The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities
Return to Comparison Statements: Election of 1860

The precincts with high Bell support had average household wealth and farm value well below county averages. For these marginal places a vote for Bell represented a safe course, the least change.

Deerfield, Churchville, and Craigsville precincts supported Bell at 87 percent while the county went for Bell at 66 percent. All three places occupied the western reaches of the county, where most slaveowners had fewer than 5 slaves and where many farms occupied higher elevations. Here, support for Bell and unionism represented a decision for continued opportunity and growth that slavery offered within the context of the Union. Old line Whigs in the county consistently argued that slavery was safer in the union than if the South tried to secede. In these precincts, where identified Whig Party activists outnumbered Democrats by a margin of 6.5 to 1, nearly double the margin of the county as a whole, voters apparently agreed that slavery was safer with Bell than either of the Democratic candidates.

Supporting Evidence

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, 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.


Citation: Key = TAF45
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