Precincts in Augusta that supported Breckinridge at a high level in 1860 represented the extremes of wealth, as the wealthiest and the poorest precincts drew more support for Breckinridge than any other precincts.

These precincts--Middlebrook, Stuart's Draft, and Sherando--supported Breckinridge at a level three times higher than in the county as a whole. Middlebrook and Stuart's Draft had household wealth and farm value well above the county average, while Sherando's was the lowest in the county. Identified Whig Party activists in these precincts outnumbered Democrats by a ratio of 4 to 1. These places, especially in Middlebrook and Stuart's Draft, considered themselves secure enough to demand more in the political arena, to withstand change in order to secure future rights and opportunities. These self-confident places represented the strongest pro-Southern, pro-slavery areas in the county. Sherando shared a broad contiguous relationship with Stuart's Draft, its closest center of commercial activity.

Precincts in Augusta that had relatively higher support for Breckinridge also had a higher proportion of slaveholders. Slaveholders accounted for 28 percent of household heads in high Breckinridge precincts (Middlebrook and Stuart's Draft, the largest of the three, had an average of 37 percent). High Douglas precincts, by contrast, averaged just 17 percent slaveholding and the high Bell precincts 24 percent slaveholding, the county average. The highest slaveholding regions of the county went for Breckinridge, while the lower slaveholding regions went for Douglas.

Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1860 Election (map)

Augusta County, Va., Election of 1860 (map)

Election Returns in Augusta, Franklin, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, 1860 (table)

National Election Returns, 1860 (table)

Politics, Augusta County, 1860 Presidential Election Voting by Precinct (table)

Politics, Augusta County, 1860 Presidential Election Candidates and Precincts (table)

Politics, Augusta County, High Bell Precincts in the 1860 Presidential Election (table)

Politics, Augusta County, High Breckinridge Precincts in the 1860 Presidential Election (table)

Politics, Augusta County, High Douglas Precincts in the 1860 Presidential Election (table)

Politics, Augusta County, Party Activists, 1859-60 (table)

Politics, Augusta County, Slaveholding and Precinct Crosstabulation (table)

Related Historiography

Paul Bourke and Donald Debats, Washington County: Politics and Community in Antebellum America (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

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

Daniel W. Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secessionist Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

William E. Gienapp, "The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political System and the Coming of the American Civil War," Why the Civil War Came (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): 81-124.

Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).

Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 1982).

Peyton McCrary, Clark Miller, and Dale Baum, "Class and Party in the Secession Crisis: Voting Behavior in the Deep South, 1856-1861,"Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8 no. 2 (Winter 1978): 429-459.

William G. Shade, Democratizing the Old Dominion: Virginia and the Second Party System, 1824-1861 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996).