Whig Party (United States)

Whig Party (United States), one of the two dominant political parties in power in the U.S. from the mid-1830s to the mid-1850s. The party was formed about 1834 by members of the defunct National Republican party and others opposed to the policies of President Andrew Jackson. It was composed of many factions, united only in their opposition to the Democratic party.

The Whig party nominated three unsuccessful candidates for president in the election of 1836. In 1840 the Whig ticket consisted of William H. Harrison for president and John Tyler for vice president. The Whigs triumphed, but Harrison died after one month in office, and Vice President Tyler, who had been a Jacksonian Democrat, acceded to the presidency. Tyler embittered the Whigs by vetoing the bills with which they had meant to restore the Bank of the United States, abolished by Jackson, and by opposing their plan to redistribute the proceeds from the sale of public lands. Most of Tyler's cabinet immediately resigned in protest, and his membership in the party was withdrawn.

In 1844 the Whig party, whose leaders were the statesmen Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, nominated Clay for president. In the ensuing campaign Clay refused to take a definite stand on the Texas annexation issue. This provoked northern abolitionists, who opposed the admission of Texas to the Union as a slave state, to support the Liberty party candidate. The Whig split ensured victory for the Democratic candidate, James K. Polk.

Once the Mexican War had been declared, controversy over admitting or excluding slavery from territory gained in the war further splintered the party. Antislavery Whigs, known as Conscience Whigs, in Massachusetts opposed the so-called Cotton Whigs in the proslavery states.

Despite the dissension, the Whig party, with the popular general Zachary Taylor as its candidate, was successful in the presidential election of 1848. The divisions resurfaced, however, when Taylor declared his opposition to Clay's proposal to end the deadlock over the admission of California to statehood. Before the stalemate could be resolved, Taylor died. His successor, Millard Fillmore, helped push Clay's compromise through Congress in 1850. The Compromise Measures of 1850 intensified the divisions within the party. Southerners and conservative northerners who supported the measures refused to cooperate with the northerners who opposed it. Consequently, the election of 1852 resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the Whig candidate, General Winfield Scott.

Southern Whig support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 convinced most northern Whigs to abandon the party, and by the end of that year it had essentially disbanded. Many voters who abandoned the Whig organization initially joined the so-called Know-Nothing party. Most northern Whigs, however, eventually joined the newly formed Republican party. In the South, most of the Whigs were soon absorbed by the Democratic party.

For the meaning of the term during the American Revolution, see Whig.