It was the Democratic majority in the district of Maine that effected the separation from Massachusetts, and from the date of that separation until 1853 Maine was classed as a Democratic state, although it elected a Whig governor in 1838 and in 1840, and cast its electoral vote for John Quincy Adams in 1824 and 1828 and for W. H. Harrison in 1840. As a result of the slavery question, there was a party disintegration between 1850 and 1855, followed by the supremacy of the Republican party from 1856 to 1878. In 1878, of the 126,169 votes cast in the election for governor, Selden Connor (b. 1839), re-nominated by the Republicans, received 56,554; Joseph L. Smith ("National" or "Greenback"), 41,371; Alonzo Garcelon (1813-1906) (Democratic), 28,218; as no candidate received a majority of the votes, the election was left to the legislature.[8] The vote of the House eliminated Connor, and Garcelon was chosen in the Senate by a Democratic-National fusion. Again there was no election by popular vote in 1879, and Garcelon and his council, to secure the election of a fusion government, counted-in a fusion majority in the legislature by evident falsification of the returns. On the 3rd of January 1880 the Supreme Court declared the governor and council in error in counting in a fusion majority, but on the 7th the governor swore in a legislature with 78 fusion and only two Republican members, and, the governor's term having expired, the president of the Senate, James D. Lamson, became governor, ex-officio. On the 12th the legislative chambers were seized by the Republicans, whose organized legislature was declared legal by the Supreme Court, and who chose as governor Daniel Franklin Davis (1843-1897); whereupon, on the 17th, Joshua L. Chamberlain, to whom the peaceful solution of the difficulty had largely been due, retired from the task assigned him by Garcelon on the 5th of January "to protect the public property and institutions of the state" until Garcelon's successor should be duly qualified. In 1880 the Democrats and Greenbacks united and elected their candidate, but after 1883 Maine was strongly Republican until 1910. The governors of the state have been as follows:--