What if John C. Fremont had decided not to abandon his Radical Republican campaign in September 1864? How would this of effected the election with a viable anti-Lincoln Republican running?
It certainly would have lost Lincoln New York and probably Pennsylvania and Connecticut as well. Other possible shifts would be New Hampshire and Indiana. If we assume those five states go from Lincoln's column to McClellan's, we end up with 129 electoral votes for Lincoln to 104 electoral votes for McClellan. In other words, the election is much closer but Lincoln will still win.
If you combine Fremont remaining in the race with some other event (such as the Confederates continuing to hold Atlanta), then there is the probability that McClellan will win the election, with enormous consequences for American history.
Why do people think McClellan winning would have such "enormous consequences for American history"? (Besides the obvious butterfly effects). McClellan was a War Democrat, he would've been sworn in less than a month before the fall of Richmond, and obviously OTL Lincoln was shot and replaced by Andrew Johnson just over a month after his second inauguration.
McClellan probably would not have been very concerned with the rights of former slaves, for one thing.
Which is another reason things would get tricky. The Peace Democrats basically had the idea that they would implement a cease-fire, sit down with the Confederates, ask them very nicely to come back into the Union, and promise to throw out the Emancipation Proclamation and have everything back the way it had been in the good old days. Moreover, they believed that the Southerners would happily accept such an offer.
Just one problem: the South wouldn't have accepted it. By 1864, Jefferson Davis and the other leaders of the South would have sooner choked to death in a puddle of their own blood and excrement than to rejoin the Union, slavery or no slavery. Even the Southerners who had been moderate Unionists in 1861 were, by-and-large, devout Confederates by 1864; just take a look at Jubal Early, for example.
But if the United States government had implemented a cease-fire, held a "conference of the states", and had its terms rejected by the Confederates, what then? Would there have been any political will in the Union to resume hostilities after they had been halted, perhaps for many months? Would the abolitionists and Republicans have continued to support the war if the emancipation of slavery were no longer a war aim?
It certainly would have lost Lincoln New York and probably Pennsylvania and Connecticut as well. Other possible shifts would be New Hampshire and Indiana. If we assume those five states go from Lincoln's column to McClellan's, we end up with 129 electoral votes for Lincoln to 104 electoral votes for McClellan. In other words, the election is much closer but Lincoln will still win.
And the Republicans have a further 17 votes in reserve, 10 from Tennessee and 7 from Louisiana.
OTL those votes were not counted, but if they would change the outcome of the election, no doubt the Republican Congress would have had a sudden rethink.
And the Republicans have a further 17 votes in reserve, 10 from Tennessee and 7 from Louisiana.
OTL those votes were not counted, but if they would change the outcome of the election, no doubt the Republican Congress would have had a sudden rethink.