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The 1852 Democratic National Convention nominated a dark horse candidate in the form of former New Hampshire senator Franklin Pierce, a Northerner sympathetic to the Southern view on slavery. [116] As the Whig and Democratic national conventions had approved similar platforms, the 1852 election focused largely on the personalities of Scott and ...
Simultaneously, the Whig Party was disintegrating at the national level, and there was competition between those who wished to take advantage of this situation to organize a major new party based on anti-slavery-extension principles, and those who wished to organize a new party based on anti-immigration and anti-Catholicism.
The history of the United States Whig Party lasted from the establishment of the Whig Party early in President Andrew Jackson's second term (1833–1837) to the collapse of the party during the term of President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857). This article covers the party in national politics. For state politics see Whig Party (United States).
Out of the Whig Party came the Republican Party, which was the party of Abraham Lincoln and took a stand against slavery. The Southern Confederacy's loss in the Civil War weakened the Democrats.
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 party then merged into the new Whig Party. Others included abolitionist parties, workers' parties like the Workingmen's Party, the Locofocos (who opposed monopolies), and assorted nativist parties who denounced the Roman Catholic Church as a threat to republicanism. None of these parties were capable of mounting a broad enough appeal to ...
1837 cartoon playing on "Jackson" and "jackass", showing the Democratic Party as a donkey, which has remained its popular symbol into the 21st century. The spirit of Jacksonian democracy animated the party that formed around him, from the early 1830s to the 1850s, shaping the era, with the Whig Party the main opposition. [41]
On December 4, 1839, the Whig Party held its first national convention, an important milestone in its rise to political power.