Whig Party (United States)
This article is about the Whigs in the United States: for other uses of the term, see Whig (disambiguation).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 1832 to 1856, the party was formed to oppose the policies of
President Andrew Jackson and the
Democratic Party he had founded. In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of
Congress over the Executive Branch and favored a program of modernization and economic development. Their name was chosen to echo the
British Whig Party, which had opposed a strong
monarchy, just as the American Whigs were opposing a strong presidency. The Whig Party counted among its members such national political luminaries as
Daniel Webster,
William Henry Harrison, and their pre-eminent leader,
Henry Clay of
Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also counted several war heroes among its ranks, including Generals
Zachary Taylor and
Winfield Scott.
In its 26-year existence, the Whig Party saw two of its candidates elected
President of the United States—Harrison and Taylor—and saw both of them die in office. Four months after succeeding Harrison, Whig President
John Tyler was expelled from the Party, and
Millard Fillmore, Taylor's Vice President, 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. Deep fissures in the party on this question led the party to run
Winfield Scott over its own incumbent President Fillmore in the
U.S. presidential election of 1852. The Whig Party never elected another President. Its leaders quit politics (as Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The voter base defected to the
nativist Know-Nothing Party, the anti-slavery
Republican Party, various coalition parties in some states, and even to the Democrats.
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. While the party did have strong support in areas historically known as Federalist strongholds, it was mainly formed as a result of an alliance between disillusioned Jeffersonian Republicans (Clay, a 10 year Republican leader in Congress, joined the party), southerners who disliked Jackson's power grabs and stance during nullification crisis and anti-masonites. 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, and took their name from the
British Whig Party, which had opposed the power of the
monarchy and supported
Parliamentary control. 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, market-oriented economy in which education and commerce would count for more than physical labor or land ownership. Whigs sought to promote faster industrialization through protective tariffs, a business-oriented monetary policy with a new Bank of the United States, and a vigorous program of "internal improvements"â€"-especially to roads and canal systems-â€"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.
Rejecting the automatic party loyalty that was the hallmark of tight Democratic party organization, the Whigs suffered 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, the 1840s, Whigs won 49 percent of gubernatorial elections with strong bases of support in the manufacturing Northeast and the border states. The trend over time, however, was for the Democratic Party to grow more quickly, and for the Whigs to lose 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 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 largely supported the Whigs. (In North Carolina, however, the large-scale planters were more often Democrats.) In general, commercial and manufacturing towns and areas voted Whig, save for strongly Democratic precincts in Irish Catholic and German immigrant communities; the Democrats often sharpened their appeals to the poor by ridiculing the Whigs' aristocratic pretensions. Protestant religious revivals also injected a moralistic element into the Whig ranks, which sent many targets of moralism (such as those affected by calls for
prohibition) to seek refuge within the Democratic party.
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 tactic failed to achieve its objective, although it did play a role in throwing that year's Vice-Presidential election into the
Senate.
In 1839, the Whigs held their first national convention and nominated
William Henry Harrison as their presidential candidate. 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.
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 the
war with Mexico, which they (including Whig Congressman
Abraham Lincoln) saw as an unprincipled land grab, but they were split (as were the Democrats) by the anti-slavery
Wilmot Proviso of 1846. In 1848, the Whigs, seeing no hope of succeeding 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.
Compromise of 1850
Taylor was firmly opposed to the
Compromise of 1850, 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.
 |
Millard Fillmore, the last Whig president |
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. 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 deaddead!" Increasingly politicians realized that the party was a loser. For example,
Abraham Lincoln, its Illinois leader, simply walked away 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, many Whigs were partyless, until a variation of the Know-Nothings called the
American Party won over their votes between 1855 and 1859. Some Whigs supported Fillmore in 1856; after a three month delay, he renounced nativism, accepted the American Party nomination and campaigned against the danger of civil war should Republican
John C. Fremont be elected. Historians estimate that, in the South, 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.
Holt p 979-80In 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 to ex-Whig
Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party and Southern Democrat
John C. Breckinridge in a four-way race (with Northern Democrat
Stephen A. Douglas fourth), triggering the
American Civil War. 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 its struggle and achievement of single party white rule of the South.
Presidents of the United States, dates in office#
William Henry Harrison (
1841)#
John Tyler (see note) (
1841-
1845)#
Zachary Taylor (
1849-
1850)#
Millard Fillmore (
1850-
1853)
Note: 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 Whig when he was elected to the
House of Representatives.
[1]Died in office.
[2]Fillmore and Donelson were also candidates on the
American Party ticket.
*
History of United States Republican Party*
American election campaigns in the 19th Century*
List of political parties in the United States*
British Whig Party*
Mathew Carey (c. 1760-c. 1839): His efforts and publications are thought to have significantly influenced the establishment of the party.
* Online through
JSTOR*
*
*
*
* Online through
JSTOR* Online through
JSTOR* Hammond, Bray.
Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (1960), Pulitzer prize; the standard history. Pro-Bank
*
*
* Online through
JSTOR* Online through
JSTOR* Online through
JSTOR*
*
*
*
* Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. ed.
History of American Presidential Elections, 1789â€"2000 (various multivolume editions, latest is 2001). For each election includes good scholarly history and selection of primary documents. Essays on the most important elections are reprinted in Schlesinger,
The Coming to Power: Critical presidential elections in American history (1972)
*
* Sharp, James Roger.
The Jacksonians Versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837 (1970)
* Taylor; George Rogers, ed.
Jackson Versus Biddle: The Struggle over the Second Bank of the United States (1949)
*
* Van Deusen, Glyndon G.
Thurlow Weed, Wizard of the Lobby (1947)
* Wilson, Major L.
Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (1974) intellectual history of Whigs and Democrats
*
Whig Party Platform of 1844*
Whig Party Platform of 1848*
Whig Party Platform of 1852
