In Augusta clusters of contiguous precincts gave their support in the 1860 presidential election in similar patterns.

Precincts with high Breckinridge, Bell, and Douglas support were connected. High Breckinridge precincts hugged the broad middle plain of the county and the eastern border. High Douglas precincts guarded the northern flat region of the county above Staunton. High Bell precincts formed a ring along the westernmost boundary of the county, touching the Allegheny Mountains. Differences in slaveholding, agricultural production, and wealth separated these clusters of precincts.

Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1860 Election (map)

Augusta County, Va., Agricultural Production (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).