other offices in the 1874 elections, aided by dissatisfaction with Grant and the defection of former Liberal Republicans. As Republicans became increasingly worried about their chances in the 1876 elections, they courted former Liberal Republican leaders like Schurz and Fenton. Both parties made direct appeals to former Liberal Republicans in the 1876 elections and former party supporters split roughly evenly between the two presidential candidates. Schurz actively campaigned for Hayes and became the Secretary of Interior after Hayes won the election. In the following years, former Liberal Republicans became members in good standing of both major parties. In the 1880s, many would join the Mugwump movement in opposition to James G. Blaine. Many also joined the Greenback Party, which sought inflationary policies and labor reforms. Interpretations Historian Richard Gerber argues that most authors and historians portray the Liberal Republicans as an aberration, noting the many unresolved issues of the Reconstruction Era. He groups the historical interpretations of the party that prevailed after 1872 into two main categories. One historical interpretation emphasizes the Liberal Republican push for the re-establishment of self-government in the South and the restoration of national unity. The second interpretation sees the Liberal Republicans as primarily motivated by opposition to the corruption of the Grant administration and support for lower tariffs. Downey argues Greeley was nominated as a result of a crass political bargain imposed against the will of a convention that really wanted Charles Francis Adams. Men like Schurz supported Adams, but were inexperienced political idealists and not professional politicians. They neither acted nor voted as a bloc, particularly after the collapse of a boom for David Davis, a collapse engineered by a group of leading reformist Republican editors. The shift of particular votes to Greeley was not decisive, but the feeling of the delegates that Adams could not win support among Irish workers, the Western masses, or Democratic voters. Lunde argues Grant supporters hailed the Civil War as a great triumph which had bound the United States into a united nation, linked not only by sentiment but by rapidly increasing networks of railroads. The Democrats and their Liberal Republican allies thought the war was a tragedy, recoiled against centralization and sought to recapture the purity of prewar days through reconciliation and respect for the autonomy of the states. Greeley's benevolent image of nationalism was defeated by the centralizing, "blood and iron" concept of Grant. McPherson argues