The Copperheads declared the war to be a failure and favored an immediate end to hostilities without securing Union victory, either via re-admitting all the Confederate states with slavery intact and legally protected, or by formally recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign nation and attempting to re-establish peaceful relationships.

The Copperheads continued to advocate allowing the Confederate states to rejoin with slavery intact, however, believing that to do otherwise would merely lead to another Civil War sooner or later.

[5] McClellan supported the continuation of the war and restoration of the Union, but the party platform, written by Vallandigham, was opposed to this position.

Many of them had hoped that Horatio Seymour would act as their standard-bearer, but early in 1864 he broke with the Copperheads and aligned himself with the more moderate Peace Democrats.

The Copperheads, realizing that trying to stop McClellan's nomination would most likely be futile, soon started to throw their votes behind the general, who finished comfortably in excess of the required two-thirds majority at the end of the first ballot.

Following the first ballot roll call, the names of Guthrie, Powell, Caton, and Phelps were withdrawn from consideration when it was revealed none of them desired the nomination.

Since the Democrats were divided by issues of war and peace, Pendleton's well-known rejection of the Lincoln administration's assertion of the constitutional right to coerce a state back into the Union balanced the ticket.