This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Appling, Zorn Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.alabama.counties.henry/1181.1185.1192.1193.1.4/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Judge Appling was indeed a Republican during the horrid days of Reconstrution in Henry County. Or, perhaps it is better stated as "Further Destruction" of the South than Reconstruction. During this time, the pre-war Confedeate Democrats had been disfranchised, unable to vote, and the vote went to the very few white Republicans and the freedmen, recently freed African slaves, who were Rebublican. Reconstruction ended around 1874 in the South in the middle of Judge Appling's second term and he was not reelected thereafter because the Democrats were again in power. This "Solid South" of Democratic rule lasted for nealry one hundred years until cracks appeared in it during the presidential election of 1964 when many Southerners moved toward Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater instead of Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson. Another prominant Rebublican in Henry County was Confederate Capt. Dennis Harrison Zorn of Zornville some six miles up the Old River Road from today's Haleburg. Capt. Zorn's leanings toward the Republian Party may have been more for personal reasons than political. He wanted a post office at his settlement and a federal license to operate the only legal whiskey distillery in Alabama in Beat 5 Henry County. These he achieved while the Republicans were still in contol of Congree and there was a Republican in the White House. In his obituary in the COLUMBIA BREEZE, June 1899, it states he was "one of the few white Republicans in the coounty, but voted with the dominant party on local issues."