The Most Important Election of the Second Half of the 1860s

Keeping with Thursday's election year theme, I don't have any good cartoons to share from the 1918 off-year election campaign, so Ulysses S.back Saturday hearkens back another 50 years to the presidential election of 1868.

"Keep the Ball Rolling" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, September 19, 1868

Banking on his overwhelming popularity as the Union General who accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant as their standard bearer. Grant didn't have much of a political history; the one and only time he had voted in a presidential election was in 1856 for Democrat James Buchanan (because "I knew Frémont"). But he had come to loathe President Andrew Johnson and happily stepped in when Republicans asked him to head their ticket and drive the impeached incumbent out of office.

Grant's brief letter accepting the Republican nomination provided the campaign's catch phrase of "Let us have peace." One could debate whether that sentence in the cartoon is the sound of the Democratic pins clattering down, or their complaint at being bowled over. Ready with a second bowling ball is Grant's running mate, Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax of Indiana ("Mother of Vice Presidents!").

"A Sea of Troubles" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 3, 1868

Deadlocked in ballot after ballot after ballot, the Democratic Convention finally nominated former New York Governor Horatio Seymour in spite of his repeated Shermanesque protests that he wasn't a candidate, wouldn't run, and wanted to nominate Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase instead.

"The Modern Samson" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 3, 1868

1868 would be the first presidential election in which freed African-American slaves would have the right to vote. "The Modern Samson" depicts "Southern Democracy" having used a blade labeled "Lost Cause Regained" to cut the hair of suffrage from Black citizenry while the Democratic ticket and supporters rejoice in the background. A statue of Andrew Johnson with stone tablets labeled "Veto" sits under the words "I will be your Moses" and atop a pedestal reading "The great Dem Party will rise in might and majesty." Southern newspaper editorials and Ku Klux Klan statements decrying the "lost cause" and arguing that Black Americans "are as babes without experience in government affairs" decorate the walls.

One must note that extending the vote to Black Americans was controversial up North as well. Prior to passage of the 15th Amendment, the Failing New York Times had editorialized:

The adult negroes of the South probably number half a million, — and if admitted to the suffrage, would cast one-sixth of the aggregate national vote. Nine-tenths of them are confessedly ignorant of the first rudiments of knowledge, and not one whit better qualified to vote, of their own motive, wisely and intelligently, than so many Chinese would be the day they should land on our shores. Is it quite safe to demand their instant admission to the ballot-box? Would it not be quite as well to approach a matter of such vast importance with a little caution? Is it quite certain that these negroes would all vote just as we would like to have them?

"Why 'The N⸺ Is Not Fit to Vote'" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 24, 1868

That Black Americans might not "vote just as we would like to have them" was the point of Nast's ironic reply in 1868. I've bowdlerized the caption of the above cartoon out of care for modern sensibilities; but you can be sure that no publication in the world had any more hesitation to print the N-word out in full than Thomas Nast did in drawing the Irish as apish ruffians.

"Nationalization Mill," unsigned, in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 24, 1868

If 1860s Democrats had their prejudice against certain voters, so did the Republicans. The New York Tribune shrieked that Tammany Hall Democrats' open border policies were a ruse to gin up the Democratic vote total. This in spite of the fact that the Republican Party platform also encouraged "foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development, and resources, and increase of power to the republic." Indeed, there was nothing to stop any immigrant from coming to the U.S.; the short-lived Burlingame-Seward Treaty signed in 1868 opened the doors to Chinese immigrants, the only foreign group with any previous limitations.

The above cartoon depicts Gov. Seymour at left bagging votes from the "naturalization mill" with his running mate, Union General Francis Blair of Missouri. Judge John McCunn was one of the members of Boss Tweed's ring, and was forced to resign in 1872 over the scandal over naturalizing 2,000 fresh-off-the-boat citizens in a single day.

I haven't credited the nationalization mill cartoon to Nast because, unlike the other two cartoons on the October 24, 1868 issue's front page, it is not signed by him.

"Matched. (?)" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 31, 1868

The text under Nast's cartoon contrasts a letter from Major General Grant promising "all due respect" to Confederate soldiers under Lt. Gen. J.C. Pemberton's command at the Battle of Vicksburg if Pemberton would surrender, with Seymour's address to New Yorkers rioting at Fort Pillow against the draft a few days later:

"MY FRIENDS, I have come down from the quiet of the country to see what was the difficulty, to learn what all this trouble was concerning the draft. Let me assure you that I am your friend." (Uproarious cheering.) "You have been my friends." (Cries of "yes," "yes," — "that's so"—"we are, and shall be again.") And now I assure you, my fellow citizens, that I am here to show you a test of my friendship." (Cheers.) "I wish to inform you that I have sent my Adjutant-General to Washington to confer with the authorities there, and to have this draft suspended and stopped." (Vociferous cheers.) "I now ask you as good citizens to wait for his return, and I assure you that I will do all that I can to see that there is no inequality and no wrong done anyone." —New York Tribune, July 14, 1863.

Such formal and flowery language was certainly typical of politicians of the period, and whoever transcribed Seymour's actual words would have polished up anything that fell short of the style. But Republicans used the words "My friends" to tar and feather Seymour as a rebel sympathizer (those words are on the sheet sticking out of Seymour's pocket in the naturalization mill cartoon above). Indeed, he was a conservative with Southern sympathies before and after the Civil War.

"Both Sides of the Question" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 24, 1868

"Both Sides of the Question" was a two-page editorial cartoon contrasting the valiant supporters of Grant and Colfax with Seymour and Blair's scurrilous minions. On the left page under the tattered Union flag, the Boys in Blue include such luminaries as New York World publisher Horace Greeley (reading his newspaper), Generals Tecumseh Sherman and Ambrose Burnside (with his trademark sideburns), and Nast himself sharpening his pencil down in the lower left corner.

"Both Sides of the Question" by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, New York, October 24, 1868

On the right page under Confederate and Ku Klux Klan banners, the Boys in Gray include Tammany Hall figures, General Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Gen. McClellan, New York Mayor John Hoffman (of the mutton chop mustache and huge jaw; he would be elected Governor in November) and peering out from their political grave, President Andrew Johnson and Union General Winfield Hancock (who would be the Democratic presidential nominee in 1880).

"Victory!" unsigned, in Harper's Weekly, New York, November 14, 1868

General Grant won the presidency of course, and the only surprising thing about it is that the outcome wasn't a complete blow-out. He won by a margin of 309,584 votes out of 5,716,082 cast. Grant's majorities in Louisiana and Georgia were disputed; and citizens of Virginia, Mississippi and Texas were not allowed to vote at all.

The Republican Party was only 14 years old, but was already very expert at adapting electoral rules in its own favor. And they have certainly refined their expertise in that area since then.