I tried to explore the subject some times (my latest : https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...hers-perspective-of-a-divided-america.378092/ ).
In my scenario, war goes bad but not and the lack of significant progress leads to public opinion turning against the war, resulting in an armistice, short of any peace treaty or actual recognition of CSA existance (kind of Korean war situation).
McClellan is elected in 1864 (Lincoln was mortally wounded during a Confederate raid on Washington in 1862), carrying all the electoral college (with a very short lead over Radical Republican candidate Frémont).
In the war aftermath, it's the National Union Party, later only Union Party that dominates, composed of conservative republicans and pro-War Democrats.
Copperheads have faded away and Radical Republicans have broken away. That Radical party is centered around the old abolitionnist core with some Know Nothing elements maybe. If the ocontinued prosecution of the war was their main fight early on, it would have mutated as some pragmatism would have make it 'better without slaveholders' with some reluctance, but Radicals would take their fight to get an amendment to abolish slavery since none such amendment passed the congress and that once the war ended, many establishment Unionist of Democrat origin decline to take the fight, or don't show interest when they don't oppose it.
I've also wondered if, since Radicals have been pushed back to fringe position on the left of political spectrum, they could be tempted to develop some christian socialist features to take on the rising labor movement, my reasoning being that Radical ideology is through its abolitionnist roots impregnated with religion; for the same reason, they would take the fight for temperance and perhaps even women's vote (I read some Radical figures supported it).
They could also capture the nascent greenback and populist movement to expand among farmers and develop their electoral base in great plains.
In my scenario, war goes bad but not and the lack of significant progress leads to public opinion turning against the war, resulting in an armistice, short of any peace treaty or actual recognition of CSA existance (kind of Korean war situation).
McClellan is elected in 1864 (Lincoln was mortally wounded during a Confederate raid on Washington in 1862), carrying all the electoral college (with a very short lead over Radical Republican candidate Frémont).
In the war aftermath, it's the National Union Party, later only Union Party that dominates, composed of conservative republicans and pro-War Democrats.
Copperheads have faded away and Radical Republicans have broken away. That Radical party is centered around the old abolitionnist core with some Know Nothing elements maybe. If the ocontinued prosecution of the war was their main fight early on, it would have mutated as some pragmatism would have make it 'better without slaveholders' with some reluctance, but Radicals would take their fight to get an amendment to abolish slavery since none such amendment passed the congress and that once the war ended, many establishment Unionist of Democrat origin decline to take the fight, or don't show interest when they don't oppose it.
I've also wondered if, since Radicals have been pushed back to fringe position on the left of political spectrum, they could be tempted to develop some christian socialist features to take on the rising labor movement, my reasoning being that Radical ideology is through its abolitionnist roots impregnated with religion; for the same reason, they would take the fight for temperance and perhaps even women's vote (I read some Radical figures supported it).
They could also capture the nascent greenback and populist movement to expand among farmers and develop their electoral base in great plains.