1870 Missouri gubernatorial election
The 1870 Missouri gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 1870, and resulted in a victory for the Liberal Republican nominee, former Senator Benjamin Gratz Brown, over incumbent Republican Governor Joseph W. McClurg.
1870 Missouri gubernatorial election
Senator Carl Schurz took a leading role in the Liberal faction, using the Missouri race as a platform to criticize allies of President Ulysses S. Grant and eventually, Grant himself.
Liberal Republican Party (United States)
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; 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 that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan. It lost in a landslide, and disappeared from the national stage after the 1872 election.
Liberal Republican campaign poster
Interior of the convention hall during the announcement of Horace Greeley as the party's nominee for president in 1872
Liberal Republican "conspirators" in a political cartoon from Harper's Weekly of March 16, 1872