1864-1865

Lincoln soon took notice of Grant's success and by spring of May 1864 Lincoln elevated Grant to command of the Union forces in Virginia. Grant was no military genius and had been only an average student at West Point, although he was a superb horseman. But what made Grant so valuable to Lincoln was that Grant did not mind shedding blood on both sides. Grant used the superior numbers of the Union to win battles against the South, led by General Robert E. Lee, in 1864 in Northern Virginia.

1864 was an election year for the presidency, and McClellan ran against Lincoln. Early in the year it looked like McClellan would win. "Copperheads" were northern "peace" or pacifist Democrats who opposed Lincoln's war efforts against the seceded South, and they supported McClellan. Quakers in the North, for example, would have likely supported McClellan rather than Lincoln.

But then the Union Army started to win overwhelming victories on the battlefield, and the more it won, the more popular Lincoln became among voters. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman really broke the back of the South's morale and will to fight. General Sherman brutalized Georgia by destroying everything in a 60-mile-wide path from Atlanta to the ocean, known as his "March to the Sea" in late 1864. To this day some southerners are bitter about this destruction, which Sherman justified a way to crush the opponent and end the War. To the South, General Sherman was as evil as a modern-day terrorist, and the popular movie Gone With the Wind decries the excessive hardship caused by Sherman and the Union troops.

Lincoln was still worried about possibly losing the presidential election in 1864, and he even replaced his current Vice President with a Democratic southerner, Andrew Johnson, in order to help attract Democratic voters. Lincoln wanted to appease voters (including the Copperheads) who were tired of the war, and broaden his support.

To further help Lincoln win reelection, absentee voting was instituted for the first time. This enabled thousands of Union soldiers to vote by mail rather than show up at the polling booths in their home town. Much later absentee voting was allowed for everyone, so they could vote by mail while away from their voting booths.

Lincoln showed his sympathy for the South by vetoing the Wade-Davis Bill in 1864, which would have imposed a very harsh reconstruction plan on the South demanded by the northern "Radical Republicans," which was a group of congressmen most determined to punish the South for slavery and the Civil War. That Bill, which never became law, would have established virtually impossible conditions for Confederate states to rejoin the union, by requiring a majority in each State to take an oath of loyalty stating that they had always been loyal to the United States, before the State could be readmitted. Lincoln, fearful of a backlash by Radical Republicans for blocking their bill, used a "pocket veto" to prevent this from becoming law. A "pocket veto" is a procedure allowed under the Constitution whereby legislation is considered vetoed if the President does nothing within ten days and Congress has adjourned; doing nothing is a less controversial way of dealing with a crisis than doing something people do not like.

Lincoln then defeated McClellan in the election of 1864, aided by the exclusion of southern voters from the election (who would have voted against Lincoln). McClellan dropped out of national politics after losing this election, but much later McClellan became Governor of New Jersey (1878-81).

In March 1865, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address was the opposite of his First: he now saw the world and the Civil War in moral rather than legal terms. His Second Inaugural Address was filled with spiritual references, reflecting that Lincoln had found faith in God. He is one of the few public officials to display an increase in faith while wielding earthly power.