Davis was a dark horse candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in both 1920 and 1924 . His friend and partner Frank Polk managed his campaign at the 1924 Democratic National Convention . He won the nomination in 1924 as a compromise candidate on the one hundred and third ballot . Although Tennessee 's Andrew Johnson served as President after Lincoln was assassinated , Davis ' nomination made him the first presidential candidate from any slave state since the Civil War , and as of 2016 he remains the only ever candidate from West Virginia . Davis ' denunciation of the Ku Klux Klan and prior defense of black voting rights as Solicitor General under Wilson cost him votes in the South and among conservative Democrats elsewhere . He lost in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge , who did not leave the White House to campaign . Davis ' 28.8 percent remains the smallest percentage of the popular vote ever won by a Democratic presidential nominee
Lincoln was assassinated
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
John W. Davis