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During the campaign, Northern Whig leaders touted traditional Whig policies like support for infrastructure spending and increased tariff rates, [96] but Southern Whigs largely eschewed economic policy, instead emphasizing that Taylor's status as an enslaver meant that he could be trusted on the issue of slavery more so than Democratic ...
The Whig Party became badly split between pro-Compromise Whigs like Fillmore and Webster and anti-Compromise Whigs like William Seward, who demanded the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act. [136] In the Deep South, most Whigs joined with pro-Compromise Democrats to form a unionist party during the 1850 elections, decisively defeating their ...
The Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s due to a series of crises over slavery. Many former Whigs joined the new, anti-slavery Republican Party, but others joined the nativist American Party. The American Party declined after the 1856 elections, and for the 1860 elections John J. Crittenden and other former Whigs formed the Constitutional Union ...
As a result of the devastating defeat and the growing tensions within the party between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners, the Whig Party quickly fell apart after the 1852 election and ceased to exist. Some Southern Whigs would join the Democratic Party, and many Northern Whigs would help to form the new Republican Party in 1854.
Northern Whigs favored Scott while Southern Whigs tended to prefer Fillmore. The party was also torn on the issue of slavery. Most in the party wanted to prevent slavery from becoming the dominating issue in the election. However, the Whigs were split on the issue of the Compromise of 1850, proposed and designed by Whig senator Henry Clay of ...
Northern Whigs feared that Texas statehood would initiate the opening of a vast "Empire for Slavery". [90] Two weeks before the Whig convention in Baltimore, in reaction to Calhoun's Packenham Letter, Clay issued a document known as the Raleigh Letter (issued April 17, 1844) [91] that presented his views on Texas to his fellow southern Whigs. [92]
Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48). The provisions of the compromise were: [1] [2]
Neither party took a strong national stand on slavery. [156] 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. [157]