Whigs accounted for the most visible party activists in Augusta County, but activists in both parties exerted significant influence.

In high Douglas precincts identified Whig activists outnumbered the Democrats 7-3, a margin of 2.3 to 1. In high Breckinridge precincts Whig activists outnumbered Democrats 4 to 1, and in high Bell precincts they outnumbered Democrats 6.5 to 1. The presence of party activists and their activities in these precincts were directly connected to the distribution of wealth and slaveholding in these places.

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.