Introduction
By 1868 the United States had
experienced several unprecedented, pivotal events since the last
presidential election: the end of the Civil War; the abolition
of slavery by the 13th
Amendment; the assassination of a president; the impeachment and
near removal from office of another president; and the
continuing clash over the policies and implementation of
Reconstruction—i.e., of admitting the former Confederate states
back into the Union and of incorporating the freed slaves into
the political and social life of the nation. In fact, many
observers viewed the 1868 presidential contest between
Republican Ulysses S. Grant and Democrat Horatio Seymour as a
referendum on Reconstruction.
The Republicans had to defend the 14th
Amendment (1868), which gave black Americans citizenship and
prohibited state governments from violating the due process
rights, the equal protection, and the privileges and immunities
of all citizens. The amendment sparked controversy because
Congress required its passage by unreconstructed states before
they could be readmitted to the Union, and because it was
ratified unenthusiastically even in some Northern states. Both
party platforms sidestepped the important question of black
manhood suffrage. The Republican platform endorsed the
Reconstruction policy of requiring black manhood suffrage in the
former Confederate states, while leaving the Northern and border
states free to decide the matter. The Democratic platform
condemned "Negro supremacy" and demanded a restoration of
states’ rights without specifically mentioning suffrage. The
readmission of several Southern states with large black
electorates, however, forced the issue into the forefront.
The Republican
Nomination
Republicans, led by their
Radical faction, had scored decisive victories in the 1866
elections. If that trend continued in the 1867 elections, then
the party’s presidential nomination would likely go to a Radical
like Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase or Senator Benjamin Wade.
Chase had the support of important figures like Senator Charles
Sumner and financier Jay Cooke. More moderate Republicans, such
as Senator William Fessenden, Charles Francis Adams Jr., and
The New York Times, had interpreted the 1866 elections not
as a mandate for radicalism, but as a rejection of President
Andrew Johnson’s programs and personality; therefore, they were
wary of a Radical nominee.
Since no moderate Republican had the national stature to
secure the nomination, they turned to General Ulysses S. Grant.
He had been considered a potential presidential candidate ever
since his battlefield exploits in the Civil War won him plaudits
for courageous leadership. Early in the 1864 presidential
campaign some disgruntled Republicans had wanted to replace
Lincoln with Grant, but the general refused resolutely and
supported the president wholeheartedly. Although he had been a
nominal Democrat, Grant was a popular war-hero and perceived as
someone who rose above partisan interests in both war and peace
to battle for the common good. Moderates saw in the
general-in-chief a man who would support Reconstruction without
the radical proposals of land redistribution and social equality
between the races.
Grant had accompanied President Andrew Johnson on the
president’s disastrous "Swing ‘Round the Circle" speaking tour
in 1866, and had accepted the position of acting secretary of
war in August 1867 when the president suspended Edwin Stanton,
who had been supporting the Congressional Republicans on
Reconstruction. His association with Johnson roused suspicion
among Radicals, but the general had undertaken those assignments
out of patriotic duty, and privately disagreed with the
president over Reconstruction. Yet for a variety of ideological
and personal reasons, his candidacy was initially opposed by
leading Radicals, such as Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley,
Whitelaw Reid, Benjamin Wade, and Benjamin F. Butler.
The Grant candidacy, though, took on momentum in the wake of
the state elections in 1867. The electorate rejected the Radical
Republican agenda by voting for Democratic control in the key
Northern states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and by
rejecting black manhood suffrage amendments in Kansas and Ohio.
The election results bolstered the case of the moderate
Republicans and seemed to close the door to a Radical nominee.
Georges Clemenceau, a Paris Temps journalist who would
later be the French premier, reported accurately that "The real
victims of the victory of the Democrats are Mr. Wade and Mr.
Chase."
The movement to impeach and remove President Johnson was also
a factor in the 1868 presidential campaign. Within the
Republican party, Johnson’s removal from office would have
resulted in Benjamin Wade, president pro tem of the Senate,
becoming president, giving Radicals control of patronage and a
way to deny Grant the nomination. But by the time Johnson’s
impeachment became a reality in early 1868, Grant had broken
publicly with the president and most Radicals were reconciled to
his nomination.
On May 16, 1868, the U.S. Senate failed by one vote to
convict President Johnson on the first article of impeachment.
The body then adjourned so that Republicans could attend their
national convention in Chicago on May 20-21. By that point, it
was unlikely that the president would be removed from office.
(On May 26 the Senate failed to convict the president on two
other counts, then dropped the case.) The delegates to the
Republican National Convention included a dozen black men, such
as P. B. S. Pinchback of Louisiana and Robert Smalls of South
Carolina. The Republican platform endorsed Congressional
Reconstruction, mourned the death of President Lincoln,
denounced President Johnson, encouraged immigration, and
advocated veterans’ pensions.
Since Grant’s nomination was a certainty before the
convention began, Congressman John Logan of Illinois simply
placed the general’s name in nomination without a speech and the
assembly roared its approval, with banners waving and a band
playing "Hail to the Chief." Grant was nominated unanimously on
the first ballot. The leading candidates for vice president were
Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, Speaker of the House Schuyler
Colfax of Indiana, and Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts,
plus several favorite-son nominees. Wade led on the first four
ballots but was overtaken by Colfax, who secured the nomination
on the sixth ballot.
Grant had at first been uninterested in becoming president,
partly because he feared it would undermine his reputation. Over
time, however, he realized that the esteem he had earned in the
Civil War was tied to making sure that the Reconstruction
process fulfilled those principles for which the Union had
fought. Therefore, to secure his personal honor and further the
political aims on which it rested, Grant accepted the Republican
presidential nomination- . His letter of acceptance was brief,
broad, and patriotic. He closed the public letter with the
hopeful proclamation: "Let us have peace." Those words promised
an end to national turmoil and became the slogan of the
Republican campaign.
The Democratic
Nomination
After the 1866 elections, a
Grant presidential nomination for the Democrats had also been
discussed, mainly by a group of New York-based party kingpins,
including Democratic party chair August Belmont, New York
World editor Manton Marble, and New York Herald
editor James Gordon Bennett Jr.. They thought that Grant’s
candidacy for the Democrats would downplay economic issues upon
which the party was divided and would cleanse it of the stain of
treason. The general, however, refused to be associated with the
Democratic party, and once Republicans rallied around him, the
idea was dropped.
The leading Democratic candidate for president in 1868 was
Representative George Pendleton, the party’s 1864
vice-presidential nominee. The handsome Ohioan had been a
principled opponent of the Lincoln administration during the
war, was respected on both sides of the aisle for his
intelligence and civility, and had built a loyal following in
the Western states. He faced strong opposition, however, from
powerful Eastern Democrats for his "soft money" views, which
endorsed printing paper currency to spur inflation in an effort
to ease the burden of debtors.
The Eastern politicos, primarily Belmont, former New York
governor Horatio Seymour, and lawyer Samuel Tilden, searched for
a "hard money" answer to the Pendleton problem. Belmont’s
foreign birth, Tilden’s lack of experience in public office, and
Seymour’s insistence that he had retired from elective politics
seemed to exclude each of them. An attractive alternative was
Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana, a Westerner like Pendleton,
but an advocate of "hard money" (money tied to the gold
standard). The Pendleton-Hendricks rivalry, though, turned
bitter when newspapers publicized accusations from each camp
that the other was engaging in shady practices.
That public rift caused Seymour to shift his sentiment from
Hendricks to Chief Justice Chase, whom the former New York
governor considered to be the most qualified of any American to
be president. As the Republicans coalesced around Grant, Chase
began courting the Democrats and secured the support of
influential Congressmen like S. S. "Sunset" Cox of New York and
Daniel Voorhees of Indiana. The chief justice was hated by
Democrats in his home state of Ohio, but the main obstacle to
his nomination was his insistence on black manhood suffrage and
other basic civil rights for black Americans. From March into
June signs for a Chase nomination were positive, but by the time
of the convention in July, his star had faded.
Other Democratic presidential candidates included Senator
James Doolittle of Wisconsin, Governor Joel Parker of New
Jersey, Governor James English of Connecticut, General Winfield
Hancock of Pennsylvania, former lieutenant governor Sanford
Church of New York, and former Congressman and railroad
president Asa Packer of Pennsylvania. In addition, President
Johnson had worked unsuccessfully since assuming office to
cobble together a coalition of conservatives to support his
Reconstruction policies and his nomination. The impeachment
proceedings against him eroded all but a core group of
supporters.
On July 4 the Democratic National Convention convened in the
new Tammany Hall building in New York City. Party chair Belmont
opened the proceedings, followed by the keynote address of Henry
Palmer of Wisconsin, and the selection of Seymour as the
convention’s chairman. The party platform accepted the demise of
slavery and secession, but in effect demanded the end of
Reconstruction by calling for the return of authority to the
states, the non-renewal of the Freedmen’s Bureau, amnesty for
all former Confederates, and military retrenchment (the army
enforced Reconstruction). The platform accused the
Republicans—"the Radical party"—of violating the constitutional
rights of the Southern states and of subjecting them to
"military despotism and Negro supremacy."
Despite dimmed prospects, ardent Chase-backers, led by John
Van Buren (President Martin Van Buren’s son) and Kate Chase
Sprague (daughter of Chase and wife of Republican Senator
William Sprague) worked behind the scenes at the convention for
his nomination. Because of the large field of candidates,
though, they decided not to place his name in contention in the
early rounds. Pendleton’s troops exhibited the opposite strategy
of demonstrating their candidate’s strength in the early
balloting before picking up additional support to top the
Democratic party’s two-thirds requirement for nomination.
The first ballot confirmed that Pendleton, with 105 votes,
was the man to beat. President Johnson came in second with 65,
followed by New York’s favorite-son candidate, Sanford Church,
with 34, General Hancock with 33½, then Packer, English,
Doolittle, Parker, Reverdy Johnson, and finally Francis P.
(Frank) Blair Jr. tagging behind with ½ of a vote. For several
ballots Pendleton continued building steadily on his strong
lead, with Hancock a distant second, Hendricks moving up to
third position, and support for Johnson dwindling until it
disappeared on the 14th ballot. Pendleton peaked on
the seventh and eighth ballots at 156½, provoking New York to
switch from favorite-son Church to hard-money Hendricks.
Pendleton’s support was widespread, drawing from 26 states,
including nearly 50 votes from the 11 states of the former
Confederacy, but, as was evident to many delegates, it was not
enough to push him over the top.
As Pendleton’s bloc eroded, Hendricks edged by Hancock until
the general’s home state of Pennsylvania added its substantial
numbers to his column on the 15th ballot, allowing
him to take the lead on the next vote. Although young (44),
Hancock would have been an attractive choice for the Democrats
(and they did finally nominate him in 1880). He had the backing
of the powerful Pennsylvania delegation, he was not
objectionable to the South, and his status as a former Union
general would have severely blunted Republican claims that the
Democrats were the party of treason. Yet the latter trait was
held against him because many Democrats were more interested in
charging Grant and the Republicans with military despotism than
in redeeming their party with their own former Union commander.
(continued)
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