1965/10/01 by James M. McPherson · 12 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #American History and Culture #Law #Liberal Party #Memoir #Political science #Politics #Race, History, and American Society #Spanish Civil War
paper · doi:10.2307/1863035
published in The American Historical Review 71(1), 43 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 1965/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
THE important role in Liberal Republican I872 played by such erstwhile Free-Soilers and antislavery Republicans as Charles Francis Adams, Salmon P. Chase, Horace Greeley, George W. Julian, Carl Schurz, Charles Sumner, and Lyman Trumbull noted by contemporaries and historians alike. Julian, for example, wrote in his memoirs that he delighted by presence of old Free Soilers I848 and I852 at Liberals' Convention. And a careful historian has stated that the most striking feature Liberal Republican was large number free-soilers and founders Republican party in its ranks.' This being so, one might also expect to find a majority those former abolitionists still alive in i872 among supporters Liberal movement. In fact, however, more than three-fourths abolitionists favored reelection President Grant over his Liberal Republican challenger, Horace Greeley. The reasons for abolitionists' overwhelming support Grant were rooted in their continuing concern for welfare freedmen. During and after Civil War, abolitionists had championed a program economic assistance, education, and equal rights for freedmen, much which had been enacted by Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and large body Reconstruction legislation.2 Most abolitionists discerned grave dangers for Negro in Liberal program conciliation southern whites and self-government for southern states. The Liberal Republican movement an anomalous compound many personalities and forces, and its major issues were tariff reduction, civil service reform, and sectional reconciliation. But party's nominee, Horace Greeley, hostile toward first and indifferent toward second, which left