Liberal Republican Party (United States)

Liberal Republican Party
Liberal Republican campaign poster.
Historical leaders	Carl Schurz, Horace Greeley
Founded	1870 (1870)
Dissolved	1872 (1872)
Split from	Republican Party
Merged into	Democratic Party
Ideology	Classical liberalism Manifest destiny Anti-corruption
International affiliation	None
Politics of United States Political parties Elections

The Liberal Republican Party of the United States was a political party that was organized in Cincinnati in May 1872, to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The Liberal Republican party's candidate was Horace Greeley, longtime publisher of the New York Tribune. Following his nomination by the Liberal Republicans, Greeley was also nominated by the Democratic Party. Greeley was seen as an oddball reformer with little government experience and a long record of vehement attacks against the very Democrats he now called on for support. Greeley was defeated, receiving approximately 43% of the popular vote, and winning only in the states of Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland. Grant received 286 of the 352 electoral college votes.

The Liberal Republican Party vanished immediately after the election. However, historians suggest that, by loosening the allegiance of liberal elements to the Republican Party, the Liberal Republicans made it possible for many of these leaders to move to the Democratic Party. The others returned to the GOP.

The party began in Missouri in 1870 under the leadership of Carl Schurz and spread nationwide. It had strong support from powerful Republican newspaper editors such as Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial, Horace White of the Chicago Tribune, Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican and especially Whitelaw Reid and Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune.