1868
The election year had been brutal for the president. In May he survived the impeachment procedure by one vote, in the summer the democrats, his old party, had refused to nominate him for president and the Republican Party had nominated Colfax, one of his biggest enemies in congress. This happened after they had not been able to get general Grant to run.
After all that, he decided to throw his own hat into the race. By taking on the same political label as four years earlier Lincoln had done he hoped the people would see him as the successor to the murdered president. He asked senator Edmund Ross of Kansas to join him on the ticket, after all it was Ross's vote that had saved him. Ross knew that his vote effectively ended his political career within his party, so he accepted the offer from the president.
The campaign had been long and hard. The democrats had accused him of being a traitor because he had joined Lincoln and the republicans in 1864 while the republicans called him a traitor to Lincoln's legacy. He stayed for the most part in the middle, calling the war an awful but necessary action while still holding on to his believe that whites are superior to blacks.
During the campaign he had the support from the two living former presidents. Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore supported his bid to keep the Radical Republicans out of the White House.
In the end, he prevailed, but the election was a close one. He won 43% of the vote with Colfax getting 35% and Seymour only 22%. In the electoral college it was also very close, but he prevailed. He received 149 electoral votes, Colfax won 105 votes and Seymour only took 40.
The year 1868 had been tough, but in the end, he won.
What does the map look like?
