Whig Party

The Whig Party was (along with the Democratic Party) one of the two main parties of the Second Party System. It operated in every state after formation by Henry Clay in 1832 to promote modernizing policies and battle President Andrew Jackson's policies. It elected its candidates for president in 1840 and 1848, but they both soon died. The party ran its last candidate in 1852, then quickly collapsed because it could not deal with the slavery issue.

Origins

The Whigs were modernizers who saw President Andrew Jackson as a dangerous man on horseback with a reactionary opposition to the forces of social, economic and moral modernization. As Jackson purged his opponents, vetoed internal improvements and killed the Second Bank of the United States, alarmed local elites fought back. Controlling the Senate for a while, they 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. Backing Henry Clay in 1832 and a medley of candidates in 1836, the opposition finally coalesced in 1840 behind a popular general, William Henry Harrison, and proved the national Whig Party could win.

The Whigs were ready to enact their programs in 1841 when Harrison was succeeded by John Tyler, an old-line Democrat who never believed in Whiggery. Factionalism ruined the party's program, and helped defeat Clay in 1844. In 1848 opportunity beckoned as the Democrats split. By ignoring Clay and nominating a famous war hero, General Zachary Taylor, the Whigs papered over their deepening splits on slavery, and won.

Rejecting the automatic party loyalty that was the hallmark of tight Democratic party organization, the Whigs suffered from factionalism. On the other hand they had a superb network of newspapers that provided an internal information system. In the 1840s Whigs won 49 percent of gubernatorial elections, with strong bases in the manufacturing Northeast and in the border states. The trend over time, however, was for the Democratic vote to grow faster, and for the Whigs to lose more and more marginal states and districts. After the close 1844 contest, the Democratic advantage widened and the Whigs could win the White House only if the Democrats split.

Whig Issues

The Whigs celebrated Clay's vision of the "American System." They 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," especially expansion of the road and canal systems. To modernize the inner American, the Whigs helped create public schools, private colleges, charities, and cultural institutions. The Democrats harkened to the Jeffersonian ideal of an egalitarian agricultural society, advising that traditional farm life bred republican simplicity, while modernization threatened to create a politically powerful caste of rich aristocrats who threatened to subvert democracy. In general the Democrats enacted their policies at the national level, while the Whigs succeeded in passing modernization projects in most states.

Whig Supporters

The Whigs won votes in every social-economic class, including the poorest. They appealed more to the upper half of the social-economic scale. The Democrats likewise won support up and down the scale, but they often sharpened their appeals to the lower half by ridiculing the aristocratic pretensions of the Whigs. Most bankers, storekeepers, factory owners, master mechanics, clerks and professionals favored the Whigs. Commercially-oriented farmers in the North voted Whig, as did most large-scale planters in the South. In general, the commercial and manufacturing towns and cities were heavily Whig, save for Democratic wards filled with recent Irish Catholic and German immigrants. The 1830s saw waves of Protestant religious revivals, which injected a moralistic element into the Whig ranks. Non-religious individuals who found themselves targets of moralism, such as calls for prohibition, denounced the Whigs as Puritans and sought refuge in the Democratic party.