election that year was George Madison Adams, congressman for the state's 8th district who, although a Democrat, was a former federal soldier. Helm took the oath of office on his sick bed at his home in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, on September 3, 1867. He died five days later, and Stevenson was sworn in as governor on September 13. Among his first acts as governor were the appointments of Frank Lane Wolford, a former Union soldier, as adjutant general and Fayette Hewitt, a former Confederate soldier, as state quartermaster general. Because Helm died so soon after taking office, a special election for the remainder of his term was set for August 1868. Democrats held a convention in Frankfort on February 22, 1868 and nominated Stevenson to finish out Helm's term. R. Tarvin Baker, formerly Stevenson's opponent in the election for lieutenant governor, was the choice of the Republicans. The Republicans faced many disadvantages, including the national party's persecution of President Johnson and a lack of local organization in many Kentucky counties. Despite Stevenson's shortcomings as a public speaker, he was elected in a landslide—115,560 to 26,605. At the time, it was the largest majority obtained by any candidate in a Kentucky election. Civil rights Post-war Kentucky Democrats had split into two factions—the more conservative Bourbon Democrats and the more progressive New Departure Democrats. Stevenson governed moderately, giving concessions to both sides. He urged the immediate restoration of all rights to ex-Confederates and denounced Congress for failing to seat a portion of the Kentucky delegation because they had sided with the Confederacy. A champion of states' rights, he resisted federal measures he saw as violating the sovereignty of the states and vehemently denounced the proposed Fifteenth Amendment. Following Stevenson's lead, the General Assembly refused to pass either the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment, but after their passage by a constitutional majority of the states Stevenson generally insisted that blacks' newly granted rights not be infringed upon. He was silent, however, when state legislators and officials from various cities used lengthy residency restrictions and redrawn district and municipal boundaries to exclude black voters from specific elections. His 1867 plea for legislators to call a constitutional convention to revise the state's pro-slavery constitution to better conform to post-war reality was completely ignored. Stevenson opposed almost every effort to expand blacks' rights beyond the minimums assured by federal amendments and legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1866