sentences:  The county lies in the inner coastal plain, most of which was highly pro-secession and part of the Democratic “Solid South”.However, Brunswick County was less fertile than the “Black Belt” and consequently had significant pro-Union and Populist sympathies, with the result that the county frequently backed Republicans at state and local levels even when the state was consistently Democratic apart from Herbert Hoover’s 1928 victory.Only three times since the Civil War – Grover Cleveland in 1888, Alton B. Parker in 1904 and Jimmy Carter in 1980 – has Brunswick County backed a losing Democratic presidential candidate.