The 1872 Liberal Republican convention nominated Greeley, a New York newspaper publisher, and wrote a platform calling for civil service reform and an end to Reconstruction.

Despite the union between the Liberal Republicans and Democrats, Greeley proved to be an ineffective campaigner and Grant remained widely popular.

Grant thus became the only president to serve two full, consecutive terms between Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) and Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921).

Additionally, he is one of only four Republican presidents to have served two full terms in office, the others being Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.

At the convention the Republicans nominated President Ulysses S. Grant for re-election, but nominated Senator Henry Wilson from Massachusetts for vice president instead of the incumbent Schuyler Colfax, although both were implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal which erupted two months after the Republican convention.

Others, who had grown weary of the corruption of the Grant administration, bolted to form the Liberal Republican Party.

At the party's only national convention, held in Cincinnati in 1872, New York Tribune editor and former representative Horace Greeley was nominated for president on the sixth ballot, defeating Charles Francis Adams.

Missouri Governor Benjamin Gratz Brown was nominated for vice president on the second ballot.

Because of its strong desire to defeat Ulysses S. Grant, the Democratic Party also nominated the Liberal Republicans' Greeley/Brown ticket[3] and adopted their platform.

Some Democrats were worried that backing Greeley would effectively bring the party to extinction, much like how the moribund Whig Party had been doomed by endorsing the Know Nothing candidacy of Millard Fillmore in 1856, though others felt that the Democrats were in a much stronger position on a regional level than the Whigs had been at the time of their demise, and predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that the Liberal Republicans would not be viable in the long-term due to their lack of distinctive positions compared to the main Republican Party.

A sizable minority led by James A. Bayard sought to act independently of the Liberal Republican ticket, but the bulk of the party agreed to endorse Greeley's candidacy.

Even initially reluctant Democratic leaders like Thomas F. Bayard came to support Greeley.

[7] In the lead-up to the 1872 presidential election, state-level affiliates of the party formed and saw limited success.

After the election, the various state affiliates grew less and less active, and by the following year, the party ceased to exist.

"[15] A poor campaigner with little political experience, Greeley's career as a newspaper editor gave his opponents a long history of eccentric public positions to attack.

A large portion of Grant's campaign funds came from entrepreneurs, including Jay Cooke, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Alexander Turney Stewart, Henry Hilton, and John Astor.

The National Woman's Suffrage Association held its annual convention in New York City on May 9, 1872.

Some of the delegates supported Victoria Woodhull, who had spent the year since the previous NWSA annual meeting touring the New York City environs and giving speeches on why women should be allowed to vote.

The delegates selected Victoria Woodhull to run for president, and named Frederick Douglass for vice-president.

During the joint session of Congress for the counting of the electoral vote on February 12, 1873, five states had objections that were raised regarding their results.

Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential ballots, 1836–1892 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.

Though the national party organization disappeared after 1872, several Liberal Republican members continued to serve in Congress after the 1872 elections.