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1872 United States presidential election

← 1868 November 5, 1872 1876 →
352 members of the Electoral College 177 electoral votes needed to win
Turnout	72.1% 8.8 pp
Nominee Ulysses S. Grant Horace Greeley † (Died November 29, 1872) Party Republican Liberal Republican Alliance Democratic Home state Illinois New York Running mate Henry Wilson Benjamin Gratz Brown Electoral vote 286 (+14 invalidated) 0 (+3 rejected) States carried 29 (+2 invalidated) 0 Popular vote 3,598,235 2,834,976 Percentage 55.6% 43.8%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Grant/Wilson (Republican). Other colors (except gray) denote states won by Greeley/Brown (Liberal Republican and Democratic). The different colors reflect the posthumous scattering of Greeley's electoral votes: purple denotes Electoral College votes won by Greeley, blue denotes those won by Thomas A. Hendricks, pink denotes those won by Benjamin Gratz Brown, green denotes those won by Charles J. Jenkins, and dark red denotes those won by David Davis. Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state.
President before election Ulysses S. Grant Republican Elected President Ulysses S. Grant Republican

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1872. Incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, the Republican nominee, defeated Democratic-endorsed Liberal Republican nominee Horace Greeley.

Grant was unanimously re-nominated at the 1872 Republican National Convention, but his intra-party opponents organized the Liberal Republican Party and held their own convention. The 1872 Liberal Republican convention nominated Greeley, a New York newspaper publisher, and wrote a platform calling for civil service reform and an end to Reconstruction. Democratic Party leaders believed that their only hope of defeating Grant was to unite around Greeley, and the 1872 Democratic National Convention nominated the Liberal Republican ticket.

Despite the union between the Liberal Republicans and Democrats, Greeley proved to be an ineffective campaigner and Grant remained widely popular. Grant decisively won re-election, carrying 31 of the 37 states, including several Southern states that would not again vote Republican until the 20th century. Grant was the last incumbent to win a second consecutive term until William McKinley's victory in the 1900 presidential election, and his popular vote margin of 11.8% was the largest margin between 1856 and 1904.

On November 29, 1872, after the popular vote was counted, but before the Electoral College cast its votes, Greeley died. As a result, electors previously committed to Greeley voted for four candidates for president and eight candidates for vice president. The election of 1872 also remains the only instance in U.S. history in which a major presidential candidate who won electoral votes died during the election process. This election set the record for the longest Republican popular vote win streak in American history, four elections, a record that was matched by the same party in 1908. In terms of electoral votes, it was improved with a fifth and sixth consecutive victory in 1876 and 1880. Grant thus became the only president to serve two full, consecutive terms between Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921). Additionally, he is one of only four Republican presidents to have served two full terms in office, the others being Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Four other Republican presidents: Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and Richard Nixon, were also reelected to their second term, but both Lincoln and McKinley were assassinated in 1865 and 1901, respectively, while Nixon resigned in 1974 before the completion of his second term. Donald Trump was also re-elected to a second, nonconsecutive term.

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

1872 Republican Party ticket
Ulysses S. Grant	Henry Wilson
for President	for Vice President
18th President of the United States (1869–1877)	U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1855–1873)

At the convention the Republicans nominated President Ulysses S. Grant for re-election, but nominated Senator Henry Wilson from Massachusetts for vice president instead of the incumbent Schuyler Colfax, although both were implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal which erupted two months after the Republican convention. Others, who had grown weary of the corruption of the Grant administration, bolted to form the Liberal Republican Party.

The opposition fusion nominations

In the hope of defeating Grant, the Democratic Party endorsed the nominees of the Liberal Republican Party.

Liberal Republican Party nomination

An influential group of dissident Republicans split from the party to form the Liberal Republican Party in 1870. At the party's only national convention, held in Cincinnati in 1872, New York Tribune editor and former representative Horace Greeley was nominated for president on the sixth ballot, defeating Charles Francis Adams. Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown was nominated for vice president on the second ballot.

1872 Liberal Republican Party ticket
Horace Greeley	Benjamin G. Brown
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Representative for New York's 6th (1848–1849)	20th Governor of Missouri (1871–1873)
Campaign

Candidates in this section are sorted by their highest vote count on the nominating ballots
Charles Francis Adams Sr.	Lyman Trumbull	Benjamin Gratz Brown	David Davis	Andrew Gregg Curtin	Salmon P. Chase
Fmr. Envoy to the United Kingdom from Massachusetts (1861–1868)	U.S. Senator from Illinois (1855–1873)	20th Governor of Missouri (1871–1873)	Associate Justice from Illinois (1862–1877)	Fmr. Envoy to Russia from Pennsylvania (1869–1872)	Chief Justice from Ohio (1864–1873)
324 votes	156 votes	95 votes	93 votes	62 votes	32 votes

Democratic Party nomination

1872 Democratic Party ticket
Horace Greeley	Benjamin G. Brown
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Representative for New York's 6th (1848–1849)	20th Governor of Missouri (1871–1873)

The Convention met in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 9–10. Because of its strong desire to defeat Ulysses S. Grant, the Democratic Party also nominated the Liberal Republicans' Greeley/Brown ticket and adopted their platform. Greeley received 686 of the 732 delegate votes cast, while Brown received 713. Accepting the Liberal platform meant the Democrats had accepted the New Departure strategy, which rejected the anti-Reconstruction platform of 1868. They realized that to win the election they had to look forward, and not try to re-fight the Civil War. They also realized that they would only split the anti-Grant vote if they nominated a candidate other than Greeley. However, Greeley's long reputation as the most aggressive antagonist of the Democratic Party, its principles, its leadership, and its activists, cooled Democrats' enthusiasm for the presidential nominee.

Some Democrats were worried that backing Greeley would effectively bring the party to extinction, much like how the moribund Whig Party had been doomed by endorsing the Know Nothing candidacy of Millard Fillmore in 1856, though others felt that the Democrats were in a much stronger position on a regional level than the Whigs had been at the time of their demise, and predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that the Liberal Republicans would not be viable in the long-term due to their lack of distinctive positions compared to the main Republican Party. A sizable minority led by James A. Bayard sought to act independently of the Liberal Republican ticket, but the bulk of the party agreed to endorse Greeley's candidacy. The convention, which lasted only six hours stretched over two days, is the shortest major political party convention in history.

The Liberal Republican Party fused with the Democratic Party in all states except for Louisiana and Texas. In states where Republicans were stronger, the Liberal Republicans fielded a majority of the joint slate of candidates for lower offices; while in states where Democrats were stronger, the Democrats fielded the most candidates. In many states, such as Ohio, each party nominated half of a joint slate of candidates. Even initially reluctant Democratic leaders like Thomas F. Bayard came to support Greeley.

Other nominations

Presidential candidates:

Charles O'Conor	David Davis
Former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from New York (Declined nomination)	Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from Illinois (Nominee – Withdrew on June 24, 1872)

Labor Reform Party

The Labor Reform Party had only been organized in 1870 at the National Labor Union Convention, which organized the Labor Reform Party in anticipation of its participation in the 1872 presidential election. In the lead-up to the 1872 presidential election, state-level affiliates of the party formed and saw limited success. One of its major victories was forming a majority coalition with the Democratic Party in the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 1871 in which William Gove, one of its members, was elected Speaker of the House.

The party's first National Convention meeting was held in Columbus, Ohio, on February 22, 1872. Initially, there was a fair amount of discussion as to whether the party should actually nominate anyone for the presidency at that time, or if they should wait at least for the Liberal Republicans to nominate their own ticket first. Every motion to that effect lost, and a number of ballots were taken that resulted in the nomination of David Davis for president, who was the frontrunner for the Liberal Republican presidential nomination at that time. Joel Parker, the Governor of New Jersey, was nominated for vice president.

While Davis did not decline the presidential nomination of the Labor Reform party, he decided to hinge his campaign in large part on the success of attaining the Liberal Republican presidential nomination, so that he might at least have their resources behind him. After their convention, in which he failed to attain their presidential nomination, Davis telegraphed the Labor Reform party and informed them of his intention to withdraw from the presidential contest entirely. Joel Parker soon followed suit.

A second convention was called on August 22 in Philadelphia, where it was decided, rather than making the same mistake again, that the party would cooperate with the new Straight-Out Democratic Party that had recently formed. After the election, the various state affiliates grew less and less active, and by the following year, the party ceased to exist. Labor Reform party activity continued to 1878, when the Greenback and Labor Reform parties, with other organizations, formed a National Party.

Straight-Out Democratic Party

Unwilling to support the Democratic party ticket (Greeley/Brown), a group of mostly Southern Democrats held what they called a Straight-Out Democratic Party convention in Louisville, Kentucky, on August 11, 1872. They nominated as presidential candidate Charles O'Conor, who declined their nomination by telegram; for vice president they nominated John Quincy Adams II. Without time to choose a substitute, the party ran the two candidates anyway. They received 0.36% of the popular votes, and no Electoral College votes.

Equal Rights Party

Victoria Woodhull is recognized as the first woman to run for president. She was nominated for president by the small Equal Rights Party. Frederick Douglass was nominated for vice president, although he did not attend the convention, acknowledge his nomination, or take an active role in the campaign.

General election

Campaign

Grant's administration and his Radical Republican supporters had been widely accused of corruption, and the Liberal Republicans demanded civil service reform and an end to the Reconstruction process, including withdrawal of federal troops from the South. Both Liberal Republicans and Democrats were disappointed in their candidate Greeley. As wits asked, "Why turn out a knave just to replace him with a fool?" A poor campaigner with little political experience, Greeley's career as a newspaper editor gave his opponents a long history of eccentric public positions to attack. With memories of his victories in the Civil War to run on, Grant was unassailable. Grant also had a large campaign budget to work with. One historian was quoted saying, "Never before was a candidate placed under such great obligation to men of wealth as was Grant." A large portion of Grant's campaign funds came from entrepreneurs, including Jay Cooke, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Alexander Turney Stewart, Henry Hilton, and John Astor.

Women's suffrage

This was the first election after the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869. As a result, protests for women's suffrage became more prevalent. The National Woman's Suffrage Association held its annual convention in New York City on May 9, 1872. Some of the delegates supported Victoria Woodhull, who had spent the year since the previous NWSA annual meeting touring the New York City environs and giving speeches on why women should be allowed to vote. The delegates selected Victoria Woodhull to run for president, and named Frederick Douglass for vice-president. He did not attend the convention and never acknowledged the nomination, though he served as a presidential elector in the United States Electoral College for the State of New York. Woodhull gave a series of speeches around New York City during the campaign. Her finances were very thin, and when she borrowed money from supporters, she often could not repay them. On the day before the election, Woodhull was arrested for "publishing an obscene newspaper" and thus could not cast a vote for herself. Woodhull was ineligible to be president on Inauguration Day, not because she was a woman (the Constitution and the law were silent on the issue), but because she would not reach the constitutionally prescribed minimum age of 35 until September 23, 1873; historians have debated whether to consider her activities a true election campaign. Woodhull and Douglass are not listed in "Election results" below, as the ticket received a negligible percentage of the popular vote and no electoral votes. In addition, several suffragists attempted to vote in the election. Susan B. Anthony was arrested when she tried to vote and was fined $100 in a widely publicized trial.

Results

32% of the voting age population and 72.1% of eligible voters participated in the election. Grant won an easy re-election over Greeley, with a popular vote margin of 11.8% and 763,000 votes.

Grant also won the electoral college with 286 electoral votes; while Greeley won 66 electoral votes, he died on November 29, 1872, twenty-four days after the election and before any of his pledged electors (from Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland) could cast their votes. Subsequently, 63 of Greeley's electors cast their votes for other Democrats: 42 voted for non-candidate Indiana Governor-Elect Thomas A. Hendricks, 18 of them cast their presidential votes for Greeley's running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, 2 cast their votes for non-candidate and former Georgia Governor Charles J. Jenkins, and 1 cast his vote for non-candidate U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis.

Of the 2,171 counties making returns, Grant won in 1,335 while Greeley carried 833. Three counties were split evenly between Grant and Greeley.

Disputed votes

During the joint session of Congress for the counting of the electoral vote on February 12, 1873, five states had objections that were raised regarding their results. However, unlike the objections which would be made in 1877, these did not affect the outcome of the election.

This election was the last in which Arkansas voted for a Republican until 1972, and the last in which it voted against the Democrats until 1968. Alabama and Mississippi were not carried by a Republican again until 1964, and they would not vote against the Democrats until 1948. North Carolina and Virginia would not vote Republican again until 1928. West Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey would not vote Republican again until 1896.

Table of results

Source (popular vote): Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

Source (electoral vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.

These candidates received votes from Electors who were pledged to Horace Greeley, who died before the electoral votes were cast.
Brown's vice-presidential votes were counted, but the presidential votes for Horace Greeley were rejected since he was ineligible for the office of President due to his death.
See Breakdown by ticket below.
The 14 electoral votes from Arkansas and Louisiana were rejected. Had they not been rejected, Grant would have received 300 electoral votes out of a total of 366, well in excess of the 184 required to win, and he would have become the first candidate to receive 300 or more electoral votes.

Source: "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved July 31, 2005.

Geography of results

• Results by county, shaded according to winning candidate's percentage of the vote

Cartographic gallery

• Map of presidential election results by county
• Map of Republican presidential election results by county
• Map of Liberal Republican/Democratic presidential election results by county
• Map of "other" presidential election results by county
• Cartogram of presidential election results by county
• Cartogram of Republican presidential election results by county
• Cartogram of Liberal Republican/Democratic presidential election results by county
• Cartogram of "other" presidential election results by county

Results by state

Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.

States that flipped from Democratic to Republican

• Delaware
• Louisiana
• New Jersey
• New York
• Oregon

States that flipped from Republican to Democratic

• Missouri
• Tennessee

Close states

Red font color denotes states won by Republican Ulysses S. Grant; pink denotes those won by Democrat/Liberal Republican Horace Greeley.

States where the margin of victory was under 1% (19 electoral votes)

1. Maryland 0.69% (927 votes)
2. Virginia 0.98% (1,816 votes)

Margin of victory between 1% and 5% (32 electoral votes)

1. Delaware 4.23% (924 votes)
2. Tennessee 4.32% (7,736 votes)
3. Arkansas 4.35% (3,446 votes)
4. West Virginia 4.46% (2,788 votes)
5. Connecticut 4.81% (4,619 votes)

Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (133 electoral votes):

1. Kentucky 5.87% (11,229 votes)
2. Alabama 6.38% (10,828 votes)
3. Indiana 6.41% (22,515 votes)
4. New York 6.46% (53,456 votes)
5. Florida 7.04% (2,336 votes)
6. Ohio 7.09% (37,531 votes) (tipping point state with rejection of electors in Arkansas and Louisiana)
7. New Hampshire 8.33% (5,743 votes) (tipping point state if electors of Arkansas and Louisiana were not rejected)
8. New Jersey 9.04% (15,200 votes)
9. Wisconsin 9.16% (18,517 votes)
10. Georgia 9.94% (13,806 votes)

Breakdown by ticket

The used sources had insufficient data to determine the pairings of 4 electoral votes in Missouri; therefore, the possible tickets are listed with the minimum and maximum possible number of electoral votes each.
Brown's vice-presidential votes were counted, but the presidential votes for Horace Greeley were rejected since he was ineligible for the office of President due to his death.

Demise of the Liberal Republicans

Though the national party organization disappeared after 1872, several Liberal Republican members continued to serve in Congress after the 1872 elections. Most Liberal Republican Congressmen eventually joined the Democratic Party. Outside of the South, some Liberal Republicans sought the creation of a new party opposed to Republicans, but Democrats were unwilling to abandon their old party affiliation and even relatively successful efforts like Wisconsin's Reform Party collapsed. The especially strong Missouri Liberal Republican Party collapsed as the Democrats re-established themselves as the major opposition party to the Republicans. In the following years, former Liberal Republicans became members in good standing of both major parties.

See also

• 1872–73 United States Senate elections
• 1872–73 United States House of Representatives elections
• American election campaigns in the 19th century
• History of the United States (1865–1918)
• Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
• Reconstruction era
• Second inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant
• Third Party System

Notes

1. ^ Elections were held in Arkansas and Louisiana; however, due to various irregularities including allegations of electoral fraud, all electoral votes from those states (6 and 8, respectively) were invalidated.
2. ^ Greeley died after the election, but prior to the Electoral College meeting. Greeley had won 66 pledged electors, of which 63 cast their votes for other candidates. 3 Georgian electors voted for Greeley; however, their votes were rejected.
3. Grover Cleveland was elected to a second non-consecutive term in 1892, after losing his re-election campaign in 1888.

References

1. "National General Election VEP Turnout Rates, 1789–Present". United States Election Project. CQ Press.
2. Matthew T. Downey, "Horace Greeley and the Politicians: The Liberal Republican Convention in 1872." Journal of American History 53.4 (1967): 727–750. online
3. Official Proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, Held at Baltimore, July 9, 1872. Boston: Rockwell & Churchill, Printers. 1872.
4. Paul F. Boller Jr. (2004). Presidential Campaigns: from George Washington to George W. Bush. Oxford University Press. pp. 128–129. ISBN 0-19-516716-3.
5. Dunning 1905, p. 198
6. Ross 1910
7. Adelman, Myra Burt (2000). "Labor Reform Party: 1872". In Ness, Immanuel; Ciment, James (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America. Vol. 2. Armonk, N.Y: Sharpe Reference. pp. 321–22. ISBN 0-7656-8020-3.
8. Renda, Lex (1997). Running on the Record: Civil War-Era Politics in New Hampshire. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. p. 173. ISBN 0-8139-1722-0.
9. Yeargain, Tyler (2021). "New England State Senates: Case Studies for Revisiting the Indirect Election of Legislators". University of New Hampshire Law Review. 19 (2): 381. Retrieved April 28, 2021.
10. Richardson, Heather Cox (2007). West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. Yale University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780300137859.
11. Bewig, Matthew S. R. (2010). "Third Parties After the Civil War". In Robertson, Andrew (ed.). Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History. Vol. 3. Sage. pp. 360–361. ISBN 9780872893207.
12. Haynes, Frederick Emory (1916). Third Party Movements Since the Civil War, with Special Reference to Iowa. State Historical Society of Iowa. p. 122. Retrieved January 27, 2018. labor reform.
13. "Women Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates: A Selected List". Center for American Women in Politics. Rutgers University Ealgeton Institute. June 30, 2015. Retrieved August 12, 2020.
14. Walsh, Colleen (November 2, 2020). "1872 election: Victoria Woodhull picks Frederick Douglass as VP". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved June 29, 2022.
15. Dunning 197
16. Guide to U.S. Elections. Vol. 1 (5th ed.). CQ Press. 2005. ISBN 1-56802-981-0.
17. Shearer, Mary L. (2016). "Who is Victoria Woodhull?". Victoria Woodhull & Company. Retrieved June 18, 2022.
18. Abramson, Aldrich & Rohde 1995, p. 99.
19. United States Congress (1873). Senate Journal. 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, February 12. pp. 334–346. Retrieved March 23, 2006.
20. David A. McKnight (1878). The Electoral System of the United States: A Critical and Historical Exposition of Its Fundamental Principles in the Constitution and the Acts and Proceedings of Congress Enforcing It. Wm. S. Hein Publishing. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-8377-2446-1.
21. https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1872&f=0&off=0&elect=0/
22. "1872 Presidential General Election Data – National". Retrieved May 7, 2013.
23. Ross, pp. 192–239

Works cited

• Abramson, Paul; Aldrich, John; Rohde, David (1995). Change and Continuity in the 1992 Elections. CQ Press. ISBN 0871878399.

Further reading

• Donald, David Herbert. Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (1970).
• Downey, Matthew T. "Horace Greeley and the Politicians: The Liberal Republican Convention in 1872," The Journal of American History, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Mar. 1967), pp. 727–750. JSTOR 1893989
• Dunning, William Archibald (1905). Reconstruction: Political & Economic, 1865–1877. ch. 12. online edition
• Gerber, Richard Allan. "The Liberal Republicans of 1872 in historiographical perspective." Journal of American History 62.1 (1975): 40–73. online
• Lunde, Erik S. "The Ambiguity of the National Idea: the Presidential Campaign of 1872" Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 1978 5(1): 1–23. ISSN 0317-7904.
• McPherson, James M. "Grant or Greeley? The Abolitionist Dilemma in the Election of 1872" American Historical Review 1965 71(1): 43–61. JSTOR 1863035
• Prymak, Andrew. "The 1868 and 1872 Elections," in Edward O. Frantz, ed. A Companion to the Reconstruction Presidents 1865–1881 (Wiley Blackwell Companions to American History) (2014) pp. 235–56 online
• Republican Campaign Clubs, Horace Greeley Unmasked. New York: Republican Campaign Clubs, 1872. —Campaign pamphlet.
• Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 7 ch 39–40. (1920)
• Ross, Earle Dudley (1910). The Liberal Republican Movement. H. Holt. pp. 202–.
• Slap, Andrew L. The Doom of Reconstruction: The Liberal Republicans in the Civil War Era (2006) online
• Strauss, Dafnah. "Ideological closure in newspaper political language during the US 1872 election campaign." Journal of Historical Pragmatics 15.2 (2014): 255–291. doi:10.1075/jhp.15.2.06str online
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Press Gang: Newspapers and Politics, 1865–1878 (1994) ch 15
• Summers, Mark Wahlgren. The Era of Good Stealings (1993), covers corruption 1868–1877
• Van Deusen, Glyndon G. Horace Greeley, Nineteenth-Century Crusader (1953) online edition

Primary sources

• American Annual Cyclopedia...for 1872 (1873), comprehensive collection of facts online edition
• Blaine, James G. (1885). Twenty Years of Congress. vol. 2. pp. 520–31. online edition
• Chester, Edward W A guide to political platforms (1977) online
• Porter, Kirk H. and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds. National party platforms, 1840–1964 (1965) online 1840–1956

External links

• Presidential Election of 1872: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• 1872 popular vote by counties
• Election of 1872 in Counting the Votes Archived October 7, 2017, at the Wayback Machine

v t e State and district results of the 1872 United States presidential election
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• 1872 United States presidential election
• Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Henry Wilson
• November 1872 events