The death of Mr. Greeley before the electoral count caused the casting of his 66 votes as scattering. The above table indicates the way they went for President. For Vice-President

The Republican party and the country were so well satisfied with President Grant's first administration, that they stood ready to honor him a second time. This was grateful to him, for he had been the mark of such bitter opposition by his political enemies as to make him feel that he needed vindication at the hands of his friends. If he were nominated and elected a second time, the fact would assure him that defamation had done him no injury, and he could always point to such a triumph as a sufficient answer to every invention of malice.

Political sentiment was somewhat mixed in 1872. There had risen inside the Republican party a strong faction which cared nothing for practical politics, and which was swayed by the thought that universal amnesty ought to be proclaimed in exchange for universal suffrage. An equally large faction swung off, as early as 1870, on the idea that the Reconstruction measures were harsh, unconstitutional, and failures in their application. This occurred in Missouri. B. Gratz Brown and Carl Schurz led the faction in a legislative fight and triumphed. They called themselves Liberal Republicans, and their opponents Radicals. This was to be the nucleus of a new party. All the dissatisfied Republican elements came to it under the lead of Greeley and Fenton in New York, Curtin in Pennsylvania, Trumbull in Illinois, and Charles Francis Adams in Massachusetts. The Democrats favored it, thinking it would disrupt

the vote was still more scattered. Brown, Libera. Republican, Mo., received 47: Julian, Dem. ocrat, Ind., 5: Colquitt, Democrat, Ga., 5; Palmer, Democrat, Ill., 3: Bramlette, Democrat, Ky., 3; Groesbeck, Democrat, O., 1; Macken, Democrat, Ky., 1; Banks, Liberal Republican, Mass, 1. The 14 votes of Arkansas and Louisiana were not counted, on account of frauds in the elections and duplicate counts by two opposing Returning Boards. The popular vote was: Grant, 3,597,070; 31 States. Greeley, 2,834,079; 6 States. O'Conor, 29,408; Black, 5,608.

the Republicans, and many of their leaders actually joined it. It issued a call for a National Convention at Cincinnati, on May 1st, 1872, where Mr. Greeley was nominated for President, and B. Gratz Brown for Vice-President. Its platform accepted

all troubles growing out of the war as settled, and favored reforms of various kinds and in general.

The regular Republican Convention met in Philadelphia, on June 5th, 1872. There was practically no opposition to the naming of President Grant for a second term, and his choice

was a unanimous one. Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency. The platform vindicated the Republican policy of reconstruction, emancipation, suffrage, equal rights; asked for a humane Indian policy; a Pacific railroad; public lands for actual settlers; protection to immigration; sound and uniform national currency; economy; enforcement of the new amendments to the constitution; gradual reduction of public debt; and wound up with hearty approval of Grant's first administration.

The Democrats met in National Convention, in Baltimore, July 9th, 1872, and, by prearrangement, accepted the candidates and platform of the Liberal Republicans. A straight out Democratic Convention met at Louisville, and nominated Charles O'Conor, of New York, for President, and John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President, on an old-fashioned platform. The Temperance party was also in the field with regular candidates and a platform.

The campaign was peculiar in every respect. The Republicans were sanguine from the start. They felt that they had an invincible nominee, and that the country would approve their platform of sentiments. The Democrats were cold toward Mr. Greeley, who had been a life-long Republican, and who, in his alienation, was pursuing a chimera. The Liberal Republicans bore the "heat and burden" of the campaign, their money, eloquence and effort almost alone contributing to its life and energy.

The November result was a bitter disappointment to the Liberal Republicans. They had neither won themselves, nor captured their Democratic allies. "Fusion had resulted in confusion" for them, was a witty after-election saying. The electoral count showed two hundred and eighty-six votes for Grant and Wilson. Mr. Greeley died in November, and the sixty-six Democratic electors voted for other persons.

In answer to the ungenerous charges that he had been ambitious to succeed himself, President Grant said:

"I never sought the office for a second, nor even for a first, nomination. To the first I was called from a life position-one created by Congress expressly for me for supposed services rendered to the Republic. The position vacated, I liked. It would have been most agreeable to me to have retained it until such time as Congress might have consented to my retirement, with the rank and a portion of the emoluments which I so much needed, to a home where the balance of my days might be spent in peace, and in the enjoyment of domestic quiet, relieved from the cares which have oppressed me so constantly now for fourteen years. But I was made to believe that the public good called me to make the sacrifice.

"Without seeking the office for the second term, the nomination was tendered to me by a unanimous vote of the delegates of all the States and Territories, selected by the Republicans of each to represent their whole number for the purpose of making their nomination. I cannot say that I was not pleased at this, and at the overwhelming endorsement which their action received at the election following. But it must be remembered that all the sacrifices, except that of comfort, had been made in accepting the first term. Then, too, such a fire of personal abuse and slander had been kept up for four years—notwithstanding the conscientious performance of my duties to the best of my understanding, though I admit, in the light of subsequent events, many times subject to fair criticism-that an indorsement from the people, who alone govern republics, was a gratification that it is only human to have appreciated and enjoyed."

He took the oath of office and was inaugurated on March 4th, 1873, amid a civic display and enthusiasm which equalled in brilliancy and intensity that of his first entry to office. His