In Augusta, Whig Party activists were more likely to own slaves and to own bigger and more valuable farms than their Democratic counterparts.

Fifty percent of Augusta Whig activists, as identified in the newspapers, held enslaved people, and the great majority of them held farms valued over $7,500. Although some Democrats, notably William A. Harman and George Baylor, held slaves in large numbers, Democratic activists worked smaller farms, and two-thirds of them were nonslaveholders. Democratic activists were more likely to reside in towns (50 percent of them lived within 1 mile of a town while 35 percent of Whig activists lived within one mile of a town). Democratic activists still maintained significant household wealth, as more than half of them were worth more than $22,000.

Age and Party Affiliation, and Precinct Voting in 1860, Augusta County (table)

Party Affiliation, Augusta County (table)

Political Activists in Augusta and Franklin Counties (table)

Related Historiography

Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

Daniel W. Crofts, Old Southampton: Politics and Society in a Virginia County, 1834-1869 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992).