Democracy in the middle of the war
The United States has never delayed a presidential election. But there was one instance in which some wondered if the country should: when the nation was embroiled in the Civil War. The 1864 election was the second U.S. presidential election to take place during wartime (the first was during the War of 1812). Still, it wasn’t the logistics of carrying out a wartime election that made some people want to postpone it. Rather, it was the fact that by the spring of 1864, the Union had no clear path to victory, and many feared President Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t win reelection. Today, conventional wisdom holds that incumbent presidential candidates are more likely to win reelection, especially during wartime. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term during World War II, and Richard Nixon delayed Vietnam peace talks because he thought prolonging the Vietnam War would help his reelection chances in 1972 (and indeed, he won a second term). Yet in 1864, this wasn’t a comm