A majority of the white men of the country, both North and South, (the only legitimate voters) favored the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, in 1868.
Much of the South couldn't vote, so Grant easily won the electoral college decision.
Grant's popular majority would have evaporated without the 450,000 freed negro slaves marched by his Radical Republican troops around Southern polling stations to vote multiple times.
J G Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 798, citing C H Coleman, The Election of 1868.
In effect, the federals imposed a Haitian Revolution on the white South, putting negroes in charge. The only thing they did differently from the Haitian Slave Revolution was that the federals kept the freed negroes from slaughtering the defeated Southern whites.
This post is dedicated to VOX and its editorial staff, who are real clear on this kind of thing from the past.
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