Whig Party (United States)

Origins

The name "Whig" repeated the term that Patriots used to refer to themselves during the American Revolution. It indicated hostility to the king. Despite the identical name it did not directly derive from the British Whig Party (see etymology).^[10]

The American Whigs were modernizers who saw President Andrew Jackson as "a dangerous man on horseback" --like a king--with a "reactionary opposition" to the forces of social, economic and moral modernization. The Democratic-Republicans who formed the Whig Party, led by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, drew on a Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government and territorial expansion combined with national unity and support for a Federal transportation network and domestic manufacturing. Casting their enemy as "King Andrew", they sought to identify themselves as modern-day opponents of governmental overreaching.

Despite the apparent unity of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans from 1800 to 1824, the American people ultimately preferred partisan opposition to popular political agreement.^[11] As Jackson purged his opponents, vetoed internal improvements and killed the Second Bank of the United States, alarmed local elites fought back. In 1831, Henry Clay re-entered the Senate and started planning a new party. He defended national rather than sectional interests. Clay's plan for distributing the proceeds from the sale of lands among the states in the public domain was intended to serve the nation by providing the states with funds for building roads and canals, which would stimulate growth and knit the sections together. However, his Jacksonian opponents distrusted the federal government and opposed all federal aid for internal improvements and they again frustrated Clay's plan. Jacksonians promoted opposition to the National Bank and internal improvements and support of egalitarian democracy, state power and hard money.

The Tariff of Abominations of 1828 had outraged Southern feelings—the South's leaders held that the high duties on foreign imports gave an advantage to the North (where the factories were located). Clay's own high tariff schedule of 1832 further disturbed them as did his stubborn defense of high duties as necessary to his American System. However, Clay moved to pass the Compromise of 1833, which met Southern complaints by a gradual reduction of the rates on imports to a maximum of twenty percent. Controlling the Senate for a while, Whigs 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 Whig Party began to take shape in 1833. Clay had run as a National Republican against Jackson in 1832, but carried only 49 electoral votes against Jackson's 219, and the National Republicans became discredited as a major political force. The Whig Party emerged in the aftermath of the 1832 election, the Nullification Crisis, and debates regarding the Second Bank of the United States, which Jackson denounced as a monopoly—and from which he abruptly removed all government deposits. People who helped to form the new party included supporters of Clay, supporters of Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, former National Republicans, former Anti-Masons, former disaffected Jacksonians (led by John C. Calhoun), who viewed Jackson's actions as impinging on the prerogatives of Congress and the states—and small remnants of the Federalist Party, people whose last political activity was with them a decade before. The "Whig" name emphasized the party's opposition to Jackson's perceived executive tyranny, and the name helped the Whigs shed the elitist image of the National Republican Party.^[12]

Clay was the clear leader of the Whig Party nationwide and in Washington, but he was vulnerable to Jacksonian allegations that he associated with the upper class, at a time when white males without property had the right to vote and wanted someone more like themselves. The Whigs nominated a war hero in 1840, and emphasized that William Henry Harrison had given up the high life to live in a log cabin on the frontier—Harrison won.

Rise

In the 1836 elections, the party was not yet sufficiently organized or unified to run one nationwide candidate. Instead, William Henry Harrison was its candidate in the Northern and border states, Hugh Lawson White ran in the South, Daniel Webster ran in his home state of Massachusetts, and Willie P. Mangum ran in South Carolina. Whigs hoped that four candidates would amass enough Electoral College votes among them to deny a majority to Martin Van Buren. That would move the election to the House of Representatives, allowing the ascendant Whigs to select their most popular man as president.

Van Buren won 170 ballots in the Electoral College, with only 148 ballots needed to win, but the Whig strategy came very close to succeeding. In Pennsylvania, which had 30 ballots in the Electoral College, Harrison got 87,235 votes to Van Buren's 91,457. A change of just a few thousand votes in that state would have reduced Van Buren's ballot count to only 140, eight short of winning.

In late 1839, the Whigs held their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison as their presidential candidate. In March 1840, Harrison pledged to serve only one term as President if elected, a pledge that 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 September 1841.

The Whigs' internal disunity and the nation's increasing prosperity made the party's activist economic program seem less necessary, leading to a disastrous showing in the 1842 Congressional election.

A brief golden age

Horace Greeley's New-York Daily Tribune—the leading Whig paper—endorsed Henry Clay for President and Millard Fillmore for Governor, 1844

"Polk 'weighed in the balances and found wanting'," a pro-Whig cartoon from 1844 using the raccoon as a party symbol

"An Available Candidate: The One Qualification for a Whig President"—a political cartoon about the 1848 presidential election that refers to Zachary Taylor or Winfield Scott, the two leading contenders for the Whig Party nomination in the aftermath of the Mexican–American War (published by Nathaniel Currier in 1848, digitally restored)

The central issue in the 1840s was expansion, with proponents of "manifest destiny" arguing for aggressive westward expansion, even at the risk of war with Mexico (over the annexation of Texas) and Britain (over control of Oregon). Daniel Walker Howe argues: "Nevertheless American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity."^[13] That is, most Democrats strongly supported manifest destiny and most Whigs strongly opposed it. John Mack Faragher's analysis of the political polarization between the parties is the following:

Most Democrats were wholehearted supporters of expansion, whereas many Whigs (especially in the North) were opposed. Whigs welcomed most of the changes wrought by industrialization but advocated strong government policies that would guide growth and development within the country's existing boundaries. They feared (correctly) that expansion raised a contentious issue the extension of slavery to the territories. On the other hand, many Democrats feared industrialization the Whigs welcomed. [ ... ] For many Democrats, the answer to the nation's social ills was to continue to follow Thomas Jefferson's vision of establishing agriculture in the new territories in order to counterbalance industrialization.^[14]

By 1844, the Whigs began their recovery by nominating Henry Clay, who lost the presidential race 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 hero of the Mexican–American War. They stopped criticizing the war and adopted only a very vague platform. 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. However, at the same time the Free Soilers probably cost the Whigs several Midwestern states.

Compromise of 1850

Taylor was firmly opposed to the proposed Compromise of 1850 (an initiative of Clay) and was committed to the admission of California as a free state. He proclaimed that he would take military action to prevent the secession of southern states. On July 9, 1850, Taylor died and Vice President Millard Fillmore, a long-time Whig, became President. Fillmore helped push the Compromise through Congress in the hopes of ending the controversies over slavery and its five separate bills became law in September 1850.

After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their Southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market, but cared little about slavery one way or another. However, many Whig voters in the North thought that slavery was incompatible with a free labor, free market economy and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which did not pass Congress, but would have stopped the expansion of slavery. No one found a compromise that would keep the party united. Furthermore, the burgeoning economy made full-time careers in business or law much more attractive than politics for ambitious young Whigs, thus the Whig Party leader in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, simply abandoned politics after 1849, instead attending to his law business.

Decline

When new issues of nativism, prohibition and anti-slavery burst on the scene in the mid-1850s, few looked to the quickly disintegrating Whig Party for answers. In the North, most ex Whigs joined the new Republican Party and in the South, they flocked to a new short-lived American Party.

The election of 1852 marked 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 had 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. The Whig Party's 1852 convention in New York City saw the historic meeting between Alvan E. Bovay and the New-York Daily Tribune's Horace Greeley, a meeting that 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 New Jersey. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming: "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!." Increasingly, politicians realized that the party was dead.

In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. 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 joined the Know Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "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.^[9] Historians estimate that in the South in 1856 former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate. 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. Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level.^[15] Twenty-six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856. The convention met for only two days and on the second day (and only ballot) quickly nominated Fillmore for President, who had already been nominated for President by the Know Nothing Party. Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for Vice President. Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.

Legacy

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. Its presidential candidate, John Bell, finished third in the electoral college.

During the Lincoln Administration (1861–1865), ex Whigs dominated the Republican Party and enacted much of their American System. Later, their Southern colleagues dominated the white response to Reconstruction. In the long run, the United States adopted Whiggish economic policies coupled with a Democratic strong presidency.

During the latter part of the American Civil War and during the Reconstruction Era, many former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves "conservatives" and hoping to reconnect with ex-Whigs in the North. These merged into the Democratic Party in the South, but continued to promote modernization policies such as large-scale railroad construction and the founding of public schools.^[9]

In today's American political discourse, historians and pundits often cite the Whig Party as an example of a political party that lost its followers and reason for being, as in the expression "going the way of the Whigs."^[16] a term referred to by Donald Critchlow in his book, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History.^[17] Critchlow points out that the application of the term by Republicans in the Republican Party of 1974 may have been a misnomer—the old Whig party enjoyed more political support before its demise than the Republican Party in the aftermath of Nixon's resignation.

Whig issues

The Whigs celebrated Clay's vision of the American System that promoted rapid economic and industrial growth in the United States. Whigs demanded government support for a more modern, market-oriented economy, in which skill, expertise, and bank credit would count for more than physical strength or land ownership. Whigs sought to promote faster industrialization through high tariffs, a business-oriented money supply based on a national bank and a vigorous program of government funded "internal improvements" (what we now call infrastructure projects), especially expansion of the road and canal systems. To modernize the inner United States, the Whigs helped create public schools, private colleges, charities and cultural institutions. Many were pietistic Protestant reformers who called for public schools to teach moral values and proposed prohibition to end the liquor problem.^[20]

The Democrats harkened to the Jeffersonian ideal of an egalitarian agricultural society, believing that traditional farm life bred republican simplicity while modernization and urbanization threatened to create a politically powerful caste of rich aristocratic men who threatened to subvert republicanism. In general the Democrats enacted their policies at the national level while the Whigs succeeded in passing modernization projects in most states.^[21]

Education

Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Horace Mann (1796–1859) won widespread approval from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs, for building public schools. Indeed, most states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers.^[22]

Factions

The Whig Party was never a homogeneous party. It was essentially divided into two main factions: the anti-slavery Conscience Whigs, based in Northern states, and the pro-South Cotton Whigs, also based in the industrial North, who wanted to maintain good business terms with the southern planters. While the "Consciences" were noted for their moral opposition to slavery, their Cottons counterpart's close association with the New England textile industry led them to de-emphasize the slavery issue. Notable Consciences included Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams while the Cottons were led by such figures as Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop and Abbott Lawrence.^[23]

The Consciences split from the Whig party in 1848, when the national party nominated the slave-owning General Zachary Taylor for President and played a role in the creation of the new Free Soil Party, which nominated Adams for Vice President on a ticket with anti-slavery former Democratic President Martin Van Buren.^[24]

Following the failure of the Free Soil Party in the election that year, most Conscience Whigs returned to the Whig fold, and more followed after the Compromise of 1850 temporarily neutralized the slavery issue. During the mid-1850s, several Conscience leaders played an important role in the founding of the Republican Party.^[25]

Presidential elections

Election	Candidate	Running mate	Votes	Vote %	Electoral votes	+/-	Outcome of election
1836	William H. Harrison	Francis Granger	550,816	36.6	73 / 294	New	Lost
	Hugh Lawson White	John Tyler	146,109	9.7	26 / 294
	Daniel Webster	Francis Granger	41,201	2.7	14 / 294
	Willie Person Mangum	John Tyler	0	0	11 / 294
1840	William H. Harrison	John Tyler	1,275,390	52.9	234 / 294	110	Victory
1844	Henry Clay	Theodore Frelinghuysen	1,300,004	48.1	105 / 275	129	Lost
1848	Zachary Taylor	Millard Fillmore	1,361,393	47.3	163 / 290	58	Victory
1852	Winfield Scott	William Alexander Graham	1,386,942	43.9	42 / 296	121	Lost
1856	Millard Fillmore	Andrew Jackson Donelson	873,053	21.5	8 / 296	34	Lost

Congressional elections

United States House of Representatives Election year No. of overall seats won +/– House Speaker 1834 75 / 242 New James K. Polk 1836 100 / 242 25 1838 109 / 242 9 Robert M. T. Hunter 1840 142 / 242 33 John White 1842 73 / 223 69 John W. Jones 1844 79 / 227 6 John W. Davis 1846 116 / 230 37 Robert Winthrop 1848 108 / 233 8 1854a[›] 54 / 234 17 Nathaniel P. Banks

United States Senate Election year No. of overall seats won +/– Senate President 1836/1837 17 / 52 17 Richard M. Johnson 1838/1839 20 / 52 3 1840/1841 29 / 52 9 Vacantb[›] 1842/1843 27 / 52 2 1844/1845 24 / 54 3 George M. Dallas 1846/1847 19 / 58 5 1848/1849 25 / 60 6 Millard Fillmore 1850/1851 22 / 62 3 Vacantb[›] 1852/1853 18 / 62 4 William R. King 1854/1855a[›] 14 / 62 4 Vacantd[›] 1856/1857 3 / 62 11 John C. Breckinridge

• ^ a: Merged in the Opposition Party at 34th Congress inauguration.
  
• ^ b: Office left vacant when Tyler assumed the presidency on April 4, 1841.
  
• ^ c: Office left vacant when Fillmore assumed the presidency on July 9, 1850.
  
• ^ d: Office left vacant after King's death on April 18, 1853.