But the region also had numerous ethnic Germans who had arrived after the revolutions of 1848. They favored the Union, and provided a number of Union soldiers rivaled on a per-capita basis only by a few fiercely Unionist counties in Appalachia. For the next century, Massac County voters favored Republican candidates for the presidency. During this period, the county's voters gave a plurality to every Republican nominee. They supported William Howard Taft in 1912, when the GOP was bitterly divided. During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt lost the county in 1936 by a greater margin than he did in 1932, when his popularity elsewhere increased as people benefited from government programs. Between 1896 and 1928, no Democratic presidential candidate gained thirty percent of the county's vote.