Talk:1868 United States presidential election

Grant's margin of victory.

I am reverting the changes of anonymous User:70.58.55.96 as to the end of the introductory paragraph:

• 6 points is not "close".
• I am quite willing to believe that Seymour did in fact beat Grant among white voters. However:
  • I'd like to see a reference for this.
  • It does not follow from the mere fact that the election was close, unless you postulate that there were in excess of 300 000 non-white voters and that they voted 99+% for Grant (or that there is an even larger number of non-white voters and a slightly smaller tilt toward Grant among them). Neither fact is in evidence.

— DLJessup 01:20, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Read the article

A statement in the article claims that Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi did not participate in the 1868 election due to Reconstruction. Negroes played no role in the election of 1968. Ignorant slaves did not vote Grant into office.

A fabrication in the article hints that ignorant slaves tipped the balance away from Seymour to Grant. That is an absurdity. TooPotato 15:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, how the article reads is:

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 a solid victory.

In other words, the freed blacks and war hero status were not responsible just for victory, but for the size of that victory. (This was a bit stronger originally, when Grant "won in a landslide", but some user thought that using the word "landslide" for Grant's victory overstated things and reduced it to merely a "solid victory".)

Now, if you look at the electoral map, there are 38 electoral votes in former Confederate states that go to Grant. (I am discounting Florida, which had its electoral votes chosen by the state legislature.) It is highly unlikely that Grant would have been able to win those votes without the participation of freedmen. Would Grant have still won? Probably, although we've just cut his margin of victory in the Electoral College in half. Moreover, perhaps a Horatio Seymour who didn't have to devote resources to winning former Confederate states could have campaigned more effectively in the North.

— DLJessup (talk) 23:06, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Here is the rub. Landowners had been voters in the colonial era and in the United States. Poor white men could not vote. No poor person qualified. In order to qualify, a person needed to own (perhaps) at least 50 acres of land. The ex-slaves did not suddenly obtain enough wealth to become voters. The fifteenth Constitutional Amendment passed through Congress on February 27, 1869. It was ratified om March 30, 1870. It said that race could not be used to disqualify a person from voting.

I am not an expert on this subject, but President Lincoln had said that women who were rich enough should be permitted to vote. I am uncertain of when the assets test was removed, allowing poor people to vote. TooPotato 20:03, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that the assets test was removed in the 1820s and 1830s, because that was one of the planks of Jacksonian Democracy. This wouldn't apply to South Carolina (the lone holdout in not allowing popular election of presidential electors), but I do know that South Carolina was forced to give up appointment of presidential electors by the state legislature during Reconstruction, so it wouldn't have been out of the question for SC to have also been

forced to give up its assets test.

— DLJessup (talk) 21:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

There is more to it than meets the eye. First of all is that each State enacts its own set of rules which determines who may vote in that State. Since there are 50 States, there are 50 sets of rules.

New World Encyclopedia (published in 1926) contains this paragraph: "The character of the qualifications required of voters in political elections varies somewhat in the different States. However, there are certain general requirements in all States, which may be summarized as follows: (1) Citizenship; (2) residence for a certain time in the State, county, and election district; (3) that the voter shall have attained the majority (21 years); (4) that the voter shall be of sound mind; (5) that he shall not be a convicted felon under sentence. Registration is also required in many States. Some of the States have established either property or educational qualifications. This has been done in most of the southern States in order to exclude the negro vote. (See SUFFRAGE, Grandfather Clause.) Several States permit women to vote. See ELECTORAL REFORM; VOTE."

Property requirements were still a tool in the twentieth century. The Federal Government does not call all of the shots when it comes to voters. There is no United States voter. TooPotato 02:14, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I read the information in New International Encyclopedia. New World Encyclopedia is a typing error. TooPotato 02:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The vast majority of the property requirements that your New International Encyclopedia references were created post-Reconstruction in the age of Jim Crow, which was a decade away. In 1868, federal troops still occupied much of the South, and the Radical Republicans were still in charge of the Congress. Many of the Southern states had been forced to adopt new constitutions before being readmitted into the Union, and these constitutions removed as many barriers to black voting as possible. Indeed, many Southern states would have looser voting requirements in 1840 than in 1890 precisely because in 1840 they didn't need strong voting requirements to block black voting.

I am somewhat curious about your encyclopedia. It states that "Several States permit women to vote." Allegedly, this encyclopedia is from 1926, yet the 19th Amendment was passed in 1919, so theoretically all women should have had the vote for seven years when the encyclopedia was published....

— DLJessup (talk) 06:02, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Comment. North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment in 1857 that guaranteed universal [white] male suffrage, which thus ended the landowning criterion. Also in North Carolina in 1868, while it is true that newly freed blacks voted overwhelmingly for Grant, he would have carried the state even without their vote. Chronicler3 21:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC) Chronicler3

Electoral picture peculiarity

Why is the graphic depiction of electoral votes skewed? Rarely nowadays does one see democratic votes colored red and and republican votes blue. --maru (talk) Contribs 20:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

This post has been copied to Wikipedia talk:Style for U.S. presidential election, yyyy#Electoral picture peculiarity. Please direct your responses there.

— DLJessup (talk) 21:36, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Georgia?

Georgia was the last state to be re-admitted to the union july 15, 1870. why did it take part in this election then? --Astrokey44 12:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Map error

The map on the right shows Kentucky having 6 electoral votes, a link provided shows Kentucky having 11 votes. If you add up the votes for Seymour, you only get 75 total (per the map), not the 80 it mentions, so I think Kentucky must have had 11 votes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.88.44.107 (talk) 00:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are absolutely correct in stating that Kentucky had 11 electoral votes.--24.210.149.86 (talk) 20:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Dubious

"The Radical Republicans regarded black suffrage as a way to ensure that the Republicans would not become a minority party of the restored Union."

This seems unlikely, given that the RRs had an ideological commitment to abolition, and citizenship (and thus suffrage) flowed directly from that, at least for African-American men. Any source verifying that this was a power play on the part of the RRs, rather than a result of their ideology? Even if so, why would the Republican Party--which won all but two presidential elections between 1860 and 1912--be worried about falling into minority status? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.243.127.24 (talk) 07:35, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Look at how close the Election of 1868 was. The EXTREMELY popular Grant was almost defeated by Horatio Seymour in the popular vote. If disfranchised Southerns had been allowed to vote, the vote would have been close. Seymour probably would have won if blacks were not granted suffrage. Once the Republicans saw that African-Americans gave Grant the presidency, they knew black suffrage would have to be guaranteed.--24.210.149.86 (talk) 01:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Ill also add that I doubt that in 1868 the Republicans knew they were only going to lose lose two elections until 1912. 76.22.97.102 (talk) 07:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

POV

Do I even need to point out that this quote from the article violates the NPOV policy?

"...his [Horatio Seymour's] conduct of the campaign did his country and the institution of free elections great good, helped to keep alive the two-party system when the opposition was determined to remain the only party that could hold power."

This came from the 1944 They Also Ran. Irving Stone is an excellent author who bashed BOTH Democrats and Republican candidates in his wonderful book. Just because this happens to praise a Democrat, it does not mean it is not a neutral point of view. Seymour did not sling any mud and the Republicans wanted to hold power indefinitely. What is your point?--71.79.242.111 (talk) 00:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Irving Stone IS an excellent author, but Reconstruction history was not his area of expertise. The Democratic campaign slogan in 1868 was "This is a white man's country: Let white men rule." Why is there no mention of that?-- madtal

Agree that this editorializing about Saint Seymour is (1)dubious and (2)has no place here. If this is Stone, than Stone should be quoted and the biases of THEY ALSO RAN should be interrogated (the book is normative, arguing that past voters made the wrong decisions). In short, it is a bad paragraph drawn from an irrelevant source. -numberonealcove — Preceding unsigned comment added by Numberonealcove (talk • contribs) 15:02, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Irving Stone should not be a source chosen over academic sources. There has been so much writing about the Civil War and Reconstruction, someone more reliable must have addressed this election.Parkwells (talk) 15:35, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

As others have said. The article as it stands has more than a whiff of magnolias to it, as it were. Lots of talk about "permitting" white southern Democrats to control the South, about the corruption and hunger for power of the Republicans. Very little about the virulent racism of the Democrats. Seymour's victory would have been bad not because he would have abandoned any attempt to provide civil rights for the freed slaves, but because the Republicans were so power-hungry they would have destroyed him. This kind of stuff is really unacceptable in 2012. john k (talk) 04:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Agree - it uses a very odd assortment of sources - Stone, a novelist. Seymour's dated biography and other old histories, not particularly notable on the period. More contemporary sources are identified in References, but not cited at all as sources. Really needs work.Parkwells (talk) 13:59, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

General election / results

There's a lot of speculation going on in this section which may or may not be well founded. I suspect it's in the cited references, but not having those, I'm reluctant to assume that and edit towards a more neutral POV (e.g. "Author so-and-so claims..." as opposed to simply stating author so-and-so's conclusions as indisputable fact, as is the case now).

The final paragraph ("If Seymour had carried all four October states ...") in particular is highly speculative (I don't want to go so far as to claim it's actually wrong; it's certainly not inconsistent with what happened in the Hayes-Tilden election) and appears to be based on a single secondary source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.71.75 (talk) 02:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Can someone dispute this article?

With all of the rhetoric in this article I feel as if I'm reading someone's opinion paper, not an encyclopedia.174.97.189.56 (talk) 15:10, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. Reading about the "peaceful" white supremacists of the South and how all the cheating was by the Republicans made be want to vomit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by StuartACParker (talk • contribs) 16:56, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

The article does need to be rewritten in a balanced format. Cmguy777 (talk) 19:11, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Rather strange that the vast majority of it is drawn from biographies of the loser. 70.36.136.102 (talk) 09:01, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

chunks are pasted from Stone's They Also Ran, which covers Seymour. see copied Rjensen (talk) 09:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

It's not strange at all when you look at the amount of material covering Horatio Seymour. Seymour only has one decent biography (Stewart). There is not a lot to work with so I did my best with what I had. I am not a Democrat so I couldn't care less about the "who is better? Republican or Democrat?" thing.--Tilden76 (talk) 22:22, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Why's there no mention of the blatantly racist campaign statements of Frank Blair, the Democratic VP nominee? Many blamed the Democratic loss specifically on him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.6.9.31 (talk) 00:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Jewish vote

Nothing is mentioned about Grant's controversial General Orders No. 11 that deported Jewish families from Union military zones. Grant had to "woo" the Jewish voter to get elected. Cmguy777 (talk) 19:10, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

If I remember correctly (I read Seymour's biography almost a year ago), Seymour refused to bring up the matter. Seymour had a lot of class. His father's suicide made him a better person because he would let nothing distress him or anger him. Oops. I can't say that because I will be charged with violating neutrality. The man lived his life like an emotionless Vulcan (that is just a fact).--Tilden76 (talk) 22:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Additional sources are needed

A 1938 biography of Seymour is limited material on which to base so much content. At least editors should try to reduce the bias in the material, delete reportorial comments and stick to what appear to be facts verified by other sources. Others must have written about the election, if not in detail about Seymour.Parkwells (talk) 15:14, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Lead

It seems odd to say Grant "benefited from his popularity in the North" as if it were a fault. I tried to tone it down - every politician "benefits from his popularity", so that seems like a not very substantial statement. Again, better sources have to be found on this election and the political context.Parkwells (talk) 15:32, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Stone noted as inaccurate

A 1945 review of Stone's book in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography noted that he had numerous errors of fact related to several men, did not reflect the consensus of many historians on several candidates; and that these factors minimized its value as a reference.Parkwells (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

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Results by State Missing/Edit Request 12/2/2016

The state results of this presidential election are missing from this article. Nearly all of the remaining US Presidential Election (besides 1792-1820 for some reason) articles have tables showing the popular and electoral votes coming from the states. Could a table containing this info be added to the article? --73.149.152.16 (talk) 21:15, 2 December 2016 (UTC)Jacob Chesley the Alternate Historian 2

Outside opinion

At the Ulysses S. Grant main article two editors want to include mention of President Grant signing an act establishing national holidays and two editors oppose. Opinions for and against are numerous and can be found at Talk:Ulysses S. Grant. Outside opinions are needed and welcomed. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:58, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Vote total

There is some disagreement over how many popular votes Horatio Seymour received. Parts of the article say 2,708,744 and others say 2,706,829.