In Augusta, Democratic and Whig activists had different occupational and social profiles, with the Whigs appearing more 'respectable.'

Democratic activists had a higher proportion of artisans (28 percent) and businessmen in their ranks than Democrats, while Whigs had a much higher proportion of farmers in their ranks (60 percent) and no artisans. Whig activists were more uniformly head of their households, and less likely to be boarders than Democratic activists. The average age of the Democrats (44) was slightly older than Whigs (42). In the professions and businesses, lawyers and merchants were evenly split among the parties, but physicians were uniformly Whigs.

Alexander H. H. Stuart in Augusta operated at the national party level, becoming a leader in the Whig Party. No such comparable figure for the Democrats could be found in Augusta. In 1836 Stuart, a successful lawyer in Staunton, entered politics. He was elected a delegate in the Virginia state legislature and was reelected until 1839, when he stepped down. Stuart considered himself from the Clay wing of the Jacksonian Democratic-Republican Party and he began to identify his interests in the new Whig Party. He ran for Congress in 1840 as a Whig and was elected, serving one term. Stuart was elected a presidential elector in both 1844 and 1848 for the Clay and Taylor tickets respectively. In 1850 President Millard Fillmore appointed Stuart Secretary of the Interior. Stuart continued to work in electoral politics and served as a member of the American ("Know-Nothing") Party convention of 1856, which nominated Fillmore for the presidency. Stuart reentered Virginia electoral politics as a candidate for the State Senate. He ran as a "Whig" even though the party was dying and won, serving from 1857 to 1861.

In Augusta, where the Whigs under Stuart's leadership dominated politics, the Democratic Party claimed to be the only "national" party, sharply criticizing the Whigs in the county and in Virginia and the South as the minority wing of a party made up mainly of "the Black Republicans, the Abolitionists, and all the isms of the north, the Fanny Wright men, the anti-renters, the Mormons." Democrats included some of the most wealthy and powerful men in the county: William G. Harman and George Baylor, whose extended families together included 121 men, women, and children, owning over 120 slaves between them. The Whig Party, on the other hand, lamented the decline of its national banner and the rise of Republicanism in the North. Some Whigs grew annoyed with the party's tight leadership by Stuart, John B. Baldwin, and John Imboden, calling them the "Clique." Some complained that they would "like to have more candidates in the field for another reason; it would perhaps arouse the Whig party from the Van Winkle sleep into which they have fallen."

Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1856 Election (map)

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).