There were factions from the very start of the war that were uninterested in fighting a war against the South. The Peace Democrats or Copperheads were bitter opponents of Lincoln's presidency and wanted an immediate negotiated peace with Confederacy. Those factions coalesced around George B. McClellan in the 1864 election as a way to oust the hated "tyrant" Lincoln. That they failed in a fairly one sided fashion could be seen as an endorsement of Lincoln, but public sentiment was hardly that one sided throughout the course of the war. It waxed and waned like most things with the successes or failures of the Union Army.