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Charles Sumner, an anti-slavery "Conscience Whig" who later joined the Republican Party Edward Everett, a pro-South "Cotton Whig" Henry Clay of Kentucky was the party's congressional leader from the time of its formation in 1833 until his resignation from the Senate in 1842, and he remained an important Whig leader until his death in 1852. [183]
Whig nominee William Henry Harrison unseated Van Buren in the 1840 presidential election, but died just one month into his term. Harrison's successor, John Tyler, broke with the Whigs in 1841 after clashing with Clay and other Whig Party leaders over economic policies such as the re-establishment of a national bank.
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. [1] The party was seen as offering a compromise position between the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans. [2]
Clay's Whig Party collapsed four years after his death, but Clay cast a long shadow over the generation of political leaders that presided over the Civil War. Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote stated his opinion that "had there been one such man in the Congress of the United States as Henry Clay in 1860–1861 there would, I feel sure, have ...
The critics of British policy towards the Thirteen Colonies called themselves "Whigs" after 1768, identifying with members of the British Whig party who favored similar colonial policies. [ citation needed ] Samuel Johnson writes that at the time, the word "patriot" had a negative connotation and was used as a negative epithet for "a factious ...
Daniel Webster and other Whig leaders referred to their new political party as the "conservative party", and they called for a return to tradition, restraint, hierarchy, and moderation. [48] In the end, the nation synthesized the two positions, Federalist and Whig, adopting representative democracy and a strong nation state.
The modern Republican Party was formed in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery, and many former Whig Party leaders joined the newly formed anti-slavery party. [159] The Republican Party sought to combine Jefferson and Jackson's ideals of liberty and equality with Clay's program of using an active government to modernize the economy. [ 160 ]
The Whig Party was reeling from electoral losses since 1852. Half of its leaders in the South bolted to the Southern Democratic Party. In the North the Whig Party was moribund with most of its anti-slavery members joining the Republican Party.