United States Presidential election, 1868
Horatio Seymour was no friend to the Republicans. He had spent a decade in New York politics battling both them and their Whig forebears; in 1862, his energetic opposition of Abraham Lincoln's war policies returned him to the governorship, just weeks after the fall of Philadelphia. When the presidential election of 1864 rolled around, he was a natural choice for the Democratic party's nomination.
But he learned, just as he had earlier in his career, that the Democratic party is a fractious, unpredictable beast. Though he had led the charge against the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, he was routinely denounced by the doughfaces in the party, like Fernando Wood, Thomas Bayard, and Daniel Voorhees, as no better than a black Republican after he vetoed a bill that would severely restricted the rights of northern Negroes. He counted as among his greatest success the Hunter-Hendricks Treaty between the USA and CSA, but he was accused of favoring Yankee business interests in both that treaty and the Tariff of 1867.
He also badly damaged his standing within the party by his handling of the Fenian Affair. The large Irish contingent within the party considered his use of armed force to break up the bands as a betrayal, considering that they had consistently supported Seymour throughout his career; while some more hawkish politicians considered his peaceful resolution of the crisis as a missed opportunity to conquer Canada.
Seymour entered the Democratic National Convention at Baltimore with few friends, and it became clear on the first ballot that he had no chance at all of victory - he garnered only 105 votes, less than a majority and far less than the required 212. His own New York delegation cast several votes for Justice Sanford Church, whom Seymour had appointed to the Supreme Court, and who had once shared a ticket with the President. When Pennsylvania switched its support from favorite son Asa Packer to Church on the third ballot, Seymour's support collapsed.
The contest soon broke down into a wrestling match between East and West. Vice-President George Pendleton and Church seesawed back and forth for a dozen ballots, neither gathering a majority, which might have given them the necessary momentum. The convention was finally ended on the fourteenth ballot when Senator Thomas Bayard of Delaware, an Easterner with distinctly pro-Southern leanings, was put into nomination by the Maryland delegation, led by Reverdy Johnson. Bayard won two-thirds of the delegates on the next ballot. Former Ohio Governor David Tod was offered a place as running-mate, but declined due to poor health. There was some talk of nominating Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois, who had achieved fame as a successful general in the War of Secession; but Grant's political inexperience and reputation as a drunkard cut his candidacy short. Michael Kerr, an Indian Congressman, received the nod.
The Republican National Convention, held in Cleveland, was no less dramatic. The 1862 and 1864 elections had virtually decapitated the party everywhere but New England and parts of the upper Midwest, but the party's leaders recognized that it could not to win if could not expand into the lower North.
Almost by default, the field was narrowed to men who had made their mark before or during the War of Secession. The two strongest candidates, in fact, were the frontrunners from the 1860 convention - William Seward, former Secrtary of State, and Salmon Chase, former Secretary of the Treasury. Both of these men, however, were seen to be unelectable outside the South.
There was a bit of a stir when Francis P. Blair of Missouri was entered into nomination by that state. Energetic and resourceful, Blair was probably more responsible than any other man for Missouri's continued presence in the Union. But he had the defects of his virtues, as his slashing approach to politics had left him with many enemies, including both Seward and Blair. Though he could creditably appeal to the lower North, neither baron would endorse him, and his compromise candidacy quickly floundered.
But the idea of a border state man had caught on, and the convention settled upon Benjamin Gratz Brown, who also hailed from Missouri. (Brown cannily had an intermediary approach Frank Blair, who happened to be his cousin, before accepting the nomination, thereby avoiding his family's wrath.) For Vice President, Senator Zach Chandler of Michigan was considered; but like Blair, he was a hard man given to hard measures, and was considered too much of a liability. Frederick Frelinghuysen, who had just recently been appointed Senator from New Jersey, got the nod instead.
Brown wasted no time attacking Bayard for his southern sympathies, while Democrats gleefully returned fire by pointing out that a Republican administration had lost the war, not the Democrats. Waving the bloody shirt, as this was called, would remain an effective tactic for decades. It was also tinged with racism, as some Democratic spokesmen were apt to rile white voters by telling them that the GOP had sent them to war to fight for blacks.
Brown had built his political base in Missouri among the Germans - when combined with the distinctly foreign-sounding name of his running mate, he became an easy mark for nativist attacks in some areas of the country. (This was highly hypocritical, as the Democrats depended on immigrant and Catholic support in many states.) This probably served to depress turnout in highly Republican areas, where voters tended to be white anglo-Saxon protestants. Brown probably paid insufficient atention to the tariff issue, which could have paid dividends in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and other industrial states.
Benjamin Gratz Brown/Frederick Frelinghuysen: 89 electoral votes, 46%
Thomas Bayard Jr./Michael Crawford Kerr: 137 electoral votes, 53%
The Republicans managed to improve upon Lincoln's dismal performance, but the war and racism attacks hit their mark. Browns consolidated the GOP base in New England and the Plains, but could not crack the lower North. If Brown had won either Pennsylvania or New York, he would have won the election; instead, he lost both states, and thus the country.
