The Monday After: Defeat before death

Little doubt was left as to which candidate The Canton Repository − then the Repository & Republican − favored 150 years ago in the presidential campaign between Republican incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant and liberal Democrat challenger Horace Greeley.

HEAD:Defeat before death

DIGITAL SUBHEAD

Gary Brown

Special to The Canton Repository

USA TODAY NETWORK

Little doubt was left as to which candidate The Canton Repository--then the Repository & Republican--favored 150 years ago in the presidential campaign between Republican incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant and liberal Democrat challenger Horace Greeley.

"FOR PRESIDENT, ULYSSES S. GRANT," the newspaper printed at the top of its editorial page on Sept. 27, 1872. "FOR VICE PRESIDENT, HENRY WILSON," the "Rep & Rep" identified for its readers.

Some of the brief editorials beneath the listing made obvious the newspapers favoritism of Grant.

"Greeley is mad because Grant executes the laws which Greeley once advocated," one editorial said in support of the president.

Another editorial made plain what it thought would be the outcome of that year's presidential election.

"That vegetable of Horace Greeley's will be the biggest beat ever grown in this country by November."

The newspaper's confidence in predicting the eventual victory by Grant was measured by a small article that put money in the editors' mouths.

"Any person wishing to bet $500 on the election of Horace Greeley will get the name of a responsible taker by Application at the offices of the Rep & Rep."

Putting election into perspective

A living history weekend earlier this month at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site at White Haven, Mo., where the Ohio-born Cival War general had settled following the war, put the election of 1872 into perspective. Organizers and re-enactors turned back the clock 150 years, promotional material said.

"President Ulysses S. Grant is running for re-election, but the Republican Party has split," recalled the historic site's overview. "A faction of the party has labeled themselves the Liberal Republicans. They've held a convention and nominated the famous newspaperman, Horace Greeley, as their candidate to replace Grant in the White House. The Democrats, still tainted by the Civil War, have decided to endorse Greeley as well.

"The Equal Rights Party, however, has nominated the first woman to be President - the notorious Victoria Woodhull."

Woodhull, of course, had ties to Stark County. The woman who was born in Homer, Ohio, in Licking County, spent many of her younger years in Massillon.

"Victoria Claflin Woodhull would lose support of her fellow suffragists with her beliefs. Woodhull was a Spiritualist and preached 'free love,'" noted a profile on the website for Massillon Museum. "When she ran for president in 1872 against Ulysses S. Grant she lost the support of women all around the country with her 'free love' platform. Victoria and her sister were jailed the day of the elections for sending obscenities through the mail. Woodhull lost the election. This was no surprise since women were not allowed to vote and she had offended most of the country."

Even though her running mate for the Equal Rights Party was well-known abolitionist social reformer Frederick Douglass, she barely got any votes. Her arrest prevented her from even voting for herself.

'Greeleyism in Ohio'

The vote totals for Grant and Greeley, however, were expected to be far greater.

To offer its readers a glimpse at what it called "Greeleyism in Ohio," the Repository and Republican published the observations "by a Cantonian" who "completed a four weeks trip through Ohio and have taken particular pains to post myself on the Presidential campaign."

The observer found Grant was favored, but also saw much support for the opponent of the president.

"A real estate dealer of Canton who was at Millersburg also, made an impromptu Grant speech at the depot which was received with considerable applause, and an invitation to get aboard the train as soon as possible."

In Akron, the writer found that Grant's Republican Party was "stronger than in '68."

"A few liberals, but many are Democrats who will not vote for Greeley and some Demicrats who intend to vote for Grant."

The observer's own preference came out near the end of the article, as he identified the candidate favored by business.

"My business is with the merchants, and I find them, with very few exceptions, strong for Grant," he wrote. "In fact, I cannot see how a business man, with his wits about him, can advocate the election of Horace Greeley, with his crazy financial policy."

Repository sides with Grant

In the same issue, the Rep & Rep published a notice of a "Mass Meeting" of supporters of Grant, a gathering at which vice presidential candidate Henry Wilson would speak. Chief marshal for the meeting was Edward S. Meyer of Canton, while assistant marshals were A.S. Duley of Massillon and L.R. Davis of Alliance.

"It is intended that this shall be the greatest political demonstration ever held in the 17th Ohio District," an advertisement for the meeting said.

An article on the same page of the Rep & Rep reported on a controversy at a Democratic meeting in another state.

"The Democrats have been highly felicitated by the appearance of the name of the poet, H. W. Longfellow, in a list of delegates from Cambridge to the Massachusetts Greeley Convention," the article said. "The owner of that name felt differently about the matter, protesting that he 'did not vote with that party.'"

Another article took Greeley to task over his support of the peaceful secession of Confederate states before the Civil War, despite being a loud voice of northern opposition to slavery. That fact was compounded by the fact that Grant was the commander of the victorious Union Army.

Disrespectfully, the newspaper believed, Greeley, "the encourager and defender of secession in 1850," spoke in Pittsburgh the day before Union Army veterans gathered in that city.

"William O. Searey, an old Kansas soldier, says if the Greeley party will take the ounce ball from his head, where it lodged at Prairie Grove, he might be induced to vote for Greeley, but as it is he will vote for Grant."

Grant wins second term

In its issue of Nov. 1, 1872, the Rep & Rep published a small item urging its readers to "be sure to be at home to vote for President on next Tuesday, November 5th."

A week later, on Friday Nov. 8, three days after the election, the weekly newspaper was celebrating a "Grand Victory," while reporting that "Grant Carries 30 States" and noting "Grant's Majority 125,000" and "His Vote in the Electoral College Two Hundred and Ninety-Two."

"The people's verdict is the Republican victory, which we today celebrate without a single drawback to detract from its completeness."

Election results, however, were the least of concern for Greeley, whose wife had die from lung disease only days before the election. Also, the newspaper which he founded, the New York Tribune, had severed its ties with Greeley.

Burdoned by those losses, Greeley's own health faltered, then faded, and he himself died on Nov. 29, 1872, so soon after the election that the Electoral College had not yet cast ballots.

The Repository & Republican, though it did not endorse Greeley's candidacy, was kind in announcing the death of a colleague in the press.

"We have never felt it a duty to consider a more painfully melancholy event than this," the newspaper began in its reporting of Greeley's passing.

"That he was personally one of the purest and best of men, the country need not be told. During all the heat of the late Presidential compaign no word of reproach ever stained his personal character," the editorial said. "Forgiveness and reconciliation were the invariable concomitants of all his conflicts. Kind-hearted to a fault, not able to resist the appeals of want or distress...in his personal habits without a vice or blemish, such was the character of the founder of the Tribune. ...

"The nation at once instinctively recognized that one of its greatest men had fallen. The popular heart feels and confesses this, though not willing that he should be president."

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: The Monday After: Charting Grant's victory in 1872 in Ohio