The Whig Party
Today, the spirits of Jefferson and Hamilton continue to wrestle against one another, with Jefferson's ghost inhabiting the Democratic Party and Hamilton's ghost inhabiting the Republican Party. Again, these groups are predicated on very specific principles: Free healthcare, welcoming Latino immigrants, stronger unionization, queer rights, concern for racial injustice, a higher minimum wage, less foreign intervention, and other such ideas define the modern Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the Republican Party stands for the preservation of healthcare as a privilege rather than as a right, stricter immigration policies, conservative attitudes toward queer identities, skepticism toward the existence of systemic racism, less government regulation, and a stronger military, among other things. However, the Whig Party was not a coalition of people with shared political doctrines, as is the case with the modern Democratic and Republican Parties. Instead, it was a loose union of people bound together only by their collective disdain for the Democrats.
In order to understand the circumstances in which the Whig Party was founded, it's vital to grasp the circumstances in which Andrew Jackson enjoyed his meteoric rise to national fame. Jackson served as a general in the War of 1812, once even becoming director of the army of volunteers. Toward the end of the war, he led troops to victory at the Battle of New Orleans, helping him obtain the admiration of Americans from all states and all spots on the political spectrum. Around the time of the Battle of New Orleans, the Federalist Party held the Hartford Convention, in which they denounced the War of 1812. The fact that these bold criticisms coincided with one of America's greatest victories against British troops in the entire war embarrassed the Federalists. By the inauguration of James Monroe in 1817, the Federalist Party had lost practically all support, ushering in a period of political unity under the Democratic-Republican Party. This time period is now known as the Era of Good Feelings. Jackson had always been a Democratic-Republican, but he now had the entire nation as a friend in the party.
9 years after the War of 1812 ended in 1815, Jackson ran for president in the 1824 election. Because the Federalist Party had collapsed, there wasn't a rival party to nominate a rival candidate, causing the Democratic-Republican Party to run 4 contestants, including Jackson. Jackson had to square up against John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. The large number of candidates prevented anyone from winning a clear majority in the Electoral College, so the House of Representatives was asked to pick from the 3 candidates with the most votes, thus automatically eliminating Clay. Clay, who was the speaker of the house, voted for Adams, causing the rest of the House of Representatives to do the same. Adams was now president-elect. On March 4, 1825, Adams replaced Monroe as president and, soon after, made Clay his secretary of state. Jackson retaliated by producing a rumor that Clay and Adams had rigged the election through a secret deal that Jackson called "the corrupt bargain". Essentially, in exchange for using his influence as speaker of the house to give Adams the presidency, Clay would become secretary of state. This behavior drove a wedge in the Democratic-Republican Party.
Adams and Clay were Democratic-Republicans who had held progressive viewpoints long before the Era of Good Feelings. However, they disagreed with the rest of the party in that they, Clay and Adams, did not believe that the federal government's powers were limited to those directly mentioned in the Constitution. The Federalists shared this opposition to strict constructionism but wanted to use the larger federal government to preserve the aristocracy, while Clay and Adams wanted to use it to help poor people and give them more economic opportunity. When the Era of Good Feelings commenced, this became a far more prominent branch of Jeffersonianism. Hence, when Jackson left the Democratic-Republican Party to protest "the corrupt bargain" and founded the Democratic Party, Clay and Adams left the party as well, with their allies participating in the same mass migration. In 1825, Clay joined the National Republican Party, a decision Adams made too in 1828. The National Republican Party was a left-wing group endorsing the same view of Jeffersonian democracy that Clay and Adams possessed.
In 1828, Adams ran for reelection as the National Republican nominee, while Jackson ran for president as the Democratic nominee. Jackson trounced Adams, being inaugurated on March 4, 1829. During his presidency, Adams signed the Tariff of 1828, raising import taxes to 50%. Jackson, a supporter of free trade, repealed this law through the Tariff of 1832, which lowered tariff rates to 35%. The south, which relied on foreign imports and so despised Adams' tariff, did not consider Jackson's reduction to be adequate. So, on November 24, 1832, South Carolina issued the Ordinance of Nullification, barring the enforcement of the 1828 and 1832 tariffs within the state's borders. Any attempt to collect the tariff would be met with secession. Jackson, though an advocate for states' rights, was furious, and threatened to invade South Carolina if the Ordinance of Nullification was never rescinded. While Jackson did eventually sign a compromise bill that lowered tariffs across the board over a 10-year period, other states' rights advocates were still appalled, turning them against the president.
1832 also saw the Bank War: In order to stabilize the economy after the War of 1812, James Madison founded the Second Bank of the United States, a national bank meant to exist for 20 years from 1816 to 1836. In 1832, Jackson was presented with a bill written by Henry Clay and Nicholas Biddle (the president of the SBUS) extending the bank's life to 1851. Jackson despised the SBUS. He considered it an unconstitutional mechanism of federal tyranny through which wealthy aristocrats could become rich at the expense of the working class, state sovereignty, and economic health. For this reason, Jackson did not stop at vetoing the recharter. At the end of 1832, he abolished the bank entirely, transforming fiscal conservatives who supported the bank into another enemy of the Jackson White House. There was now a three-headed dragon ready to fight the dreaded Jackson at any moment. All that was needed was a final trigger. In 1832 and 1833, Jackson took the SBUS' funds and distributed them across a set of state and private banks. This upset both National Republicans and states' rights advocates, who despised the use of presidential power without Congressional oversight, as well as economic conservatives who were offended by the anti-bank action. So, in 1834, the 3 coalitions formed against Jackson - the National Republican Party, fiscal conservatives, and states' rights activists - merged to establish the Whig Party.
The Whig Party quickly became a source of refuge for millions of Americans who disliked Jackson. And this wasn't exclusive to any specific region of the political world. Left-wing Americans, right-wing Americans, and centrist Americans all joined the Whig Party, provided that they disliked Jackson. It was an extremely diverse pallet of separate political doctrines combined only by their hatred for one man and his closest followers. And they were a determined bunch, ready to make sure they could expel Jacksonian Democrats from Washington DC. In 1836, the first presidential race the Whigs ran in, the Whig Party nominated 3 candidates. One Whig would represent the western US, another the southern US, and a final candidate would stand in for the northern US. The Democrats nominated their co-founder Martin Van Buren. The Whigs' idea was to replicate what happened in 1824; they wanted to split the vote and mail the election over to the House of Representatives, where Van Buren had far worse a chance of securing the executive branch. Van Buren, riding Jackson's popularity, still easily won the election, with not one vote relying on the House of Representatives!
Van Buren's presidency instantly imploded, however. Jackson's distribution of SBUS funds across state banks created a heightened demand for loans, as such money became more readily available. To keep up with these desires, the state banks started printing money, sparking a severe inflation crisis. This, coupled with the collapse of over 800 banks due to debt and Jackson discouraging the sale of land by making gold and silver the only recognized currency with which to buy land, caused a massive recession known as the Panic of 1837. Consequently, Van Buren had no chance of defeating Whig nominee William Henry Harrison in the 1840 election. Still, 1840 proved to be an important race. A Democratic, pro-Van Buren newspaper tried to mock Harrison by saying, "Give him a barrel of hard cider and settle on him a pension of 2,000 a year, and take my word for it, he would sit the remainder of his days in a log cabin!" Harrison attached himself to this image, which made him seem folksy and relatable. His supporters composed catchy, upbeat songs about log cabins and cider. At pro-Harrison rallies, people would receive mini log cabins, bottles of hard cider, and sometimes model log cabins stuffed with bottles of hard cider!
Harrison easily beat Van Buren, becoming president on March 4, 1841. However, he developed pneumonia soon after, dying on April 4, 1841. With this, his vice president - John Tyler - became president. The Constitution left the role of the vice president in the event of the president's death, impeachment, or resignation rather opaque. Some argued that the vice president would serve for the remainder of that term, while others insisted that the vice president would merely act as president until a new election could be held where a permanent successor is chosen. Tyler supported the former position, making himself officially president on April 6, 1841, by having Chief Justice Roger Taney administer the oath of office. His assertive behavior here turned many Whigs against Tyler. This fact grew worse when Tyler vetoed a bill that would have revived the SBUS, resulting in his expulsion from the Whig Party. John Quincy Adams, now a Congressman, even drafted articles of impeachment against Tyler for using his veto power "beyond" what was Constitutionally authorized and for making false promises to sign certain bills. Neither allegation was backed up and the articles of impeachment were never passed.
Tyler began as a Democrat due to the tariff issue but defected to the Whigs after the Nullification Crisis. Because of this, Tyler proved to be one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. The Democrats hated him for being a Whig, while the Whigs hated him for opposing their pro-federal legislation! In 1844, Tyler tried to run for president under a third party but dropped out so that he wouldn't accidentally split the vote in favor of Democratic candidate James K. Polk. In the generals, Polk faced off against Clay. It was an extremely close election, but Polk managed to win by one of the most narrow margins ever. Many have calculated that New York's vote alone pushed the results in favor of Polk. Polk's presidency was defined by the Mexican-American War, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Among other provisions, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo required Mexico to cede what are now the states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada to the United States. This opened up a fierce argument about whether or not slavery would be allowed in the new territory.
It was amidst this angry debate that Zachary Taylor became the Whig nominee. His opponent was the Democrat Lewis Cass. Taylor was by no means a partisan, having never even voted prior to the 1848 election. However, his status as a war hero who led American troops to several vital victories in the war against Mexico secured his victory. Taylor himself was a southerner, having been born in Virginia and raised in Kentucky. He also owned roughly 300 slaves. That said, he was adamantly opposed to allowing slavery in the Mexican Cession. Having spent nearly all of his adult life in the military, Taylor developed a passionate patriotism that left him crushed by the sight of slavery tearing the Union apart. Hence, he drew the line in the sand, declaring that slavery would never, ever exist in the Mexican Cession. Henry Clay had other plans. In a desperate attempt to quell the debate over slavery in the Mexican Cession, he proposed the Compromise of 1850. Under the Compromise of 1850:
- Would have admitted California into the Union as a free state
- Let the rest of the Mexican Cession vote on whether or not they'd allow slavery
- End the importation of slaves into the Washington DC
- Require all Americans to report escaped slaves
- Have the federal government assume responsibility for the debts Texas obtained during the Mexican-American War if and only if Texas relinquished its claims to land in what is now New Mexico and Arizona
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