Whig Party: Presidents, Platform, Beliefs, Decline, Historical Significance (1999)

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The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Four Presidents belonged to the Party while in office.[1] Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s.[2] It originally formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829–37) and his Democratic Party. In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Presidency and favored a program of modernization, banking and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing. It appealed to entrepreneurs and planters, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers. It included many active Protestants, and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal policies. Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence. "Whig" meant opposing tyranny.[3] Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide: Democrats stood for the 'sovereignty of the people' as expressed in popular demonstrations, constitutional conventions, and majority rule as a general principle of governing, whereas Whigs advocated the rule of law, written and unchanging constitutions, and protections for minority interests against majority tyranny.[4] The Whig Party nominated several presidential candidates in 1836, General William Henry Harrison of Ohio in 1840, preeminent leader Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1844, General Zachary Taylor of Virginia in 1848, and yet another war-hero, General Winfield Scott of Virginia in 1852. In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, Harrison and Taylor, elected President. Both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death in 1850, was the last Whig president. The party fell apart because of the internal tension over the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the nomination for a full-term of its own incumbent, President Fillmore, in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Scott. Most Whig Party leaders eventually quit politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The northern voter-base mostly gravitated to the new Republican Party. In the South, most joined the Know Nothing Party, which unsuccessfully ran Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, by which time the Whig Party had become virtually defunct. Some former Whigs became Democrats. The Constitutional Union Party experienced significant success from conservative former Whigs in the Upper South during the 1860 presidential election. Whig ideology as a policy orientation persisted for decades and played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state governments during Reconstruction. Presidents of the United States, dates in office William Henry Harrison (1841) John Tylera (1841–45) Zachary Taylor (1849–50) Millard Fillmore (1850–53) Additionally, John Quincy Adams, elected President as a Democratic-Republican, later became a National Republican, then a Anti-Masonic, and then a Whig after he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1831. Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison were Whigs before switching to the Republican Party, from which they were elected to office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)