 These elections were the last gasp in the South to stand up to the Democrats in the emerging sharp sectional confrontation.In North Carolina, a Republican organization did not develop until after the Civil War and many former Whigs such as John Pool called themselves either the Whig Party or the Opposition Party through the election of 1860.This "new" Whig Party was actually just the state's affiliate of the American (Know Nothing) Party with a new name, according to Folk and Shaw's "W.W. Holden