John T. Harris' Independent Campaign for Congress, 1859

In 1858-1859, a Harrisonburg lawyer named John T. Harris upset the political applecart in the central Shenandoah Valley when he defied the Democrat Party and ran as an independent candidate for the 9th Congressional District. This presentation will cover Harris’s successful bid for Congress while also revealing the colorful, rancorous, and rowdy nature of political campaigning on the eve of the Civil War.
Using Harris’ memoirs and articles from the newspapers of the day in Harrisonburg and Staunton, Harter will discuss Harris’s independent campaign and the political world it revealed in the Shenandoah Valley before the Civil War.
Dale Harter, a Rockingham County native, is the librarian at Albert Hill Middle School, in Richmond. He began researching John T. Harris as an undergraduate at James Madison University and went on to edit Harris’s memoirs for his master’s thesis at the University of South Carolina. Along with his wife Tracy, he established the archives for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Society and edited the Society’s newsletter for many years. He also was the Society’s museum curator when it was located in Harrisonburg and then known as the Warren-Sipe Museum.