Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
By the 1830s, the Whig Party emerged as the national conservative party. Whigs supported the national bank, private business interests, and the modernization of the economy in opposition to Jacksonian democracy, which represented the interests of poor farmers and the urban working class, represented by the newly formed Democratic Party. They ...
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).
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 Republican Party was formed after the collapse of the Whig Party in the 1850s to reflect the political ideologies of the northern states. It immediately replaced the Whig Party as a major political party, supporting social mobility, egalitarianism, and limitations on slavery. [14]
President Tyler, a former Democrat, and Senator Clay each claimed leadership of the Whig Party and, as the two men differed over such issues as whether to re-establish the Bank of the United States, party support was divided. The abolitionist movement attracted those who did not want to be part of a party led by slavery-supporting Southerners.
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 Republican Party emerged from the great political realignment of the mid-1850s. William Gienapp argues that the great realignment of the 1850s began before the Whig party collapse, and was caused not by politicians but by voters at the local level. The central forces were ethno-cultural, involving tensions between pietistic Protestants ...
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 ...