Dan RatherTHE CAMPAIGN came while cities buzzed with talk of plots against life and property. The party out of power accused the president and his party of tyranny, and the president's partisans accused their opponents of treason. It was an era of great polarisation and anger, in a country rife with conspiracy theories of all kinds.
It was the presidential race of 1864, held amidst the blood and battles of the Civil War. The incumbent president, Abraham Lincoln, was the Republican candidate; his Democratic opponent, George B. McClellan, was the former commander of the Army of the Potomac, a post from which Lincoln had removed him. Within a year, victory would belong to the Union, but at the time of the campaign, war weariness and disaffection prevailed in both the North and the South.
REPUBLICAN CHARGES
McClellan faced Republican charges that the Confederacy wanted him to win, and worse. Meantime, the Democrats slammed "King Lincoln" for his conduct of the war and his curtailment of civil liberties, most notably the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus -- the staple of law that allows a prisoner to have a court decide whether or not he has been lawfully imprisoned. There was, to use a phrase that has become so familiar, much at stake.
With only the Union states voting, President Lincoln won re-election in 1864 by an electoral landslide. But as James McPherson writes in his outstanding Civil War history "Ordeal by Fire": "One remarkable fact about the 1864 election was that it took place at all.
GENERAL ELECTIONS
No other country before World War II held general elections in the midst of war." As late as the 20th century, Britain, for example, would twice cancel elections because of war. McPherson goes on to quote Lincoln: "We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."
All of this came to mind some weeks ago when the government contemplated what to do in the event of a terrorist attack on or near Election Day. And it was there again as the Department of Homeland Security raised the terrorism threat level on the heels of the Democratic Convention and in the run-up to the Republican Convention. 2004 is not, to be sure, 1864: The electorate is polarised but not at war with itself, and whatever other things are "at stake," the future of the Union is not among them; both the Republican and the Democratic presidential candidates strongly support the current war on terrorism; and John Kerry is not George McClellan, nor is George Bush Abraham Lincoln.
EMOTIONALLY CHARGED
Despite the emotionally charged atmosphere of this year's campaign which figures to thicken in the weeks and months to come the charges and countercharges have yet to reach the rhetorical lows and the substantive weight of those heard in the 1864 campaign. Nevertheless, that presidential contest 140 years ago highlights some of the challenges posed to a democracy in wartime. It demonstrates the determination with which America met these challenges then and has continued to do so in times of national crisis.
Wartime decisions, including those of voters, often take on a life-or-death feel. In wartime, also, the power of incumbency can seem disproportionate, as can be the temptation for challenger and incumbent alike to appeal to passion rather than to reason. Ours is not a nation that puts much stock in history. But if we look back to 1864, we might find reason to say to ourselves, "Steady" -- as we move forward, in this time of anxiety, to November 2004.
Dan Rather is a television broadcaster. (c) 2004 DJR Inc. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
