American Whig Party

Date April 14, 1834

The creation of the Whig Party strengthened the two-party system in American politics and accentuated the sectional divisions that were to lead to the U.S. Civil War.

Locale United States

Key Figures

• John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), vice president of the United States, 1829-1832, and senator from South Carolina
• Henry Clay (1777-1852), Kentucky senator and leading Whig politician
• Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), president of the United States, 1829-1837
• Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), vice president under Jackson an successful Democratic candidate for president in 1836
• William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), military hero, former senator, Whig candidate for president in 1836, and successful candidate in 1840
• Daniel Webster (1782-1852), Massachusetts senator and Whig candidate for president in 1836
• Hugh Lawson White (1773-1840), Tennessee senator and Whig candidate for president in 1836

Summary of Event

The emergence of the Whigs as a national party would have advanced more rapidly had there been a single overriding issue or outstanding leader to rally around. Since there was neither, the opponents of the Democrats were a hodgepodge of malcontents, an “organized incompatibility” with only one unifying theme: an undying hatred of Andrew Jackson . They disliked the seventh president of the United States, whom they dubbed King Andrew I because of his ostensibly ruthless and dictatorial manner, and they slowly drew together into the Whig Party. They gave themselves the name “Whigs” because they ostensibly opposed tyranny and monarchy, as did the English Whigs. The name “Whig” became official when Senator Henry Clay gave it his stamp of approval in a speech that he delivered before the Senate on April 14, 1834; however, the name had been used unofficially for at least two years prior to then.

The old Federalists and the National Republicans who opposed Jackson in 1828 were later joined by many who had supported Jackson in that election but had turned against him over his positions on such divisive matters as his attack on the Second Bank of the United States and the South Carolina nullification controversy. These desertions were serious jolts to the Democratic Party and strengthened the ranks of a coalescing opposition. This opposition was strongest among the high-tariff merchants and manufacturers in the Northeast, wealthy planters in the South, and western farmers who desired internal improvements.

If there were common ideological denominators to the Whig Party, they were support for property rights and interest in government’s capacity to build and improve the nation’s institutions. Thus, there was both a conservative and a progressive side to the Whig Party. Like the earlier Federalists, the Whigs tended to represent the financial and business establishment. Unlike the Federalists, the Whigs understood the impetus toward westward expansion that was seizing the United States during the 1830’s.

The Whigs also became champions of small businessmen—a class that might later have been called the petit bourgeois. Their constituency often included entrepreneurs who were in what is now the Midwest and mid-South, who were seeking prosperity and wanted a strong government, friendly to business, to ensure that they got what they sought. The Whig Party did not have the common touch of the Democrats, but it was never so thoroughly a captive to southern, slaveholding interests as its counterparts. Indeed, it was out of the Whig Party that the Republican Party, the primary antislavery party, would later emerge. The Whig Party eventually split, over slavery among other things. During its less-than-thirty-year existence, it elected two presidents and maintained the idea that the U.S. party system consisted of two equally strong but ideologically opposed parties, both representing a broad range of interests.

After a time of local party building, the Whigs first tested their national strength in the presidential campaign of 1836. Either Kentucky’s Henry Clay , the glamorous “Harry of the West,” or Daniel Webster , the eloquent Massachusetts defender of the union, would have seemed a logical choice to head the ticket. However, their positions on issues were too well known. In addition, the two men were bitter rivals whose differences threatened to split the infant party. Furthermore, many southern states’ rights Whigs looked to John C. Calhoun for leadership. However, although Calhoun joined Clay and Webster in their hatred of Jackson , he never truly considered himself a Whig.

With so many diverse elements, agreement about a candidate or a platform was impossible. Consequently, the party held no national nominating convention in 1836. Instead, Whig strategy was to run several candidates from the different sections of the nation. These candidates included Daniel Webster of Massachusetts; William Henry Harrison of Ohio, who had been a military hero in the Indian wars; and Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee, who, it was alleged, had killed a Cherokee chief with his own hands and thus gained credence and acclaim among frontier settlers. The Whigs did not expect that any one of their candidates would receive a majority in the electoral college. However, they hoped to draw enough votes away from the Democratic candidate to prevent him from receiving a majority. The election would then be thrown into the House of Representatives, where a Whig would have a good chance of being chosen.

This multipronged strategy was deemed foolhardy by many at the time and did not augur well for the Whigs’ chances in the 1836 election. Leaving nothing to chance, Jackson used his prestige and party organization to win the Democratic nomination for his own vice president, Martin Van Buren , on the first ballot. The Whigs selected Hugh Lawson White of Tennessee, William Henry Harrison of Ohio, and Webster as their standard-bearers. The grand strategy backfired, because the Whig candidates split the anti-Jackson vote and enabled the well-disciplined Democrats to put Van Buren in office easily.

The new president inherited a multitude of problems and had been in office only three months when the Panic of 1837 occurred. New York banks suspended specie payments, other banks and businesses began to fail. unemployment rose, and railroads and canals were abandoned as the panic evolved into a lengthy depression. This condition was caused by many things, including Jacksonian financial measures, especially the bank war and the Specie Circular; ravaging of the wheat crop by the Hessian fly; overspeculation in land; and easy credit, which left most Americans in debt. Labor, the backbone of the Democratic Party, suffered heavily, and by late 1837, 90 percent of the eastern factories were closed. The lingering depression hit the farmers of the South and West hardest, adding stress to their status as debtors.

Following the typical political thinking of the day, Van Buren did little to fight the depression, and his administration ended under a cloud of gloom. Opposition came not only from the Whigs but also from dissident Democrats. The political impact of the depression was immediately apparent as Whig strength rapidly increased.

Voters became Whigs for various reasons. Westerners, caught between their needs and resentments, were badly divided on both the banking and internal improvement issues. Southerners were equally divided between those who, like Calhoun , saw in Van Buren’s Independent Treasury sound Democratic policy and those who, like John Tyler of Virginia, still bitterly resented the Democratic administration’s attack on nullification. In the Northeast, conservative business interests who called for wider government activity became more sharply divided from the working groups and farmers than ever before. New political alignments were emerging, and the Democrats, as the party in power, suffered the most from these new developments.

Significance

In the election of 1840, the Whigs showed the extent to which they had learned the lessons of popular appeal. When they nominated the old western military hero, William Henry Harrison , rather than Webster or Clay , and placed Tyler, an anti-Jackson Democrat, on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate, the Whigs demonstrated their political sophistication. By proclaiming the true democratic qualities of their candidates—exemplified by such slogans as “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” and “Log Cabins and Hard Cider”—and refusing to write a platform, they allowed dissatisfied elements in all sections to assume that they would gain their ends.

The Whigs’ populist campaign in 1840 led almost inevitably to some distortions of the truth. Harrison, for example, was said to have been born in a log cabin, proving his humble origins; in fact, he had been born on a Virginia plantation. The U.S. electorate either did not know this fact or preferred to forget it; they accorded Harrison great popularity. Van Buren , though tainted by the economic depressed, was sullenly renominated by the Democrats and was immediately denounced by the Whigs as an aristocrat of the worst sort. The campaign that developed was all sound and fury, slogan and vituperation. More than any other, the 1840 campaign may be said to have set the tone for what later came to typify presidential campaigns. An emphasis on image and personality rather than ideology and a premium placed on the skillful use of the mass media would from then on be necessary to elect a party candidate president of the United States. Issues were forgotten or ignored as the glamorous Harrison was elected. The rise of the Whigs was now a fact of political life.

Bibliography

Baxter, Maurice G. Henry Clay and the American System. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. Thorough examination of Clay’s politics, views on economic development, and impact upon American government.

Brown, Thomas. Politics and Statesmanship: Essays on the American Whig Party. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. An important collection that surveys the American Whig Party from various informative perspectives.

Howe, Daniel Walker. The Political Culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Discusses the ideology and social affiliations of the Whig Party.

McCormick, Richard P. The Second American Party System. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966. Shows how the Whigs fit into the structure of mid-nineteenth century U.S. politics.

Peterson, Merrill D. The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Examines three important Whig senators of the nineteenth century.

Sibley, Joel H. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Political biography of the winner of the 1836 presidential election that examines the development of partisan politics in decades leading up to Van Buren’s election.

Watson, Harry L. Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: Democracy and Development in Antebellum America. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998. Dual biography, describing the two men’s conflicting visions for the future of the United States. Includes reprints of twenty-five primary documents, including speeches and letters.

Widmer, Ted. Martin Van Buren. New York: Times Books, 2005. Unflattering political biography of Van Buren by a former adviser to president Bill Clinton.