The election of 5828 gave to Andrew Jackson the Presidency, and to the people, in a higher degree than ever before, the control of the Government. Opposition to Jackson's radical policy brought about, under Whig leadership, a coalition of parties which influenced deeply and permanently the character, policy and for tunes of the Whig Party. It became the champion of the bank, of the right of Congress, and of the older and purer form of the civil service. In strict accord with their own principles, however, the Whigs supported the President during the nullification contro versy (see NULLIFICATION). The majority of the Northern Whigs, with the entire Southern membership of the party, disapproved the propaganda of the Abolitionists on the ground of its tendency to endanger the Union, and many from a like motive voted for the "gag rules" of 1835-44 (see ADAMS, J. Q.), which in spirit, if not in letter, violated the constitutional right of petition. In the election of 1832 Clay was the nominee of the National Republican Party for the Presidency. Gen. W. H. Harrison was nominated by the anti-Jackson groups in 1836, and in 184o purely on the grounds of expediency he was the nominee of the Whig Party. The election of Gen. Harrison in the "log cabin and hard cider" campaign of 1840 proved a fruitless victory; the early death of the President and the anti-Whig politics of his successor, John Tyler (q.v.), shattered their legislative programme.
In 1844 Clay was the Whig candidate, and the annexation of Texas, involving the risk of a war with Mexico, was the leading issue. The Whigs opposed annexation and the prospect of suc cess seemed bright, until an injudicious letter written by Clay turned the anti-slavery element against him and lost him the Presidency. The triumph of Polk in 1844 was followed by the
annexation of Texas and by war with Mexico. The Whigs opposed the war largely for political reasons, but on patriotic grounds voted supplies for its prosecution. The vast territorial expansion, at the cost of Mexico, brought to the front the question of slavery in the new domain. The agitation that followed continued through the presidential election of 1848 (in which the Whigs elected Gen. Zachary Taylor), and did not subside until the passage of the "Compromise Measures of 1850" (q.v.). To its authors this compromise seemed essential to the preservation of the Union; but it led directly to the destruction of the Whig Party.
In the North, the fugitive slave law grew daily more odious, but a committal of the party to the repeal of the law would have driven the Southern Whigs into the camp of the Democrats. In an endeavour to allay sectional strife, the national Whig conven tion of 1852, the last that represented the party in its entirety, gave to the Northern Whigs the naming of the candidate—Gen. Winfield Scott—and to the Southern the framing of the platform with its "finality" plank which committed the party to an accept ance of the laws regulating slavery as final. Two years later the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act demonstrated that "finality" could not be maintained, and that in committing the Whig Party to the policy of its maintenance the convention of 1852 had signed the death-warrant of the party.