DBAHC/WI: McClellan loses in 1864

Historians tend to look at McClellan's ascension to the presidency as foreordained; after swiftly taking the rebel capital, crushing of the rebellion, and restoring of the slaveholding states to their places in the Union without any kind of revolution, he was a national hero. With explosive personal charisma, the unified support of the West, the South, the army, and the lower North, and the popular slogan that Lincoln started the war and McClellan ended it, the victorious General-in-Chief swept into the White House in the first step of a lightning political career, and became the first president since Jackson to serve two terms.

Is there any realistic way to keep McClellan out of the White House in 1864, and what would be the likely effects of a second term for Lincoln, or a Fremont presidency?
 
There was something of a tradition in the nineteenth century of sending victorious generals to the White House, the one exception of course being Scott.

The 1852 result was probably due to the strains on the Whig Party, which essentially was just about to break up. You could not have the Democrats reunite and rally, but to break up into factions. There was actually a faction within the party opposed to forcing the southern states back into the Union at all, so just have them run a fourth candidate.

Another thing you could do is for Lincoln and the radical wing of the Republican Party agree on a reconstruction program, so there is no Fremont candidacy. Alternately, Lincoln opts to to run and to serve just one turn, he was really broken by the stress and didn't really want to run.

So in a situation where the Republicans are united behind either Lincoln or Fremont, or even one of the other successful Union generals (though their best general in the West, Grant, was a Democrat!), and its the Copperheads who run a third party candidate against McClellan, then I can see McClellan losing. That's alot, but political parties were really important in the nineteenth century and if you can weaken the Democrats enough, not even McClellan's wartime record could secure him the White House.
 

ben0628

Banned
Well a confederate victory during the Peninsula campaign would have made a fool out of McClellan and would have prolonged the war. Problem was Joe Johnston wasn't that great of a commander (too cautious). Kill/wound Johnston at the battle of Seven Pines (he almost got hit by a shell fragment) and he would have probably been replaced by a more aggressive Robert E. Lee who advocated attacking McClellan and driving him off the peninsula.
 
I'll admit I have a hard time making sense of ben0628's comment, especially the part about Robert E. Lee.

I just looked up the guy on Wikipedia, and apparently he was an engineer who designed a good deal of the country's coastal fortifications. He had a good Mexican War record, and was thought highly enough that he was one of the five officers the Confederates made generals. There is nothing in his background to be particularly aggressive, and his part in the Civil War was curtailed by a heart attack. However good the man have been, he certainly wasn't in any condition in 1862 to lead troops into combat.

I have heard of Joe Johnston, and many military historians have good things to say about him, and argue that he could have held Richmond if Davis hadn't fired him after Seven Pines. He certainly would have been an improvement over Braxton Bragg. I don't know what Davis was thinking.

Honestly, given the superiority in numbers and armaments of the federal forces, I don't see how the Confederacy could have survived past 1863. Maybe if they had held Richmond or New Orleans they could have staggered into 1864, but how were they going to hold those two cities?
 
Another thing you could do is for Lincoln and the radical wing of the Republican Party agree on a reconstruction program, so there is no Fremont candidacy. Alternately, Lincoln opts to to run and to serve just one turn, he was really broken by the stress and didn't really want to run.
I think in that case, the impact is less that the Republican party is united, and more that there aren't southern electors to cast votes for McClellan. Given the total disintegration of the rebellion in summer 1862 and minimal damage done to the South, I have a hard time believing they would somehow contrive to drag out reconstruction for two years.

Also, even if Lee had taken command and would have been as aggressive as ben0628 claims, that would have just sped things up. With the swampy Chickahominy and the James anchoring McClellan's right and left flanks, it would have meant a frontal assault into the teeth of the Army of the Potomac's trenches and heavy guns, which would end one way. Really, McClellan couldn't have planned it better himself. Transferring McDowell's corps by ship to the Peninsula left Washington 'exposed' to Jackson's thrust, which badly embarrassed Lincoln, while McClellan got credit for the near simultaneous capture of Corinth, Chattanooga, and Richmond in late May-early June.
 
Top