B. Gratz Brown
Benjamin Gratz Brown (May 28, 1826 - December 13, 1885) was a Liberal Republican Governor of Missouri. He was also a chairman of the Public Buildings and Grounds committee.
Brown was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1826. He graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington in 1845 and from Yale College in 1847. He studied law.
He became a member of Missouri state house of representatives and served there between 1852 and 1858. An able lawyer in St. Louis, Brown was a leader in the Free-Soil movement in Missouri. He edited the Missouri Democrat between 1854 and 1859. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Governor of Missouri in 1857. He tried to prevent Missouri from seceding from the Union in 1861. After that, he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He served as a Senator from Missouri from 1863 to 1867. Then he served as the Governor between 1871 and 1873.
He was the vice presidential candidate under newspaper editor Horace Greeley in the presidential election of 1872. Greeley died on November 30 of illness. He died before the results came out in the electoral college, and 18 of the electoral votes that Greeley was supposed to get went to Brown. But the Republicans, incumbent president Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Wilson won the election.
Brown died in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1885.
