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By late 1871, it seemed increasingly likely that a group of Republican
liberals would oppose President Ulysses S. Grant’s reelection for a variety of
reasons. Although the liberals had supported the Reconstruction policies of
congressional Republicans in the late 1860s, most opposed continued federal
intervention in the South after the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment in March
1870. Republican liberals also criticized what they considered to be the Grant
administration’s expansionist, bellicose foreign policy. Although liberals
themselves, cartoonist Thomas Nast and editor George William Curtis of
Harper’s Weekly did not join the anti-Grant movement because of their
personal loyalty to the president and their disagreement with administration
critics’ stance that the federal government had no further role to play in
protecting civil rights in the South. |
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