Liberal Republican Party

The **Liberal Republican Party** was a classical liberal political party in the United States which existed from 1870 to 1872 as a liberal splintergroup of the Republican Party. The party was founded by GOP reformists who opposed the rampant corruption in Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration, demanded civil service reform, believed that civil and political rights for African-Americans had already been achieved, supported "amnesty" for former Confederates (allowing them to vote and hold office), supported lower tariffs to challenge the growing power of big business, and opposed the Radical Republicans' military occupation of the South and the use of fradulent elections to empower carpetbaggers, scalawags, and freedmen. According to Ron Chernow, the Liberal Republican Party advocated for "civil service reform, sound money, low tariffs, and states' rights." The Liberal movement sought to combat the corruption of the Grant administration and reverse the enlargement of the federal govenrment which had occurred during the Civil War; many Liberal Republicans were former Free Soilers and ex-Democrats whose disagreements with the Republican Party's wartime Whiggish economic policies, expansion of government power, and abandonment of states' rights as a philosophy of the government led to them deserting the party. During the 19th century, "liberalism" signified opposition to government intervention in the economy or labor relations, combined limited government and free-market ideals with some of the ideals of Social Darwinism (believing that competition was necessary for progress), and challenged the efforts of reformers and labor unions to rein in the influence of big businesses. The Liberal Republicans worried about the political influence of immigrants (particularly Catholics) and formerly enslaved African-Americans, and some advocated to returning to property qualifications for voting. Liberals argued that federal assistance to Southern Blacks prevented them from achieving their potential through free competition, and liberals played a key role in the Republican Party's abandonment of Reconstruction.

The Liberal Republican support base included many German-Americans (particularly in St. Louis, where 80% of Germans had voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860) who, while having formerly been among the most radical of Radical Republicans, felt threatened by the GOP's inability to address America's economic problems after the war, opposed the pietistic religious stance of the GOP, and also grew concerned that the growing African-American community in St. Louis and other cities would support the mots nativist and pietistic segments of the Republican Party.

The Liberal Republicans were united in their opposition to Ulysses S. Grant's re-election, and, in the 1872 presidential election, the Democrats backed Horace Greeley's Liberal Republican presidential bid with the goal of defeating Grant. However, Frederick Douglass mobilized the African-American vote in support of Grant's GOP, and the Liberal Republican-Democrat coalition lost the election with 44% of the vote, as most Democrats were unenthusiastic about backing their old (former Whig) opponent, Greeley. Three-fourths of abolitionists had remained loyal to the GOP, although Charles Sumner, Carl Schurz, and Charles Francis Adams Sr. backed the Liberal Republicans, as they believed that the goals of Reconstruction had been accomplished, and that civil service reform should now take precedence over Black civil rights.

Most abolitionists believed that only relentless law enforcement could protect the rights of southern blacks, while the Liberal Republicans believed the Democrats' promise to accept Reconstruction and instead hoped to cooperate with "better class" southern whites and adopt a hands-off policy towards the American South. Greeley died shortly after the election, and the Liberal Republicans fell apart. Most Liberal Republican congressmen eventually joined the Democratic Party, while others returned to the GOP and joined the reformist "Half-Breeds" and "Mugwumps", with some even joining the pro-labor Greenback Party.