Excerpt from War Elections, 1862-1864

Not since the war elections of Abraham Lincoln's time have the American people been faced with the task of making political decisions which directly affect the winning of a people's war and the peace to follow. A study of the elections of 1862, 1863, and particularly Lincoln's second election in 1864, provides us with the only parallel in our nation's history to the elections in November, 1944. Then, as today, our nation was engaged in a progressive war whose future was to be determined as much by the ballots of the loyal citizens as by the bullets of their brothers on the battlefield.

War is no mere contest between rival military forces. Armies and navies are the tools of civil policy and are the last resource of nations whose problems cannot be solved peaceably. Once the weapon of war is employed its conduct becomes subject to the political purposes of the groups in control of that nation. If, during the course of the war, those groups are thrown out of power and new ones with totally Opposite aims and policies take over, the conduct of the war will correspondingly change.

During the Civil War the Republicans were the progressive party. They represented the political union of the western small farmers and the industrial capitalists of New England and the middle states, supported by the workers. These people saw in the extension of slavery a threat to their own existence. Small free farmers could not compete successfully side by side with large-scale slave holdings. Slave labor threatened to drag the wage worker down to its miserable level. Industry could not grow, transportation could not ex pand, markets could not rise if slaves were the only labor force available, cotton the only cr0p, and the plantation owner the only customer. Modern industrial society could only develop if the stranglehold of slavery on the nation could 'be broken by the forces within the Republican Party.

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