1876:
Tilden/Hendricks (Democratic)214 EVs, 51.6%,
Grant/Blaine (Republican) 155 EVs, 47.3%
The 1872-6 period was plagued with continued questions over Reconstruction, as despite Grant trying to continue to enforce it his intervention to protect Southern Republicans was met with severe backlash, particularly with Northern sympathy towards the cause falling after the radical government of Joseph Brooks refused to re-enfranchise former Confederates after being elected in controversial fashion and the violent crackdown on the Red Shirts in Mississippi and the Colfax massacre in Louisiana.
After the Democrats gained control of the House in 1874, Grant turned towards seeking to intervene peacefully, which allowed the Democratic state governments elected in many Southern states to start to implement laws weakening the protection of African-American voting rights provided for by the Fifteenth Amendment. In response, Grant passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to try to protect black access to public facilities, which in theory allowed for continued voting rights for African-Americans, but did little to quell violence and so could not prevent voter suppression by white Southerners.
Exacerbating these blows to Grant’s popularity was the Whiskey Ring, which found Treasury officials to be guilty of bribery by whiskey distillers. This gave voters the impression the Grant administration was rife with corruption, which proved an excellent springboard to his Democratic opponent, Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden was well-known as the Governor of New York, and was notable for his anti-corruption stance, breaking with Tammany Hall and prosecuting the Canal Ring during his Governorship, which he framed in stark contrast to Grant. He also stressed his support for the gold standard and tax cuts, though many of his supporters sought to end Reconstruction and despite his anti-slavery and pro-Union past Tilden did nothing to disavow them.
Despite being widely expected to lose, Grant fought a hard campaign. He emphasized the significant effort he and his Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow had put into breaking up the Whiskey Ring, used Tilden’s indifference to the violence of Southern Democrats to energise Republicans in the North to turn out, and replaced Frelinghuysen with the more moderate former Speaker James Blaine as his running mate.
Grant’s strong and well-funded campaign did allow him to turn a projected landslide for Tilden into a fairly competitive race, but he still became the first President since Martin van Buren to seek re-election and lose. Tilden, meanwhile, had retaken the White House for the Democrats for the first time since before the Civil War, though his term would be a deeply controversial one.
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1880: Grant/Blaine (Republican) 253 EVs, 52.3%, Tilden/Hendricks (Democratic) 116 EVs, 45.5%
Tilden’s administration saw significant change in government policy in a more conservative direction. While he had been a ‘Barnburner’ Democrat who opposed slavery, he acquiesced to the Democratic Congress’s pushes to repeal the Ku Klux Klan Act, Enforcement Acts and related anti-racism legislation, On economic matters he was even more conservative, opposing allowing silver money in favour of the gold standard and using federal troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in what remains the deadliest conflict between workers and strike-breakers in American history.
Not surprisingly, these actions evoked intense opposition which the Republicans sought to capitalise on despite many of them shifting to be more conservative themselves in some areas. They successfully won back control of the House in the 1878 midterms, and during the following two years Tilden’s health began to falter significantly, further damaging Democratic morale.
The Republican nomination battle was at first favoured to see Blaine made the nominee, but former President Grant had rebuilt his reputation after his 1876 defeat by making a world tour to meet with leaders internationally, most prominently in Europe and Asia. When he returned to the US in September 1879, he was met by cheering crowds and significant news coverage, which helped convince his old ally Roscoe Conkling to urge him to seek the nomination again.
While Grant was reluctant at first due to his previous defeat and the emerging conflict between anti-civil service reform and pro-civil service reform Republicans (the so-called ‘Stalwarts’ and ‘Half-Breeds’; Conkling belonged to the former faction, Blaine to the latter), the delegates saw him as the best candidate to unite the party around. Grant made Blaine his running mate once again, making this election the first time in American history that the two parties nominated the same presidential and vice-presidential candidates back to back.
Despite aggressive voter suppression in the South, the third-party campaign of the Greenbacks, who nominated James Weaver, helped the Republicans to build up strength in the region by fighting Democratic attempts at suppression. Grant also funded supporters across the country rather than concentrating his funds in the swing states, which he was able to do since his campaign had more money to use than Tilden.
Grant won a second term comfortably, and managed to narrowly carry Florida and North Carolina, which was considered to justify his inclusion of campaigning in the Southern states rather than conceding them to the Democrats and would be a major factor in the way civil rights programmes would develop in the 1880s.
I'd be interested to see what results you got to see the difference!
