=The Reform Movement in Republican Ranks.=—­The sentiments expressed by Lowell, himself a Republican and for a time American ambassador to England, were shared by many men in his party.  Very soon after the close of the Civil War some of them began to protest vigorously against the policies and conduct of their leaders.  In 1872, the dissenters, calling themselves Liberal Republicans, broke away altogether, nominated a candidate of their own, Horace Greeley, and put forward a platform indicting the Republican President fiercely enough to please the most uncompromising Democrat.  They accused Grant of using “the powers and opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal ends.”  They charged him with retaining “notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in places of power and responsibility.”  They alleged that the Republican party kept “alive the passions and resentments of the late civil war to use them for their own advantages,” and employed the “public service of the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence.”

It was not apparent, however, from the ensuing election that any considerable number of Republicans accepted the views of the Liberals.  Greeley, though indorsed by the Democrats, was utterly routed and died of a broken heart.  The lesson of his discomfiture seemed to be that independent action was futile.  So, at least, it was regarded by most men of the rising generation like Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, and Theodore Roosevelt, of New York.  Profiting by the experience of Greeley they insisted in season and out that reformers who desired to rid the party of abuses should remain loyal to it and do their work “on the inside.”

=The Mugwumps and Cleveland Democracy in 1884.=—­Though aided by Republican dissensions, the Democrats were slow in making headway against the political current.  They were deprived of the energetic and capable leadership once afforded by the planters, like Calhoun, Davis, and Toombs; they were saddled by their opponents with responsibility for secession; and they were stripped of the support of the prostrate South.  Not until the last Southern state was restored to the union, not until a general amnesty was wrung from Congress, not until white supremacy was established at the polls, and the last federal soldier withdrawn from Southern capitals did they succeed in capturing the presidency.

The opportune moment for them came in 1884 when a number of circumstances favored their aspirations.  The Republicans, leaving the Ohio Valley in their search for a candidate, nominated James G. Blaine of Maine, a vigorous and popular leader but a man under fire from the reformers in his own party.  The Democrats on their side were able to find at this juncture an able candidate who had no political enemies in the sphere of national politics, Grover Cleveland, then governor of New York and widely celebrated as a man of “sterling honesty.”  At the same time a number of dissatisfied Republicans openly espoused the Democratic cause,—­among them Carl Schurz, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, and William Everett, men of fine ideals and undoubted integrity.  Though the “regular” Republicans called them “Mugwumps” and laughed at them as the “men milliners, the dilettanti, and carpet knights of politics,” they had a following that was not to be despised.