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 common assumption—the eight presidents directly preceding Lincoln had each served one term or less.
Lincoln’s main weakness as a candidate was that the Union’s war against the Confederacy wasn’t going well. By the spring of 1864, the Civil War had been going on for three years with no end in sight, and many voters (i.e., white men ages 21 and up) were starting to get war-weary. Lincoln agreed with his advisors that his chances for winning reelection looked grim, but he disagreed with those who suggested he delay the election.
“Lincoln always felt that the Civil War was, number one, about democracy,” says Eric Foner, a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University and author of The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.
“[Lincoln thought] if you suspend democracy in the middle of the war, you are basically undercutting the whole purpose of the war,” he continues. “So even when he thought he was going to lose, he never really contemplated suspending the presidential election.” (Lincoln did, however, suspend the writ of habeas corpus and ignore a ruling by the Supreme Court’s chief justice that he didn’t have the authority to do so.)
When Lincoln first ran for president in 1860, it was his Republican Party that had a stronghold in the north, and the Democratic Party that had found popularity in the south. When 11 southern states seceded to join the Confederacy, the Republican Party became the Union’s dominant political party. Even so, for the 1864 election, the Republican Party decided to join forces with some Democrats to form the National Union Party.
Despite concerns about Lincoln’s electability, the National Union backed him as its presidential candidate. Yet notably, Lincoln ditched his current Republican vice president to run with Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who had previously supported slavery, in an attempt to “balance the ticket.”
Meanwhile, a divided Democratic Party nominated George McClellan, a popular general who’d served in the Union Army. Lincoln’s campaign position was that there would be no ceasefire until the south rejoined the north and ended slavery. In contrast, McClellan said his only condition for ending the war would be that the Confederate states rejoined the Union.
Whether or not slavery continued—as well as the fate of black Americans—was not a priority for McClellan or the Democratic Party. And in the party’s attempt to win the votes of war-weary white northerners, it launched “probably the most racist presidential campaign in American history,” says David Goldfield, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation.
For example, one Democratic political cartoon exploited white Americans’ fears about interracial sex by depicting a fictional “Miscegenation Ball at the Headquarters of the Lincoln Central Campaign Club.” Another Democratic campaign pamphlet referred to Lincoln as “Abraham Africanus the First” and declared that the first commandment of the Republican Party was “Thou shalt have no other God but the negro.”
Ultimately, what helped Lincoln win over McClellan wasn’t the fact that he wanted to end slavery. It was the fact that in the two months before the election, the Union achieved major military victories by capturing Atlanta and winning a major battle in the Shenandoah Valley. These military victories boosted morale among both civilian and military voters. Soldiers in particular seemed to agree with Lincoln’s campaign slogan: “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream.”
In order to pull off the 1864 election, the Union needed a way for soldiers stationed far from their homes to vote. To this end, most northern states passed new laws allowing soldiers to cast absentee votes from military camps. However, because soldiers were more likely to vote for their current commander-in-chief, there were some partisan attempts to suppress their votes.
“In states where the Democrats controlled the state legislature, like Indiana, they did not allow soldiers to vote in their army camps,” Foner says. “But the War Department kind of encouraged commanders to let these soldiers go home for a week or something in order that they could vote.”
The election also included three new states: Kansas, West Virginia and Nevada. Kansas had joined the Union as a free state in 1861, just after Lincoln’s first presidential election and before the Civil War started. West Virginia joined in 1863 after breaking off from the Confederate state of Virginia. And Nevada actually became a state on October 31, 1864, just a week before the election, in part because Congress thought it might give Lincoln an electoral edge, Foner says.
On November 8, Lincoln won in a landslide. He received 54 percent of the civilian vote, 78 percent of the military vote and 212 electoral votes across 22 states. In comparison, McClellan took 21 electoral votes in only three states: Delaware, Kentucky and his home state of New Jersey. The victory meant Lincoln continued leading the war with the goal of reuniting the country and abolishing slavery.
“I think it was one of the most critical elections in our history,” says John C. Waugh, a historical reporter and author of Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency. “And thank god that Lincoln won.”
The Los Angeles riots sprung from years of rising tensions between the LAPD and the city’s African Americans, highlighted by the 1991 videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King. On April 29, 1992, anger boiled over after four LAPD officers were found not guilty of assaulting King, leading to several days of widespread violence, looting and arson throughout L.A. By May 3, thousands of National Guardsmen and federal troops had largely curbed the uprising, which left more than 60 people dead and produced about $1 billion in damage.
The 1980s brought rising unemployment, gang activity, drugs and violent crime to the poorer neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Aggressive efforts to exert control by the Los Angeles Police Department fostered a belief among minority communities that its officers were not held liable for abusive police actions.
In August 1988, as part of LAPD Chief Daryl Gates’s “Operation Hammer” drug sweeps, more than 80 officers tore apart a pair of apartment buildings on Dalton Street in South L.A., leaving dozens homeless.
In January 1990, a skirmish between the LAPD and Nation of Islam members following a traffic stop resulted in the death of 27-year-old Air Force veteran Oliver Beasley.
Early on March 3, 1991, an intoxicated parolee named Rodney King led police on a high-speed car chase before stopping in Lakeview Terrace.
His subsequent beating, which left him with a fractured skull and cheekbone, was caught on video by Lakeview resident George Holliday, who forwarded it to local station KTLA. Within days, the footage of police repeatedly hitting a black man with batons was airing on all major networks, drumming up nationwide outrage against the officers involved.
On March 15, LAPD Sergeant Stacey Koon and officers Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno were indicted for assault in the King beating, with Koon and Powell also charged with filing false police reports. The African-American community endured another blow the following day, when 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by Korean grocer Soon Ja Du over a disputed shoplifting.
Shortly afterward, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley formed the independent Christopher Commission, named for co-chair Warren Christopher, to investigate operations within the LAPD. In July, the commission published a report that detailed repetitive use of excessive force and recommended a new system of accountability, though Gates staunchly defended his practices.
On November 15, Du drew a sentence that included community service and suspended jail time, a decision that outraged Harlins’ family and supporters. Eleven days later, it was announced the trial for the four officers in the King beating would be moved from Los Angeles County to predominantly white Ventura County. In February 1992, the trial commenced with a 12-member jury that included one Latino, one Asian American and one half-African American.
At about 3:15 p.m. on Wednesday, April 29, the jury released their verdict: All four officers were acquitted of charges in the King case, save for a mistrial on one charge against Powell of excessive force.
The response was immediate, as angry protesters took to the streets. Hundreds of people gathered at the Los Angeles County Courthouse to protest the verdict. By 5:30 p.m., the unrest had grown violent near the intersection of Florence and Normandie Avenues in South L.A., where locals attacked passing motorists and forced overwhelmed LAPD officers to retreat.
A news helicopter captured footage of white truck driver Reginald Denny being pulled from his rig and beaten nearly to death, with no signs of police assistance. Minutes later, a Latino driver named Fidel Lopez endured a similar attack.
In a matter of hours, neighborhoods across South and Central Los Angeles were in flames as rioters firebombed thousands of buildings, smashed windows, looted stores and even attacked the Parker Center police headquarters in downtown L.A. By the end of the day, California Governor Pete Wilson had declared a state of emergency and ordered the activation of reserve National Guard soldiers.
The citywide unrest showed little signs of abating on April 30, prompting the suspension of rapid transit, mail service, schools and professional sports games. Many businesses closed, leaving residents to wait in long lines for food and gas, while other store owners, like bands of armed Korean merchants, chose to engage the looters.
Although some 2,000 National Guardsmen had reached the city by 8:00 that morning, a lack of proper communication and equipment prevented effective deployment until later in the afternoon.
May 1, the third day of continued rioting, was marked by the televised appearance of King, who asked for the mayhem to stop, quietly pleading, “Can we all get along?”
That evening, President George H.W. Bush also took to the airwaves to denounce both the “senseless deaths” of the riots and the police brutality that inspired them, and to announce the dispatch of thousands of federal officers to Los Angeles.
By May 2, with 6,000 National Guardsmen bolstered by the addition of another 4,000 federal troops and Marines, the disorder had largely quelled. An estimated 30,000 people marched at a peaceful rally for Korean merchants, and volunteers began cleaning up the streets. Meanwhile, arraignments began for some 6,000 alleged looters and arsonists.
Highway exits reopened and police began recovering stolen merchandise the following day, the only significant trouble coming when National Guardsmen shot a driver who attempted to run them over.
On May 4, Mayor Bradley lifted the citywide curfew, and residents attempted to resume day-to-day activities with schools, businesses and rapid transit resuming operations. Federal troops stood down on May 9 and the National Guard soon followed, though some soldiers remained until the end of the month.
The final tally for the L.A. riots included 2,000 injuries, 12,000 arrests and 63 deaths attributed to the uprising. Upwards of 3,000 buildings were burned or destroyed and 3,000 businesses were affected as part of the $1 billion in damages sustained by the city, leaving an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people out of work.
At the conclusion of the riots, elected officials set about putting the city back together through a combination of federal grants, collaborations with financial institutions and tax proposals.
Governor Wilson and Mayor Bradley tapped Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth to lead the “Rebuild L.A.” effort, which attracted nearly $400 million in corporate investments and set in motion a series of grassroots movements to foster job training and community involvement.
Attention was also focused on the culpability of the city’s law enforcement. On May 11, former FBI Director William H. Webster was named to head an investigation into the LAPD response during the riots, and in late June embattled Chief Daryl Gates stepped down.
In October, the commission issued a report that criticized both the LAPD and City Hall for being unprepared and slow to handle the response to the riots. It issued a list of recommendations, including redeploying desk officers into community patrols and upgrading the city’s communications and information systems.
Critics of the LAPD earned some vindication in 1993 when officers Koon and Powell were sentenced to 30 months apiece for violating King’s civil rights. In April 1994, King was awarded $3.8 million in a civil lawsuit against the city.
Although the LAPD demonstrated improvements with community-based programs, it resisted implementing most of the recommendations of the 1991 Christopher Commission. It wasn’t until the Rampart Scandal of the late 1990s, which exposed widespread corruption within an LAPD anti-gang unit, that serious change was enacted.
In 2000, the city of Los Angeles entered a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that allowed an independent monitor to oversee reforms. After taking over as LAPD chief in 2002, William Bratton was credited with significantly overhauling and improving the perception of the department. He used information technology to track misconduct and use of force, promoted diversity and disciplined officers instead of adhering to a code of silence.
Toward the end of Bratton’s tenure, in 2009, a Harvard study found that 83 percent of Los Angeles residents believed the LAPD to be doing a good or excellent job, and a federal judge approved a transition plan that placed oversight in the hands of the Los Angeles Police Commission. In 2013, Department of Justice oversight of the LAPD was fully lifted.
