Whig Party (United States)

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Whig Party
Years active	1833-1856
Political Ideology	Modernization, Economic protectionism, government dominated by Congress
Political Position	N/A
International Affiliation	N/A
Preceded by	National Republican Party
Succeeded by	Free Soil Party Know-Nothing Party Republican Party
Colors	N/A
See also	Politics of the U.S. Political parties Elections

The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from 1833 to 1856,^[1] the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party. In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism. Their name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because "Whig" was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who saw themselves as opposing autocratic rule.^[2] The Whig Party counted among its members such national political luminaries as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and their preeminent leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also counted four war heroes among its ranks, including Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Abraham Lincoln was a Whig leader in frontier Illinois.

In its over two decades of existence, the Whig Party saw two of its candidates, Harrison and Taylor, elected President of the United States. Both, however, died in office. John Tyler became president after Harrison's death, but was expelled from the party, and Millard Fillmore, who became president after Taylor's death, was the last Whig to hold the nation's highest office.

The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction successfully prevented the nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the U.S. presidential election of 1852; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott, who was soundly defeated. Its leaders quit politics (as Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The voter base defected to the Republican Party, various coalition parties in some states, and to the Democratic Party. By the U.S. presidential election of 1856, the party had lost its ability to maintain a national coalition of effective state parties and endorsed Millard Fillmore of the American Party at its last national convention.[1]

Contents 1 Origins and policies 2 Party structure 3 The early years 4 A brief golden age 4.1 Compromise of 1850 5 Death throes, 1852–1856 6 Presidents from the Whig Party 7 Candidates 8 See also 9 Bibliography 10 Notes 11 External links

[edit] Origins and policies

The Whig Party was formed in the winter of 1833-1834 by former National Republicans such as Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams, and by Southern States' Rights supporters such as W. P. Mangum. Opponents of the party ridiculed it as a reconstitution of the old Federalist party. Many southerners, who disliked Jackson's power grabs and stance during the nullification crisis, supported the new party, as did many Anti-Masons. In its early form, the Whig Party was united only by opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson, especially his removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States without the consent of Congress. The Whigs pledged themselves to Congressional supremacy, as opposed to "King Andrew's" executive actions.^[3] The Whigs saw President Andrew Jackson as a dangerous man on horseback with a reactionary opposition to the forces of social, economic, and moral modernization. As Jackson purged his opponents, vetoed internal improvements, and killed the Bank of the United States; alarmed local elites fought back. They argued that Congress, not the President, reflected the will of the people. Controlling the Senate for a while, Jackson's enemies passed a censure motion denouncing Jackson's arrogant assumption of executive power in the face of the true will of the people as represented by Congress. (The censure was later expunged.) The central issue of the early 1830s was the Second Bank of the United States. Backing various regional candidates in 1836 the opposition finally coalesced in 1840 behind a popular general, William Henry Harrison, who proved the national Whig Party could win.

The Whigs came to unite around economic policy, celebrating Clay's vision of the "American System" which favored government support for a more modern, industrial economy in which education and commerce would equal physical labor or land ownership as a means of productive wealth. Whigs sought to promote domestic manufacturing through protective tariffs (as had Alexander Hamilton 40 years prior), a growth-oriented monetary policy with a new Bank of the United States, and a vigorous program of "internal improvements"—-especially to roads, canal systems, and railroads-—funded by the proceeds of public land sales. The Whigs also promoted public schools, private colleges, charities, and cultural institutions.

By contrast, the Democrats hearkened to the Jeffersonian political philosophy ideal of an egalitarian agricultural society, advising that traditional farm life bred republican simplicity, while modernization threatened to create a politically powerful caste of rich aristocrats who threatened to subvert democracy. The Democrats wanted America to expand horizontally, by adding more land through Manifest Destiny. Whigs had a very different vision: they wanted to deepen the socio-economic system by adding more and more layers of complexity, such as banks, factories, and railroads. In general, the Democrats were more successful at enacting their policies on the national level, while the Whigs were more successful in passing modernization projects, such as canals and railroads, at the state level, but not the federal (which had to wait until Abraham Lincoln's presidency to be fully realized).

[edit] Party structure

Rejecting the party loyalty that was the hallmark of tight Democratic Party organization, the Whigs suffered greatly from factionalism throughout their existence. On the other hand, the Whigs had a superb network of newspapers that provided an internal information system; their leading editor was Horace Greeley of the powerful New York Tribune. In their heyday, in the 1840s, the Whigs had strong support in the manufacturing Northeast and the border states. However, the Democratic Party grew more quickly over time, and the Whigs lost more and more marginal states and districts. After the closely contested 1844 elections, the Democratic advantage widened, and the Whigs were only able to win nationally by splitting the opposition. This was partly because of the increased political importance of the western states, which generally voted for Democrats, and Irish Catholic and German immigrants, who also tended to vote for Democrats.

The Whigs, also known as the "white heads", won votes in every socio-economic category, but appealed more to the professional and business classes: doctors, lawyers, merchants, ministers, bankers, storekeepers, factory owners, commercially-oriented farmers and large-scale planters. In general, commercial and manufacturing towns and cities voted Whig, save for strongly Democratic precincts in Irish Catholic and German immigrant communities; the Democrats often sharpened their appeal to the poor by ridiculing the Whigs' aristocratic pretensions. Protestant religious revivals also injected a moralistic element into the Whig ranks. Many called for public schools to teach moral values; others proposed prohibition to end the liquor problem.

[edit] The early years

In the 1836 elections, the party was not yet sufficiently organized to run one nationwide candidate; instead William Henry Harrison ran in the northern and border states, Hugh Lawson White ran in the South, and Daniel Webster ran in his home state of Massachusetts. It was hoped that the Whig candidates would amass enough U.S. Electoral College votes among them to deny a majority to Martin Van Buren, which under the United States Constitution would place the election under control of the House of Representatives, allowing the ascendant Whigs to select the most popular Whig candidate as President. The Whigs came only a few thousand votes short of victory in Pennsylvania, vindicating their strategy, but failed nonetheless.

In late 1839, the Whigs held their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison as their presidential candidate. In March 1840, Harrison pleged to serve only 1 term as President if elected, a pledge which reflected popular support for a Constitutional limit to Presidential terms among many in the Whig Party. Harrison went on to victory in 1840, defeating Van Buren's re-election bid largely as a result of the Panic of 1837 and subsequent depression. Harrison served only 31 days and became the first President to die in office. He was succeeded by John Tyler, a Virginian and states' rights absolutist. Tyler vetoed the Whig economic legislation and was expelled from the Whig party in 1841. The Whigs' internal disunity and the nation's increasing prosperity made the party's activist economic program seem less necessary, and led to a disastrous showing in the 1842 Congressional elections.

[edit] A brief golden age

By 1844, the Whigs began their recovery by nominating Henry Clay, who lost to Democrat James K. Polk in a closely contested race, with Polk's policy of western expansion (particularly the annexation of Texas) and free trade triumphing over Clay's protectionism and caution over the Texas question. The Whigs, both northern and southern, strongly opposed expansion into Texas, which they (including Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln) saw as an unprincipled land grab. In 1848, the Whigs, seeing no hope of success by nominating Clay, nominated General Zachary Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero. They stopped criticizing the war and adopted no platform at all. Taylor defeated Democratic candidate Lewis Cass and the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, who had nominated former President Martin Van Buren. Van Buren's candidacy split the Democratic vote in New York, throwing that state to the Whigs; at the same time, however, the Free Soilers probably cost the Whigs several Midwestern states.

[edit] Compromise of 1850

Taylor was firmly opposed to the Compromise of 1850 and committed to the admission of California as a free state, and had proclaimed that he would take military action to prevent secession. But, in July 1850, Taylor died; Vice President Millard Fillmore, a long-time Whig, became President and helped push the Compromise through Congress, in the hopes of ending the controversies over slavery. The Compromise of 1850 was first proposed by Henry Clay.

[edit] Death throes, 1852–1856

1852 was the beginning of the end for the Whigs. The deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that year severely weakened the party. The Compromise of 1850 fractured the Whigs along pro- and anti-slavery lines, with the anti-slavery faction having enough power to deny Fillmore the party's nomination in 1852. 1852's Whig Party convention in New York City saw the historic meeting between Alvan E. Bovay and The New York Tribune's Horace Greeley, a meeting which led to correspondence between the men as the early Republican Party meetings in 1854 began to take place. Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats' Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states including Scott's home state of Virginia. Whig Representative Lewis Davis Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, "We are slayed. The party is dead--dead--dead!" Increasingly politicians realized that the party was a loser. Abraham Lincoln, its Illinois leader, for example, ceased his Whig activities and attended to his law business.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act exploded on the scene. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs strongly opposed it. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs in 1854 joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants. In the South, the Whig party vanished but as Thomas Alexander has shown, Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades.^[4] Historians estimate that, in the South in 1856, Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters. He won only 13% of the northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column. The future in the North, most observers thought at the time, was Republican. No one saw any prospects for the shrunken old party, and after 1856 there was virtually no Whig organization left anywhere.^[5] Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the "Opposition Party" for several years and had some success.

In 1860, many former Whigs who had not joined the Republicans regrouped as the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated only a national ticket; it had considerable strength in the border states, which feared the onset of civil war. John Bell finished third. During the latter part of the war and Reconstruction, some former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves "Conservatives", and hoping to reconnect with ex-Whigs in the North. They were soon swallowed up by the Democratic Party in the South, but continued to promote modernization policies such as railroad building and public schools.^[6]

In today's discourse in American politics, the Whig Party is usually mentioned in the context of a political party losing its followers and reason for being, often exemplified by the phrase "going the way of the Whigs."

[edit] Presidents from the Whig Party

Presidents of the United States, dates in office

1. William Henry Harrison (1841)
2. John Tyler* (1841-1845)
3. Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
4. Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)

• Although Tyler was elected vice president as a Whig, his policies soon proved to be opposed to most of the Whig agenda, and he was officially expelled from the party in 1841, a few months after taking office.

Additionally, John Quincy Adams, elected President as a Democratic-Republican, later became a National Republican and then a Whig after he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1831.

[edit] Candidates

Election year	Result	Nominees
		President	Vice President
1836	lost	Daniel Webster	Francis Granger
	lost	William Henry Harrison
	lost		John Tyler
	lost	Willie Person Mangum[1]
	lost	Hugh Lawson White
1840	won	William Henry Harrison[2]
1844	lost	Henry Clay	Theodore Frelinghuysen
1848	won	Zachary Taylor [2]	Millard Fillmore
1852	lost	Winfield Scott	William Alexander Graham
1856	lost	Millard Fillmore[3]	Andrew Jackson Donelson[3]
1860	lost	John Bell[4]	Edward Everett[4]

^[1] Although Mangum himself was a Whig, his electoral votes came from Nullificationists in South Carolina.
^[2] Died in office.
^[3] Fillmore and Donelson were also candidates on the American Party ticket.
^[4] Bell and Everett were also candidates on the Constitutional Union ticket.

[edit] See also

• List of Whig National Conventions
• History of United States Democratic Party
• History of United States Republican Party
• American election campaigns in the 19th century

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Great Americans of the Whig Party, 1832-1856 Biographies of American Whigs.
• The American Presidency Project, contains the text of the national platforms that were adopted by the national conventions (1844-1856)

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