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Hancock led through the 21st
ballot, as Hendricks neared within four votes. Chase’s name was
put into nomination on the 17th ballot, and Pendleton’s name was
withdrawn on the 18th. The Ohio delegation could have added to
Hancock’s momentum against Pendleton’s rival, Hendricks, but
they cast their lot instead with another Pennsylvanian, Asa
Parker. On the 22nd ballot, General George McCook of Ohio rose
to nominate Horatio Seymour, causing spontaneous cheering and
demonstrations of approval. While Seymour had not been an active
candidate and genuinely seemed not to want the nomination, he
was widely respected within the party and had the fewest enemies
of any of the current contenders. He expressed to the convention
his thanks, declined the offer, then stepped down from the
podium to confer with the New York delegation. The convention
ignored his plea and made his nomination unanimous. The
nomination of a vice-presidential candidate proceeded without
Seymour present, and the delegates unanimously selected Frank
Blair Jr. of Missouri.
The Republican Campaign
It was traditional that
presidential nominees did not campaign openly, but Grant’s
particular reticence, epitomized by his sparingly-worded
acceptance letter, roused considerable press commentary and
caused some to label him "the American Sphinx." Grant did take
one railroad trip westward to Denver, with Generals William T.
Sherman and Philip Sheridan, which bordered on being a campaign
tour. But there, too, he was seen but not heard, waving to
enthusiastic crowds at various train-stops but refusing to
deliver speeches. For the most part, Grant stayed at his home in
Galena, Illinois, where he received groups of well-wishers. The
actual campaigning was left to thousands of Republican speakers
and organizers across the country. They gave stump speeches,
circulated campaign pamphlets and political broadsides, rallied
the voters with barbecues and torchlight parades, and organized
into pro-Grant clubs like the Tanners (Grant had worked as a
tanner) and the Boys in Blue (Union veterans).
The Republicans entered the campaign promoting themselves as
the party that saved the union, freed the slaves, and was
reforming the South. They argued that, with the Senate almost
assured of staying in Republican hands, the election of a
Democratic president would produce a stalemated federal
government and continue executive hostility toward
Reconstruction. Republicans also "waved the bloody shirt," that
is, reminded voters constantly that the Democratic party had
backed slavery and secession and opposed the Union war effort.
Republican newspapers allocated ample coverage to anti-black and
anti-Republican violence in the South.
Seymour was personally smeared with the "bloody shirt" when
Republicans recalled that while governor in 1863 he had
addressed the perpetrators of the New York City draft riot as
"My friends." Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast
would relentlessly harass Seymour for his role during the Draft
Riots. Others labeled his association with the Peace Democrats
as the equivalence of treason. Republican party spokesmen
carried accusations against their Democratic rival to a personal
level by alleging that his family was prone to insanity
(Seymour’s father had committed suicide) and that the candidate
himself was in frail health.
The last point was important because the man who would be a
heartbeat away from the presidency, Democratic vice-presidential
nominee Frank Blair Jr., was a loose cannon who unintentionally
proved to be one of the best weapons in the Republican arsenal.
(As it turned out, Seymour outlived his running-mate by 11
years.) Blair came from a prominent political family, had
founded the Free-Soil party in Missouri, served in the Union
military, and lost his wealth financing the Union cause. After
the war, however, he became a vocal critic of Radical
Reconstruction. During the 1868 campaign, Blair advocated
nullification of the Reconstruction Acts and predicted that a
Grant presidency would degenerate into a military dictatorship.
His harsh words and abrasive personality tended to alienate
potential supporters.
Republicans had a field day with Blair, labeling his
temperament volatile and his views extreme and dangerous. They
went so far as to claim that he wanted another civil war,
distilling his message as "Let us have war!" and contrasting it
to Grant’s "Let us have peace!" The New York Tribune
identified Blair as a "revolutionist," while the New York
Evening Post warned that his election would initiate
"government by assassination." Partly to counter charges of
Grant’s drinking problem, Republicans branded Blair as a
drunkard, producing what they claimed was one of his hotel bills
of $10 for board and $65 for whiskey and lemons.
The Democratic Campaign
The Democratic party struck
back by contending that the Republicans were advocating racial
equality or even black superiority, not only in the South, but
for the entire country. Democrats pictured the South as a
beleaguered area suffering not only from the destruction of war
and but also from Republican-imposed military rule. They
presented their party as the only truly national party and as
the only one that could bring about sectional reconciliation.
Like the Republicans, Democrats engaged in the American
political tradition of character assassination, attacking Grant
as a besotted, uncouth, simple-minded, unprincipled,
Negro-loving tyrant. As Republicans marched in their parades,
Democrats taunted them with signs reading "Grant the Butcher,"
"Grant the Drunkard," and "Grant the Speculator." A campaign
ditty included the lines: "I am Captain Grant of the Black
Marines/ The stupidest man that ever was seen." Grant’s
running-mate, Schuyler Colfax, was depicted as unprincipled,
mean-spirited, and anti-Catholic (like many, he was briefly a
Know-Nothing in the mid-1850s as he moved from the Whig to the
Republican party).
Results of the state elections in the early fall were an
ominous sign for the prospects of the national Democratic ticket
in early November. Between September 1 and October 22
Republicans triumphed in eight of nine state elections,
including the major states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.
Panic spread throughout Democratic ranks, prompting a movement
to dump Seymour and Blair and replace the presidential nominee
with Chase or Hendricks. Seymour was apparently willing to step
down, but members of the Democratic Executive Committee—Belmont,
Tilden, and August Schell—refused to allow it. They blamed
Democratic losses on Republican vote fraud and convinced
Seymour, who had a reputation as a talented orator, to go on a
campaign speaking tour.
In the 19th century it was considered taboo for
presidential candidates to trek across the country canvassing
for votes, and the few who had attempted it had been assailed
for soiling the dignity of the office. The Democrats in 1868,
however, were desperate, so Seymour took to the stump. On
October 21 he began in Syracuse, followed by campaign stops in
Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit,
Indianapolis, and Chicago. Although Democratic papers tended to
praise his efforts, some reporters noted that his delivery of
the nearly identical speeches became more lackluster with each
iteration. Whatever the case may be, he was not able to undo the
damage done by Blair’s remarks or to diminish Grant’s
popularity.
When the votes from the November 3 election were tabulated,
Grant scored a comfortable victory in the popular vote, 53% to
Seymour’s 47%, while winning by a landslide in the electoral
college, 214 to 80. 78% of the electorate participated,
including for the first time in American history an estimated
500,000 black men. Seymour won a majority of the Southern
popular vote, but only Georgia and Louisiana in that region’s
electoral vote. He showed strength in the border states and the
Mid-Atlantic, winning the electoral votes of Kentucky, Maryland,
Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, and in the Pacific West,
winning Oregon and losing California by only 500 votes. The
surprisingly substantial totals for the ambivalent Seymour and
the vitriolic Blair were enough to dispel the contention that
Grant had been unstoppable.
Republicans charged Democrats with committing fraud and
intimidation, particularly in New York City under "Boss" Tweed
and across the South where the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist
groups were active. Numerous reports of violence against black
and white Republicans in the South were reported in the press
during the late summer and fall. However, the election did not
turn into the bloodbaththat some had feared.
In February 1869 the outgoing Republican Congress, reassured
by an apparent election mandate, passed the 15th
Amendment which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be
abridged on account of race or color. The requisite number of
states ratified the amendment by March 1870 and it became part
of the U.S. Constitution. Also by the early months of 1870 the
governments of all the former Confederate states had been
reconstructed and allowed to regain Congressional
representation. Even though Congress passed the Enforcement Acts
and the Ku Klux Klan Act, the opinion of Northern white
politicians, journalists, and the general public became
increasingly less concerned with the plight of black Americans.
Within a few years the Reconstruction experiment would end.
Sources consulted: Paul F. Boller
Jr., Presidential Campaigns; William A. DeGregario,
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents; John Hope Franklin,
"Election of 1868," in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed.,
History of American Presidential Elections, vol. III, pp.
1247-1256; Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York;
and, Brooks D. Simpson, Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant
and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868.
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