The Constitutional Union Party was a conservative and Southern unionist political party in the United States that was active from 12 February 1860 to 1861. The party was founded by moderate Southerners who refused to join either the abolitionist Republican Party or the radically pro-slavery Southern Democrats ahead of the 1860 presidential election, and the party attracted unionist and conservative Southern Whigs (including "Opposition Party" members) and supporters of the declining nativist Know Nothings. The party was strongest among Southern Unionists and in the border states, winning the Upper South states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee in the 1860 presidential election. When the American Civil War broke out in April 1861, Constitutional Union Party leader John Bell sided with the Confederacy, while Constitutional Unionists who remained loyal to the Union formed the Unconditional Unionist Party.
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