Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The American Whig Party

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

American politics has been called a two-party system. While there are two major parties today, and those two parties have been around a long time, they weren’t always the only two parties. In fact, there was a political party in the US that, took its name from a British political party, had four US presidents, and even held control of Congress for several years. Today, they are all but unknown to most people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American politics has been called a two-party system. While there are indeed two major parties today, and those two parties have been around a long time, they weren't always the only two parties. In fact, there was a political party in the United States that took its name from a British political party, had four U.S. presidents, and even held control of Congress for several years. Today, however, they're all but unknown to most people. Learn more about the Whig Party, their rise and fall on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The 1820s were an important time in American history. I've touched on this area in a few previous episodes, in particular, the one on the election of 1824 and on the six political eras in American history episode. By the time of the 1820 election, the Federalist Party had completely fallen apart. President James Monroe literally ran unopposed for president. In 1824, all four of the candidates for president who received electoral votes came from the

same party, the Democratic Republican Party. After this election, the Democratic Republican Party two fell apart, and they were replaced by the Democratic Party, which was led by Andrew Jackson. This is the direct descendant of the modern-day political party with the same name. In 1828, the incumbent president was John Quincy Adams, and he ran against Jackson, but the party he was associated with wasn't really an organized party. It was alternatively called the National Republican Party, the Anti-Jacksonian Party, and the plain old Republican Party, although this was not related to the modern-day party with the same name. Andrew Jackson dominated the political landscape during this era, from 1828 to 1836. he was president, and even after his presidency, he cast a long shadow over American politics.

The opponents of Jackson were at first simply known as anti-Jaxonians, because they were united in their opposition to Jackson. It wouldn't be correct to say that the anti-Jaxonians were simply a revival of the Federalist Party. By this time, there had been a complete realignment in the American political system. Some Democratic Republicans went on to form the new Democratic Party, but some also became anti-Jaxonians. The beginning of the Whig Party began with the nullification crisis. Congress had passed a series of tariffs in 1828 and 1832, which dramatically increased the taxes on imported goods. This was vehemently objected to in the South, which called it the Tariff of Abominations, as the South was highly dependent on agricultural exports. In 1832, the South Carolina State Legislature passed a bill that supposedly nullified the federal tariff.

They claimed that a state could nullify any federal law which affected them. Around the country, anti-Jacksonian groups began to form, and they created what they called small Whig parties. Calling their groups Whig Parties was a joke and a jab at Jackson, but it is a joke which is completely over the heads of most modern-day people, so it requires explaining. The Whig Party was actually a political party in Great Britain that formed in the late 17th century, and lasted through the mid-19th century. and, ironically enough, they dissolved around the same time as the American Whig Party did. The British Whigs were pro-parliament and supported a constitutional monarchy rather than an absolute monarchy. Their positions changed somewhat over the course of almost 200 years, but for our purposes, we can say that they were less supportive of the monarchy. The joke was in the American context that it made Andrew Jackson out to be a king.

Hence, the opposition groups called themselves Whigs. Here I also might explain the origin of the name because it does sound really weird. Whig is spelt with an H, and it has nothing to do with wigs that you wear on your head. Whig is short for the word Wigamore, which is a term for a cattle driver. It comes from Scottish cattle drivers who would say, and I'm probably going to butcher this, Chuig on Bothar, which then got morphed into Wigamore somehow by the English. Wigamore became the name of a group of Scottish rebels of, the English Civil War and was later used to describe those who blocked Charles

the second son James from ascending to the throne because he was Catholic. However, for our purposes, it was simply used to mean opposition to authority. The birth of the American Whig Party is often given as 1833, when the anti-Jacksonians took control of the Senate. The core of the early party consisted of the national Republicans, such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, defectors from the Democratic Party, as well as members of the anti-Missom. Party. And yeah, the anti-Masonic party was a thing, and I'm sure I'll be doing an episode on that in the future. The party wasn't very organized at this point. It still had opposition to Jackson at its core.

In the 1836 election, they ended up having two candidates which received electoral votes. It wouldn't have made a difference, as combined they didn't have enough to beat Martin Van Buren, but it was still disorganized. In 1840, however, they nominated a hero of the War of 1812, William Henry Harrison. who was from the north. And they picked as his running mate a southerner, John Tyler. Harrison won the election quite handily. Van Buren had the bad luck of being president during the panic of 1837, which was probably the biggest economic downturn in America before the Great Depression. Harrison, on the other hand, had the bad luck of dying just 31 days after becoming president. Tyler wasn't much of a Whig as president. He appointed Democrats to his cabinet,

and he wasn't very popular. The Whig Party dropped him as their candidate in 1844. Instead, they ran Henry Clay from Kentucky, who lost to James Polk. Polk promised and vowed to only serve one term, and he did just that. The Whigs then ran General Zachary Taylor, who had just come off success in the Mexican-American War. Taylor won the presidency in 1848, becoming the second Whig to win the White House. But he too died in office two years into his term, and he was replaced by his first. running mate, Millard Fillmore. By the time the 1850s rolled around, the Whig issues of a

national bank, infrastructure improvements, and opposition to tariffs, took a backseat to the issue which completely dominated American life, slavery. The Whig party had members in both the North and the South, with two of their four presidents coming from each. However, the North-South divide in the party couldn't withstand the growing debate about slavery. In the 1852 election, for the second time, the Whigs didn't nominate their incumbent president. This time they selected General Winfield Scott, who was soundly defeated. By 1856, they didn't even have their own candidate for president. They supported Millard Fillmore, who ran as the candidate from the No-Nothing Party.

They received significantly fewer votes than the new Republican Party, which had positioned itself as staunchly anti-slavery. By 1856, American politics had once again re-aligned, and there was no future for the Whig Party. But in 1860, a former Whig Party member did win the presidency, Abraham Lincoln. History hasn't been kind to the Whig Party. Historian Alan C. Guzlo wrote that, quote, no major political movement has suffered more sheer dismissal, more impatient contempt at the hands of political historians than the American Whigs, unquote.

The Whigs have been considered by historians to be a party that had no real ideas. They were formed out of an opposition to Andrew Jackson. not out of support for anything in particular. The moment a real divisive issue came to the forefront of politics, aka slavery, the Whig Party couldn't survive. While I don't think it's entirely true that they had no issues, I also don't think it's totally false either. Believe it or not, there was an attempt to revive the Whig Party in 2008

as a centrist's political third party. It was formed by a group of veterans who were sick of watching people bicker about politics on TV in the mess hall. The animal they picked to represent them, was the owl. They never got very far, but in Philadelphia, a man by the name of Robert Buchholz actually won a local election for the position of judge of elections running under the Whig Party banner. He was the first Whig to win an election in the United States in over 150 years. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson. Today's review comes from

listener around the world we from podcast attic. They write, I've become addicted to this short educational podcast. I'm a history and travel buff and love hearing about interesting facts in a quick, digestible way. I've listened to every episode and just sometimes wish I was patient enough to wait a few days so I could cue them up and listen longer. But it's not just me. I've listened to the founding of the Bell Labs episode with my husband who worked there and the great molasses flood with my son who learned about it in school. Thanks for all you do. Well, thank you very much around the world we. And actually, I'm not sure if your username got cut off. By the way, If you love travel, I might just have something for you that you might enjoy in a few months.

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