Abstract: LEGEND has it that when Henry M. Stanley discovered Dr. David L. Livingstone in darkest Africa, and reported the news that the Democrats had -named Horace Greeley for President, the explorer refused to accept the information. " 'You have told me stupendous things, and with a confiding simplicity I was swallowing them peacefully down,'" Livingstone is supposed to have remarked, "'but . . . when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become a Democratic candidate I will be hanged if I believe it.' "1 Livingstone had every reason to be skeptical, for the political circumstances of 1872 were as confusing as they were unlikely. Prominent Republicans, rejecting the course of American life under the direction of the party many of them had helped to sire and support, formed the Liberal Republican movement to deny a second presidential term to Ulysses S. Grant. Internally divided over ideological priorities and political strategy, factions of bolting Liberals struggled for power in the national convention at Cincinnati in early May 1872. Greeley, somehow, emerged as the presidential candidate of the third party, a choice which dismayed as many Liberal Republicans as it satisfied-and surprised them all. Grant's renomination by the regular Republican organization surprised no one. It arranged the stage for Democratic nomination of the anti-Democratic Tribune editor by his lifelong political enemies. These events, and the strange campaign which followed, made Grant's reelection success appear an anticlimax. The Liberal Republican party enjoys the distinction of being the only third party in American history with sufficient strength to compel one of the two major parties officially to endorse and nominate its candidate for President.

Abstract: in American politics. But business political activities are not limited to making such contributions, for in 1934 the Bank of America participated in the California gubernatorial election in several unusual ways. It unsuccessfully attempted, through its head and founder, A. P. Giannini, to persuade the comptroller of the currency, James F. T. O'Connor, to run for governor. With the emergence of Upton Sinclair as the probable winner of the Democratic nomination for the governorship, the bank sought to have California Democrats unite behind a single candidate who could defeat him. This end also was not accomplished. A. P. Giannini then worked with high officials in the Roosevelt Administration on a plan to secure Sinclair's withdrawal from the gubernatorial race in favor of Raymond Haight, a progressive Republican running as an independent. The failure of that step eventually led to Giannini's endorsement of conservative Frank Merriam, the Republican nominee. What is striking about these actions is that nearly all of them demanded working within the Democratic Party. Many large businesses had, after all, become cool towards Roosevelt in 1934. Cooperation with the Democrats also was a drastic change in the stance of the Bank of America, which had allied itself with the Republicans throughout most of its existence. The search for the explanation of this change must be a primary task in examining the Bank of America's role in the 1934 election. It means an analysis of four main factors: the 1920s conflict with the Federal Reserve Board over the expansion of the bank's branch banking system; the conflict with the head of the San Francisco Federal