Civilian leadership and military command are of different qualities. On the occasion of President Ulysses Grant’s inauguration as the eighteenth president of the United States, a good portion of the nation responded with relief over the end of a failed Johnson administration and held high hopes in the prospect of the ascent of a widely acclaimed war hero and bold leader—at least so acclaimed throughout most sections of the country—to the White House. Many saw in Grant the qualities they admired in the legends of Washington and Jackson, and his ability to keep his dignity during the campaign lent support to that sentiment.
But President Grant’s administration soon gave reason to disappoint. Corruption, incompetence, nepotism, and internal dissent against the continuation of Reconstruction shook the administration and severely fragmented the Republican Party. Grant himself was capable and essentially honest, but poor decisions regarding appointments, based more on loyalty and sentiment than professional considerations, damaged his reputation and undermined his personal integrity. Grant led what was far and away the most corrupt administration to date by filling offices with favorites and relatives, many of whom were either unfit for their appointments or devoid of any moral scruples. Scandal gripped the presidency. Vice President Schuyler Colfax had been implicated in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, an affair of bribery and graft that actually had occurred during the Johnson administration but came to light during Grant’s term, one that entangled high officials who were now a part of his own administration. Because of the extensive corruption, a new term, “Grantism,” was coined both to describe the condition of corruption that gripped the administration and to claim the location of its source directly in the president himself rather than the Republican Party. Many believed the president to be largely or wholly responsible and sought to begin governmental reform by directly targeting the White House. Others, however, observed that it was not so much the president as it was his closest advisers who exposed themselves as self-serving and venal flatterers who had poisoned the administration at the expense of Grant’s good name and the administration’s effectiveness. In either case, Republicans, in thinking about the upcoming election, were in a state of confusion and, in some quarters, either disenchantment or outright panic. The party that had proved so strong in the previous two elections was now vulnerable, and a president who had inspired so much confidence when inaugurated was now viewed by an ample number of voters as an inept failure.
As a result, as early as 1870, a number of leading Republicans saw themselves as a group in dissent against their president, and thus by the beginning of the 1872 campaign, a faction had emerged with the Republican Party that was clearly anti-Grant, demanding civil service reform as a way to control the unbridled corruption that was a consequence of the expansion and abuses of political patronage under the current president. This patronage system, often referred to as the “spoils system,” had been the common way of assigning political appointments for decades, and it was taken for granted as the standard method of conducting the business of politics; but a movement was under way that sought a more meritocratic, professional civil service, and many Republicans, weary of “Grantism,” were more than ready to pick up the cause. Members of this reform faction included some of the party’s more talented and influential leaders, including famed journalist, reformer, and intellectual eccentric Horace Greeley, Republican elder statesman Charles Francis Adams (son and grandson of presidents), Justice Salmon P. Chase (who had also recently been courted by Democrats as a possible presidential candidate), Supreme Court justice and Abraham Lincoln’s campaign manager David Davis, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull (author of the Thirteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866), and Missouri senator Carl Schurz, who first made a political name for himself stumping within the German immigrant community in Illinois for Abraham Lincoln during his failed 1858 senatorial campaign. It was Schurz who, in a speech before the Senate in 1872, declaimed, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right,” a modification of the famous phrase that is also attributed to naval war hero Stephen Decatur. However, Grant, in spite of the myriad problems that weakened his administration, still held a strong base of supporters, enough to expose within the party a division so wide that it could not, at least at this time, be bridged.
Thus, largely through leadership of Schurz, this reform faction split from the main party, called themselves the Liberal Republicans of the United States, and convened in Cincinnati in May 1872 to independently nominate their own presidential candidate. Schurz, who was born in Germany and was thus ineligible to stand as a candidate, was nonetheless an important presence throughout the convention. His keynote speech was a critical moment, wherein he urged delegates to “rise above petty considerations” and “small bickerings” and instead seize the moment not only to defeat Grant, but also to infuse in the presidency, and in politics as such, a “loftier moral spirit.” The campaign goal of “anybody but Grant” would not suffice to promote such lofty ends; a substantively credible challenger needed to be found. Chase, Sumner, and Adams were the more eminent figures, but Chase’s flirtation with the Democrats in 1872 had eroded his once-considerable influence within the Republican Party. Sumner was slowed by poor health and hampered by a personality that many found difficult to manage. Greeley was also mentioned, but his support was almost exclusively concentrated in the Northeast, and particularly in New York; thus many viewed him as a potentially effective candidate for the vice presidency, one that could help bring New York’s thirty-three electoral votes to the ticket. That said, Greeley had been promoting himself for the White House for at least a year, and it was clear to the delegates that Greeley might not settle for the second spot. Just how much of a force he would be at the convention was unclear, but his attempts to gain the nomination were known long before the delegates convened in Cincinnati. Three candidates were thus viewed as the more plausible contenders for the Liberal Republican campaign against Grant: Adams, Trumbull, and Davis, with a fourth, Greeley, looming ever larger on the horizon.
Adams was a brilliant and respected public servant, popular among Midwestern liberal Republicans and attractive to Democrats along the Eastern Seaboard. His moderate approach to the former Confederacy might have been an advantage in the South, even though as a Republican, Adams was already at a disadvantage there, for very few white Southerners were open to supporting a candidate from the Party of Lincoln. But he also brought some liabilities, beginning with his age (sixty-five), his disinterest in the competitive side of politics, and his close association with Schurz, who had over the years made a number of enemies. Trumbull, whose major triumphs were his leadership in the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, came to the convention with a distinguished record and even more enemies than Schurz. He was a hard-line Radical Republican whose vote on President Johnson’s behalf during the Senate’s removal proceedings saved the Johnson presidency, much to the chagrin of nearly everyone in his party. Trumbull was also aging, and like Adams, he found campaigning burdensome. Justice Davis was thus the front-runner as the convention opened. He had support in the Midwest and the South, but among the Liberal Republicans of the East, his record as a justice was not fittingly attuned to the spirit of liberal reform. His supporters offended delegates at the convention with their overconfidence and their indulgent behavior. Davis had been an important political asset to Lincoln back in the day, but his inability to conduct a disciplined campaign in his own behalf may suggest just who was in fact the bigger asset to whom in that particular relationship.
On the eve of the convention, four influential liberal editors targeted Davis, simultaneously lambasting him in their respective newspapers published in Cincinnati, Louisville, Chicago, and Springfield, Illinois. It was now apparent that Davis had squandered his pre-convention political capital, and thus on the first ballot he finished a distant fifth, polling only 92 votes to 203 for Adams, 147 for Greeley, 110 for Trumbull, and 95 for Missouri’s Benjamin Gatz Brown, numbered among Schurz’s enemies. This initial result revealed the extent of Greeley’s influence and served as a wave that he rode into the second ballot, where he gained 101 additional votes for a total of 245, moving just slightly ahead of Adams, who also gained votes to finish with 243. Trumbull gained as well, finishing third with 148, while Davis’s fortunes slid dramatically, the preconvention front-runner polling only 75 votes. Andrew J. Curtin of Pennsylvania drew 62, with Chase pulling in just 2 votes. Brown, who now openly supported Greeley (his nemesis, Schurz, backed Adams), slid to just 2 votes, but his efforts provided Greeley with a significant bloc that helped propel him toward the top of the field.
On the fourth and fifth ballots, Adams once again pulled ahead of Greeley, as Greeley actually lost ground on the fourth ballot and scarcely made it up on the fifth. Adams, after five ballots, held a 309 to 258 vote lead, and the apparent momentum needed to propel him the nomination. But Adams’s ascent suddenly stalled; enough delegates were on the floor who simply refused to vote for him under any circumstance, thus preventing him from achieving the needed 359 votes and victory. These delegates were more amenable to Greeley, particularly the Trumbull delegates, who now began to switch to the Greeley cause, helping to suddenly turn the tide away from Adams and toward the journalist/reformer from New York. Thus on the sixth ballot, Greeley pulled back into the lead, gaining 74 votes for a total of 332. Surprisingly, Adams also gained, increasing his delegate count to 324, but Greeley’s more significant gain was a game changer. On the next round, the seventh, Greeley won 442 votes and thus the nomination. The convention then proceeded to reward Brown’s alliance with Greeley by nominating him with ease on the second ballot. Trumbull also had some support for the second spot, but it was not enough to challenge Brown. The platform that was adopted by the Liberal Republican Party contained three central planks: civil service reform and the imposition of higher standards for public service, phasing out Reconstruction, and lowering tariffs.
Oddly enough, the Liberal Republicans were less interested in the situation facing African American voters and their increasingly frustrated attempts to exercise their rights now explicitly protected under the Constitution and supported by related federal laws. In 1871, intensified violence against African Americans forced President Grant to ask Congress to enact the Ku Klux Klan Act, which would thereby give federal officials the authority to arrest, prosecute, and punish individuals who engaged in the kind of intimidation and violence that had become a Klan specialty. Despite the frightening realities of terror and brutality directed against the freed slaves, Liberal Republicans sought to shift the focus from Reconstruction to government reform. While the Liberal platform sought to dismantle Reconstruction governments, it notwithstanding still endorsed the Reconstruction Amendments and the doctrine of equal rights under the law, a position that to their critics exposed inconsistencies. This platform also advocated a grant of universal amnesty to Southern citizens and withdrawal of federal troops from the South, a move that many felt would thoroughly undermine African American citizenship and the attempt to reform a former slave society. Advocating equal rights and yet proposing measures that put African Americans’ vulnerable voting rights at risk was a contradiction that seems to have been lost on the delegates. But the mood of the country was changing, and the debate over what Reconstruction meant and what could be done on behalf of freedmen began to lose its energy. In addition to the Liberal wing, other Republicans had also grown tired of military occupation and became highly critical of arguably undemocratic and allegedly “carpetbag” Reconstruction governments in Southern states, thus sympathizing with some of the same complaints voiced by their counterparts among the Democrats, particularly those in the South.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party convened in Baltimore the following July, and in a unique twist in American political history, the Democrats as a cohesive body joined a rival party to embrace its candidate, and thus they seconded Greeley’s nomination for the presidency, hoping that the action would ultimately weaken the Republicans. Thus Greeley would run on the separate endorsements of both the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats. Greeley was far from being a hero to the Democrats; his political past was in part defined by his opposition to the Democratic Party and, in particular, what that party had meant to the South. Nonetheless, the Democrats concluded that they did not have a candidate anywhere near the stature needed to challenge Grant, whom they despised; and that for the long term, a strategy that would further divide the Republicans was their best opportunity for the upcoming election and beyond. The Democratic convention lasted but six hours, the shortest on record, Greeley having been nominated on the first ballot with 686 votes out of 724 delegates. Brown was also nominated for the second slot, winning 713 first-round votes. The Democrats adopted the Liberal Republican platform with a few minor changes and additions, mostly for show, as an attempt to appear to be a party apart. But in reality, the Democratic Party was, at least for the moment, almost at one with the Liberal Republicans, much in the same way that the War Democrats allied themselves closely with the Republicans in the Union Party coalition that had previously reelected Lincoln and subsequently elected Grant. The difference was that in this case, the Democrats were only lukewarm for Greeley.
Even though Greeley’s nomination was virtually unopposed at the hastily concluded convention, there were a few dissenters. Democrats who were more conservatively disposed, forerunners of what would later be called the Bourbon Democrats, a faction that would soon become a powerful force in the party’s future, were openly displeased. Alexander Stephens (former vice president of the Confederacy), for one, was appalled by the options left to the Democrats in the endorsement of Greeley, describing the choice between Grant and Greeley as akin to a choice between “hemlock and strychnine.” A number of Bourbon Democrats bolted and nominated their own candidate, eminent lawyer Charles O’Conor of New York, under the banner of the “Straight-Out Democrats.” The Straight-Out campaign was meager, winning in the end only slightly above 23,600 votes nationwide in the general election; but it is of interest as a historical first, for O’Conor, a Roman Catholic, became the first of his faith to be nominated by any party as a candidate for the presidency. It would not be until 1928 that another Catholic (Alfred E. Smith, another New Yorker) would receive a presidential nomination from either a major or a minor party. John Quincy Adams II, son of Charles Adams (recently defeated by Greeley for the Liberal nomination) and grandson of his presidential namesake, was nominated as his running mate. Adams, an erstwhile Republican, had switched to the Democratic Party as a result of his dissatisfaction with Republican Reconstruction policies. Neither O’Conor nor Adams sought their nominations, and both abstained from actively campaigning, although Adams in particular was publicly critical of the Greeley nomination.
A month after the Liberal Republicans met in Cincinnati, President Grant’s diehard supporters, of whom there were many in spite of the stain of scandal, held their convention in Philadelphia, which was the official convention of the Republican Party (the hybrid Union Party moniker by now falling into disuse). As before, Grant was nominated without opposition, this time with considerable flourish resembling a coronation more than an election. The convention dropped controversial incumbent vice president Schuyler Colfax from the ticket and replaced him with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, an old opponent of slavery; but not without a fight, as Colfax still had numerous loyal supporters and an interest in high office. Grant, however, was annoyed at Colfax for making it publicly known that he would volunteer to run for president should Grant decide to step down, a statement that turned Grant’s interest toward Wilson and to those delegates who chose to back him.
In an effort to defuse the crisis over the integrity of the Grant administration, as well as to counter the defection of the “Cincinnati Soreheads” that had nominated Greeley, convention delegates adopted a number of progressive planks. The platform reaffirmed statutory support for the Civil War amendments, begrudgingly endorsed civil service reform, and continued the traditional support for protective tariffs. Significantly, the party added a plank recognizing obligations to women, proposing their “admission to wider fields of usefulness,” and suggesting the “respectful consideration” of “additional rights” for their sex. This constituted the first women’s rights plank in American politics, and its inclusion won the endorsement of suffragette Susan B. Anthony, who had accused Greeley of publishing editorials unfriendly toward the cause of women. With the Civil War receding further into history, the political rights of women was now a cause regaining broader attention, and the Republican plank reflected a growing awareness, however gradually, of the justice of that cause. The convention was mostly a showcase for President Grant, but owing to these kinds of elements, it did promote a fairly farsighted platform. It was also the first convention to make full use of the instant communication now provided through the invention of the telegraph, as the electorate was now frequently alerted to the latest updates over the wire.
Events in the general election campaign broke well for President Grant. Liberal Republicans and their new allies, the Democrats, overestimated the effectiveness of the civil service reform and amnesty issues and underestimated Grant’s personal popularity. Equally important, Greeley proved a weak candidate unable to deal with relentless Republican attacks. Greeley was certainly an idiosyncratic personality, even more so than Zachary Taylor, the blasé, albeit successful, Whig candidate in the campaign of 1848. Greeley’s somewhat confused jumble of ideas and opinions revealed a restless and puzzling mind. He could appear farsighted and open-minded and then suddenly exhibit simple-minded intolerance. He was prone to dial into fads and fashionable causes, and he entertained cultish proclivities. His attraction to crackpot thinking weakened the credibility of his social vision. He was an abolitionist who excoriated hierarchy and privilege, and yet he was regarded in the women’s movement as an enemy to that cause. He was once described by journalist Charles Dana as a “visionary without faith, a radical without root, an extremist without persistency, a strife-maker without courage.” Grant, by comparison, was a safe and welcome alternative.
Some might regard the Greeley campaign as an unmitigated disaster, which may in part be true, but President Grant’s success can also be attributed to his own personal resilience in deflecting criticism and marshaling his own loyal forces. Grant had, after all, vanquished far more formidable enemies in the past. Republican-aligned newspapers depicted Greeley as an eccentric troublemaker espousing weird ideas. For instance, political cartoonist Thomas Nast incessantly mocked Greeley with caricatures of a pumpkin-headed, mole-eyed know-it-all, easily corrupted, intellectually muddled, and foolishly arrogant. Nast’s cartoons also strenuously impugned Greeley’s loyalty and patriotism to great effect by portraying images of the Liberal candidate congratulating rebel soldiers, aiding and abetting murderous Klansmen, and scandalously joining hands with the notorious assassin John Wilkes Booth while wickedly gloating over Abraham Lincoln’s grave. Once again, waving the bloody shirt and evoking President Lincoln’s martyrdom worked to great effect against Republicans’ opponents and helped further to seal Greeley’s fate. At the end of the campaign, Greeley remarked, “I have been assailed so bitterly that I hardly know whether I was running for the presidency or the penitentiary.” Memories of the Civil War and Grant’s critical role in the Union victory were more powerful than any discontent over his administration’s many problems. The Republican platform also helped Grant in his own efforts to address the problem of government corruption by supporting the establishment of a government commission charged with civil service reform.
Mudslinging was a tactic also employed by the Liberal Republican/Democratic coalition. Greeley supporters trotted out tired accusations of drunkenness and military butchery, and they attempted to tie Grant to scandals that had implicated his friends and associates. Matt Morgan, an editorial cartoonist stridently critical of Grant, drew the president as a cretinous, cigar-chomping crook, a crowned petty thief swilling huge quantities of liquor, raised palm opened for the bosses to grease. But in the end, Grant was again victorious, soundly defeating the politically naïve Greeley in spite of the serious scandals within his administration and the numerous biting insults launched against him.
Grant won in a landslide, carrying all but six states for a total of 286 electoral votes to Greeley’s 66. Grant’s electoral vote total was the highest ever in terms of raw numbers, exceeding the previous record of 254 won by Franklin Pierce in 1852 (President Lincoln impressively won 212 in the 1864 election, made more remarkable by the absence of 11 states). In the popular vote, Grant won close to 3,600,000 (55.6%), far exceeding his number in the previous election, while Greeley somehow managed to win approximately 2,800,000 (43.8%). Of note is the formation in 1869 of the Prohibition Party, which in 1872 nominated James Black of Pennsylvania, an advocate for temperance, for the presidency. Black scarcely won a total of 5,000 popular votes, but the temperance movement was under way, and when tied to the larger currents of progressivism, it would gain enough momentum to achieve its goals by the early twentieth century. Equally of interest is the candidacy of Victoria Woodhull for president, joined by the eminent Frederick Douglass for vice president on a ticket sponsored by what was called the Equal Rights Party. These two personages represent the first woman to officially run for president and the first African American to run for vice president, albeit on a minor party ticket. Whether or not the Equal Rights Party won any votes is unclear. Woodhull was a woman of some controversy, having been arrested on obscenity charges days before the general election.
Given Grant’s vulnerability, the outcome more than anything exposed the weakness of the Democrats, who did not even select their own candidate. Interestingly, Grant won a majority of the former Confederate states, taking some of them decisively. An important factor was the African American vote, which was still exercised in spite of the many and increasing localized criminal efforts to blunt it. Sadly, this situation would soon change, as early as the following presidential election, and the black vote would not contribute significantly until well into the twentieth century.
Gillette, William. “Election of 1872.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds., History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968. Vol. 2. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
McFeely, William S. “1872.” In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Fred L. Israel, and David J. Frent, eds. Running for President: The Candidates and Their Images. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.