Democrats had held the governor's office in Kentucky since 1859 and this did not change in the 1867 state elections. John LaRue Helm, who had been governor once previously between 1850 and 1851 and who had had a son killed as a Confederate flag officer at Chickamauga, easily defeated Republican S. M. Barnes and a Union Democrat named W.B. Kinkead. Helm only served five days as the state's twenty fourth governor, hovever, succumbing to illness on September 8, 1867. Lieutenant Governor John Stevenson succeeded him, continuing a Democratic hold on the office that would continue to 1895. (By John Osborne)
Z. F. Smith, The History of Kentucky: From Its Earliest Discovery and Settlement to the Present Date ... (Louisville, KY: The Prentice Press, 1896), 759.
