When a group of disaffected Republicans calling themselves Liberal Republicans met in Cincinnati, Ohio in May 1872, they had the perfect opportunity to defeat Ulysses S. Grant in the November election. Led by Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, the Liberal Republicans reacted to the growing scandals and widespread corruption associated within the Grant administration. Unfortunately, however, the Liberal Republicans emerged from the convention nominating the one man who had the least chance of defeating Grant, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune.
Ulysses Grant and the Stalwart Republicans
Ulysses Grant, associated with Union victory over the South in the last years of the Civil War, had been an ideal presidential choice in 1868 for the Republican Party. Former President Andrew Johnson had been deemed a Southern sympathizer and endured impeachment although the Senate trial did not result in conviction. Grant, who had presidential ambitions before 1868, was the ideal candidate.
Grant, however, was no politician and though personally honest, found himself under the control of the Republican “stalwarts” in Congress. An 1872 political cartoon created by Matt Morgan, for example, features an incompetent Congress with Senator Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwarts, pouring liquor into the glass of President Grant who is obviously already inebriated. A caption on the pillared wall declares, “The times demand an uprising of honest citizens to sweep from power the men who prostitute the name of our sacred party to selfish interests.”
- Witchita Kansas Newspapers
- Gambia News Paper
Breaking News: Gambia: GAMBIAN ARMY CHIEF MISINFORM PRESIDENT JAMMEH ABOUT THE DETAINED KANILAI PATROL TEAM SOLDIERS! Tuesday, November 08, 2011 (1172 reads)
- News About Vladimir Putin
- Chanel 5 News Cleveland
- News Years Eve Song
