As the man who'd led the Northern forces to victory in the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant was seen by many Republicans as the natural choice for a presidential candidate. Hugely popular and with name recognition to spare, this national war-hero was seen as the ideal man to contest the election of 1868.
Under the circumstances, it's more than likely that any Republican candidate would've won in that year. Many Southern whites were disenfranchised and were therefore unable to participate in the election. In addition, large numbers of African Americans were able to vote for the first time, and almost without exception they voted for the party of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. All things considered, Grant's Democratic opponent, Horace Seymour, didn't really stand a chance.
Grant repeated the trick four years later, chalking up an even more impressive victory than in 1868. Despite monumental levels of graft and corruption at the highest levels of his administration, Grant was easily able to secure re-election, comfortably seeing off another Horace, his Liberal-Republican opponent, Horace Greeley, whose election campaign was somewhat undermined by the fact that he died before the Electoral College cast its votes.
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