Whig Party

Whig Party. When President Andrew Jackson won reelection in 1832, soundly defeating a divided field of challengers, anti‐administration leaders recognized the need for a new opposition party to challenge the Democrats.The National Republican party, represented by Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, no longer garnered widespread support. The newly formed Anti‐Masonic party, led by Thurlow Weed and William Seward in New York and Thaddeus Stevens in Pennsylvania, represented an organized but narrowly focused group. Coming together in 1834, the founders of the new party dubbed themselves the Whigs, opposing “King Andrew” as the English Whig party had opposed James II in the Glorious Revolution, and later George III.

Born of political opposition to Jackson, the early Whigs struggled to define a more positive party platform. The Democrat Martin Van Buren's presidential victory in 1836 gave them ample time to consolidate their party. With the Panic of 1837 as a backdrop, they articulated a program for economic recovery. Most Whigs embraced Clay's American System, calling for high protective tariffs, federally subsidized internal improvements, and a national bank. (Despite Clay's prominence as a Whig congressional leader, he never managed to win the presidency.) Though accused of being the party of elite businessmen, Whig candidates in fact won votes among all economic groups, giving them a rough parity of electoral power with the Democratic party.

Whigs criticized the growth of executive power, a development they associated with Jackson's use of civil‐service patronage. Many who came from an evangelical Protestant background encouraged groups fostering moral reform. Whigs also vehemently opposed U.S. territorial expansion during and after the Mexican War. What brought Whigs together, however, was not a rigid set of policies. Indeed, when they won the presidency in 1840 and 1848, electing the military heroes William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor (both of whom died soon after taking office), their candidates had run without a formal platform. Rather, party members united around a common worldview and a shared vision of the nation's future. Their conservative temperament emphasized individual self‐control and the harmony of collective interests. So long as the populace preserved republican virtues, Whigs saw hope in an emerging industrial nation.

Whatever their foresight, the Whigs ran aground in the 1850s when they confronted the divisive slavery issue. Though Whigs had previously bridged northern and southern interests, differences over the Compromise of 1850 tore the party asunder as many of its supporters defected to the recently formed nativist Know‐Nothing party. Despite their collapse as an electoral force in 1854, Whigs and Whig ideas continued to influence American politics through the emergent Republican party. Indeed, the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, like many others in the new party, had spent much of his career as a Whig.
See also Antebellum Era; Bank of the United States, First and Second; Conservatism; Depressions, Economic; Individualism; Industrialization; Political Parties; Protestantism; Republicanism.

Bibliography

Daniel Walker Howe , The Political Culture of the American Whigs, 1979.
Michael F. Holt , The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 1999.

Eric D. Daniels