Ever since the Civil War, Kentucky had been shaped politically by divisions created by that war between secessionist, Democratic counties and Unionist, Republican ones,[1] although the state as a whole leaned Democratic throughout this era and the GOP would never carry the state during the Third Party System at either presidential[2] or gubernatorial level.

[3] Following Samuel J. Tilden’s 24-point victory in the state in 1876, the tobacco-growing Jackson Purchase and Western Coal Field were affected by the Greenback movement.

[3] It also was aimed at regulating the railroads which the western landowners – many former slaveholders – saw as siphoning the profit from their cash crop economy.

Weaver did best in the regions where the Greenback insurgency was always strongest, but received no votes at all in fourteen of Kentucky’s 117 counties (most of those lying in the Eastern Coalfield).

Democratic nominee Winfield Scott Hancock thus comfortably carried the state, although his margin was only two-thirds that of Tilden.