I recently borrowed a book from my local public library for a trip I was about to take called A Short History of the Civil War by James L. Stokesbury. It is a nice little read, very informative without being too academic; but one chapter that I read today made me sit up and take notice. The parallels between the attitudes of the Democrats and some Republicans in the Civil War are eerily similar to attitudes that are held today about the Iraq war. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same; read on and you'll see what I mean. Change a few names and dates here or there, and you wouldn't even know that it wasn't the current conflict that is  being discussed.

On the election of 1864:
"In 1864 the Democrats thought they could beat Lincoln, and many Republicans agreed with them. A good many of the latter, indeed, went so far as to suggest that the Republicans should rid themselves of Lincoln, and that they would have a better chance at winning the election if they replaced him..."(pp 259)
Sound familiar?

On Democratic Party campaign strategy:
"They (Dems) certainly needed to cover themselves as best they could, for the game was there for the Democrats to win, if only they could develop a combination to do it. That was the real rub. It was all well and good to cry, 'The war is a failure!' but what did they offer as an alternative? They did not really know. They had some vague ideas that if they stopped the war, somehow all would be well agian; the country might be reunited, and everyone could agree that the late unpleasantness had just not happened. It was far from a positive program, and even that was achieved only by dillegently ignoring a great many facts, most notably that the war had happened..."(pp 259)
Shades of 9/11 anyone?

On selecting a candidate:
"Their (Dems) dilemma was underscored by their search for a candidate. Who would possibly be the Democratic standard-bearer against Lincoln? Since the were going to repudiate the war, it would look best if they had a war hero to do it. The extreme Peace Democrats did not want even that, and they did their best to nominate Horatio Seymour of New York, one of the most difficult anti-war state governors with whom Lincoln had to contend. There was, however, a more charismatic figure, and he let it be known he was available: George Brinton McClellan. The man who had once been willing to "become dictator to save the country, and perish by suicide to preserve its liberties", was now willing to become the Democratic presidential candiate."(pp 259-260)
Ned Lamont, netroots revolution, and John F. Kerry come to mind here!

On the run-up to the elections:
"Most observers were pretty sure the military men, or those connected with them, would in fact vote Republican, but what of the rest of the country, all the millions of people who just needed to get on with their day-to-day lives? They might well not support a war to which they could see no end, and in which they could see little profit. These were the people to whom the Democrats appealed. The war is a failure, the war is a waste; "this bloody and expensive war" was a stock phrase of Democratic editorials and oratory. Lincoln and his gang had suspended civil rights, imposed burdensome taxes, wrecked the country, and for what? To free the slaves? To keep South Carolina in a union it wanted to leave? Surely the country deserved better than these abolitionists, fanatics, political charlatans and backwoods yokels. Surely the country deserved George B. McClellan and peace and prosperity.
In July and August it looked not only as if that was what the country deserved, but also what it wanted. The reports Lincoln recieved from his political managers did not look good. they would almost certainly lose many of the state governments, much of Congress, and they would probably lose the White House too. People were so tired of war and death and destruction; peace was worth almost any price."(pp261)
Where have I read/seen/heard this before? Maybe the MSM?

On what actually happened on election day ( this is a lengthy passage):
"On a more practical level, the Republicans were determined to do all they could, legally and occasionally illegally, to win the election; both sides urged their followers, as the quip has it, to "vote early and vote often." The fall of  Atlanta (Gen. W.T. Sherman, September 1864), though it was percieved as cutting a good deal from under the Democrats' "The war is a failure" campaign, still did not make the election a sure thing or even approach it. One measure the Republicans chose, wisely as it turned out, was to allow and encourage voting by the soldiers themselves. The government hoped that its fighting men would support the war effort, rather than repudiate it. Soldiers from some states that required their physical precence were furloughed so they could go home to vote. Other states sent commissioners to their regiments in the field to record the soldiers' ballots there.
The result was gratifying beyond the Republicans' wildest hopes. Here were the men doing the actual fighting and dying, asked to vote in support of the government, in effect a war, that would make them continue to fight and die--and they did so resoundingly. These men were not fooled by the Democrats' hedging on the great questions of the day, and they knew better than any others that when Jeff Davis said independence was a precondition to peace, he and those who followed him meant exactly that. Of the soldier votes that were tabulated seperately, 199,754 out of 154,045 were for Lincoln-78 percent for the war. There is no reason to believe that those who went home voted any differently from those still in the field; thus Lincoln carried the army by three to one." (pp281-282)
Seem familiar to you?

Now is it just me, or does all this sound familiar? I have heard Rush Limbaugh say for years that the Democrats never change their playbook, but I doubt even he realized that the playbook hadn't changed since the Civil War!!!

I guess the old saying is true: The more things change, the more they stay the same!

*All passages quoted from: A Short History of the Civil War by James L. Stokesbury. New York: Morrow, 1995. Pages 259-61, 281-2.