Liberal Republican Party (United States)

Interior of the convention hall during the announcement of Horace Greeley as the party's nominee for president in 1872

Thomas Nast's caricature of the Cincinnati Convention from Harper's Weekly, April 13, 1872

Liberal Republican "conspirators" in a political cartoon from Harper's Weekly of March 16, 1872

American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872.

- Liberal Republican Party (United States)

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Ulysses S. Grant

American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.

Grant's birthplace, Point Pleasant, Ohio

Chinook Indian Plank House Published 1845
Grant believed Pacific Northwest Indians were a peaceful people and not a threat to settlers.

"Hardscrabble" Published 1891
The farm home Grant built in Missouri for his family. His wife Julia called the home an "unattractive cabin".

Brigadier General Grant photographed at Cairo, Illinois, September 1861 (Published 1911)

21st Illinois regiment monument in the Viniard Field, Chickamauga

Grant's successful gamble: Porter's gunboats night ran the Confederate gauntlet at Vicksburg on the Mississippi River.
Published 1863

The Battle of Jackson, fought on May 14, 1863, was part of the Vicksburg Campaign.
Published 1863

Union troops swarm Missionary Ridge and defeat Bragg's army. Published 1886

Commanding General Grant at the Battle of Cold Harbor, June 1864

Grant (center left) next to Lincoln with General Sherman (far left) and Admiral Porter (right) – The Peacemakers by Healy, 1868

Defeated by Grant, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House

Grant–Colfax Republican Ticket
Published 1868

Inauguration of President U.S. Grant, Capitol building steps.
March 4, 1869

Anthony Comstock Grant's vigorous prosecutor of abortionists and pornographers.

Amos T. Akerman, appointed Attorney General by Grant, who vigorously prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan

Image of mobs rioting entitled "The Louisiana Outrage". White Leaguers at Liberty Place attacked the integrated police force and state militia, New Orleans, September 1874.
Published October 1874

Secretary of Treasury George S. Boutwell aided Grant to defeat the Gold Ring.

Secretary of State Hamilton Fish and Grant successfully settled the Alabama Claims by treaty and arbitration.

Wharf of Santo Domingo City
Dominican Republic

American Captain Frye and his crew were executed by Spanish authority.

King Kalākaua of Hawaii meets President Grant at the White House on his state visit, 1874.
Published January 2, 1875

Ely Samuel Parker
Grant appointed Parker the first Native American (Seneca) Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Battle of the Little Big Horn
Great Sioux War
Published 1889

Cartoon by Thomas Nast on Grant's opponents in the reelection campaign

Grant is congratulated for vetoing the "inflation bill" in 1874.

Cartoonist Thomas Nast praises Grant for rejecting demands by Pennsylvania politicians to suspend civil service rules.

Harper's Weekly
cartoon on Bristow's Whiskey Ring investigation

Cartoonist Joseph Keppler lampooned Grant and his associates. Grant's prosecutions of the Whiskey Ring and the Klan were ignored.
Puck, 1880

Official White House portrait of President Grant by Henry Ulke, 1875

Commanding General Grant
Constant Mayer's portrait of 1866

Grant National Memorial, known as "Grant's Tomb", largest mausoleum in North America

The Liberal Republicans and Democrats united behind Grant's opponent in the presidential election of 1872, but Grant was handily reelected.

Charles Sumner

American statesman and United States Senator from Massachusetts.

Birthplace, Irving Street, Beacon Hill, Boston

An 1842 bust of Charles Sumner by Thomas Crawford

Lithograph of Preston Brooks' 1856 attack on Sumner; the artist depicts the faceless assailant bludgeoning the learned martyr

The walking cane used to attack Charles Sumner on exhibit at the Old State House in Boston

Senator Sumner and his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, photograph by Gardner, 1863

Sumner puts head in British lion's mouth—Harper's Weekly, 1872

President Ulysses S. Grant The Dominican Republic annexation treaty caused bitter contention between President Grant and Sen. Sumner. —Brady 1869

Statue by Anne Whitney in Harvard Square

Sumner bitterly opposed Grant's re-election by supporting the Liberal Republican candidate Horace Greeley in 1872 and lost his power inside the Republican Party.

Benjamin Gratz Brown

American politician.

He was a U.S. Senator, the 20th Governor of Missouri, and the Liberal Republican and Democratic Party vice presidential candidate in the presidential election of 1872.

Reconstruction era

Period in American history following the American Civil War ; it lasted from 1865 to 1877 and marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States.

The ruins of Richmond, Virginia, the former Confederate capital, after the American Civil War; newly-freed African Americans voting for the first time in 1867; office of the Freedmen's Bureau in Memphis, Tennessee; Memphis riots of 1866

The Southern economy had been ruined by the war. Charleston, South Carolina: Broad Street, 1865

The distribution of wealth per capita in 1872, illustrating the disparity between North and South in that period

A political cartoon of Andrew Johnson and Abraham Lincoln, 1865, entitled "The Rail Splitter At Work Repairing the Union". The caption reads (Johnson): "Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever." (Lincoln): "A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended."

Monument in honor of the Grand Army of the Republic, organized after the war

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1861–1865)

Celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation in Massachusetts, 1862

Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (1865–1869)

An October 24th, 1874 Harper's Magazine editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast denouncing KKK and White League murders of innocent Blacks

The debate over Reconstruction and the Freedmen's Bureau was nationwide. This 1866 Pennsylvania election poster alleged that the bureau kept the Negro in idleness at the expense of the hardworking white taxpayer. A racist caricature of an African American is depicted.

1868 Republican cartoon identifies Democratic candidates Seymour and Blair (right) with KKK violence and with Confederate soldiers (left).

"This is a white man's government", Thomas Nast's caricature of the forces arraigned against Grant and Reconstruction in the 1868 election. Atop a black Union veteran reaching for a ballot box: the New York City Irish; Confederate and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest; and big-money Democratic Party chairman August Belmont, a burning freedmen's school in the background. Harper's Weekly, September 5, 1868.

Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States (1869–1877)

Grant's Attorney General Amos T. Akerman prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan, believing that the strong arm of the federal Justice Department could pacify the South.

Eastman Johnson's 1863 painting The Lord is My Shepherd, of a man reading the Bible

Atlanta's rail yard and roundhouse in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War

$20 banknote with portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch

Winslow Homer's 1876 painting A Visit from the Old Mistress

A Republican Form of Government and No Domestic Violence, by Thomas Nast, a political cartoon about the Wheeler Compromise in Louisiana, published in Harper's Weekly, March 6, 1875

White Leaguers attacking the New Orleans integrated police force and state militia, Battle of Liberty Place, 1874

Rutherford B. Hayes, 19th President of the United States (1877–1881)

A poster for the 1939 epic film Gone with the Wind, which is set during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras

A new Republican faction emerged that wanted Reconstruction ended and the Army withdrawn—the Liberal Republicans.

The Radical Republicans (later also known as "Stalwarts" ) were a faction of American politicians within the Republican Party from the founding of the Republican Party in 1854 (before the American Civil War) until the end of Reconstruction in the Compromise of 1877.

Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury

Henry Winter Davis, one of the authors of the Wade–Davis Manifesto opposing Lincoln's "ten percent" reconstruction plan

Edwin McMasters Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War, whom Johnson tried to remove from office

"Grant's Last Outrage in Louisiana" art in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of January 23, 1875

Finally in 1872, the Liberal Republicans, who wanted a return to classical republicanism, ran a presidential campaign and won the support of the Democratic Party for their ticket.

New-York Tribune

American newspaper founded in 1841 by editor Horace Greeley.

Daguerreotype of the Tribune editorial staff by famed later Civil War photographer Mathew Brady (1822–1896), taken circa 1850s. Horace Greeley (1811–1872), is seated, second from the right. Editor Charles Anderson Dana (1819–1897), is standing, center.

The New York Tribune building, today the site of One Pace Plaza in lower Manhattan.

Greeley ran for president as the nominee of the Liberal Republican Party (and subsequently the Democratic Party) in the 1872 election against incumbent Ulysses S. Grant in his bid for a second term.

The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts)

Newspaper based in Springfield, Massachusetts covering news in the Greater Springfield area, as well as national news and pieces from Boston, Worcester and northern Connecticut.

The October 17, 2018, front page of The Republican

Samuel Bowles, transformed the paper into the largest circulating daily in New England by the mid-19th century, and is remembered for his influence on abolitionism and the Republican Party, as well as his mantra for journalists—"Put it all in the first sentence."

The historic Republican Block was home to The Republican from 1858 to 1867

The Springfield Republican as it appeared during the Reconstruction era, 1865

First Home of the Springfield Republican

Republican block, Springfield (newspaper building at left), 19th century

Current headquarters and printing facilities of The Republican, 2018

During the controversies affecting slavery and resulting in the American Civil War, Bowles supported, in general, the Whig and Republican parties, but in the period of Reconstruction under President Ulysses S. Grant, his paper represented anti-administration or Liberal Republican opinions, while in the disputed election of 1876 it favored the claims of Samuel J. Tilden, and subsequently became independent in politics.

Liberal Republican Party (United States)

Ulysses S. Grant

Charles Sumner

Benjamin Gratz Brown

Reconstruction era

Radical Republicans

New-York Tribune

The Republican (Springfield, Massachusetts)

1872 United States presidential election

Carl Schurz

Lyman Trumbull