Northern Democrats

Copperheads and Bourbon Democrats

By 1860, the party was in such disarray that it was unable to centralize enough to support a single candidate. Instead, the Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John Breckinridge for president, while the Northern Democrats supported Stephen Douglas. Breckinridge won the 11 slave states. Douglas came in second in the popular vote, but took less than five percent of the electoral vote. With the Democrats split, Republican Abraham Lincoln beat them both, and the Civil War began.

During the war, the only Southern Democrats remaining with the United States were those from the states that had rejected secession: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. The Northern Democrats fought over the matter ofthe war. War Democrats stood with Lincoln, while the Copperheads (sometimes called Butternuts, also a term for a Confederate soldier) sought an immediate peace treaty with the seceding states, and an end to the military draft. The Copperheads blamed the Republicans, and the abolitionists for causing the war, accusing them of inciting the southern states in to seceding. Copperheads were often been accused of treason, in encouraging soldiers to desert, even directly helping Confederates, but such accusations were mostly made by their political opponents, and fit the vicious and vituperative rhetoric of the day.

As the war waxed on, lasting longer than many first thought, Copperheads fared well in state and local elections where the Democrats had an existing power base, and especially in the border states, which were often settled by former southerners who maintained family and cultural ties to the Confederate states. The 1864 presidential election could have been a significant one for the Democrats: the war had taken a serious toll, and the Republicans showed early signs that they expected a harsh battle to re-elect Lincoln. But infighting ruined the Democrats' chances, as the War Democrats and Copperheads were unable to come to terms. In the end, the pro-war General George McClellan was nominated to run for president, with a party platform that called for the nation to sue for peace. General McClellan was quite clear that he had no intention of doing so. The mixed message brought the Democrats 45 percent of the popular vote, but less than a tenth of the electoral votes. Lincoln was re-elected.

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