Symbolic of the South's changing political affiliation, this was the first Republican National Convention held in a prior Confederate State.

The so-called "New Nixon" in the 1968 presidential election devised a "Southern strategy," taking advantage of the region's opposition to racial integration and other progressive/liberal policies of the Democratic Party and President Lyndon B. Johnson.

He was able to secure the nomination to the support of many Southern delegates, after he and his subordinates made concessions to Strom Thurmond and Harry Dent on civil rights, the Supreme Court, and the selection of a vice presidential candidate.

[1] Nixon decided not to re-select his 1960 running mate Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford of Michigan proposed New York City Mayor John Lindsay for vice president.

In his acceptance speech, Nixon deplored the state of the union and urged a return to law and order both at home and abroad: When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world can't manage its own economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented racial violence, when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home, then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.