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In the South, there were numerous Republican counties, notably in Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia. Even in Georgia, a state in the Deep South, there were counties returning Republican majorities. This was the result of an attempt by Republican politicians to heal sectional resentment and make the South competitive.

While traveling the South in 1895, McKinley realized that many conservative Southern whites were angry at the populist radicals who controlled the Democratic Party in their states. White businessmen of Georgia wanted the support of a party that would oppose regulation and taxation as long as it would allow them to preserve white supremacy. The possibility of preserving white supremacy without offending loyal black Republicans seemed like a possibility after black leader Booker T. Washington gave a speech in 1895 that proposed the "Atlanta Compromise", which held that whites should support blacks in their struggle for economic independence as they learned trade and industry, and in return blacks would not challenge the political or social order of Jim Crow. The policy was somewhat of a success because McKinley won 37% of Georgia's vote (the closest a Republican would come to winning the state until 1928).
Noticed this while reading about William Jennings Bryan on Wikipedia, and it inspired me. Is it in any way possible, in your opinion, for William McKinley to have decided to put some significant focus on winning votes in the South in order to open up a Republican voter base in the region, by getting the Redeemers to at least partially abandon the Democratic Party to Bryan and support McKinley instead?
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