Confederate presidential election, 1867

Despite a smaller population, less industrial capability, and near-total blockade, the Southern rebellion somehow succeeded. Thanks to better military leadership which emphasized defensive war, poor communications and incompetent supply line management on the Union side (culminating in the utterly failed landing at New Orleans in 1862), and loss of public support for the crusade, Abraham Lincoln was defeated for re-election by New York governor Horatio Seymour, who signed the 1865 Treaty of Paris with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. The United States would recognize the Confederate States of America as the 11 states which formally seceded, the Indian Territory, and the Arizona Territory, while referendums on joining the confederacy would be held in West Virginia, Missouri, and Kentucky. The first two voted overwhelmingly to remain in the Union (over 80% in West Virginia and over 70% in Missouri), with 59% of Kentuckians voting to join the Confederacy.

As mandated by the Confederate Constitution, Jefferson Davis, who would go down as the Confederacy's second "founding father" (after John C. Calhoun, who died ten years before the secession of his South Carolina), did not seek a second term, and with the unity formed by war over the Confederate political elite split into two major camps. The Whigs, noting the massive superiority of Northern industry over Southern industry, advocated a mercantilist economic policy to build up an industrial base, federal infrastructure projects in the Mississippi, and an intricate national railway system, putting to work both Confederate veterans and slave laborers. Governor John Letcher of Virginia, initially an opponent of secession but eventually going along with his state legislature, was nominated.

The Democrats, representing the planting class responsible for the existence of the Confederacy in the first place, supported free trade, opposed most of the Whigs' corporatist policies as unconstitutional, and advocated a "Golden Circle" of influence, either buying or seizing by force almost everything north of Colombia. Both parties advocated "peace and goodwill with our Northern brother", recognizing that a second war with a United States growing in industrial might would likely spell the end of the Confederacy. Vice President Alexander Stephens, trumpeting the legacy of his predecessor, was nominated.

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