Editing Reconstruction era (section)

===Election of 1868===
{{Main|1868 United States presidential election}}
During the Civil War, many in the North believed that fighting for the Union was a noble cause—for the preservation of the Union and the end of slavery. After the war ended, with the North victorious, the fear among Radicals was that President Johnson too quickly assumed that slavery and Confederate nationalism were dead and that the Southern states could return. The Radicals sought out a candidate for president who represented their viewpoint.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=455–457}}

In May 1868, the Republicans unanimously chose [[Ulysses S. Grant]] as their presidential candidate, and [[Schuyler Colfax]] as their vice-presidential candidate.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|pp=41–42}} Grant won favor with the Radicals after he allowed [[Edwin Stanton]], a Radical, to be reinstated as secretary of war. As early as 1862, during the Civil War, Grant had appointed the Ohio military chaplain [[John Eaton (General)|John Eaton]] to protect and gradually incorporate refugee slaves in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi into the Union war effort and pay them for their labor. It was the beginning of his vision for the Freedmen's Bureau.<ref>{{cite book |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |title=The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1999 |isbn=9780823219346 |editor1=Cimbala |editor-first=Paul A. |edition=1st |place=New York |chapter=Ulysses S. Grant and the Freedmen's Bureau |editor2=Miller |editor-first2=Randall M. |name-list-style=amp}}</ref> Grant opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|pp=437–453, 458–460}}

In northern cities Grant contended with a strong immigrant, and particularly in New York City an Irish, anti-Reconstructionist Democratic bloc.<ref name="Montgomery">{{cite book |last1=Montgomery |first1=David |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ktsm2lS5BegC&pg=PA130 |title=Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 |publisher=Alfred Knopf |year=1967 |isbn=9780252008696 |location=New York |pages=130–133 |access-date=9 October 2020 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gleeson |first=David |date=2016 |title=Failing to 'unite with the abolitionists': the Irish Nationalist Press and U.S. emancipation |journal=Slavery & Abolition |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=622–637 |doi=10.1080/0144039x.2016.1208911 |issn=0144-039X|doi-access=free }}</ref> Republicans sought to make inroads campaigning for the Irish taken prisoner in the [[Fenian raids]] into Canada, and calling on the [[Presidency of Andrew Johnson|Johnson administration]] to recognize a lawful state of war between Ireland and England. In 1867 Grant personally intervened with [[David Bell (Irish Republican)|David Bell]] and [[Michael Scanlon (poet)|Michael Scanlon]] to move their paper, the ''Irish Republic'', articulate in its support for black equality, to New York from Chicago.<ref name="Knight">{{cite journal |last1=Knight |first1=Matthew |date=2017 |title=The Irish Republic: Reconstructing Liberty, Right Principles, and the Fenian Brotherhood |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |url-status=live |journal=Éire-Ireland |publisher=Irish-American Cultural Institute |volume=52 |issue=3 & 4 |pages=252–271 |doi=10.1353/eir.2017.0029 |s2cid=159525524 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201141335/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/680371/summary |archive-date=December 1, 2020 |access-date=9 October 2020}}</ref><ref name="Yanoso">{{cite book |last1=Yanoso |first1=Nicole Anderson |title=The Irish and the American Presidency |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2017 |isbn=9781351480635 |location=New York |pages=75–80}}</ref>

The Democrats, having abandoned Johnson, nominated former governor [[Horatio Seymour]] of New York for president and [[Francis Preston Blair Jr.|Francis P. Blair]] of Missouri for vice president.{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} The Democrats advocated the immediate restoration of former Confederate states to the Union and amnesty from "all past political offenses".{{sfnp|Peters|Woolley|2018b}}

Grant won the popular vote by 300,000 votes out of 5,716,082 votes cast, receiving an [[Electoral College (United States)|Electoral College]] landslide of 214 votes to Seymour's 80.{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}} Seymour received a majority of white votes, but Grant was aided by 500,000 votes cast by blacks,{{sfnp|Simon|2002|p=245}} winning him 52.7 percent of the popular vote.{{sfnp|Calhoun|2017|p=55}} He lost Louisiana and Georgia primarily due to [[Ku Klux Klan]] violence against African-American voters.{{sfnp|Foner|2014a|pp=243–244}} At the age of 46, Grant was the youngest president yet elected, and the first president elected after the nation had outlawed slavery.{{sfnp|McFeely|2002|p=284}}{{sfnp|Smith|2001|p=461}}{{sfnp|White|2016|p=471}}