David Peter Lewis (1820 Charlotte County, Virginia – July 3, 1884) was the 23rd Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama, having served from 1872 to 1874. After his term expired, a Republican was not be elected again as governor of Alabama for 119 years. In 1861, Lewis was a delegate to the Confederate Provisional Congress. In 1868, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In 1869 he joined the Republican Party. As a well-known North Alabama Unionist who nevertheless did support the Confederacy, he was an attractive candidate for governor and won decisively over the Democrat Thomas H. Herndon. The 1872 election was highly controversial and conflicting election returns resulted in the seating of two different legislatures controlled by each party. During Lewis' term unsuccessful attempts were made to pass civil rights legislation to bar discrimination on common carriers and in hotels, schools and theaters. The impact of the Panic of 1873 as well as the civil rights controversy led to Lewis' defeat in 1874. He later unsuccessfully sought an appointment to the federal bench. Disillusioned by politics, he returned to the practice of law in Huntsville, where he is interred at Maple Hill Cemetery.

Thereafter, Republicans did not vigorously contest the Alabama governorship until 1966, when then U.S. Representative James D. Martin of Gadsden was handily defeated by the Democrat Lurleen Burns Wallace, the surrogate candidate for her husband, then term-limited Governor George C. Wallace. The Wallace organization proved too strong for the Republicans to withstand. Twenty years thereafter, Republican Guy Hunt of Cullman was elected as a result of a Democratic split in 1986 as the state's first Republican governor since Lewis.^[1]

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