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| Elections in South Carolina |
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The 1878 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 5, 1878 to select the governor of South Carolina. Wade Hampton III was renominated by the Democrats and ran against no organized opposition in the general election to win reelection for a second two-year term.
Upon becoming governor after a prolonged struggle against Daniel Henry Chamberlain in the gubernatorial election of 1876, Wade Hampton adopted moderate racial policies and favored many Republican proposals. For instance, the state modified the agriculture lien law and passed a law giving counties the ability to mandate the fencing of livestock. Hampton also appointed many blacks to government positions and provided for more funds to be spent educating black children than white children.
The state Republican Party held their convention in Columbia on August 7 and August 8. The white Republican leaders opposed fielding a slate of candidates for statewide offices and even proposed a resolution to endorse Hampton. They felt that any opposition to Hampton would only encourage the Democrats to mount an aggressive and unified campaign. [1] Instead, they proposed for the party to concentrate its resources on contesting the local races in hopes that the Democrats would not vigorously contest those elections due to lack of competition at the state level.
However, many prominent black Republicans favored fielding a slate of statewide candidates and launch an all out campaign against the Democrats. The sentiment among the delegates favored this position, but party chairman, Robert B. Elliott, and other Republican leaders managed to convince the delegates the futility of fielding a statewide campaign. When a resolution was offered to pledge the Republican Party to field a state ticket, it was defeated by a vote of 85-35. The platform of the party adopted at the convention merely stated that a full slate was inexpedient because it was "impossible for Republican voters to organize and vote without incurring great personal danger". [2] Thus, the campaign of 1878 for the Republicans was left up to the county organizations.
An attitude of apathy and defeatism swept through the Republican camp and most were resigned to the inevitable destruction of the party. One leader commented that it was highly unlikely "that the Republicans could succeed without federal troops in 1878 where they had failed with them in 1876." [3] Several Republican county organizations passed resolutions supporting Hampton's reelection for governor and even endorsed Democratic candidates for county offices. For example, in Marion County the Republicans placed five out of nine Democratic candidates on their ticket in a policy of fusion. [4]
Throughout Hampton's first term in office, he appealed for political harmony between the races. Hampton carried out his pledge to ensure equal rights between the races and he appointed more black men to office than Chamberlain had during his term as governor. [5] The more militant faction of the Democratic Party, led by Martin Gary, was entirely against any cooperation with blacks and instead sought to remove blacks completely from political life. The Edgefield County Democrats would not acknowledge any black Democratic clubs and they prevented blacks from participating in the primary elections. Hampton publicly refuted this policy and no other county followed suit. [4] Nevertheless, new laws were enacted by the General Assembly in 1877 to make it harder for blacks to participate and vote in the electoral process.
The general election was held on November 5, 1878 and Wade Hampton was reelected as governor of South Carolina with no organized opposition, although there was much more electoral fraud and violence than the election in 1876. For instance, on Edisto Island where 1,000 Republicans and 50 Democrats resided, the polls never opened. The Red Shirts in Fairfield County physically beat anyone who dared vote for a Republican. Combined with the lack of a Republican candidate and new prohibitive voting laws, turnout was not surprisingly much less than the 1876 election.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic | Wade Hampton III (incumbent) | 119,550 | 99.8 | +49.5 | |
| No party | Write-Ins | 213 | 0.2 | +0.2 | |
| Majority | 119,337 | 99.6 | +99.0 | ||
| Turnout | 119,763 | ||||
| Democratic hold | |||||
The 1876 United States presidential election was the 23rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1876.
Wade Hampton III was the scion of one of the richest families in the ante-bellum South, owning thousands of acres of cotton land in South Carolina and Mississippi, as well as thousands of enslaved workers. He became a senior general in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War. He also had a career as a leading Democratic politician in state and national affairs.
Daniel Lindsay Russell Jr. was an American politician who served as the 49th governor of North Carolina, from 1897 to 1901. An attorney and judge, he had also been elected as state representative and to the United States Congress, serving from 1879 to 1881. Although he fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War, Russell and his father were both Unionists. After the war, Russell joined the Republican Party in North Carolina, which was an unusual affiliation for one of the planter class. In the postwar period he served as a state judge, as well as in the state and national legislatures.
Daniel Henry Chamberlain was an American planter, lawyer, author and the 76th Governor of South Carolina from 1874 until 1876 or 1877. The federal government withdrew troops from the state and ended Reconstruction that year. Chamberlain was the last Republican governor of South Carolina until James B. Edwards was elected in 1974.
The Electoral Commission, sometimes referred to as the Hayes-Tilden or Tilden-Hayes Electoral Commission, was a temporary body created by the United States Congress on January 29, 1877, to resolve the disputed United States presidential election of 1876. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes were the main contenders in the election. Tilden won 184 undisputed electoral votes, one vote shy of the 185 needed to win, to Hayes' 165, with 20 electoral votes from four states unresolved. Both Tilden and Hayes electors submitted votes from these states, and each claimed victory.
The 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 1876, to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. The election campaign was a referendum on the Radical Republican-led state government and their Reconstruction policies. Opponents disputed the challenger Wade Hampton III's victory, gained by a margin of little more than 1100 votes statewide. But he took office in April 1877, after President Hayes withdrew federal troops as a result of a national Democratic compromise, and the incumbent Daniel Henry Chamberlain left the state.
The 1870 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on October 19, 1870, to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. Governor Robert Kingston Scott easily won reelection based entirely on the strength of the black vote in the state. The election was significant because white conservatives of the state claimed it showed that political harmony between the white and black races was impossible and only through a straightout Democratic attempt would they be able to regain control of state government.
The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States. Red Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875, when anti-Reconstruction private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.
Martin Witherspoon Gary was a Confederate attorney, soldier, and politician from South Carolina. He attained the rank of brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He played a major leadership role in the 1876 Democratic political campaign to elect Wade Hampton III as governor, planning a detailed campaign to disrupt the Republican Party and black voters by violence and intimidation.
The South Carolina civil disturbances of 1876 were a series of race riots and civil unrest related to the Democratic Party's political campaign to take back control from Republicans of the state legislature and governor's office through their paramilitary Red Shirts division. Part of their plan was to disrupt Republican political activity and suppress black voting, particularly in counties where populations of whites and blacks were close to equal. Former Confederate general Martin W. Gary's "Plan of the Campaign of 1876" gives the details of planned actions to accomplish this.
The 1880 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 2, 1880 to s elect the governor of South Carolina. Johnson Hagood was nominated by the Democrats and ran against L. W. R. Blair, a Greenback-Labor candidate. Hagood easily won the general election and became the 80th governor of South Carolina.
The 1882 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 7, 1882 to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. Hugh Smith Thompson was nominated by the Democrats and ran against J. Hendrix McLane, a Greenback-Labor candidate. Thompson easily won the general election and became the 81st governor of South Carolina.
The 1890 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on Tuesday November 4, to elect the governor of South Carolina. Ben Tillman was nominated by the Democrats and easily won the general election against A.C. Haskell to become the 84th governor of South Carolina.
Alexander Cheves Haskell was a Colonel in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War and a Democratic politician in Reconstruction era South Carolina.
The 1892 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 1892, to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. Governor Ben Tillman was renominated by the Democrats and was elected in the general election to a second two-year term.
The 1894 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 1894 to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. John Gary Evans was nominated by the Democrats and became the 85th governor of South Carolina.
The 1896 South Carolina gubernatorial election was held on November 3, 1896 to select the governor of the state of South Carolina. William Haselden Ellerbe won the Democratic primary and easily won the general election to become the 86th governor of South Carolina.
Elections in Alabama are authorized under the Alabama State Constitution, which establishes elections for the state level officers, cabinet, and legislature, and the election of county-level officers, including members of school boards.
"Straight-Out Democratic Party" is the name used by three minor American political parties between 1872 and 1890.
From December 1876 to April 1877, the Republican and Democratic parties in South Carolina each claimed to be the legitimate government. Both parties declared that the other had lost the election and that they controlled the governorship, the state legislature, and most state offices. Each government debated and passed laws, raised militias, collected taxes, and conducted other business as if the other did not exist. After four months of contested government, Daniel Henry Chamberlain, who claimed the governorship as a Republican, conceded to Democrat Wade Hampton III on April 11, 1877. This came after President Rutherford Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South.
| Preceded by 1876 | South Carolina gubernatorial elections | Succeeded by 1880 |
