Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency by a sizeable electoral margin—214 electoral votes from 26 states for Grant versus 80 electoral votes from 8 states for Seymour. But Grant received only 52 percent of the popular vote. White men had overwhelmingly voted for Seymour. It was the 500,000 votes of black men in the South that carried the election for Grant—the votes of black men, that is, who had not been prevented, at gunpoint, from voting.
