WHIG PARTY, a political party prominent in the United States from about 1824 to 1854. The name had been in use immediately before the Revolution and during that war to desig nate those who favoured the colonial cause and independence. The first national party system of the United States came to an end during the second war with Great Britain. The destruction of the Federalist Party (q.v.) through a series of suicidal acts which began with the alien and sedition laws of 1798, and closed with the Hartford convention of 1814-15, left the Jeffersonian Republican (Democratic) Party in undisputed control. Soon, however, the all-inclusive Republican Party began gradually to disintegrate and a new party system was evolved, each member of which was the representative of such groups of ideas and interests, class and local, as required the support of a separate party. Each new party, disguised during the early stages of organization as the personal following of a particular leader or group of leaders, kept on calling itself Republican. Even during the sharply contested election of 1824 the rival partisans were known as Jackson, Crawford and Calhoun, or as Clay and Adams Republicans (see DEMOCRATIC PARTY). It was not until late in the Administration of John Quincy Adams (1825-29), that the supporters of the President and Henry Clay, the secretary of State, were first recognized as a distinct party and began to be called by the accurately descriptive term National Republicans. But after the party had become consolidated, in the passionate campaign of 1828 and later, in opposing the measures of Presi dent Jackson, it adopted in 1834 the name Whig, which, through memorable associations both British and American, served as a protest against executive encroachments, and thus facilitated union with parties and factions, such as the Anti-Masonic Party (q.v.). The new name announced not the birth but the maturity of the party, as the inaugural address and the messages to Con gress of President J. Q. Adams had set forth clearly its national
izing, broad-construction programme.
The ends for which the Whigs laboured were : first, to main tain the integrity of the Union; second, to make the Union thoroughly national ; third, to maintain the republican character of the Union; fourth, while utilizing to the full the inheritance from and through Europe, to develop a distinctly American type of civilization; fifth, to propagate abroad by peaceful means American ideas and institutions. Among the policies or means which the Whigs used in order to realize their principles were the broad construction of those provisions of the Federal Constitu tution which confer powers on the National Government; pro tective tariffs; comprehensive schemes of internal improvements under the direction and at the cost of the National Government; support of the Bank of the United States; resistance to many acts of President Jackson as encroachments on the legislative branch of the Government and therefore hostile to republicanism ; coali tion with other parties in order to promote national as opposed to partisan ends ; resort to compromise in order to allay sectional irritation and compose sectional differences ; and the expression of sympathy with the liberal movement in other lands.
The activity of the Whig Party together with the activities of the disparate elements which preceded their formation into a party, covered a period from the election of 1824 to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. In two respects, namely, the rise of the new radical democracy under Andrew Jackson, and the growth of sectionalism over the slavery issue, this period was highly critical. In view of these events the most difficult task of the Whigs, under the patriotic and conservative leadership of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, was to moderate and enlighten, rather than antagonize, the new democracy and to attempt to overcome the disrupting influence of the slavery issue.