The Whig Party

Or: Fear and Loathing within the Two-Party System.

Who were the Whigs?

• Founded in 1833 by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, Opponents of Andrew Jackson

• Pro-Business, Industry, and Manufacturing.

• Former Federalists.• States-Rights Southerners angered

during the Nullification Crisis.

The First Election

• 3 Whigs ran for President in 1836 (Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Hugh Lawson White).

• They all lost.

1840

• William Henry Harrison was the Whig’s nominee. John Tyler was the VP nominee.

 • They presented him as a

humble farmer, a fierce war hero and a “Man’s Man.”

 • Adopted the slogan

“Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!” • Referred to President Van

Buren as “Martin Van Ruin” and “Little Van.”

• Harrison won: 234 electoral votes to 60.

President Harrison

• Served the shortest term of any president in United States History.

• Inaugurated on March 4, 1841.

• Died of pneumonia, on April 4, 1841.

• First president to die in office

President Tyler

• Took over for President Harrison after his death.

• First Vice-President to take over for his predecessor.

• Kicked out of the Whig Party in 1841 after vetoing pretty much their entire agenda.

Other Whig Presidents

        • Zachary Taylor. Elected in 1848. Died in office in

1850 after eating a bowl of cherries and milk that may have been tainted with cholera or some other common, infectious disease.

 

Other Whig Presidents

      

• Taylor's Vice-President, Millard Fillmore took over and finished out his term in 1852.

 

Other Whig Presidents

   There, um…were none.   

• After Whig candidate Winfield Scott was soundly defeated in 1852, the Whig Party died.

Lasting Effects

    • The Whig Party spawned the Modern

Republican Party, as many former Northern Whigs (including Abraham Lincoln) became Republicans during the 1850s.