Mapping Early American Elections


5th Congress: South Carolina 1796

South Carolina elected three Federalists and three Democratic-Republicans to the Fifth Congress.

The map for this election is incomplete due to the lack of returns at the parish or district level.

South Carolina used the district system for electing members to Congress.

In September 1797, South Carolina held a special election in which Thomas Pickney was elected to replace William L. Smith, who resigned when he was appointed minister to Portugal.

District Candidate Party Vote Percentage Elected
1 William L. Smith Federalist 784 84.8%
1 Robert Simons Democratic-Republican 126 13.6%
2 John Rutledge, Jr. Federalist 839 87.3%
2 Elnathan Haskell Democratic-Republican 122 12.7%
3 Lemuel Benton Democratic-Republican 777 63.3%
3 Tristam Thomas Federalist 300 24.4%
3 Joseph Blyth Federalist 151 12.3%
4 Thomas Sumpter Democratic-Republican 854 50.7%
4 Richard Winn Federalist 831 49.3%
5 Robert G. Harper Federalist 1,618 67.6%
5 William Butler Democratic-Republican 774 32.4%
6 William Smith Democratic-Republican 947 37%
6 Abraham Nott Federalist 830 32.5%
6 William Will Democratic-Republican 650 25.4%
6 Other candidates 130 5.1%

In most cases, only candidates who received more than 5 percent of the vote in a district are reported. Other candidates are reported as a group, but only if they in aggregate received more than 5 percent of the vote. In addition, percentages for each district may not add up to 100 percent due to rounding. The term Dissenting Republican includes various breakaway factions of the Democratic-Republican party.

New Nation Votes Data


Mapping Early American Elections is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Creative Commons License This site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

RRCHNM logo NEH logo