The Greenback Party emerged gradually from the consolidation of like-minded state-level political organizations of differing names. According to historian Paul Kleppner, the origin of the Greenback Party is to be found in the state of Indiana, where early in 1873 a group of reform-minded farmers and political activists declared themselves free of the established parties and established themselves as the Independent Party. One of the founding members, John C. Wilde, is cited several times in a northern Michigan newspaper from 1898 explaining the reasons for the beginning of the Party. The group nominated a slate for statewide office, running on a platform which called for expansion of the national currency. (In Wisconsin in the same year, a short-lived Reform Party, also called Liberal Reform Party or People's Reform Party, a coalition of Democrats, reform-minded Republicans, and Grangers secured the election of William Robert Taylor as Governor of Wisconsin for a two-year term, as well as a number of state legislators, but it never formed a coherent organization.)