Freedom and Franchise

Benjamin Gratz Brown was a dynamic Missourian who served his state as legislator, United States senator, and governor (1871-73). He was influential also as editor of the Missouri Democrat and as founder and vice-presidential candidate (1972) of the Liberal Republican party. This first published biography of Brown traces his political career, which spanned the years between 1852 and 1873, and, using him as a focal point, indicates the complexity of border state politics before, during and after the Civil War. Brown ran the gamut of political parties - Whig, Benton Democrat, Republican, Radical, Liberal Republican, and Democrat. On the question of slavery he changed in a few years from a middle-of-the-road position to abolitionism and, in the postwar years, to advocacy of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Professor Peterson investigates Brown's motives for these shifts in party affiliation and reversals of policy. Her study reveals from a new perspective the activities of the Blair family, Thomas Hart Benton, John Charles Fremont, Carl Schurz, Horace Greeley, and many others. In part political opportunist and in part idealist, Brown was not unique among politically active men of this period; his life reflects the difficulties faced by many of this contemporaries. Professor Peterson remarks: "Was inconsistency a characteristic of the 'blundering generation, ' or was it an expression of 'pragmatism in politics' - of events controlling men rather than men controlling events? Whatever the answer, Gratz Brown's career illustrates the problems and some of the solutions that marked one of the nation's most troubled periods."