During his term, he approved legislation to extend the franchise by reducing the property requirement; it benefited the white majority in the state as well as blacks.

[citation needed] To prevent such a political coalition from being successful again, in the 1898 elections Democrats conducted a campaign of fear, stressing white supremacy, and regained power in the state legislature.

[1] Russell attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but left soon after the outbreak of the American Civil War.

In college he was a member of the Delta Psi fraternity (aka St. Anthony Hall) He was commissioned as a captain in the Confederate Army and served in the war.

Around this time, the paramilitary white supremacist "Red Shirts" fought to suppress the Republican Party and black voting in North Carolina.

In 1896, the two parties held separate state conventions to allow the Populists to nominate presidential electors pledged to Democrat William J. Bryan.

At the Republican state convention in Raleigh on May 16, 1896, Russell was nominated for Governor of North Carolina on the seventh ballot over former U.S. Representative Oliver H. Dockery.

Alfred Waddell, whom Russell had defeated for Congress in 1878, led thousands of white rioters in the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898; they seized the city government by force, and destroyed the only black-owned newspaper in the state.

Governor Russell ordered the Wilmington Light Infantry (WLI) and federal Navy Reserves to quell the riot; instead they became involved.

[7] To prevent "fusionist" coalitions or Republicans winning office again, in 1899 the Democrats used their control of the state legislature to pass an amendment that effectively disenfranchised blacks and many poor whites.

As a result, voter rolls dropped dramatically, blacks were excluded from the political system, and the Republican Party was crippled in the state.

This condition lasted until the 1960s, when Federal civil-rights legislation restored black voting rights and white Southerners began to abandon their reflexive loyalty to the Democrats.