The Whig Party was a conservative political party that existed in the United States from 1833 to 1856, rivaling the slightly larger Democratic Party during the Second Party System. The Whigs represented the conservative tradition of American politics during that era, championing the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of capitalism into the agrarian Midwest while also supporting social reform movements such as the public school, temperance, philanthropy, and - among a few Northern members - abolitionism. The Whigs combined the Federalist views on a strong central government, Protestant moralism, nationalism, and industrialism with National Republican views on internal improvements, modernization, and the broadening of the electorate to the middle-class to form a new political program encouraging of the "Protestant work ethic" and social mobility within a tiered society, contrary to the Jacksonian Democrats' agrarianism and egalitarianism. The Whig Party split over the slavery issue, with pro-slavery "Cotton Whigs" in the South leaving for the Democratic Party, pro-compromise Whigs forming the Constitutional Union Party (by way of the Know Nothings), and anti-slavery Whigs helping to form the Republican Party. The Republican Party inherited the Whigs' economic views while adopting Democratic views on mass participation in politics, while the Whigs' aristocratic tendencies were inherited by the Southern "Bourbon Democrats" during the Reconstruction era, leading to the Southern Democrats betraying their yeoman support base and disenfranchising them by the 1900s.
History[]
The Whig Party, supported by entrepreneurs, professionals, planters, social reformers, evangelical Protestants, and the emerging urban middle-class, was founded as a coalition of former National Republicans, Anti-Masons, Nullifiers, and Federalists who opposed the rise of populist Jacksonian democracy and the authoritarian ruling style of Democratic president Andrew Jackson. Whereas the Jacksonian Democrats supported a Jeffersonian idea of society in which the United States ought to expand to the Pacific and open up vast swathes of new territories to subsistence farmers and (especially in the case of Southern Democrats) slavery, the Whigs supported the expansion of industrial capitalism and, in the case of Northern Whigs, the restriction of slavery to the American South. Rather than transforming North America into a swathe of farmland governed by a highly-decentralized government, the Whig Party advocated modernization in the form of the construction of roads, canals, railroads, industries, and cities; rather than supporting "mob rule" and a spoils system, the Whigs supported protections against majority tyranny and a meritocracy; rather than allow for the popularly-elected President to abuse his power and lord over the US Congress, the Whigs supported rule of law and vigilance against executive tyranny; rather than allow for states' rights to be paramount, the Whigs supported American nationalism; and, with regard to the question of slavery, the Whigs supported compromise rather than either abolition or the unrestricted spread of slavery into the territories. In the social sphere, the Whigs were generally supportive of public education over home-schooling, temperance over the free consumption of alcohol, government involvement in the business-led modernization of America over laissez-faire economics, the Protestant work ethic over agrarian communitarianism, support for a national bank over poorly-capitalized state-chartered "wildcat banks," and - in the case of many Northern Whigs - the expansion of a free labor ideal rather than slavery.
The Whigs' support for industrial capitalism as a means of social mobiltiy attracted them the support of middle-class conservatives, as the Whigs embraced the economic and social changes of the Industrial Revolution, while the Democrats opposed society's transition from one of self-employed farmers into one of wage laborers. The Whigs drew strength from the economic elites in both Northern cities and Southern plantation regions, as the Whigs supported both the industrial capitalism that was rife in New England and the preservation of the traditional aristocracy over the encouragement of "mob rule" in the South. The Whigs built on the strength of the National Republicans and Anti-Masonic Party to build up party organizations in Delaware, Maryland, and much of New England, and, unlike their Federalist and National Republican predecessors, the Whigs were also strong in Tennessee and Kentucky (where support for internal improvements was high) and competitive in Louisiana, Georgia, and Virginia (home to industrial centers such as New Orleans, Atlanta, and Richmond). Morally-conservative Yankee settlers in the Midwest, who settled in the upper tiers of states such as Ohio and Indiana and were mainly Congregationalist and Presbyterian, were also staunch Whig supporters, as their parts of the state had access to the Erie Canal and raised wheat, cattle, and sheep; the southern parts of these states were populated mostly by Southern transplants who farmed corn and pigs, swilled whiskey, and voted Democratic. The Whigs were weak in Democratic strongholds like New Hampshire, Maine, Illinois, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas, where agrarianism was stronger than industrial capitalism.
In foreign policy matters, the Whigs were opposed to Manifest Destiny and the Mexican-American War, as well as to the Indian Removal Act, seeing the harsh treatment of Native Americans as immoral and territorial expansion as presenting the risk of reigniting the slavery debate as slavery threatened to expans along with the country. To make up for their anti-expansionism, the Whigs often ran war heroes as their presidential candidates, such as William Henry Harrison in 1836 and 1840, Zachary Taylor in 1848, and Winfield Scott in 1852.
Sure enough, the Mexican-American War and the conquest of the Mexican Cession reignited the slavery debate, which intensified in the 1850s as new states were created and the balance of free and slave states was upset. While the mainstream Whig Party refused to take a strong stance for or against slavery and instead preferred compromise, anti-slavery Whigs formed third parties such as the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party during the 1840s, where they were joined by anti-slavery "Barnburner" Democrats. As Northeastern "Conscience Whigs" critical of slavery came to dominate their party's political discourse, Southern Whigs staunchly supportive of slavery began to defect en masse to the Democratic Party, while pro-compromise Whigs would affiliate themselves with the American Party at the 1856 election and the Constitutional Union Party in 1860. The mass exodus of politicians out of the Whig Party led to the main party's death by 1856. In 1854, Free Soilers, Libertyites, Conscience Whigs, Barnburner Democrats, anti-slavery Know Nothings, and other opponents of slavery formed the Republican Party, which openly opposed the extension of slavery. The Whig Party was torn asunder between the Northern-sectionalist Republicans and the Southern-sectionalist Democrats, with the anti-sectionalist "Silver Greys" finding themselves confined to the centrist Constitutional Union Party or forced to become members of either major party. The American Civil War put an end to the slavery debate, and many Southern Whigs who remained loyal to the Union became Republicans and were derided as "Scalawags", while former Constitutional Unionists helped found several "Conservative" parties in states such as Virginia and North Carolina, continuing to support Whiggish economics and social views while opposing the Radical Republicans' war on white supremacism during Reconstruction. Other Whigs, such as Robert E. Lee, remained in the Democratic fold, and the Southern planter and industrial classes formed the bulk of the conservative "Bourbon Democrats", who were equally hostile to the Yankee-dominated Republicans and the populist Southern lower classes. Into the 1960s, the Southern Democrats were split between pro-business and populist wings, and the conservative Bourbon Democrats faced revolts by agrarian Democrats during the 1890s and by populist Democrats until the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s led to Southern conservatives beginning to join the Republican Party. In the North, most former Whigs remained loyal to the Republican Party, but some, including businessmen dependent on Southern trade leading up to the war, became Democrats during the Civil War.
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