When was the Whig party founded?
Whig Party (United States)
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. It emerged in the 1830s as the leading opponent of Jacksonian democracy, pulling together former members of the National Republican (one of the successors of the Democratic-Republican Party) and the Anti-Masonic Party. It had links to the upscale traditions of the long-defunct Federalist Party. Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1840s to the mid-1860s. It originally formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829–1837) 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, planters, reformers and the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers. It included many active Protestants and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal. Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs (aka the Patriots) of the 18th century who fought for independence. The political philosophy of the American Whig Party was not related to the British Whig party. Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide:
Elihu B. Washburne
In 1854 Washburne supported Abraham Lincoln's unsuccessful candidacy for the United States Senate. In the mid-1850s the Whig Party dissolved, and the Republican Party was founded as the major anti-slavery party. Washburne joined the Republican Party, and in 1856 supported its first candidate for president, John C. Frémont.
Nullification Crisis
In the political vacuum created by this alienation, the southern wing of the Whig Party was formed. The party was a coalition of interests united by the common thread of opposition to Andrew Jackson and, more specifically, his "definition of federal and executive power." The party included former National Republicans with an "urban, commercial, and nationalist outlook" as well as former nullifiers. Emphasizing that "they were more southern than the Democrats," the party grew within the South by going "after the abolition issue with unabashed vigor and glee." With both parties arguing who could best defend southern institutions, the nuances of the differences between free soil and abolitionism, which became an issue in the late 1840s with the Mexican War and territorial expansion, never became part of the political dialogue. This failure increased the volatility of the slavery issues.
Daniel Webster
In the aftermath of the battle over the national bank, Jackson's political opponents coalesced into the Whig Party. By taking a name rooted in American and British history, the Whigs implicitly criticized Jackson as a tyrannical executive. Although National Republicans like Clay and Webster formed the core of the Whig Party, Anti-Masonic leaders like William H. Seward and states' rights Democrats like John Tyler also joined the new party. The Whig Party proved more durable the National Republican Party and, along with the Democrats, the Whigs became one of the two major parties of the Second Party System, which would extend into the 1850s. By 1834, Webster supporters such as Caleb Cushing, Rufus Choate, Abbott Lawrence, and Edward Everett had begun preparing for his candidacy in the 1836 presidential election. With Clay showing no indication of making another run, Webster hoped to become the main Whig candidate in the 1836 election, but General William Henry Harrison and Senator Hugh Lawson White retained strong support in West and the South, respectively. Rather than uniting behind one presidential candidate, Whig leaders settled on a strategy of running multiple candidates in order to force a contingent election in the House of Representatives.
Washington Hunt
After the break-up of the Whig Party, Hunt, despite his previous association with the Seward/Weed faction of the party, was among the more conservative Whigs who refused to join the Republicans. Hunt was the chairman of the 1856 Whig National Convention and supported his fellow New York Whig, former president Millard Fillmore for the presidency in that year. In 1860, Hunt joined the Constitutional Union Party and supported its nominee for the presidency, John Bell. After it became clear that Bell could not win on his own in New York, Hunt was involved in the formation of a fusion ticket with the supporters of Democrat Stephen Douglas.
Whig Party (United States)
In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread Northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants. In the South, the Whig Party vanished—but as Thomas Alexander has shown, Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades. Historians estimate that in the South in 1856 former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate. He won only 13% of the Northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column. The future in the North, most observers thought at the time, was Republican. Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level. Twenty-six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856. The convention met for only two days and on the second day (and only ballot) quickly nominated Fillmore for President, who had already been nominated for President by the Know Nothing Party. Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for Vice President. Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.
Richard W. Thompson
During the 1850s Thompson and some of his fellow Whigs (such as his friend Schuyler Colfax) transferred allegiance to the American Party, better known as the Know Nothing Party. They did so due to their suspicion of the increased immigration from Ireland and Germany, but also because of the view of the northern portion of the American Party to be opposed to slavery. In time Thompson and his allies would allow an alliance of their portion of the Whig Party (which was collapsing with the American Party to prevent victories in elections by the Democratic Party.
Whig Party (British political party)
On 9 December 2014, Ghani was interviewed by Jo Coburn on the BBC's "Daily Politics". Ghani has also received support from American Whigs. The party was founded without any policies, but instead a group of values such as human rights, love of country and diversity, for which they use the Swedish word "mångfald" (meaning "diversity", "variety" or "multitude"). In early 2015, the Whig Party formed an agreement with Something New that meant both parties would cross-endorse candidates and they would not stand opposing candidates in the same seats.
Winfield Scott
In the mid-1830s, Scott joined the Whig Party, which was established by opponents of President Jackson. Scott's success in preventing war with Canada under Van Buren confirmed his popularity with the broad public, and in early 1839 newspapers began to mention him as a candidate for the presidential nomination at the 1839 Whig National Convention. By the time of the convention in December 1839, party leader Henry Clay and 1836 presidential candidate William Henry Harrison had emerged as the two front-runners, but Scott loomed as potential compromise candidate if the convention deadlocked. After several ballots, the convention nominated Harrison for president Harrison went on to defeat Van Buren in the 1840 presidential election, but he died just one month into his term and was succeeded by Vice President John Tyler.
Whigs (British political party)
Ashcraft and Goldsmith (1983) have traced in detail in the period 1689 to 1710 the major influence of the liberal political ideas of John Locke on Whig political values, as expressed in widely cited manifestos such as "Political Aphorisms: or, the True Maxims of Government Displayed", an anonymous pamphlet that appeared in 1690 and was widely cited by Whigs. The 18th-century Whigs borrowed the concepts and language of universal rights employed by political theorists Locke and Algernon Sidney (1622–1682). By the 1770s the ideas of Adam Smith, a founder of classical liberalism became important. As Wilson and Reill (2004) note: "Adam Smith's theory melded nicely with the liberal political stance of the Whig Party and its middle-class constituents".
Henry W. Corbett
The Democratic Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) and the Whig Party (which had been pretty well destroyed after the 1852 elections) had been the major political parties in the United States. Corbett had been a Whig and follower of Henry Clay but when the Republican Party was founded on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan, he was one of its early and enthusiastic supporters. The Republican Party was founded as the anti-slavery party in opposition to the pro-slavery Democratic Party in one of the few fundamental reorganizations of the American political system.
Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)
The Liberal Party was formally founded in 1859, replacing the Whig Party as one of the two leading parties. With increasing party discipline it became easier to define the principal opposition party and the Leaders of the Opposition.
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was never a homogeneous party. It was essentially divided into two main factions: the anti-slavery Conscience Whigs, based in Northern states, and the pro-South Cotton Whigs, also based in the industrial North, who wanted to maintain good business terms with the southern planters. While the "Consciences" were noted for their moral opposition to slavery, their Cottons counterpart's close association with the New England textile industry led them to de-emphasize the slavery issue. Notable Consciences included Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams while the Cottons were led by such figures as Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop and Abbott Lawrence.
Political party
The first modern political factions, however, can be said to have originated in early modern Britain. The first political factions, cohering around a basic, if fluid, set of principles, emerged from the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution in late 17th century England. The Whigs supported Protestant constitutional monarchy against absolute rule; the Tories, originating in the Royalist (or "Cavalier") faction of the English Civil War, were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the republican tendencies of Whigs, who were the dominant political faction for most of the first half of the 18th century; the Whigs supported the Hanoverian succession of 1715 against the Jacobite supporters of the deposed Roman Catholic Stuart dynasty, and were able to purge Tory politicians from important government positions after the failed Jacobite rising of 1715. The leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government in the period 1721–1742; his protégé was Henry Pelham (1743–1754).
Charles A. Wickliffe
Charles Anderson Wickliffe (June 8, 1788 – October 31, 1869) was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky. He also served as Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, the 14th Governor of Kentucky, and was appointed Postmaster General by President John Tyler. Though he consistently identified with the Whig Party, he was politically independent, and often had differences of opinion with Whig founder and fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay.
List of United Kingdom Whig and allied party leaders, 1801–1859
This article provides a list of United Kingdom Whig and allied party leaders from 1801 to 1859. During the 19th century, the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites gradually evolved into the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party was formally established in 1859 and continued to exist until it merged with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to create the Liberal Democrats.
Whig Party (United States)
After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their Southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market, but cared little about slavery one way or another. However, many Whig voters in the North thought that slavery was incompatible with a free labor, free market economy and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which did not pass Congress, but would have stopped the expansion of slavery. No one found a compromise that would keep the party united. Furthermore, the burgeoning economy made full-time careers in business or law much more attractive than politics for ambitious young Whigs; thus, the Whig Party leader in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, simply abandoned politics after 1849, instead attending to his law business.
Early-18th-century Whig plots
During the early 18th century Great Britain was undergoing a government shift into a two party system.
The prior conservative party, the Tories, was the primary political party, but at the turn of the 18th century the Whigs, a liberal faction, had begun to rise in influence. As the parties struggled for power in Parliament, tensions rose. When the Whig party continued to grow in power and influence, gaining more representation in Parliament and recognition in the general public, the Tories, found themselves challenged over their policies and opinions. The arguments of government went beyond the House of Parliament. Public speeches, debates, and other forms of popular influence arose, creating a new style of politics. This was the environment that Princess Anne found herself when she became Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland on March 8, 1702. Her brother-in-law, William III of England and II of Scotland who had preceded her had been in support of the growing two party system, and in respect, Anne "endured" the Whigs despite her alliance with the Tory party. The tensions between the parties had escalated to the point where party members became paranoid of conspiracies and conducted plots against one another. The Whigs conspired assassination plots against important Tory figures as an attempt to make way for their policies and political agendas.
Edward Bishop Dudley
Dudley easily won reelection in 1838. A meeting of Wake County Democrats nominated Branch, who was in many ways the founder of the Whig party although he now called himself a Democrat. Many Democrats refused to recognize the nomination and stayed away from the polls. Dudley received 64 percent of the vote, the largest margin ever won by an antebellum candidate for governor.
He urged more aid to internal improvement and to public schools, but owing primarily to East-West sectionalism, he accomplished relatively little.
Whig Party (United States)
In late 1839, the Whigs held their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison as their presidential candidate. In March 1840, Harrison pledged to serve only one term as President if elected, a pledge that reflected popular support for a constitutional limit to presidential terms among many in the Whig Party. Harrison went on to victory in 1840, defeating Van Buren's re-election bid largely as a result of the Panic of 1837 and subsequent depression. Harrison served only 31 days and became the first President to die in office. He was succeeded by John Tyler, a Virginian and states' rights absolutist. Tyler vetoed the Whig economic legislation and was expelled from the Whig party in September 1841.
Whig history
The British historian Herbert Butterfield coined the term "Whig history" in his short but influential book "The Whig Interpretation of History" (1931). It takes its name from the British Whigs, advocates of the power of Parliament, who opposed the Tories, advocates of the power of the king.
1852 United States presidential election
The Union party was formed in 1851, an offshoot of the Whig party in several Southern states, including Georgia. As the 1852 presidential election approached, Union party leaders decided to wait and see who was nominated by the two major parties. The movement to nominate Daniel Webster as a third-party candidate began in earnest following the Whig Convention, largely driven by those who had been strenuously opposed to Winfield Scott's nomination, among them Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and George Curtis. While Webster was against what he perceived as a "revolt" from the Whig Party and preferred not to be nominated, he let Americans vote for him should the party choose to nominate him.
Presidency of Andrew Jackson
The National Republicans, including Clay and Webster, formed the core of the Whig Party, but many Anti-Masons like William H. Seward of New York and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania also joined. Several prominent Democrats defected to the Whigs, including former Attorney General John Berrien, Senator Willie Person Mangum of North Carolina, and John Tyler of Virginia. Even John Eaton, the former Secretary of War, became a member of the Whig Party. Beginning in December 1833, voting behavior in Congress began to be dominated by partisan affiliation. By the time of the 1836 presidential election, Whigs and Democrats had established state parties throughout the country, though party strength varied by state and many of Jackson's opponents in the Deep South eschewed the Whig label. While Democrats openly embraced partisanship and campaigning, many Whigs only reluctantly accepted the new system of party politics, and they lagged behind the Democrats in establishing national organizations and cross-sectional unity. Along with the Democrats, the Whigs were one of the two major parties of the Second Party System, which would extend into the 1850s. Calhoun's nullifiers did not fit neatly into either party, and they pursued alliances with both major parties at various times.
United States presidential election, 1840
After the negative views of Freemasonry among a large segment of the public began to wane in the mid 1830s, the Anti-Masonic Party had begun to disintegrate. Its leaders began to move one by one to the Whig party. Party leaders met in September 1837 in Washington, D.C., and agreed to maintain the party. The third Anti-Masonic Party National Convention was held in Philadelphia on November 13-14, 1838. By this time, the party had been almost entirely supplanted by the Whigs. The delegates unanimously voted to nominate William Henry Harrison for president (who the party had supported for president the previous election along with Francis Granger for Vice President) and Daniel Webster for Vice President. However, when the Whig National Convention nominated Harrison with John Tyler as his running mate, the Anti-Masonic Party did not make an alternate nomination and ceased to function and was fully absorbed into the Whigs by 1840.
Whigs (British political party)
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), a leading London intellectual, repeatedly denigrated the "vile" Whigs and praised the Tories, even during the times of Whig political supremacy. In his great "Dictionary" (1755), Johnson defined a Tory as "one who adheres to the ancient Constitution of the state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of England, opposed to a Whig". He linked 18th-century Whiggism with 17th-century revolutionary Puritanism, arguing that the Whigs of his day were similarly inimical to the established order of church and state. Johnson recommended that strict uniformity in religious externals was the best antidote to the objectionable religious traits that he linked to Whiggism.
Whig Party (British political party)
The Whig Party is a political party in England which is intended to be a revival of the Whigs that existed in the United Kingdom from 1678 to 1868.
Wolverine Citizen
In 1850, Francis H. Rankin, Sr. came to Flint, Michigan and opened the "Genesee Whig". Six years later it was renamed "The Wolverine Citizen and Genesee Whig". Later yet, Genesee Whig was dropped from the title. The paper was used to support the formation of the Republican Party from the remains of the Whig Party and the anti-slavery section of the Democratic Party. During the American Civil War, the newspaper switch to daily publication for 18 months. The paper was very supportive of the Federal side. 
When, Francis, Jr. was thirteen, he started working at the press. In 1881, he gained half interest in the "Citizen". He continued the paper after his father's death until 1915.
George Ticknor Curtis
From 1840 to 1843, Curtis was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Whig. A political ally of Daniel Webster, he was one of the "Cotton Whigs" who joined the Democratic Party when the Whig party dissolved in 1856.
An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs
Edmund Burke's position in the Whig party during the parliamentary session of 1790–91 was awkward. His "Reflections on the Revolution in France", published in November 1790, had been generally well received by both the conservative Old Whigs and radical New Whigs. However, after the leading Whig Charles James Fox publicly denounced it, no fellow Whigs came out openly in Burke's defence. Burke was repeatedly called an apostate from Whiggism. 12 May 1791 issue of the "Morning Chronicle" proclaimed Burke's expulsion from the Whig party:
Whigs (British political party)
Ashley claimed that "[t]he traditional policy of the Whig party from before the Revolution [of 1688] down to the time of Fox was an extreme form of Protectionism". The Whigs' protectionism of this period is today increasingly cited with approval by heterodox economists such as Ha-Joon Chang, who wish to challenge contemporary prevailing free trade orthodoxies via precedents from the past.
Whigs (British political party)
It was only now that a genuine two-party system can be seen to emerge, with Pitt and the government on the one side, and the ousted Fox-North coalition on the other. On 17 December 1783, Fox stated in the House of Commons that "[i]f [...] a change must take place, and a new ministry is to be formed and supported, not by the confidence of this House or the public, but the sole authority of the Crown, I, for one, shall not envy that hon. gentleman his situation. From that moment I put in my claim for a monopoly of Whig principles". Although Pitt is often referred to as a "Tory" and Fox as a "Whig", Pitt always considered himself to be an independent Whig, and generally opposed the development of a strict partisan political system.
Philosophic Whigs
The Philosophic Whigs were a significant grouping in the nineteenth century Whig party, who drew on the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment to bring the concept of social change and progress to British political thought.
Allen Wardner
Following the death of his wife he began to withdraw from active management of his business ventures, turned over their management to one of his sons and retired in the late 1840s. He became a Whig after the Anti-Masonic Party dissolved, and joined the Republicans when that party was founded in the 1850s.
Elisha Whittlesey
Whittlesey was elected to the Eighteenth through Twenty-second Congresses, elected as an Anti-Masonic candidate to the Twenty-third Congress, and elected as a Whig to the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Congresses and served from March 4, 1823, to July 9, 1838, when he resigned. He was one of the founders of the Whig Party.
He served as chairman of the Committee on Claims (Twenty-first through Twenty-fifth Congresses).
He was Sixth Auditor of the Treasury from March 18, 1841, until December 18, 1843, when he resigned and resumed the practice of law in Canfield.
He was appointed general agent of the Washington Monument Association in 1847.
He was appointed by President Zachary Taylor as First Comptroller of the Treasury and served from May 31, 1849, to March 26, 1857, when he was removed by President James Buchanan.
He was reappointed by President Abraham Lincoln April 10, 1861, and served until his death in Washington, D.C., January 7, 1863. He was interred in the Canfield Village Cemetery, Canfield, Ohio.
Bushrod Washington Wilson
Wilson's earliest political allegiance was to the Whig Party. He had free-soil proclivities and supported the abolition of slavery. Following the demise of the Whig Party and establishment of the Republican Party, he became a member of that organization.
Levi Lincoln Jr.
Lincoln was one of several politicians whose leadership led to the solid establishment of the National Republicans and their successors the Whigs. The National Republican Party in Massachusetts grew out a coalition of former Jeffersonian Republicans (led by Lincoln) and former Federalists (led by Daniel Webster), who coalesced to support President John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s. Lincoln critically refused an offer of a position in the United States Senate in 1827, citing the need to remain in the state and strengthen the then-fragile National Republican organization. The Whig Party, which succeeded the National Republicans, dominated state politics until 1854.
Whig Party (United States)
The American Whigs were modernizers who saw President Andrew Jackson as "a dangerous man on horseback"—like a king—with a "reactionary opposition" to the forces of social, economic and moral modernization. The Democratic-Republicans who formed the Whig Party, led by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, drew on a Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government and territorial expansion combined with national unity and support for a Federal transportation network and domestic manufacturing. Casting their enemy as "King Andrew", they sought to identify themselves as modern-day opponents of governmental overreaching.
Whigs (British political party)
Until the decline of the Liberal Party in the early 20th century, it was "de rigueur" for Liberal MPs and peers to be members of the Reform Club, being regarded as an unofficial party headquarters. However, in 1882 the National Liberal Club was established under William Ewart Gladstone's chairmanship, designed to be more "inclusive" towards Liberal grandees and activists throughout the United Kingdom.
Opposition Party (Southern U.S.)
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: a Political Biography".
Democratic Party (United States)
Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small yet decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery. In 1854, angry with the Kansas–Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party and joined Northern Whigs to form the Republican Party.
Presidency of Martin Van Buren
Van Buren's competitors in the election of 1836 were three members of the newly established Whig Party, a loose coalition bound by mutual opposition to Jackson's anti-bank policies but lacking the party unity or organizational strength to field a single ticket or define a single platform. The Whigs ran several regional candidates in hopes of sending the election to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would have one vote and the Whigs would stand a better chance of winning. The three candidates were: Hugh White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and William Henry Harrison of Indiana. Besides endorsing internal improvements and a national bank, the Whigs tried to tie Democrats to abolitionism and sectional tension, and attacked Jackson for "acts of aggression and usurpation of power."
Whig history
Whig history has no direct relation to either the British Whig or American Whig parties and should not be confused with "Whiggism", which is a political ideology. The term "Whiggery" is ambiguous in contemporary usage: it may either mean party politics and ideology, or a general intellectual approach.
Neill S. Brown
Brown was a founding member of Tennessee's Whig Party. He was an elector for Hugh Lawson White in 1836, and campaigned for William Henry Harrison and Henry Clay in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844, respectively. He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1837, becoming the legislature's youngest member during the 1837-1839 term. In 1843, Brown ran a competitive race against Democratic incumbent Aaron V. Brown (no relation) for the 6th District congressional seat, but was defeated.
Whigs (British political party)
The Liberal Party (the term was first used officially in 1868, but had been used colloquially for decades beforehand) arose from a coalition of Whigs, free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel and free trade Radicals, first created, tenuously under the Peelite Earl of Aberdeen in 1852 and put together more permanently under the former Canningite Tory Lord Palmerston in 1859. Although the Whigs at first formed the most important part of the coalition, the Whiggish elements of the new party progressively lost influence during the long leadership of the former Peelite William Ewart Gladstone and many of the old Whig aristocrats broke from the party over the issue of Irish home rule in 1886 to help form the Liberal Unionist Party, which in turn would merge with the Conservative Party by 1912. However, the Unionist support for trade protection in the early twentieth century under Joseph Chamberlain (probably the least Whiggish character in the Liberal Unionist party) further alienated the more orthodox Whigs. By the early twentieth century "Whiggery" was largely irrelevant and without a natural political home. One of the last active politicians to celebrate his Whiggish roots was the Liberal Unionist statesman Henry James.
Whiggism
After the huge success (from the Whig point of view) of the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, Whiggism dominated English and British politics until about 1760, although in practice the political group splintered into different factions. After 1760, the Whigs lost power – apart from sharing it in some short-lived coalition governments – but Whiggism fashioned itself into a generalised belief system that emphasised innovation and liberty and was strongly held by about half of the leading families in England and Scotland, as well as most merchants, dissenters and the middle classes. The opposing Tory position was held by the other great families, the Church of England, most of the landed gentry and officers of the army and the navy. Whiggism originally referred to the Whigs of the British Isles, but the name of "Old Whigs" was largely adopted by the American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies. Following independence, American Whiggism became known as republicanism. The term "Old Whigs" was also used in Britain for those Whigs who opposed Robert Walpole as part of the Country Party.
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig ideology combined conservatism and modernization--with appropriate policies that were usually under heavy attack by the more democratic Democrats. Nevertheless the issues they raised became part of American political thought. They were typically rooted in evangelical Christianity, as expressed in the Second Great Awakening. Whigs linked moral progress and material progress--each needed the other. They supported Protestant religiosity and missions, while being fearful of Catholics. Whigs believed that a higher stage of morality would be achieved when as America brought wealth and opportunity to everyone. Colleges and public schools would promote upward social mobility was discouraging immorality and dissipation. Rapid business expansion was good not the moral danger Democrats warned about.. Gregory Bowen notes that the two parties were polar opposite and highly ideological: "At the heart of Democratic ideology was a militant egalitarianism which contrasted sharply with the Whigs' support for equality of opportunity to produce a meritocratic society." Historian John Ashworth shows how polarized the two parties were on important questions of economic development: "It was a clash of democracy with capitalism." Democrats glorified individualism while Whigs said it was a dangerous impulse that must be subordinated to the greater good of an organic society; they called for individuals to restrain themselves and focus on doing their duty. 
In 1860, many former Whigs who had not joined the Republicans regrouped as the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated only a presidential ticket. It had considerable strength in the border states, which feared the onset of civil war. Its presidential candidate, John Bell, finished third in the electoral college.
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament. Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey. After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832.
Whig Party (United States)
The Whigs' internal disunity and the nation's increasing prosperity made the party's activist economic program seem less necessary, leading to a disastrous showing in the 1842 Congressional election.
Morrill Tariff
Meanwhile, the Whig Party broke up, and this element of the Whig program was taken up by the new Republican Party, which ran its first national ticket in 1856. Some former Whigs from the Border States and upper South remained in Congress as "Opposition", "Unionist", or "American" (Know Nothing) members; they also supported higher tariffs.
John J. Crittenden
Crittenden was active in organizing the Whig Party from the remnants of the defunct National Republican Party in 1834. On July 4, 1834, he called to order the party's first organizational meeting in the state at Cove Spring, Kentucky. He was chosen as chair of the committee on resolutions and in a speech on July 5, bitterly condemned President Jackson. Later in 1834, Kentucky governor James T. Morehead appointed Crittenden Secretary of State. In the August elections, Whigs won a majority in both houses of the General Assembly. When the Assembly convened, they elected Crittenden to the U.S. Senate over Democrat James Guthrie by a vote of 94–40.
Whigs (British political party)
Whigs restored their unity by supporting moral reforms, especially the abolition of slavery and emancipation of the Catholics. They triumphed in 1830 as champions of Parliamentary reform. They made Lord Grey prime minister 1830–1834 and the Reform Act 1832 Grey championed became their signature measure. It broadened the franchise and ended the system of "rotten boroughs" and "pocket boroughs" (where elections were controlled by powerful families) and instead redistributed power on the basis of population. It added 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000 in England and Wales. Only the upper and middle classes voted, so this shifted power away from the landed aristocracy to the urban middle classes. In 1832, the party abolished slavery in the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. It purchased and freed the slaves, especially those in the Caribbean sugar islands. After parliamentary investigations demonstrated the horrors of child labour, limited reforms were passed in 1833. Catholic emancipation was secured in the Catholic Relief Act 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholics in Britain. The Whigs also passed the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 that reformed the administration of relief to the poor.
Whiggism
Quickly following the adoption of "whig" as the name of a political faction, the word "whiggism" was already in use by the 1680s. In 1682, Edmund Hickeringill published his "History of Whiggism". In 1702, writing satirically in the guise of a Tory, Daniel Defoe asserted: "We can never enjoy a settled uninterrupted Union and Tranquility in this Nation, till the Spirit of Whiggisme, Faction, and Schism is melted down like the Old-Money". The name probably originates from a shortening of Whiggamore referring to the Whiggamore Raid.
Judah P. Benjamin
In May 1856, Benjamin joined the Democrats, stating they had the principles of the old-time Whig Party. He indicated, in a letter to constituents, that as Northern Whigs had failed to vote to uphold the rights granted to Southern states in the Constitution, the Whigs, as a national party, were no more.
Whig Party (United States)
Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats' Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states, including Scott's home state of New Jersey. Whig Representative Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming: "We are slain. The party is dead—dead—dead!." Increasingly, politicians realized that the party was dead.
Whig Party (British political party)
Waleed Ghani and his fiancée Felicity Anscomb applied to register the Whig Party with the Electoral Commission on 27 May 2014. The Whig Party was registered with the Electoral Commission on 15 September 2014. The Electoral Commission lists Waleed Ghani as its Leader and Nominating Officer and Felicity Anscomb as its Treasurer. Ghani founded the party with the intention of filling a vacuum he saw in British politics. Jesse Norman, a Conservative Member of Parliament who in 2013 published a biography of the famous Whig politician Edmund Burke, proposed that Ghani may have exaggerated Whigs' historical progressive achievements.
Whigs (British political party)
With the succession of Elector George Louis of Hanover as king in 1714, the Whigs returned to government. The Jacobite rising of 1715 discredited much of the Tory party as treasonous Jacobites, and the Septennial Act ensured that the Whigs became the dominant party. Between 1714 and 1760, the Tories died out as an active political force, but always retained a considerable presence in the House of Commons. The governments of Robert Walpole, Henry Pelham and his older brother the Duke of Newcastle dominated between 1721 and 1757 (with a brief break during the also-Whig Carteret ministry). The leading entities in these governments consistently referred to themselves as "Whigs".
Foxite
The Foxite and Grenvillite factions combined their forces in the House of Commons in 1808. Grenville and Grey jointly proposed George Ponsonby as leader in the Commons. In effect, this step created the more organised Whig Party of the nineteenth century and was a major stage in the decline of the factional political system more characteristic of the eighteenth century. In effect, the Foxites ceased thereafter to be a distinct group.
1856 Whig National Convention
The 1856 Whig National Convention was a quadrennial presidential nomination convention of the Whig Party. The convention was held at the 1851 landmark Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts over the old Centre ("Marsh") Market in Market Place (formerly Harrison Street) between East Baltimore Street and Water Street along South Gay Street and the west bank of the Jones Falls stream through downtown Baltimore, in Maryland on September 17 and September 18, 1856. Same site as the previous 1852 Convention. Former President Millard Fillmore was nominated as the party's candidate for President, four years after a failed bid to win the nomination in 1852. Andrew J. Donelson, nephew of the late President Andrew Jackson, was nominated as the party's candidate for Vice President. The convention was the last for the Whig party, which had floundered after losing a total of 37 seats in the Congress in the 1850 and 1852 elections. The Democratic candidates James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge, won the 1856 presidential election.
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Most of the House of Commons disagreed with Burke and his popularity declined. As the French Revolution broke into factions, the Whig Party broke in two: the New Whig party and the Old Whig party. As founder of the Old Whigs, Burke always took the opportunity to engage in debate with the New Whigs about French Jacobinism.
Whig Party (United States)
During the latter part of the American Civil War and during the Reconstruction Era, many former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves "conservatives" and hoping to reconnect with ex-Whigs in the North. Thus in Virginia and elsewhere moderate, nationalist, and economically innovative ex Whigs used the party name “Conservative” in order to avoid identification with the Democratic party. In a few years the Conservative Party merged into the Democratic Party in the South. However the ex-Whigs continued to promote modernization policies such as large-scale railroad construction and the founding of public schools.
In today's American political discourse, historians and pundits often cite the Whig Party as an example of a political party that lost its followers and reason for being, as in the expression "going the way of the Whigs." a term referred to by Donald Critchlow in his book, "The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History". Critchlow points out that the application of the term by Republicans in the Republican Party of 1974 may have been a misnomer—the old Whig party enjoyed more political support before its demise than the Republican Party in the aftermath of Nixon's resignation.
Charles S. Morehead
Following his congressional tenure, Morehead resumed his law practice and management of his plantations. In 1852, he was a presidential elector for Winfield Scott, and in 1853, he served another term in the Kentucky House. By early 1855, sectional divisions had ripped apart the national Whig Party. In Kentucky, many former Whigs associated with the Know Nothing Party. Morehead was among these; he claimed that the Know Nothing Party was more "Union" than the Democratic Party. The ex-Whigs hoped to take over the Know Nothing Party and reshape it into a Unionist Whig organization. Accordingly, when the Know Nothing candidate for governor, Judge William Loving, withdrew from the race due to failing health, the influx of ex-Whigs nominated Morehead to replace him for the gubernatorial election of 1855. Prior to the dissolution of the party, most had expected the Whigs would nominate Morehead at their own party's convention in April.
Whig Party (United States)
Following the failure of the Free Soil Party in the election that year, most Conscience Whigs returned to the Whig fold, and more followed after the Compromise of 1850 temporarily neutralized the slavery issue. During the mid-1850s, several Conscience leaders played an important role in the founding of the Republican Party.
Brownlow's Whig
The "Whig" was one of the most influential newspapers in nineteenth-century Tennessee, due mainly to Brownlow's editorials, which often included vindictive personal attacks and fierce diatribes. A Methodist circuit rider by trade, Brownlow partnered with publisher Mason R. Lyon under a one-year contract and launched the "Whig" on May 4, 1839 to counter rising Democratic sentiment in the region. He quickly made many enemies across the majority Democratic antebellum South. During his career, Brownlow survived several assassination attempts, numerous libel lawsuits, and arrest and imprisonment by Confederate authorities during the American Civil War.
William Henry Harrison 1840 presidential campaign
Harrison lost a bid for Senate in 1831, and found insufficient support to mount a run for the House of Representatives in 1832. His large family gave him money problems, and he remained out of public life in the early 1830s. By 1834, opposition to President Jackson was coalescing into what became known as the Whig Party. Harrison, though several years out of active politics was a war hero with roots in both North and South, and had been fired by Jackson. Thus, he looked attractive as a possible presidential candidate to the new party, something that Harrison did nothing to discourage. Harrison wrote a letter to the newspapers that won over many Whigs, assuring them of his fidelity to party principles, such as the limited power of the executive and federal subsidies for roads, canals and railroads.
Two-party system
The old Whig leadership dissolved in the 1760s into a decade of factional chaos with distinct "Grenvillite", "Bedfordite", "Rockinghamite", and "Chathamite" factions successively in power, and all referring to themselves as "Whigs". Out of this chaos, the first distinctive parties emerged. The first such party was the Rockingham Whigs under the leadership of Charles Watson-Wentworth and the intellectual guidance of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke laid out a philosophy that described the basic framework of the political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed". As opposed to the instability of the earlier factions, which were often tied to a particular leader and could disintegrate if removed from power, the two party system was centred on a set of core principles held by both sides and that allowed the party out of power to remain as the Loyal Opposition to the governing party.
A genuine two-party system began to emerge, with the accession to power of William Pitt the Younger in 1783 leading the new Tories, against a reconstituted "Whig" party led by the radical politician Charles James Fox.
Whigs (British political party)
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, they contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute monarchy. The Whigs played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of the Stuart kings and pretenders, who were Roman Catholic. The Whigs took full control of the government in 1715 and remained totally dominant until King George III, coming to the throne in 1760, allowed Tories back in. The Whig Supremacy (1715–1760) was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whigs thoroughly purged the Tories from all major positions in government, the army, the Church of England, the legal profession and local offices. The Party's hold on power was so strong and durable, historians call the period from roughly 1714 to 1783 the age of the Whig Oligarchy. The first great leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government through the period 1721–1742 and whose protégé Henry Pelham led from 1743 to 1754.
Winchester, Massachusetts
Until the middle of the 19th century, parts of Arlington, Medford, Cambridge, and Woburn comprised what is now Winchester. The movement toward incorporation of what, by this time, was called South Woburn was likely precipitated by the rise of the Whig Party in Massachusetts ("History of Winchester, Massachusetts" by H. S. Chapman and Bruce W. Stone, 1936, 1975).
Political party
As the century wore on, the factions slowly began to adopt more coherent political tendencies as the interests of their power bases began to diverge. The Whig party's initial base of support from the great aristocratic families widened to include the emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants. As well as championing constitutional monarchy with strict limits on the monarch's power, the Whigs adamantly opposed a Catholic king as a threat to liberty, and believed in extending toleration to nonconformist Protestants, or dissenters. A major influence on the Whigs were the liberal political ideas of John Locke, and the concepts of universal rights employed by Locke and Algernon Sidney.
Society of United Irishmen
Also in 1789 the Whig party was founded in Ireland and soon it became an alliance of radicals, reform-minded parliamentarians, and dissident representatives of the governing class. By 1791 this alliance however was already fracturing, and several rival Whig clubs were set up by people such as Napper Tandy in Dublin and Belfast. Another grouping was a "shadowy" organisation of eleven people headed by Samuel Neilson, that sought to move the recently revived Volunteer movement in as far a radical direction as possible.
Reform Club
The club was founded in 1836 by Edward Ellice, Member of Parliament (MP) for Coventry and Whig Whip, whose riches came from the Hudson's Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the Reform Act 1832. This new club, for members of both Houses of Parliament, was intended to be a forum for the radical ideas which the First Reform Bill represented: a bastion of liberal and progressive thought that became closely associated with the Liberal Party, who largely succeeded the Whigs in the second half of the 19th century.
James Turner Morehead (Kentucky)
Later that year, the National Republican party began to re-brand itself as the Whig Party, a name that first appeared in the "Lexington Intelligencer" on April 25, 1834. On July 4, 1834, Governor Morehead hosted the party's first convention in Frankfort. Kentuckians flocked to the "new" party "en masse", and the legislative elections of August 1834 saw the party garner majorities in both houses of the state legislature. Flexing their political muscles, the majority party ousted Guthrie from his post as president of the Senate and by a vote of 90–40, and sent John J. Crittenden instead of Guthrie to the U.S. Senate in 1835.
Country Party
Country Party was the original 17th Century name of what developed into the British Whig Party. In later times, the name reappeared in various political contexts in English-speaking countries, including:
New York Courier and Enquirer
By 1834 Webb, Clay, and the East Coast financial industry had joined hands to form a new, nationwide political party. While its party machinery was based on Clay's National Republican Party, the new name for the political gathering, the Whig Party, was coined by Webb, who became the young party's chief media proprietor. The "Courier and Enquirer" thus became a key element in the United States's Second Party System, in which the Democratic Party and the Whig Party confronted each other during the decades prior to the American Civil War. A standard history of New York states that during the 1830s, the "Courier and Enquirer" was "the largest and most powerful paper in the United States."
William A. Newell
As the Whig party foundered, the opposition to the Democratic Party consisted of the new American party (also called the Know-Nothings), and the nascent Republican Party. The former stood for limiting immigrants' role in politics (primarily Irish Catholics at the time), while the latter was opposed to the extension of slavery to the territories. The parties united in an attempt to defeat the powerful Democratic party, and, as a former Whig who was also opposed the extension of slavery, Newell was nominated at a joint convention in 1856. He won by just 3,000 votes over Democratic candidate William C. Alexander, but the Democrats won most of the seats in the legislature.
Brownlow's Whig
In the presidential election of 1852, Brownlow rejected Whig candidate Winfield Scott and supported Daniel Webster, although the Massachusetts senator died before the election. After the Whig Party disintegrated in 1854, Brownlow aligned with the Know Nothing movement, and intensified his attacks on non-Anglo American immigrants. In 1860, after the secession debate had come to dominate politics in the region, the "Whig" supported Constitutional Union presidential candidate John Bell, helping him capture the state's electoral votes. After the war, the "Whig" became one of the few papers in the South to support the Radical Republicans.
Whig Party (British political party)
On 31 March 2015, the Whig Party released their manifesto for the 2015 general election. The party is pro-European Union and pro-immigration; it supports universal childcare from ages two to four and the abolition of student tuition fees; and it defends the rights of renters in the United Kingdom in addition to women's rights and human rights around the world.
Whig Party (United States)
By 1844, the Whigs began their recovery by nominating Henry Clay, who lost the presidential race to Democrat James K. Polk in a closely contested race, with Polk's policy of Western expansion (particularly the annexation of Texas) and free trade triumphing over Clay's protectionism and caution over the Texas question. The Whigs, both Northern and Southern, strongly opposed expansion into Texas, which they (including Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln) saw as an unprincipled land grab.
Unionist Party (United States)
By 1860, the Whig Party was defunct. A group of former Whigs formed the Constitutional Union Party, with John Bell as candidate for President. Also as in 1850, ex-Whigs and anti-secession Democrats combined as "Unionists" to oppose secessionists in state elections, especially in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Virginia, where the Republican Party label was still toxic. Bell's candidacy was ineffective, but the state strategy proved successful as the American Civil War began in 1861.
Whigs (British political party)
The term "Whig" was originally short for "whiggamor", a term meaning "cattle driver" used to describe western Scots who came to Leith for corn. In the reign of Charles I the term was used during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms to refer derisively to a radical faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the "Kirk Party" (see the Whiggamore Raid). It was then applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the King's Episcopalian order in Scotland. The term "Whig" entered English political discourse during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681 when there was controversy about whether or not King Charles II's brother, James, should be allowed to succeed to the throne on Charles's death. "Whig" was a term of abuse applied to those who wanted to exclude James on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. The fervent Tory Samuel Johnson often joked that "the first Whig was the Devil".
List of United States National Republican/Whig Party presidential tickets
The collapse of the Whigs after 1852 left political chaos. Even though the party disintegrated, it continued to win some elections under its own banner, as the "Opposition Party", or as the American Party. The American, or "Know-Nothing" Party, formed from various prohibitionist and nativist movements, based originally on the secret Know-Nothing lodges. It was a moralistic party that appealed to the middle class fear of corruption, which it identified with Catholics, especially the recent Irish immigrants who seemed to bring crime, corruption, poverty and bossism as soon as they arrived. Remnants of the Whig party met once more in convention in 1856, and nominated the Know Nothing's nominees in order to provide a "centerist" pro-slavery alternative to James Buchanan.
The Republican Party was more driven, in terms of ideology and talent; it surpassed the hapless Whig/American Party coalition in 1856. By 1858 the Republicans controlled majorities in every Northern state, and hence controlled the electoral votes for president in 1860. The tattered remnants of the Coalition's southern wing, under the name, "Constitutional Union Party", ran a ticket in order to prevent secession. They were joined by a few anti-secessionist Southern Democrats. Nearly all of the Northern wing had already joined the Republicans; the only free states where the Constitutional Union Party garnered more than 3% were Massachusetts and California.
Cecil Whig
The paper was founded on Aug. 7, 1841, by Palmer Chamberlain Ricketts (father of Palmer C. Ricketts, who would later become president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1901) to circulate the Whig political party beliefs in the wake of William Henry Harrison's presidential victory. The Whig promoted itself as “Devoted to Politics, Agriculture, The Useful Arts, Literature and General Intelligence.” It was originally published weekly, from Ricketts' log cabin near the intersection of Main and Bow streets in Elkton. In 1989, the Whig began daily circulation, publishing papers Monday through Friday. In 2012, the Whig began publishing three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Bank War
By the spring of 1834, Jackson's enemies-who included National Republicans, states rights nullifiers, and some pro-Bank Democrats-coalesced to form the new Whig Party. The term was derived from the British party of the same name, and meant to signify opposition to monarchy, or, in the American case, what the party's members saw as executive tyranny. Philip Hone, a New York merchant, may have been the first to use the term in reference to anti-Jacksonians, and it became more popular after Clay used it in a Senate speech on April 14. "By way of metempsychosis," Blair jeered, "ancient Tories now call themselves Whigs."
1860 Republican National Convention
By 1860 the dissolution of the Whig Party in America had become an accomplished fact, with establishment Whig politicians, former Free Soilers, and a certain number of anti-Catholic populists from the Know Nothing movement flocking to the banner of the fledgling anti-slavery Republican Party. While the Republican Presidential effort on behalf of the 43-year-old Colonel John C. Frémont in the 1856 election had met with failure, party gains were made throughout the Northern United States as the sectional crisis over slavery intensified.
New England
Politically, the region often disagreed with the rest of the country. Massachusetts and Connecticut were among the last refuges of the Federalist Party, and New England became the strongest bastion of the new Whig Party when the Second Party System began in the 1830s. The Whigs were usually dominant throughout New England, except in the more Democratic Maine and New Hampshire. Leading statesmen hailed from the region, including Daniel Webster.
Whig Party (United States)
The Consciences split from the Whig party in 1848, when the national party nominated the slave-owning General Zachary Taylor for President and played a role in the creation of the new Free Soil Party, which nominated Adams for Vice President on a ticket with anti-slavery former Democratic President Martin Van Buren.
Pliny Merrick
Merrick was an active promoter of the Anti-Masonic Party. The party developed in the early nineteenth century, opposing political leaders who were members of secretive Masonic brotherhoods. Masonic members held political views on the role of the government and how the country should expand. The Anti-Masonic Party opposed those views as moving away from the original founding fathers intent. Merrick renounced Free Masonry in 1832. The party was the precursor to the Whig Party.
Patriot Whigs
The Patriot Whigs and, later Patriot Party, were a group within the Whig party in Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole in the House of Commons in 1725, when William Pulteney (later 1st Earl of Bath) and seventeen other Whigs joined with the Tory party in attacks against the ministry. By the middle of the 1730s, there were over one hundred opposition Whigs in the Commons, many of whom embraced the Patriot label. For many years they provided a more effective opposition to the Walpole administration than the Tories.
True Whig Party
The True Whig Party (TWP), also known as the Liberian Whig Party (LWP), is the oldest political party in Liberia. Founded in 1869 by primarily Americo-Liberians, the party dominated Liberian politics from 1878 until 1980. The nation was virtually a one-party state, although opposition parties were never outlawed. Initially, its ideology was strongly influenced by that of the United States Whig Party (which was later succeeded by the Republican Party).
True Whig Party
The party endorsed systems of forced labour. In 1930 they sent "contract migrant laborers", under conditions tantamount to slavery, to Spanish colonists on Fernando Pó in Spanish Guinea (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea), leading to a five-year U.S. and British boycott of Liberia. Despite this dispute, the West considered the True Whig Party as a stabilizing, unthreatening force. The US and Britain invested extensively in the nation under William Tubman's long period of rule (1944–1971).
Chief Whip of the Liberal Democrats
This is a list of people who have served as Chief Whip of the Liberal Democrats in the Parliament of the United Kingdom and of its predecessor parties. The Liberal Party was formed in 1859, but through its roots in the Whig Party dates back to the late 1670s. In 1988, the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party, formed by dissident Labour Party members in 1981, to create the Liberal Democrats.
Political parties in the United States
The Second Party System operated from about 1828 to 1854, following the splintering of the Democratic-Republican Party. Two major parties dominated the political landscape: the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay, that grew from the National Republican Party; and the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson. The Democrats supported the primacy of the Presidency over the other branches of government, and opposed both the Bank of the United States as well as modernizing programs that they felt would build up industry at the expense of the taxpayer.
History of the United States Democratic Party
In 1854, over vehement opposition, the main Democratic leader in the Senate, Stephen Douglas of Illinois, pushed through the Kansas–Nebraska Act. It established that settlers in Kansas Territory could vote to decide to allow or not allow slavery. Thousands of men moved in from North and South with the goal of voting slavery down or up and their violence shook the nation. A major re-alignment took place among voters and politicians, with new issues, new parties and new leaders. The Whig Party dissolved entirely.
Willie Person Mangum
Willie Person Mangum (pronounced "Wylie Parson"; May 10, 1792September 7, 1861) was a U.S. Senator from the state of North Carolina between 1831 and 1836 and between 1840 and 1853. He was one of the founders and leading members of the Whig party, and was a candidate for president in 1836 as part of the unsuccessful Whig strategy to defeat Martin Van Buren by running four candidates with local appeal in different regions of the country. He is, as of 2018, the only major-party presidential nominee to have been a North Carolinian at the time of his nomination.
Whig Party (United States)
In Liberia, the True Whig Party—named in direct emulation of the American Whig party, was founded in 1869 and it dominated politics in that country from 1878 until 1980.
Walter Forward
He was a member of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1837 and played an important role in the establishment of the United States Whig Party in the 1830s.
Thomas Muir of Huntershill
The French Revolution of 1789 revived the hopes of all members of the Whig party in Scotland and England, in their campaign for burgh and county reform. However, as the Revolution progressed and England witnessed the emergence of popular reform societies advocating Parliamentary reform, the aristocratic section of the Whigs began to fear the spread of revolutionary ideology on to home territory. It was in an attempt to forestall such a development that the younger generation of Foxite Whigs in Parliament and the Lords inaugurated in April 1792 the London Association of the Friends of the People. Led by the Scots Lords, Lauderdale and Buchan, this society enjoyed widespread initial support from leading Whigs throughout Britain.
Henry Clay
The removal of deposits helped unite Jackson's opponents into one party for the first time, as National Republicans, Calhounites, former Democrats, and members of the Anti-Masonic Party coalesced into the Whig Party. The term "Whig" originated from a speech Clay delivered in 1834, in which he compared opponents of Jackson to the Whigs, a British political party opposed to absolute monarchy. Neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were unified geographically or ideologically. However, Whigs tended to favor a stronger legislature, a stronger federal government, a higher tariff, greater spending on infrastructure, re-authorization of the Second Bank of the United States, and publicly funded education. Conversely, Democrats tended to favor a stronger president, stronger state governments, lower tariffs, hard money, and expansionism. Neither party took a strong national stand on slavery. The Whig base of support lay in wealthy businessmen, professionals, the professional class, and large planters, while the Democratic base of support lay in immigrant Catholics and yeomen farmers, but each party appealed across class lines.
Opposition Party (Southern U.S.)
The "Opposition Party" name was adopted by several former Whig politicians in the period 1854–1858. In 1860, the party was encouraged by the remaining Whig leadership to effectively merge with the Constitutional Union Party. The party was seen as offering a compromise position between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans.
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party nominated several presidential candidates in 1836. General William Henry Harrison of Ohio was nominated in 1840, former Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1844, General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana in 1848, General Winfield Scott of New Jersey in 1852 and the last nominee, former President Millard Fillmore from New York in 1856. In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, Harrison and Taylor, elected president and both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party later that year. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death in 1850, was the last Whig President.
Edward Everett
The political situation in the country was quite fluid in the late 1820s. The Federalist Party had collapsed, and the victorious Democratic-Republican Party had become diffuse, resulting in political factionalism in place of party affiliation. Everett was associated with the "National Republican" faction of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. He supported Clay's "National System"—which called for protective tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank—and the interests of Massachusetts' propertied class. Everett was re-elected to four additional terms as a National Republican, serving until 1835. The National Republicans formally became the Whig Party in 1834.
Whigs (British political party)
Both parties began as loose groupings or tendencies, but became quite formal by 1784 with the ascension of Charles James Fox as the leader of a reconstituted Whig Party, arrayed against the governing party of the new Tories under William Pitt the Younger. Both parties were founded on rich politicians more than on popular votes, and there were elections to the House of Commons, but a small number of men controlled most of the voters.