Attack ads: Lincoln vs McClellan

[brtmchl]

I found this site today. This may heve been discussed before, but I couldn't find it in past threads.

IT asks the question, could Lincoln have been re-elected today, in todays age of Super Pacs and negative ad campaigns?

These are certainly negative, but I believe that negative ad campaigns have been around throughout history.. And certainly those of Jefferson and Adams were by far the worst I have heard of. Jefferson called John Adams, a hermaphrodite who is secretly trying to marry the American Presidency to the British Crown? Adams called Thomas Jefferson, an atheist and anarchist who supports incest?

I do not recall any negative ads by President Lincoln toward McClellan in fact Pennsylvania Republican leader Alexander K. McClure recalled: "I saw Lincoln many times during the campaign of 1864, when McClellan was his competitor for the Presidency. I never heard him speak of McClellan in any other than terms of the highest personal respect and kindness. He never doubted McClellan's loyalty to the government or to the cause that called him to high military command. But he did believe, until after the capture of Atlanta by Sherman and Sheridan's victories in the Valley, which settled the political campaign in favor of Lincoln, that McClellan was quite likely to be elected over him, and that if elected, with all his patriotism and loyalty to the Union, he would be powerless to prevent the dissolution of the Republic."
Is this accurate? Was Lincoln above going negative?

http://www.flackcheck.org/lincoln-vs-mcc...super-pac/

http://www.flackcheck.org/lincoln-vs-mcc...biography/

What was the actual election like?