Other campaign literature was more charged. A Democratic Party pamphlet in Case III decries increased taxes, debt, suspension of civil rights, the War’s carnage, but also the threat posed by African-Americans. With abolition a war aim, black labor will compete with white, and a “parcel” of “brutal Africans” will be set loose, “who, for all they can ever hope, either here or hereafter, are better off in their present homes than anywhere else in the world, or than they would be in Africa.” The Republicans’ task was easier. While officially for abolition, they could downplay it and also paint McClellan as being false to the Union and to soldiers’ sacrifices.

One of the most memorable events in Philadelphia during the War was the Great Central Sanitary Fair a huge fundraising event for the Union cause in June 1864. The head of the executive committee that organized it was John Welsh (APS 1867); the local Sanitary Commission was chaired by Horace Binney, Jr. (APS 1869). The scale of the Fair was a huge, with a central hall 540 feet long that was constructed in 40 days. The restaurant sat 1,000. Abraham Lincoln visited on June 16, contributing 48 signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation that sold for $10.00 each. The Fair raised $1,000,000 to aid the troops. In this, the fourth year of war, the South could only dream of such an extravaganza.