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Both General McClellan and President Lincoln look awkward and uncomfortable in each other’s presence in this Peninsula military conference held during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862.

Not to worry if you're a southerner who has no knowledge whatever of the 1864 presidential election. For our ancestors then, the U.S.A. was a militant rival and its politics were contemptible. After all, the South had elected Jeff Davis to a six year term with no provision for reelection, so 1864 had no political relevance down here - except for the forlorn hope that former Union general George Brinton McClellan might defeat Old Abe in his wartime reelection bid.

Spring and summer of 1864 had been a slugfest between Union and Confederate armies from Tennessee across to Northern Virginia. Battle names that are now bloody legends in our country's history constitute much of the campaign rhetoric of the great presidential campaign of '64 - the Wilderness, Petersburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta. Grant was earning his nicknames - "the Hammer," the "Butcher."

"Marse Robert," as the southerners referred to Lee, was dazzling European military observers sent by Paris and London to note the tactics and strategies of both armies. Lincoln's popularity among northerners ebbed and flowed in public opinion as did the blood of his soldiers in southern cornfields. The New York draft riots in July of 1863 showed Lincoln and the world just how unpopular the war had become.

Timing could not have been better for a disgruntled Union general to take on the commander-in-chief in a winner-take-all presidential campaign. Handsome, dashing, charismatic George "Little Mac," McClellan had been stung one too many times by Lincoln's sarcasm. Historians maintain that the election of 1864 preserved the original integrity of the Union and set the course for 20th century politics in the United States.

Simon Cameron, allegedly one of the most corrupt politicians in Washington, D.C., was dispatched to Pennsylvania, his home state, to sew up the state legislature which controlled 26 electoral votes. When Cameron had been a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, it was said that he'd been the "King of Patronage." Fellow Pennsylvanian, Thad Stevens, an arch-enemy of the South, did the essential arm-twisting to ensure that Pennsylvania did not bolt the Republican fold. Political cartoonists savagely mocked Lincoln's awkward physique and long, sad face.

Contrast the sorrowful image of Abe Lincoln in 1864 with that of the heroic and short, but powerfully built West Point general who resigned with the intention of unseating Old Abe. George McClellan appeared to be a man born to lead. The way he spoke, the way he sat a horse, the way he looked men in the eye, McClellan was a man devoid of political ambition until his military prowess was impuned by the backwoods Illinois lawyer who'd lucked into the White House.

When Lincoln sent Simon Cameron to "lock up" Pennsylvania early for the Republicans, he had cause for concern. George McClellan was a native son of that state and the McClellans carried considerable influence. Philadelphia physician, Dr. George McClellan, father of the general, was looked upon as one of the pioneers in opthamology. Dr. McClellan also had founded the Jefferson Medical College, one of the most renown schools of medicine in the country.

A few years later his father secured through President John Tyler an appointment for 15-year-old George to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Graduating number 2 in a class of 59, George Brinton McClellan counted Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, Ambrose Powell Hill, George Pickett, George Stoneman, Cadmus Wilcox and David R. Jones as his classmates. There was no part of the academy's complex curriculum in which "Little Mac" did not excel. In year two the mathematically inclined McClellan was selected for the rigorous civil engineering program. In the next two years the ambitious cadet read the works of military strategists Dennis Mahan and Antoine-Henri Jomini. Jomini, one of Napoleon's generals, had a great impact upon the developing officer.

This number two graduate of the academy's class of 1846 made it out just in time to see hot action in the Mexican War. The lieutenant was cited several times for bravery by commanding general Winfield Scott. After the war, McClellan was selected as one of the American officers to go abroad to observe the Crimean War and report back to the war department. Somewhere in this time period he also redesigned the U.S. Army's cavalry saddle, thus making it the most advanced piece of equine military equipment in use by any nation.

What led to his discomfiture and downgrading by President Lincoln? To Lincoln's credit, he gave George McClellan every opportunity to be the decisive factor in the terrible War Between the States. The young general who had had early successes in western Virginia in 1861 was promoted and given command of the huge "Army of the Peninsula," a massive army of 100,000 men and 360 pieces of artillery, not to mention thousands of horses, mules, ordnance wagons and naval ships to seal off the York and James Rivers. By now, McClellan's nickname had been changed to "Little Napoleon."

The president made a trip out to the field to have a conference with his top general. While waiting for a posed picture, Lincoln wrote his wife, "Mary dear, we are waiting to be seated for a photo. McClellan does not have any trouble with being seated. He likes to sit." Finally, an exasperated Lincoln quipped to a newspaper reporter in 1862, "If General McClellan isn't going to use his army, I'd like to borrow it for a time."

Unfortunately, the general made some unkind remarks about his commander-in-chief. "The good of my country requires me to submit to all this from men whom I know to be greatly my inferior socially, intellectually and morally! There never was a truer epithet applied to a certain individual than that of the 'Gorilla.'"

George Brinton McClellan was nominated by the Democratic Party in convention in Chicago in the Spring of 1864. His running mate was the Democratic senator from Ohio, George Pendleton. The Democrats pledged to end the unpopular war by negotiating peace with the Confederacy. Back east the New York Times was not so sure. "We do not say that Gen. McClellan may not have, for a time at least, views of his own. . . . But the trouble with him is that he lacks steadfastness of conviction. His opinions are shaped mainly by circumstances."

By August even Lincoln believed that reelection was hopeless as the stalemated war had become an albatross around his neck. Lincoln ran on the National Unity Party with Tennessee Senator Andrew Johnson. Unfortunately for the Democrats, their man McClellan came across as pompous and inflexible. His speeches, once wildly popular with soldiers, fell flat on the ears of potential voters.

The coffin nail in George McClellan's bid to defeat his old commander-in-chief was the telegraph wire General Sherman sent from Atlanta on September 6, 1864, saying, "The city is ours." Suddenly the war looked winnable as Sherman pressed to the sea and Grant hammered Lee in Virginia. Old Abe handily defeated the upstart rival with 212 electoral votes to 21. The Union was preserved as much by Lincoln's reelection as it was by Grant's battlefield victories. McClellan became the first West Point man to run for president, and Lincoln became the first president in 32 years to win reelection.

(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. See more columns online at www.moultrienews.com).