Democratic Party Meeting: 1850 in Yanceyville, North Carolina

Democratic Party Meeting: 1850 in Yanceyville, North Carolina

In 1850, Caswell County Democratic Party leaders met in Yanceyville to select delegates for the next Democratic Party Convention in Raleigh, NC, to nominate a candidate for NC Governor. Note the attendee names, which of course included the ubiquitous Nathaniel Jones Palmer.

The sense of the meeting was to support David Settle Reid as the Democratic candidate for NC Governor in 1851. Whig editor of The Milton Chronicle, Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, criticized the Democrats for again suggesting David Settle Reid should run, as he had been defeated in the last NC gubernatorial election.

Of course Reid won, was re-elected, and then was elected to the US Senate. So much for the opinion of Evans, who later abandoned the Whig Party and became a Democrat.

Reid's election began a Democratic Party domination of North Carolina that lasted some 125 years.

"Democratic Party Meeting." The Milton Chronicle (Milton, North Carolina), 16 May 1850

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Hon. D. S. Reid

"It appears that the Democrats wish to sacrifice this gentleman again. Now we do enter our solemn protest against their serving so clever a fellow so badly. He deserves better treatment at their hands, and should receive it. He has been of some service to that party, and it would be cruel in them to immolate him upon the altar of defeat again.

"Yes, it would be a sacrifice to run him as a candidate for Governor again; once beaten is bad enough, to be beaten twice would be rather too severed for a man that has such keen sensibilities as Col. Reid."

The Milton Chronicle (Milton, North Carolina), 16 May 1850