Horace Greeley 1872 presidential campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  Horace Greeley ran for President of the United States in 1872. Had he somehow won, he would have become the first socialist president in American history. He never came close. Greeley stood as the joint nominee of the Democratic Party and the Liberal Republicans. That faction had split from the Republican Party over corruption and over Reconstruction policy. The country around him was changing fast. The 15th Amendment had just given African Americans the right to vote for the first time. At the same time, the federal government was moving against the Ku Klux Klan. The economy was strong, and President Ulysses S. Grant's own corruption scandals had not yet reached the public. Grant, running for re-election, beat Greeley decisively. What remained unclear was how this candidacy came together at all, and why it collapsed so completely.

• 2. The Liberal Republican Nomination Fight

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  U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis entered the race for the Liberal Republican nomination as the clear front-runner. Newspapers attacked him relentlessly, and his support weakened as the field narrowed. Charles Francis Adams, Sr. picked up momentum instead. He was a former United States Minister to the United Kingdom and the son of President John Quincy Adams. Adams opened a lead at the 1872 Liberal Republican National Convention, drawing 205 delegates. Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown, another candidate in the race, dropped out. He endorsed Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune and a former congressman. Greeley overtook Adams on the second ballot, winning 245 delegates to Adams's 243. U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull briefly surged on the third ballot. Greeley pulled back into the lead by the sixth ballot, with 334 delegates. He ultimately won the nomination with 482 delegates against 187 for Adams. The delegates chose Gratz Brown, the man who had endorsed Greeley, as his running mate.

• 3. An Unlikely Ticket

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  U.S. Senator Carl Schurz, a prominent Liberal Republican, was stunned by the Greeley nomination. So were the other supporters of Charles Francis Adams. The press and the public shared that surprise, and for good reason. The Liberal Republicans were largely a free-trade movement, yet they had just chosen a staunch protectionist as their presidential nominee. Greeley brought no political or government experience to the ticket. He was known for an eccentric, erratic public persona, and for backing a wide range of fringe causes, from vegetarianism to spiritualism. Years of controversial and sometimes contradictory public statements had left him with a paper trail that his political enemies could mine for attacks.

  After Greeley and Gratz Brown secured the Liberal Republican nomination, the Democratic Party nominated the same ticket. Democratic leaders believed they could not win the presidency without support from anti-Grant Liberal Republicans. Both parties calculated that sharing one candidate would let them infiltrate and dominate the other.

  A faction calling itself the Straight-Out Democratic Party rejected the Greeley nomination outright. It held a second nominating convention in Louisville, Kentucky, and put forward Charles O'Conor and John Quincy Adams II as candidates, though both men disavowed the effort. Electors pledged to O'Conor and Adams drew just 0.35% of the popular vote and won no seats in the Electoral College.

• 4. A Brutal Campaign Trail

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  Greeley's supporters called Grant a dictator and a drunk. Grant's supporters fired back, branding Greeley a traitor and a flake. Grant and the Republicans also waved what was called the bloody shirt, tying the Democrats to secession and the defeated Confederacy. Federal officials arrested more than 1,000 people under the Reconstruction Enforcement Acts during the campaign. The goal was to stop Republican voters, especially Black voters, from being kept from the polls.

  President Grant did not actively campaign. Greeley did the opposite, traveling through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, delivering as many as 22 speeches in a single day. He gave nearly 200 speeches in total. The effort backfired. Greeley was seen as saying the wrong things to the wrong audiences, and he took political attacks personally rather than shrugging them off. In October 1872, his wife fell ill and died, a personal loss that struck in the middle of the campaign.

• 5. A Running Mate's Undoing

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  Benjamin Gratz Brown fainted before a gathering in New York City, one of several public embarrassments during the campaign. At a campaign picnic, he was so drunk that onlookers watched him slice up and butter a watermelon. He attended other campaign events and delivered speeches while intoxicated, and he sometimes forgot the party's own policies. Errors and misstatements piled up as the campaign wore on, giving Grant's side one more target to attack a ticket that was already struggling.

• 6. Landslide and Its Aftermath

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  Grant defeated Greeley in a landslide, carrying 31 of the nation's 37 states. He won the Electoral College 286 to 66 and took the national popular vote by 55.6% to 43.8%. Grant's winning percentage was the highest of any election between 1828 and 1904, while Greeley's losing percentage was the lowest between 1848 and 1904. Grant's performance was far weaker in the South, where his appeal, and that of the Republicans generally, was largely confined to Black men.

  Horace Greeley did not live to see the Electoral College formally meet. Exhausted and demoralized by the campaign and its results, he died just several weeks after the election.