1872 Horace Greeley Campaign Medal DeWitt HG 1872-10 Brass

An 1872 campaign medalet for Horace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown, brass at 23 mm, pierced for suspension, cataloged as DeWitt HG 1872-10. Greeley faces right inside THE SAGE OF CHAPPAQUA, with H. GREELEY below. The nickname came from his farm at Chappaqua, New York, and it was used warmly by his supporters and witheringly by everyone else. The reverse carries an eagle with shield, olive branch and arrows, ringed by GREELEY BROWN & AMNESTY and the date. Amnesty is the platform in one word. Greeley had come out for restoring political rights to former Confederates, seven years after Appomattox and against the grain of the party he had spent his life building, and putting the word on the campaign metal was a deliberate act rather than a decoration. He founded and edited the New-York Tribune and was the most widely read newspaperman in the country. The Liberal Republicans nominated him against Grant, and then, in one of the strangest alliances in American politics, the Democrats nominated him too. Grant beat him badly. Greeley's wife died days before the election, and he died himself on November 29, 1872, after the popular vote and before the Electoral College met, the only presidential candidate ever to do so.