Elections of 1856 and 1860
The Republican Party of Virginia was founded at a convention in Wheeling on September 18, 1856. Most of the founding members resided in the northern panhandle of Virginia or near the Ohio River. They adopted resolutions endorsing the Republican presidential ticket of John C. Frémont and William L. Dayton as well as the party's platform, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories. The convention nominated a full slate of candidates for presidential elector in Virginia, but in the November general election, the Republicans received fewer than 300 votes, a mere 0.2 percent of the state total. All the votes were cast in the four counties of the northern panhandle except for a few in the counties of Upshur, on the western slope of the Allegheny Mountains, and Shenandoah, in the Shenandoah Valley.
In the November 1860 presidential election, Lincoln received 1,929 votes in Virginia, about 1.15 percent of the votes. As in 1856, most of the Republican voters resided in the Ohio Valley counties of Virginia, but several men voted for the Republicans in the Shenandoah Valley and in the upper regions of the Potomac Valley, and 4 men voted for Lincoln in the southeastern city of Portsmouth and 55 in Prince William County, south of Washington, D.C.
The Election of 1869 and a New Constitution
The convention reformed the structures and operation of local governments on a more democratic model with more locally elected officials, created a statewide system of free public schools, guaranteed the vote to African American men, and barred former Confederates from holding office. The state's voters, again including African American men, ratified the constitution in July 1869 under a negotiated plan that allowed the voters to reject the disfranchisement of former Confederates but retain suffrage for African Americans. Soon after the constitutional convention began its work late in 1867, opponents of radical change, including Democrats and former Whigs, founded the Conservative Party of Virginia to unite opponents of the radical Republicans in Congress and the radical proposals then being debated in the convention.
Throughout the 1870s, most African Americans in Virginia supported the Republicans and opposed the Conservatives, although black men disagreed with one another on some of the same issues on which white Republicans had disagreed at the end of the Civil War. One thing on which African Americans did not disagree, though, was support for the new public school system. Within a few years it became obvious that many of the state's white families appreciated and supported the schools as strongly as the black families.
Conservatives succeeded in amending the state constitution in 1876 to require payment of a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting and to disfranchise men convicted of petty crimes. That suppressed the number of black voters and reduced the number of African Americans and Republicans who won election to the General Assembly.
Debt Crisis and Alliance with the Readjusters
Statewide Eclipse
Election Results
* Readjuster-Republican coalition candidate.
** Peoples' (Populist) Party candidate with strong Republican support.
* plus 21 identified as Independent, probably Readjusters
** Republican-Readjuster coalition
* 3 Readjusters
** 2 Readjusters
† 1 Readjuster
Time Line
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September 18, 1856 - The Republican Party of Virginia is founded at a convention in Wheeling. Delegates endorse the presidential ticket of John C. Frémont and William L. Dayton as well as the party's platform, which opposes the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
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November 1856 - In the general election, Republican candidates for presidential elector in Virginia receive fewer than 300 votes, or 0.2 percent of the state total. All come from the western part of the state.
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1859 - Virginia's Republican Party nominates no candidates for statewide office.
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May 1860 - Virginia Republicans meet in Wheeling and adopt resolutions opposing slavery in the western territories, endorsing a homestead act and a protective tariff, and denouncing eastern Virginia's "slave capitalists."
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November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln, a Republican from Illinois, is elected U.S. president. He wins 1 percent of the vote in Virginia. While John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party wins the state overall, the Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge wins the trans-Allegheny counties of western Virginia.
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May 13–15, 1861 - During the First Wheeling Convention, representing the still-Unionist western portion of Virginia, Francis Harrison Pierpont promotes the reorganization of state government.
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June 20, 1861 - During the Second Wheeling Convention, Francis Harrison Pierpont is unanimously elected governor of the reorganized Virginia government still loyal to the Union.
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1865 - After the Civil War, the Republican Party of Virginia reorganizes around a nucleus of Unionists such as Francis Harrison Pierpont and the former Whig congressman John Minor Botts.
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March 2, 1867 - The U.S. Congress passes "An Act to provide for the more efficient government of the rebel states," also known as the First Reconstruction Act.
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December 11–12, 1867 - Convening in Richmond, a group of former Democrats, former Whigs, and moderate Republicans, led by Alexander H. H. Stuart, forms the Conservative Party.
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May 1868 - James H. Clements is elected president of the Republican Party's state nominating convention. Henry Horatio Wells and James H. Clements are chosen as the Republican candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, respectively, but the statewide elections of 1868 are canceled.
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1869 - John C. Underwood, a Republican judge who dominated the year's constitutional convention in the absence of boycotting Democrats, helps to draft a constitution for Virginia that includes full suffrage for all males twenty-one years or older, including African Americans.
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March 9, 1869 - A Republican Party convention nominates Henry Horatio Wells for governor, J. D. Harris, an African American, for lieutenant governor, and Thomas R. Bowden for attorney general.
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November 1869 - The Conservative Party wins majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. It ran no candidates for statewide office, instead endorsing moderate Republicans.
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1872 - The Republican candidate for president, Ulysses S. Grant, carries Virginia with about 50.5 percent of the vote.
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1876 - Virginia's Conservative Party (which soon becomes the Democratic Party) succeeds in amending the state constitution, for the first time denying the right to vote to men who had not paid the state poll tax.
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1877 - The Republican Party fails to nominate candidates for statewide office, allowing the Conservative Party ticket to run and win unopposed.
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February 25–26, 1879 - The Readjuster Party is founded at a convention in Richmond with the goal of "readjusting," or reducing the amount the principal of and the rate of interest on the state debt.
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March 14, 1881 - Almost 300 African American Republicans convene in Petersburg and decide to endorse the Readjuster Party in the important 1881 general election.
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November 1881 - Under William Mahone's guidance, William E. Cameron, of the Readjuster Party, is elected governor.
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1882 - The Readjusters (a coalition of disgruntled Democrats, Republicans, and African Americans committed to refinancing the state's public debt and preserving the new public school system) amend the Virginia state constitution to remove payment of the poll tax as a prerequisite to voting.
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February 14, 1882 - The governor signs the Riddleberger Act, named after Harrison H. Riddleberger. It provides for fifty-year, 3-percent bonds on the debt, reduces the principal by about a third, and prohibits the payment of taxes with coupons.
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1883 - Virginia's Conservative Party changes its name to the Democratic Party and chooses a new leader, John S. Barbour Jr., who organizes the party down to the precinct level. Barbour's leadership marks the beginning of a long era of Democratic domination.
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November 3, 1883 - Racial and political tensions erupt in an election-eve street fight in Danville that leaves at least one white and four black men dead.
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November 1885 - The Democratic Party sweeps to power, winning all statewide elected offices. The Readjuster Party dissolves, with many of its members becoming Republicans.
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1889 - William Mahone runs for governor as a Republican and is defeated by Democrat Philip W. McKinney.
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1902 - Virginia's dominant conservative Democrats promulgate a new state constitution that equips local election officials with devices for disfranchising political opponents, including most African Americans and many Republicans. Voting participation in Virginia plummets.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Tarter, B. The Republican Party of Virginia in the Nineteenth Century. (2016, July 19). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Republican_Party_in_Virginia_During_the_Nineteenth_Century.
- MLA Citation:
Tarter, Brent. "The Republican Party of Virginia in the Nineteenth Century." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 19 Jul. 2016. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: December 18, 2014 | Last modified: July 19, 2016
Contributed by Brent Tarter, founding editor of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography.