United States Presidential Election of 1868

Grant defeated Seymour 214 to 80 in the first election with Black male voters participating.

Overview

Ulysses Grant's popularity carried him past New York's Horatio Seymour 214 to 80, with Grant winning the popular vote by about 5.4 points. Under Congressional Reconstruction, roughly 700,000 newly enfranchised Black men voted, most for the party of Lincoln, offsetting disenfranchised ex-Confederates in the South. The Democrats ran on opposition to Reconstruction; Republicans waved the bloody shirt. Grant's victory kept Reconstruction alive, and the Fifteenth Amendment followed in 1870 to protect the new electorate.