Conservative Party (Virginia, 1867)

The party was related to similar conservative movements in other states, combining Liberal Republicans and repentant Democrats looking to improve their image as "friends of the black people" on a national level.

[2] From December 11–12, 1867 a group of former Democrats, former Whigs, and moderate Republicans, led by Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart held a convention in Richmond, Virginia.

Later the assembly voted to sell most of the state's stock in railroad companies, but the low prices that investors paid created suspicions of corruption, and the state treasury received less money than anticipated and voted to pay the large public debt left over from the pre–Civil War years by issuing new bonds with thirty-four-year maturity and six percent annual interest.

[4] A popular bill that would increase the amount of revenue available to public schools was introduced and passed by the assembly in 1878, but was vetoed by Governor Frederick W. M. Holliday.

Wise denounced the party during testimony before the Virginia House of Delegates Committee on Elections, as nothing more than "old-fashioned Democrats, old-fashioned Whigs, Know Nothings, locofocos, sour-crout (sic) Democrats, and Greelyites,"[5] the latter a reference to Horace Greeley of New York, whose candidacy the Conservative Party endorsed for President of the United States in the 1872 presidential election.