<P> John J. Crittenden and other unionist Congressmen organized the 1860 Constitutional Union Convention, which met in May 1860 . The convention nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice President . Crittenden, Sam Houston, William Alexander Graham and William Cabell Rives also received support for the party's presidential nomination at the convention . In the 1860 presidential election, Bell took 12.6% of the popular vote and won three slave states . Most of Bell's support came from former Southern Whigs or Know Nothings . </P> <P> After the election, Crittenden and other Constitutional Unionists unsuccessfully sought to prevent a civil war with the Crittenden Compromise and the Peace Conference of 1861 . After the onset of the American Civil War, many former party members, including Bell, supported the Confederacy whereas most border state Constitutional Unionists remained loyal to the Union . Constitutional Unionists helped organize the Wheeling Convention (which split off West Virginia from Virginia) while many in Missouri joined the Unconditional Union Party . </P> <P> A predecessor of the Constitutional Union Party, the Unionist Party, was founded in 1850 by Georgia politicians Robert Toombs, Alexander Stephens and Howell Cobb to support the Compromise of 1850 and reject the notion of Southern secession . This party united Southern Whigs and Democrats under the Georgia Platform, which affirmed Georgia's acceptance of the Compromise as a final resolution to the issue of slavery . However, the party never expanded outside of the Deep South states of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama and dissolved by the end of 1851 . </P> <P> The 1860 incarnation of the Constitutional Union Party united remnants of both the defunct Whig and Know Nothing parties who were unwilling to join either the Democrats or the Republicans . Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Henry Clay's successor in border - state Whiggery, set up a meeting among fifty conservative, pro-Compromise congressmen in December 1859, which led to a convention in Baltimore the week of May 9, 1860, one week before the Republican Party convention . The convention nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for Vice President . </P>

Who did the constitutional union party nominate as their 1860 presidential candidate