| United States Presidential Election, 1868 |
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The U.S. presidential election of 1868 was the first presidential election to take place during Reconstruction . Three of the former Confederate states ( Texas , Mississippi , and Virginia ) were not yet readmitted to the Union and therefore could not vote in the election. The incumbent President , Andrew Johnson , was despised by Democrats for running as Abraham Lincoln 's Vice President and by Republicans for obstructing their plans for Reconstruction, and so he was not a candidate. Instead the Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour to take on the Republican candidate, Civil War Hero General Ulysses S. Grant . With freed Blacks voting in much of the South (with the help of Union soldiers), and with massive popularity in the North as the man who won the Civil War, Grant won an impressive victory. BACKGROUND The American Civil War over, partisan politics immediately returned as U.S. Congress wrangled with the issue of reconstruction - the Radical Republicans even going so far as to impeach President Andrew Johnson . NOMINATIONS Republican Party nomination General Ulysses S. Grant , who had garnered 22 delegate votes at the 1864 convention without demonstrating any interest in being a candidate, was unanimously nominated as the party's standard bearer for 1868 . Schuyler Colfax was chosen over Ohio's Benjamin Franklin Wade for Vice President. Democratic Party nomination Two-time New York Governor Horatio Seymour emerged as the Presidential nominee for the Democrats , garnering 317 delegate votes to defeat 1864 Vice Presidential nominee George H. Pendleton (157 delegates), future Vice President Thomas Andrews Hendricks (146) and eventual 1880 Democratic presidential nominee Winfield Scott Hancock . Francis Preston Blair, Jr. was nominated for Vice President. Minor candidates The students of Trinity College nominated wandering eccentric Daniel Pratt for president, and their well-liked African-American Janitor, "Professor" James Williams, as his running mate. Pratt accepted the nomination. GENERAL ELECTION Results With a relatively narrow popular majority, Grant was able to sweep the Electoral College winning most of the South. Recognizing their dependence on Black votes in the South, the Republicans took steps to safeguard this vote by passing the Fifteenth Amendment , enshrining Black suffrage in the Constitution, although the spirit of the Amendment would be evaded by later local laws in the South for many years. Source (Popular Vote): Source (Electoral Vote): (a) '' Mississippi , Texas , and Virginia did not participate in the election of 1868 due to Reconstruction. In Florida , the state legislature cast its electoral vote.'' SEE ALSO
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