Grant Takes Command: 1868 and 1872 Elections

The 1868 election was up for grabs. Abraham Lincoln was dead. Incumbent President Andrew Johnson was politically dead. The Republican Party was in a bit of trouble. They overstepped their authority in Congress and impeached Johnson. He escaped removal as public opinion was against impeachment. Despite escaping, Johnson was not popular in the North.
Northerners did not like Johnson, but they disliked Reconstruction as well. The Democrats attempted to feed into this. Their candidate was Horatio Seymour. Seymour had the worst name of any nominee before 2008. He also ran as a white supremacist.
The Democrats won the White Vote by a fraction, but lost the Black Vote by a wide margin. The Republicans nominated U.S. Grant. Grant was moderate, not tied to the Radicals in Congress, and the most popular man in the country. He defeated the South in the Civil War and defeated them again for the White House.
Four years later, Grant won re-election 56% to 44%. The economy was good and he was still the popular war hero. His opponent, Horace Greeley, had the second worst name for a presidential candidate ever. He also died before the election ended. Six different candidates split Greeley's electoral votes up.
Grant turned out to be a lousy president. This kept him from being nominated for a third term in 1876. However, he was probably superior to the alternatives offered up by the Democrats of the time.