ELECTION #21, 1868, The NASTY-METER is 6.

QUOTE from a Democratic attack ad against Grant: "Grant has been drunk in the street since the first of January."

The CANDIDATES in 1868.

RWPUBLICAN: ULYSSES S. GRANT.

The Republican Convention was held in Chicago. They nominated Grant on the first ballot. The plain-spoken hard drinking Grant was at the height of his popularity for doing more than any other general to win the war. His stature in America at the time is comparable to that of Dwight D. Eisenhower after WWII - the man was an icon. Grant had avoided assassination on April 14, 1865 when he turned down Lincoln's invitation to attend
Ford's Theater - he had been included in the plot formed by John Wilkes Both and his accomplices. The VP candidate was Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax.

DEMOCRAT: HORATIO SEYMOUR.

The Democrats met in New York. After 21 ballots . no candidate could be agreed on, and a dark-horse nominee was engineered by Samuel Tilden, the head of the New York delegation. The dark-horse he introduced was New York Governor Horatio Seymour. Seymour did not want to be the nominee, in fact he got up in front of the convention and said, "May God bless you for your kindness to me, but your candidate I cannot be." He then burst into tears backstage but finally agreed to accept the nomination. For VP they chose a guy by the name of Francis Blair.

The CAMPAIGN in 1868.

The fact that Grant smoked, drank, and gambled to excess made things even better for the Republicans. In many people's eyes, he was, indeed, "United States" Grant. The Republicans called Seymour "The Great Decliner" and hinted that hereditary insanity ran in his family. They went after the Democratic VP candidate (Blair) when they discovered he had stayed in a Hartford Hotel, where his room fee was $10.00, but he spent $65.00 on whiskey and lemons.

The Democrats got on Grant for his drinking and brought up he had numerous bouts of blind drunkenness during the Civil War. And he was called such names as "Useless" and "The Butcher" but it was not enough to turn the tide as voters didn't seem to care.

The WINNER was ULYSSES S. GRANT.

Grant got 3,013,650 popular votes and 214 electoral.
Seymour got 2,708,744 popular and 80 electoral.

For the first time in history, half a million blacks had voted - and it's safe to assume that the over-whelming majority went for
Grant. But it is a dirty little secret that black votes were counted in only 16 of the 37 states and 8 of those were in the old Confederacy. Connecticut did not allow blacks to vote, and New York made ownership of $250 worth of property a requirement before allowing a black to cast his ballot.

An interesting bit of Civil War history is that Grant's best man and the two ushers at his wedding in 1848 would all, as officers of the Confederacy, surrender to him at Appomattox in 1865.