Readjuster Party

…the Confederacy who led Virginia’s “Readjuster” reform movement from 1879 to 1882.

In 1879 the Readjuster Party in Virginia—so named because its supporters sought to readjust the huge funded debt of that state so as to lessen the tax burden on small farmers—gained control of the legislature and secured in 1880 the election of its leader, Gen. William Mahone, to…

…white working people: the “Readjusters” of Virginia in the 1880s, led by former general William Mahone, and the “Fusionists” of North Carolina in the 1890s, a coalition of Republicans and Populists. There is also a Southern literary tradition of rejection of the interpretation and values of the Lost Cause…

…a group known as the Readjusters, claiming that the debt and interest needed pruning, seized control of the government (with the aid of the Republicans) and “readjusted” the debt downward.