<P> The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States . Four United States Presidents belonged to the party while in office . It emerged in the 1830s as the leading opponent of Jacksonians, pulling together former members of the National Republican (one of the successors of the Democratic - Republican Party) and the Anti-Masonic Party . It had links to the upscale traditions of the Federalist Party . Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1840s to the mid-1860s . It originally formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829--1837) and his Democratic Party . In particular, the Whigs supported the supremacy of the United States Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization, banking and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing . It appealed to entrepreneurs, planters, reformers and the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers . It included many active Protestants and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal . Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs (aka the Patriots) of the 18th century who fought for independence . The underlying political philosophy of the American Whig Party was not directly related to the British Whig party . Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide: </P> <P> Democrats stood for the' sovereignty of the people' as expressed in popular demonstrations, constitutional conventions, and majority rule as a general principle of governing, whereas Whigs advocated the rule of law, written and unchanging constitutions, and protections for minority interests against majority tyranny . </P> <P> The Whig Party nominated several presidential candidates in 1836 . General William Henry Harrison of Ohio was nominated in 1840, former Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1844 and General Zachary Taylor of Kentucky in 1848 . Another war hero, General Winfield Scott of New Jersey, was the Whig Party's last presidential nominee in 1852 . In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, Harrison and Taylor, elected president and both died in office . John Tyler succeeded to the presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party later that year . Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death in 1850, was the last Whig President . </P> <P> The party fell apart because of internal tension over the expansion of slavery to the territories . With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the nomination for a full term of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election--instead, the party nominated General Scott . Most Whig Party leaders eventually quit politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties . The Northern voter base mostly gravitated to the new Republican Party . In the South, most joined the Know Nothing Party, which unsuccessfully ran Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, by which time the Whig Party had become virtually defunct . Some former Whigs became Democrats . The Constitutional Union Party experienced significant success from conservative former Whigs in the Upper South during the 1860 presidential election . Whig ideology as a policy orientation persisted for decades and played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state governments during Reconstruction . </P>

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