The 1870 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on October 19, 1870, to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. Governor Robert Kingston Scott easily won reelection based entirely on the strength of the black vote in the state. The election was significant because white conservatives of the state claimed it showed that political harmony between the white and black races was impossible and only through a straightout Democratic attempt would they be able to regain control of state government.

Robert Kingston Scott was an American Republican politician, the 74th governor of South Carolina, and an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In 1891 he built a Queen Anne Italianate Victorian home in Napoleon, Ohio and lived there until his death in 1900. It still stands to this day in Napoleon on the corner of W. Clinton Street and Haley Ave.