The 1872 Democratic National Convention was a presidential nominating convention held at Ford's Grand Opera House on East Fayette Street, between North Howard and North Eutaw Streets, in Baltimore, Maryland on July 9 and 10, 1872.

It resulted in the nomination of newspaper publisher Horace Greeley of New York and Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown of Missouri for president and vice president, a ticket previously nominated by the rump Liberal Republican faction convention meeting, also held in Baltimore's newly built premier Opera House of nationally well-known theatre owner/operator John T. Ford (infamous as the owner of the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. where 16th President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865) of the major Republican Party, which had already re-nominated incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant of the regular Republicans for another term.

[3] While Greeley's long reputation in the years before as the most aggressive attacker of the earlier Democratic Party, its principles, its leadership, and its activists cooled enthusiasm among many of the delegates for the potential nominee, it was accepted that the Democrats would only split the anti-Grant vote and all but assure Grant of re-election if they nominated any other candidate.

Major General William B. Franklin was approached by a group of Democrats from Pennsylvania and New Jersey who urged him to run against Horace Greeley for the party's presidential nomination.

Source: Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held at Baltimore, July 9, 1872.