7. Reunion

Abstract

‘Reunion’ examines the period after the Emancipation Proclamation, the ongoing Civil War, and the presidential campaign of 1864. By the fall of 1864, large portions of the Confederacy's territory were under Union occupation and the question was not whether, but when, the Confederacy would buckle, and what kind of peace should then take place. A presidential election was looming, but Lincoln had no trouble getting the renomination of his own party convention and on March 4, 1865, he stepped on to the podium on the east portico of the Capitol to take his second oath of office as president and deliver his Second Inaugural address.