1860 United States presidential election, runoffGovernor Samuel Jones Tilden (Republican, New York) / Senator Galshua Aaron Grow (Republican, Pennsylvania) 51.5% popular votesSenator Charles Sumner (Liberal, Massachusetts) / Governor Henry Winter Davis (Liberal, Maryland) 48.5% popular votesThe first implementation of the Sixteenth Amendment was not without incident: the runoff election was marred by violence, widespread accounts of fraud and intimidation, particularly in the former Confederacy, where "Red Shirts" either supporting Tilden's election or merely opposing Sumner's employed lynchings and threats of violence to keep black men from the polls. It would take several weeks and a special tripartite Congressional committee to determine that Tilden had won the election. The Republican majority was narrow, Tilden having prevailed by a bare margin of 3% —owing to the support of Redeemers in the lower South, and also ironically to the many black voters who defied the Red Shirts to support the party of Seward and Frémont. Time would tell whether their confidence in the Republicans was well-placed, as a weary nation looked toward a new administration in a new decade.
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