1868 Democrat President Candidate Seymour & Blair CDV!!

Pricing & History

Sold for
Start Free Trial or Sign In to see what it's worth.
Sold Date
Source eBay

Great original CDV of presidential candidates Seymour & Blair, who lost the 1868 election to Ulysses S. Grant. No Photographer noted. 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 tfore could not vote in the election. The incumbent President, Andrew Johnson, had alienated so many people that his effort to win the Democratic nomination failed: Johnson had failed to help remitt Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia back into the US as individual states. Instead the Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour to take on the Republican candidate, Civil War hero General Ulysses S. Grant. With Freedmen voting in all of the South, and with massive popularity in the North as the man who won the Civil War, Grant won an impressive victory. Reconstruction was a hotly debated issue north and south. Seymour ran what historian David Blight has called "arguably the most openly white supremacist election campaign in American history," with the slogan "This Is a White Man's Country, Let White Men Rule." General Ulysses S. Grant announced he was a Republican and was unanimously nominated as the party's standard bearer. Speaker Schuyler Colfax was chosen over Ohio's Benjamin Franklin Wade for Vice President. President Andrew Johnson had some initial support, but his refusal to ask the Democrats to nominate him eventually made Democrats vote for alternatives on future ballots; Johnson now was unpopular, and could not mangage to reissue US statehood for Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia. 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. 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. (31 states participated, with the addition of Nebraska on the one hand and the "unreconstructed" status of Texas, Mississippi and Virginia, which meant they were not allowed to participate, on the other). Horatio Seymour (May 31, 1810 - February 12, 1886) was an American politician. He was Governor of New York State from 1853-1854 and from 1863-1864. He was the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States in the U.S. Presidential election of 1868, but lost the election to Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Horatio Seymour was born in Pompey Hill, Onondaga County, New York, educated at Geneva Academy (later Hobart College) and at Middletown (Conn) Military Academy, studied law at Utica, and in 1832 was admitted to the bar. He served as mayor of Utica, New York from 1842 to 1843. He served as Governor of New York from 1853 to 1854 and again from 1863 to 1864. During his second tenure as governor, he became a leading Northern opponent of President Abraham Lincoln's administration during the American Civil War. Seymour protested Lincoln's restriction of civil liberties, as well as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union's military draft. He advocated the vigorous prosecution of the war, but protested against Lincoln's extensive use of executive war powers. In 1868 he was president of the Democratic National Convention which met in New York City, and received its presidential nomination. He received 80 electoral votes against 214 for Grant. After this he took no further part in political affairs. He died in 1886 and was interned in Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, New York with his wife Mar... read more

Items in the Price Guide are obtained exclusively from licensors and partners solely for our members’ research needs.

Flag item for content or copyright

If this item contains incorrect or inappropriate information please contact us here to flag it for review.

If you are the originator/copyright holder of this photo/item and would prefer it be excluded from our community, contact us here for removal.