ture" Democrats gave comfort
and prospect of aid to the Liberal Republicans by declaring for a
constructive, forward-looking policy in place of reactionary opposition.
The Liberal chiefs were led to believe that the new Democratic leaders
would accept their platform and candidates in order to defeat Grant. The
principal candidates for the Liberal Republican nomination were Charles
Francis Adams, Lyman Trumbull, Gratz Brown, David Davis, and Horace
Greeley. Adams was the strongest candidate but was jockeyed out of place
and the nomination was given to Horace Greeley, able enough as editor of
the "New York Tribune" but impossible as a candidate for the presidency.
The Democratic party accepted him as their candidate also, although he
had been a lifelong opponent of Democratic principles and policies. But
disgusted Liberals either returned to the Republican ranks or stayed
away from the polls, and many Democrats did likewise. Under these
circumstances the reelection of Grant was a foregone conclusion. There
was certainly a potential majority against Grant, but the opposition
had failed to organize, while the Republican machine was in good working
order, the Negroes were voting, and the Enforcement Acts proved a great
aid to the Republicans in the Southern States.

One good result of the growing liberal sentiment was the passage of
an Amnesty Act by Congress on May 22, 1872. By statute and by the
Fourteenth Amendment, Congress had refused to recognize the complete
validity of President Johnson's pardons and amnesty proclamations,
and all Confederate leaders who wished to regain political rights
had therefore to appeal to Congress. During the Forty-first Congress
(1869-71) more than three thousand Southerners were amnestied in order
that they might hold office. These, however, were for the most part
scalawags; the most respectable whites would not seek an amnesty which
they could secure only by self-stultification.* It was the pressure
of public opinion against white disfranchisement and the necessity for
meeting the Liberal Republican arguments which caused the passage of
the Act of 1872. By this act about 150,000 whites were reenfranchised,
leaving out only about five hundred of the most prominent of the old
regime, most of whom were never restored to citizenship. Both Robert E.
Lee and Jefferson Davis died disfranchised.

* The machinery of government and politics was all in
radical hands--the carpetbaggers and