“White Man’s Country” This silk ribbon from the 1868 presidential campaign between Republican Ulysses S. Grant and his Democratic opponent, New York governor Horatio Seymour, openly declares the Democrats’ goal of white supremacy. During the campaign, Democratic vice presidential nominee Francis P. Blair Jr. promised that a Seymour victory would restore “white people” to power by declaring the reconstruction governments in the South “null and void.”
David J. & Janice L. Frent Collection/Corbis.