Liberal Republican Party (United States)

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The Liberal Republican Party was an American political party that was organized in May 1872 to oppose the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant and his Radical Republican supporters in the presidential election of 1872. The party emerged in Missouri under the leadership of Senator Carl Schurz and soon attracted other opponents of Grant; the Liberal Republicans decried the scandals of the Grant administration and sought civil service reform. The party opposed Grant's Reconstruction policies, particularly the Enforcement Acts. It lost in a landslide, and disappeared from the national stage after the 1872 election. The Republican Party had emerged as the dominant party in the aftermath of the Civil War, but many original Republicans became dissatisfied with the leadership of President Grant. Prominent liberal leaders like Schurz and Lyman Trumbull had been leaders in the fight against slavery and for the first stages of Reconstruction. They considered the task accomplished, and thought...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Henry Brueckner, artist; Svobodin Merinsky, lithographer. Composed, lithographed, printed & published at Merinsky's Establishment 319 Pearl St. New York, 1872., Public domain