The American Presidential Election of 1872

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The 22nd episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1872, it's Grant versus a vegetarian who looks like a lion. Oh yeah, and it's the first presidential election (if not only) in which a woman runs with an African American. Who cares if women can't vote yet!

Feeling extra dorky? Then visit here:
http://www.countingthevotes.com/1872

For the most part, Ulysses Grant remained popular during his first term as President, especially with the majority of Republicans. He got his party’s renomination. However, some Republicans did not like him so much. For one thing, they didn’t like how Grant had a lot of friends in his Cabinet and ignored merit. A lot of his friends, as it would turn out, were a bit corrupt. As matter of fact, Vice President Schuyler Colfax was tied to the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal, in which many politicians were bribed for actions favorable to the railroad company Union Pacific. It would be just one of several scandals tied to the Grant administration. After Colfax was implicated, the Republican Party decided it might not be such a good idea to renominate him, so they nominated Henry Wilson, the Senator from Massachusetts, to be Grant’s running mate instead.

Still, some Republicans, like Charles Sumner, weren’t satisfied. Sumner was sick of the favoritism Grant showed to friends and family, calling it “Grantism.” Some influential Republicans refused to support him, and actually started a new political party called the Liberal Republican Party. Those dang liberal Republicans. They nominated Horace Greeley, a former Representative from New York and a well-known editor of the New York Tribune, for President. A journalist running for President? Crazy. They nominated Benjamin Gratz Brown, the Governor of Missouri, as his running mate.

Now here’s something interesting, a fusion, or cross-endorsement, nomination. The Democratic Party also decided to nominate Horace Greeley for President and Benjamin Gratz Brown for Vice President. They even adopted the Liberal Republican platform, showing they were cool with Reconstruction policies. Really though, the main reason why they decided to go with the Liberal Republican nominees is because they wanted to take down Grant and knew by nominating different people it would just split his opposition.

How about some third parties? Well, there were at least three new ones. The Labor Reform Party tried to nominate a couple fellows, lawyer Charles O’Conor from New York, and Supreme Court justice David Davis from Illinois, but things just didn’t work out. It was kind of doomed from the start.

Meanwhile, there was the Prohibition Party, which was formed to oppose the consumption and sale of alcohol. James Black, who founded the party and was a big temperance activist, duh!, was their first nominee for President. John Russell, another founder of the party, was his running mate.

By far the most interesting third party that ran for President in 1872, and maybe in American history, was the Equal Rights Party. The National Woman’s Suffrage Association had supported a woman named Victoria Woodhull, an activist who publicly talked trash about the government only being made up of men. Despite the fact that women all across the country could not vote, well except in sparsely populated Wyoming territory, Woodhull became the first woman to be nominated for President in American history. Frederick Douglass was nominated as her running mate, but he never acknowledged the nomination. Woodhull had little money and borrowed money from supporters for her campaign, usually not able to pay them back. Where are Super PACs when you need them, eh? So yeah, just let that sink in for a moment. In 1872, a woman ran for President with an African American as her running mate.

The two frontrunners, Grant and Greeley, were aggressively attacked. Grant for the corruption in his Cabinet, and Greeley for being an eccentric guy for his support of spiritualism (aka communicating with the dead), vegetarianism, prohibition, and socialism, all radical ideas at the time. Greeley had a rough campaign, and had the misfortune of a long history of positions published in his newspaper that opponents could nitpick. Even his own supporters were disappointed with him. On top of that, his wife died right before the election.

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