 As the most culturally Southern of all Illinois counties, Gallatin County was pro-Confederate during the Civil War and even provided a few volunteers to the Confederate Army.It then became solidly Democratic for the next century and a third, voting Republican only in the GOP landslides of 1920, 1952, 1972 and 1980.Even in those four elections, no Republican candidate received more than Richard Nixon’s 53.7 percent in his 3,000-plus-county 1972 triumph.