AS A POLITICAL FORCE 8 1 



synonymous with " rebel " or " Copperhead," and the party 

 which was thus handicapped could not be expected to make 

 much headway for many years to come. There was, however, 

 considerable opposition to the dominant Republicans in this 

 section during the decade of the seventies, and almost of neces- 

 sity much of this opposition took the form of third parties. 

 The first movement in this direction was the organization of 

 the Liberal Republican party, which won some victories in 

 Missouri, but the presidential election of 1872 demonstrated 

 that this was a party of leaders rather than of the people. Fol- 

 lowing closely on the heels of the failure of this movement, 

 there appeared a series of " Independent " parties which were 

 distinctly popular in their origin, and were able to make a con- 

 siderable showing in the elections, though they received little 

 support from prominent politicians of the old school. 1 



These Independent parties have received very little con- 

 sideration from historical writers, and there has been a ten- 

 dency to look upon them as merely preliminaries leading up to the 

 organization of the National Greenback party. This tendency 

 is a natural one in view of the fact that in one or two states 

 the Independent organization did affiliate with the Greenback 

 party. In other states, however, the platforms of the Inde- 

 pendent parties specifically rejected the Greenback policy, and 

 an examination of the movement in all the states in which it 

 appeared makes it clear that its causes are to be sought prima- 

 rily, not in the desire for fiat currency, but in two other factors 

 which had no connection with the old issues of war time. The 

 first of these factors was the growing demand for the regulation 

 of railway charges by the state, a demand which the dominant 

 Republican party was not inclined to heed, and closely related 

 to this was the second the rapid organization of the agricul- 

 tural population of the West into clubs and granges. 



1 That this movement attracted considerable attention among the politicians 

 of the country is evident from President Grant's fifth annual message to Congress, 

 dated December i, 1873, which contains the statement that "political partisan- 

 ship has almost ceased to exist, especially in the agricultural regions." Just what 

 meaning the president intended to convey by these words and whether or no he 

 looked upon the situation as one to be deplored, is difficult to determine. 



