[468]
The Liberal Republicans, composed of reformers, men who supported low tariffs, and those who opposed Grant's prosecution of the Klan, broke from Grant and the Republican Party.[469] The Liberals, who personally disliked Grant, detested his alliance with Senator Simon Cameron and Senator Roscoe Conkling, considered to be spoilsmen politicians.[470]
In 1872, the Liberals nominated Horace Greeley, a leading Republican New York Tribune editor and a fierce enemy of Grant, for president, and Missouri governor B. Gratz Brown, for vice president.[471] The Liberals denounced Grantism, corruption, nepotism, and inefficiency, demanded the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, literacy tests for blacks to vote, and amnesty for Confederates.[472] The Democrats adopted the Greeley-Brown ticket and the Liberals party platform.[473][au] Greeley, whose Tribune gave him wider name recognition and a louder campaign voice, pushed the themes that the Grant administration was failed and corrupt.[475]
The Republicans nominated Grant for reelection, with Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts replacing Colfax as the vice presidential nominee.[476][av] The Republicans shrewdly borrowed from the Liberals' party platform, including "extended amnesty, lowered tariffs, and embraced civil service reform.