The Democratic National
Convention
The odd became surreal in
Baltimore on July 9-10 when the Democratic party also nominated
the Greeley-Brown ticket and adopted the Liberal Republican
platform whole-cloth. It is the only time in American history
when a major party endorsed the candidate of a third party.
Greeley had been an outspoken abolitionist, one of the founders
of the Republican party, and the needle in the side of many a
Democrat. Now he was to be their champion. During the Civil War,
Greeley had first advised letting the South secede, then urged
an aggressive Union military policy, followed by attempts to
arrange a cease-fire and negotiated settlement. Early in the
Reconstruction process, he was one of the first to call for both
universal manhood suffrage and universal amnesty. By 1872 the
Democrats rhetorically accepted the former and desperately
desired the latter. They were also a party in disarray with no
other viable candidate to offer the nation. Like in Missouri in
1870, national Democratic leaders saw the Liberal Republican
movement as a Trojan Horse which could carry them back into the
White House. (The Liberals, conversely, thought they were taking
over the Democrat party.)
The Republican National
Convention
The Republicans had already
met a month before on June 5-6 in Philadelphia, where Grant was
renominated by acclimation. The only suspense at the convention
was the choice of vice president. The Crédit Mobilier scandal
had not yet come to light, but Colfax had alienated himself from
the president when he let it be known that he was available for
the regular Republican presidential nomination should Grant
chose not to seek a second term. The breach was exacerbated when
some Liberal Republicans considered the sitting vice president
as a possible presidential candidate of their own.
On the first ballot in Philadelphia, U.S. Senator Henry
Wilson of Massachusetts bested Colfax 364½ to 321½ (with 66
scattered) before Virginia switched to give Wilson the vice
presidential nomination. The Republican platform called for
vigorous enforcement of the 14th
and 15th Amendments, equal rights under the law,
civil service reform, amnesty for former Confederates, Union
veterans’ benefits, but waffled on the tariff issue. In May, the
Republican Congress had passed the Amnesty Act and slightly
lowered the tariff so as to rob the Liberal
Republican-Democratic coalition of those issues.
The Campaign
One wag remarked that the
Grant-Greeley contest was a battle pitting a "man of no ideas"
against a "man of too many." The campaign degenerated into a
mudslinging melee, epitomized in the anti-Greeley cartoons of
Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly
and the anti-Grant cartoons of Matt Morgan in Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper (many of which are featured on
this site). Greeley partisans called Grant a dictator and a
drunk, while the president’s forces depicted the editor as a
traitor and a flake. At the end of the campaign, Greeley
complained, "I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew
whether I was running for the presidency or the penitentiary."
Grant could have said much the same.
The Republicans had the advantages of a popular president, a
good economy, and an efficient party organization animated by
thousands of patronage appointees who doubled as campaign
workers. The GOP took every opportunity to "wave the bloody
shirt" and thereby remind voters of the Democratic association
with secession and the Confederate cause. Their Liberal
Republican-Democratic opponents, on the other hand, suffered
from weak and uncoordinated organization, internal feuding, low
funds, and a candidate about whom even his own supporters had
doubts.
State and Congressional elections held in the late summer and
early fall were considered a bellwether of the presidential
elections held in early November. In 1872, the first test was in
North Carolina on August 1. Republicans took no chances, sending
Cabinet members and black students from Howard University to
campaign throughout the state. To make sure that Republicans,
especially blacks, were not prevented from voting, federal
officials arrested over 1000 under authority of the
Reconstruction Enforcement Acts. Fraud was committed by both
sides, and the results were mixed, with the Republicans electing
the executive ticket and the Democrats capturing the legislature
(and thus able to elect a U.S. senator). In September, though,
Maine and Vermont went firmly in the Republican column.
Grant opted for the traditional silence of a sitting
president, but his challenger took to the hustings. On September
19-29, Greeley embarked on a grueling campaign tour through New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, delivering up
to 22 speeches per day for a total of nearly 200. Although some
detractors were impressed, others judged the effort to be
counterproductive, with Greeley saying the wrong things to the
wrong audiences. His vice-presidential running-mate, Gratz
Brown, made matters worse by delivering a speech at Yale while
drunk, fainting before a gathering in New York City, and
generally making misstatements.
In late October, the Republicans won the Pennsylvania
elections by a larger-than-expected margin, and the dye seemed
to be cast for the upcoming presidential vote. On election day,
Grant overwhelmed the Liberal Republican-Democratic nominee,
winning 31 of 37 states, 286 electoral votes to 66 slated for
Greeley, and 56% of the popular vote to his rival’s 44%. Grant’s
winning percentage was the highest between 1828 and 1904, while
Greeley’s losing percentage was the lowest between 1848 and
1904. Grant, however, had not done well in the South, and the
Republican party base there was primarily limited to black men.
Greeley’s political defeat was accompanied by personal tragedy.
In early October his wife had fallen sick and died later that
month, a few weeks before the election. Exhausted and
demoralized, Greeley himself died a few weeks after the
election.
Sources consulted: Paul F. Boller
Jr., Presidential Campaigns; Charles S. Campbell, The
Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-1900;
William A. DeGregario, The Complete Books of U.S. Presidents;
Richard Allan Gerber, "The Liberal Republican of 1872 in
Historiographical Perspective," Journal of American History
62 (June 1975): 40-73; William Gillette, "Election of 1872," in
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of American
Presidential Elections, vol. III, pp. 1303-1330.
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