Lincoln's Approach to a Tough Election Could Teach Trump a Few Things

Since President Donald Trump loves describing himself as akin to the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, he might want to take a few lessons from Lincoln, not only on how to wage a campaign for re-election but how to deal with the possibility of defeat in a time of national tumult.

At the end of August 1864, with a bitterly contested presidential election less than three months away, Lincoln had good reason to believe he would lose his bid for a second term.

The three-year-long effort to quell the Confederacy's slaveholder rebellion was faltering, casualties mounting. Just 13 months earlier, chaos had struck some of the North's largest cities, as resistance to military conscription triggered looting, arson and violent attacks against innocent people of color. In New York alone, draft rioters had not only lynched innocent African Americans and sacked retail stores, but also unleashed a particularly heinous attack on the "Colored Orphan Asylum" on Fifth Avenue -- setting it ablaze with more than 200 orphans still inside (they escaped).

By 1864, press attacks on Lincoln reached new levels of vitriol. Democratic newspapers condemned the incumbent as a despot and clown, mocking him as an ineffective commander-in-chief. Much of this could be written off as partisan dissembling, but then, in the summer, two of the most influential Republican newspaper editors turned against Lincoln as well.

Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune went so far as to undercut administration policy and propose to personally negotiate a peaceful end to the Civil War, bullying Lincoln into authorizing him to talk armistice with dubious Confederate conferees. When Lincoln also instructed Greeley not to negotiate away the Emancipation Proclamation in return for a cease-fire, the talks collapsed and conservative voices in the North condemned Lincoln for showing his hand. Where public relations was concerned, it seemed Lincoln could not win.

And then, Henry J. Raymond, editor of the reliably pro-Lincoln New York Times, warned the president: "The tide is setting strongly against us." If the vote were held that week, Raymond predicted, Lincoln would lose the swing states of Illinois, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Why not launch a peace initiative of your own, Raymond urged him -- this time aimed directly at Confederate President Jefferson Davis himself. This proved the most unnerving advice of all, for Raymond was not only a newspaper editor, but chairman of the Republican (redubbed the Union) Party.

With nowhere else to turn, a desperate and despondent Lincoln threw up his hands and authorized Raymond to seek such a conference with the Rebel chief "in entirely respectful terms" and "propose, on behalf of this government, that upon the restoration of the Union and the national authority, the war shall cease at once, all remaining questions to be left for adjustment by peaceful means." Even the freedom of Blacks seemed negotiable.

The meeting never materialized, but what President Trump needs to consider most closely is what Lincoln did next.

First, he refused to question the legitimacy of an election in the midst of chaos.

"We can not have free government without elections," he said in a November speech, "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."