...the Democratic presidential candidate Gen. George McClellan was highly favored to win the election that fall on a peace platform.This was in the middle of a war which--if the US had lost--would have resulted in there being two countries rather than one in the middle of the continent.
Slavery would have continued in the Confederate Union for many years after the end of the war, though not as long as people think and certainly not in perpetuity, as mechanization would eventually have made slavery superfluous anyway.
In 1864--144 years ago--the Democrats were trying to lose a war which the USA needed to win. And in 2008 they're doing the exact same thing.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.