Kentucky

NATIVE AMERICANS INHABITED Kentucky from prehistoric times, when the area was settled in the late 18th century by European migrants from Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states. Kentucky was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1792, making it the 15th state in the United States. Its constitution granted “full and free male suffrage,” and during most of its history the state has elected Democratic-Republican or Democratic Party governors. Its first elected governor, and also its fifth governor, was Isaac Shelby, who was born in Maryland, served in the Virginia legislature, and moved to Kentucky. State law prohibited him from serving two consecutive terms. James Garrard from Virginia succeeded him in 1796. Benjamin Logan challenged the election, petitioning the state legislature. He had received 21 votes to 17 for Garrard, but lost in the second ballot. In 1800, the first gubernatorial election in which the people voted directly, Garrard was re-elected, becoming the only governor of Kentucky to serve two consecutive terms until the state constitution was amended in the 1990s.

The third governor, Christopher Greenup, also born in Virginia, was a land speculator who ran unopposed as governor, receiving 25,917 votes. In the 1808 gubernatorial election, Kentucky elected Charles Scott, a hero from the American Revolutionary War. Isaac Shelby followed him, serving a second term. The first non-Democratic-Republican to be elected governor was Thomas Metcalfe of the National Republican Party, who won the 1828 gubernatorial elections. John Breathitt of the Democrats succeeded him, and then Lieutenant Governor James T. Morehead of the National Republican Party took over on the Breathitt's death.

From the 1836 election, until 1850, members of the Whig Party were elected as governor in all six gubernatorial elections, with John L. Helm to resigning as governor to become U.S. attorney general. The success of the Whig Party during this period rested largely on their opposition to legal relief for landowners from bankruptcy; the Democrats supported legal relief. The 1837 election was essentially taken for granted by the Whigs. In the 1848 elections, Linn Boyd was nominated by the Democrats, but declined to run; Lazarus W Powell was chosen to run in his place. He lost, but when Helm resigned, with the position of lieutenant governor left vacant, gubernatorial elections were held in 1851 and Lazarus W Powell was elected, defeating the Whig candidate, who was also Powell's law partner, Archibald Dixon, by less than 1,000 votes, with Cassius M. Clay, an abolitionist, picking up 3,621 votes. Clay would later support Abraham Lincoln's election, going on to become minister to Russia, where he played a crucial role in the U.S. purchase of Alaska.

In the 1855 gubernatorial election, Charles S. More-head of the Know Nothing Party was elected. In the 1859 election, Democrat Beriah Magoffin, was elected as governor. In the 1860 U.S. presidential election, in which Abraham Lincoln won, Kentucky voted heavily for John Bell of the Constitutional Union, giving him 66,058 votes (45.2 percent), with 55,143 votes (36.3 percent) for John Breckinridge of the southern Democrats, 25,651 votes (17.5 percent) for Stephen Douglas of the Northern Democrats, and only 1,364 votes (0.9 percent) for Abraham Lincoln.

...