Whatever chance the Democrats had in 1864 was lost when the war at last began to favor the Union cause. By the late summer of 1864, Grant had forced Lee back into the defenses of Richmond and Petersburg. In the West, Sherman's advancing army captured Atlanta on September 2. At the same time, Admiral Farragut's naval forces closed the key Confederate port of Mobile.

When the ballots were cast in November, the results reflected both these Union triumphs and the rift among the opposition. Lincoln carried every state except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey. He polled 2,206,938 popular votes to McClellan's 1,803,787 and won an electoral vote victory of 212 to 21. It must be remembered, however, that voters in the seceded states, the strongholds of the Democratic party, did not participate in the election.

Life in the White House

Beset by military, diplomatic, and political problems, the President tried to keep his family life as normal as possible. The two youngest Lincoln boys, Thomas (Tad) and William Wallace (Willie), were high spirited lads. Their older brother, the sober Robert Todd Lincoln, was less frequently in Washington, because he was first a student at Harvard and later an aide to General Grant. Despite the snobbishness of Washington society and criticisms from those who wanted all social affairs suspended because of the war, the Lincolns continued to hold receptions in the White House. But the President found these affairs costly and tiring. He would slip away late at night after a White House party to visit the telegraph room of the War Department to read the latest dispatches from the front. He never took a vacation, but in summer he moved his family to the cooler and more secluded Soldier's Home in Washington.

Lincoln visibly aged during the war years, and by 1865 he appeared almost haggard. His life was made harder by personal trials. Early in 1862, Willie died of typhoid. His mother, always high-strung and hysterical, suffered a nervous breakdown, and Lincoln had to watch over her with careful solicitude. But Lincoln emerged from his public and private agonies with a new serenity of soul. Any trace of vanity or egotism was burned out by the fires of war. In his second inaugural address, his language reached a new level of eloquence. Urging his countrymen to act "with malice toward none; with charity for all," he looked beyond the end of the war toward binding up the nation's wounds, so as to "achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace."

Reconstruction

From the start of the Civil War, Lincoln was deeply concerned about the terms under which the Southern states, once subdued, should be restored to the Union. He had no fixed plan for reconstruction. At the outset, he would have welcomed a simple decision on the part of any Southern state government to rescind its ordinance of secession and return its delegation to Congress. By 1863, however, to this war aim of union he added that of liberty, for he now insisted that emancipation of the slaves was a necessary condition for restoration. By the end of the war he was beginning to add a third condition, equality, for he realized that minimal guarantees of civil rights for blacks were essential. Privately, he let it be known that he favored extending the franchise in the Southern states to some of the blacks--"as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks."

As to means by which to achieve these goals, Lincoln was also flexible. When Union armies advanced into the South, he appointed military governors for the states that were conquered. Most notable of these was the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew JOHNSON, who became Lincoln's running mate in 1864. In December 1863, Lincoln enunciated a comprehensive reconstruc tion program, pledging pardon and amnesty to Confederates who were prepared to swear loyalty to the Union and promising to turn back control of local governments to the civil authorities in the South when as few as 10% of the 1860 voting population participated in the elections. Governments operating under this 10% plan were set up in Louisiana and Arkansas and soon were petitioning for readmission to Congress.

Inevitably Lincoln's program ran into opposition, both because it represented a gigantic expansion of presidential powers and because it appeared not to give adequate guarantees to the freedmen. Defeating an attempt to seat the senators from the new government in Arkansas, Radical Republicans in Congress in July 1864 set forth their own terms for restoration in the far harsher Wade-Davis Bill. When Lincoln pocket-vetoed this measure, declaring that he was "unprepared to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of reconstruction," Radicals accused him of "dictatorial usurpation."

The stage was set for further conflict over reconstruction when Congress reassembled in December 1864, just after Lincoln's reelection. Assisted by the Democrats, the Radicals forced Lincoln's supporters to drop the bill to readmit Louisiana. Lincoln was deeply saddened by the defeat. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl," he said, "shall we sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it?" On April 11, 1865, in his last public address, the President defended his reconstruction policy.

Death

Three days later, the President was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth while attending a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington. He died at 7:22 the following morning, April 15, 1865. After lying in state in the Capitol, his body was taken to Springfield, Ill., where he was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Benjamin P. Thomas, Author of "Abraham Lincoln: A Biography" and David Herbert Donald Harry C. Black Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Southern History, The Johns Hopkins University

Source

http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/prescont.html