Liberal Republican party,
A shortlived political organization that sprang from the regular Republican party, and was composed of men who had gone from the
Democratic to the Republican party when the former assumed an aggressive pro-slavery attitude, and also the Republicans who had become dissatisfied with the reconstruction policy of their party.
The movement began to assume considerable strength in 1867, when coercive measures were deemed necessary by the Republican party to maintain the new political rights of the negroes in the
South.
The passage and enforcement of the so-called “Force bill” (see
Ku-Klux Klan), on April 20, 1871, increased the movement to such an extent that organization only seemed necessary to make it a telling power.
A union of “Liberal Republicans” and Democrats was effected in
Missouri in 1870-71.
Its leading principles were a reform of the tariff and the civil service, universal suffrage, universal amnesty, and the cessation of “unconstitutional laws to cure Ku-klux disorders, irreligion, or intemperance.”
On May 1, 1872, this fusion
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374]
held a national convention in
Cincinnati, which nominated
Horace Greeley, of New York, for
President, and
B. Gratz Brown, of
Missouri, for
Vice-President.
On July 9 the Democratic National Convention adopted the platform and candidates of the Cincinnati convention, and in the ensuing election the ticket of
Greeley and
Brown was overwhelmingly defeated.
The party really became disintegrated before the election, but after that event its dissolution was rapid, and by 1876 there were only a few men in Congress who cared to acknowledge that they were Liberal Republicans.
See
Greeley, Horace.
