The main issue in 1868 was Reconstruction. Opinions on the subject were varied and violent. Abraham Lincoln wanted to restore the defeated Southern States to the Union as quickly and painlessly as possible and for his leniency won the distrust of Radical Republicans in Congress. After his assassination, his successor, Andrew Johnson, had a brief honeymoon with the Radicals; then there was an explosive falling-out. Johnson and the Radicals in Congress came to disagree bitterly on how the former Confederate states were to be handled.

Johnson thought the President should supervise Reconstruction, while the Radicals insisted that Congress manage it. Johnson favored fairly mild conditions for the readmission of the Southern states into the Union; the Radicals sponsored a harsh program involving military occupation of the South and the building up of' the Republican party there with the help of the former slaves. Johnson was willing to extend limited rights to the ex-slaves, but the Radicals demanded full civil rights, including the suffrage, for the freedmen. During 1867 Johnson vetoed one Reconstruction act after another and Congress promptly overrode his vetoes by substantial majorities. In February 1868 the Radicals succeeded in mustering enough votes in the House of Representatives to impeach him for "high crimes and misdemeanors." But when the vote on the charges against him was taken in May, they failed by one vote to win the necessary two-thirds majority needed for conviction. "The country is going to the Devil!" stormed Pennsylvania's Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens afterward.

On May 20, while the passions aroused by the impeachment trial were still running high, the Republicans met in Chicago, nominated General Ulysses S. Grant (who "saved the Union") on the first ballot and then added the genial Schuyler Colfax of' Indiana to the ticket. The Republican platform blistered the Johnson administration, praised Congressional Reconstruction, and called for "equal suffrage to all loyal men in the South," but left the matter of Negro suffrage "in all the loyal states" to the "people in those states." The Democrats, who met in New York on July 4, did a lot of balloting before finally picking Horatio Seymour, former Governor of New York, as their candidate. Seymour was so reluctant to receive the nomination he was called "the Great Decliner." But General Francis P. Blair, who received second place, gladly accepted the honor. He was eager to take to the stump and denounce the Radical Republicans. The Democratic platform condemned Congressional Reconstruction as "unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void," demanded the "immediate restoration of all the states to their rights in the Union under the Constitution," and asked for "the regulation of the elective franchise in the States by their citizens."

The campaign, not surprisingly, centered on the Civil War and Reconstruction. "Scratch a Democrat," cried the New York Tribune, "and, you'll find a rebel under his skin."' During the campaign the Republicans charged that Seymour (a Peace Democrat during the war) had been "a traitor to his government as far as he dared in the agony of rebellion."' They also said his health was wretched and there was a streak of insanity in his family. As for Blair, he was a "revolutionist" and a drunkard. His bill for two days in a Connecticut hotel came to ten dollars for room and board and sixty dollars for whiskey and lemons.

The Democrats didn't think Grant, forty-six, precisely a model of sobriety. They referred to him as "Grant the Drunkard," described him as "a soaker behind the door and in the dark," but also claimed he was "drunk in the public streets since the first of January." They also said he was a military despot, had an illegitimate daughter by an Indian woman, and was not overly bright. To the tune of "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines," they sang:

I am Captain Grant
of the Black Marines
The stupidest man
that ever was seen

When they got sick of denigrating Grant, they blasted his party for championing Negro suffrage and trying to "Africanize" the South. But some Democrats sought the votes of blacks. In an editorial, "The Colored Voter: A Sober Appeal to His Interest and His Sober Reason," a writer for a Nashville newspaper told the former slaves they owed their freedom to the Democrats and should vote the Seymour-Blair ticket. His curious reasoning: "If your State and her sister Southern states had not seceded from the Union you would not today have been free ... If you are indebted to any party or power for your present liberty, you are indebted to the Southern people ... In view of these facts which of the two parties has the greatest claim on you for your support? The Democratic Party!"

But most blacks voted Republican. And the black vote was probably crucial to the triumph of the Grant-Colfax ticket in November. Although Grant won 214 electoral votes to Seymour's 80 and carried 26 states to Seymour's 8, his popular majority was only about 310,000 (3,012,833 to 2,703,249). It is apparent that if he had not won the 450,000 to 500,000 votes cast by the freedmen in the Southern states under military occupation, he would not have won his popular majority. The Republicans were fully aware of their dependence on the black vote in 1868. After the election they decided to safeguard Negro suffrage. Within four months the Fifteenth Amendment, providing that the right to vote should not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, passed both houses of Congress and went to the states. And since the Republicans controlled the majority of state legislatures, three-fourths of the states ratified the amendment within a year.

Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Campaigns (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 123-25.