Will the Election of 2020 Be the Most Consequential Since 1864?
And why was the 1864 election so important?
The presidential election of 2020 is now less than a year away. Will American voters stick with Trump, who by then will probably have been impeached, or will they go with a candidate versed in constitutional norms and diplomatic precedent?
On an MSNBC program November 9, contributor Steve Schmidt noted that the presidential election of 2020 will be the most consequential American election since 1864. What was so consequential about the election of 1864, and have none rivaled it in consequence since?
By November 1864, the United States had suffered three and one-half years of bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were dead, untold numbers wounded. Militarily, the war had shifted to the Union’s favor in 1863. That same year, President Abraham Lincoln had radicalized the war with the Emancipation Proclamation. That document made the war not just about preserving the Union, but about destroying slavery as well.
But the war was not over, and Lincoln faced re-election. A victory would mean the country supported his prosecution of the war, his position on abolition, and his plan for a moderate reconstruction of the South.
