How can the Collapse of the Whigs be avoided or postponed?

An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:


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Let's look a little more closely at why the Whig Party died and why by contrast the two parties established as the two leading parties by the election of 1856--the Democrats and Republicans--seem immortal.

Michael F. Holt in *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party* notes that some Whigs attempted to keep their spirits up after their party's 1852 defeat by saying that the victorious Democrats were bound to make some terrible mistake. As he notes, they were right about that--the Kansas-Nebraska Act shattered the Democrats in the North. The Whigs were wrong only in thinking that Democratic mistakes and disunity would automatically benefit *them.* As Holt writes (pp. 772-3):

"During the twentieth century, American electoral politics has always been organized around the same two major parties--Republicans and Democrats--in large part because the adoption of state-printed ballots in the 1890s measurably increased the difficulty of launching a third party to challenge them. Since those major parties had an automatic slot on the ballots and since the legal hurdles for other parties to get on those ballots were so high, Republicans and Democrats effectively monopolized
voters' choice. During this century, therefore, the Republican party has been the only realistic alternative to the Democrats. Thus it, and not some other party, has usually benefited when voters sought to punish Democrats and to replace them in office.

"In the 1850s and for most of the nineteenth century, however, the rules of the political game encouraged rather than inhibited the creation of new parties. Instead of state-printed ballots that gave legally recognized major parties pride of place and disadvantaged other groups who sought to be listed on them, political parties distributed and printed their own ballots. As a result, it was far easier for new parties to challenge the old ones. As Whigs would learn to their dismay, therefore, politics in
the 1850s was not a zero-sum game...Unlike their twentieth-century Republican successors, in sum, Whigs could not monopolize opposition to Democrats and that simple, if easily overlooked, fact more than anything else explains the death of the Whig party."

According to Holt (p. 1130, n. 24):

"For evidence that Democrats and Republicans cooperated in many states to adopt the Australian ballot during the 1890s explicitly to deny third parties access to the electorate, see McCormick, *From Realignment to Reform*, pp. 114-18; Reynold and McCormick, 'Outlawing "Treachery"'; and Argersinger, 'Place on the Ballot.'"

Had ballot access been more restricted in 1854, the Whigs might actually have benefited from the Kansas-Nebraska Act. By two-party logic, the Northern Whigs were the natural beneficiaries of the Act's unpopularity. Not a single Northern Whig voted for the Act, whereas most Demcorats supported it. To be sure, to be a successful "anti-Nebraska" party, the Whigs would have to sacrifice most of their southern wing--though a few Upper South Whigs voted against the Act. But as the Republican Party was
to show, it was perfectly possible for an a party to win presidential elections without any southern electoral votes.

However, what happened to the Northern Whigs is that just as they hoped to take advantage of the K-N Act, they got hit by two competitors for the anti-Democratic vote. One was the "anti-Nebraska," "People's" and other groups that eventually coalesced into the Republican Party. These groups contained Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers; they had become suspicious of the Whig Party because it still contained some Southerners who voted for the K-N bill, and even the Northern Whig establishment did not seem antislavery enough (yes, it had opposed the K-N bill, but much of it had supported the Fugitive Slave Law and other unappealing concessions to the "slave power"). These groups would only support those Whigs who were willing to become part of a broader antislavery coalition, and the more conservative Whigs--who though opposed to the K-N Act still hoped to retain their connections with Southern Whigs--refused to do this.

The second group was the Know-Nothings (who were eventually to form the American Party) who capitalized on resentment of immigrants, especially Catholic ones. In the North, most Know-Nothings also opposed the K-N Act, and many participated in "anti-Nebraska" coalitions.

To oversimplify a complicated process, from 1854 to 1856 the Whig Party bled to death, losing more and more of its supporters to these two competitors, eventually called the "Republicans" and "Americans." (The "Americans" eventually split, with the antislavery "North Americans" going over to the Republican side.) Now, had the Australian ballot and restrictive ballot access laws been on the books in 1854, it would be hard for these new groups to get on the ballot (especially in time for the 1854
elections), and most antislavery men and most nativists in the North would probably have supported the Whigs as the "lesser evil." The party might have survived, and even had some support in the Upper South. It would oppose the K-N Act, but as a Democratic plot to undermine national unity and the "finality" of the Compromise of 1850--not as a slaveholders' plot to bring slavery to the Midwest. It would urge restoration of the Missouri Compromise--but would *not* explicitly say that there must be no more slave states and no more slave territory, and it would oppose attempts to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act with "personal liberty laws" (though it might hint that some revision of the Act was desirable to provide safeguards against the kidnapping of free blacks). To be sure, there would still be Free Soil radicals who would think the Whigs not antislavery enough, but they might be not much more powerful than they were in 1852.

I once posed the question: "given a greater difficulty in getting third parties on the ballot, could there have been a Whig Party sufficiently opposed to slavery expansion to become the majority party in the North but conservative and bi-sectional enough that its eventual victory would not be seen by most southerners as cause for secession?" I am still not sure of the answer. It is possible that the influx of Free Soilers into the Whig Party in this scenario and the exodus of almost all Lower South Whigs
and many Upper South ones will leave the Whigs so radicalized--at least in southern eyes--that they will be as hated as "black Whigs" as the "black Republicans" were in OTL. But if a Whig victory is even marginally less offensive to the South than a Republican one, that could make a difference.

So much for that confusing period from 1854 to 1856 which witnessed the death of one party (the Whigs), the birth of another (the Republicans) and the birth *and* death of yet another (the Americans)…

http://soc.history.what-if.narkive....-the-same-fate-as-the-whig-party-of-the-1800s
 
I had another soc.history.what-if post many years ago on how the Kansas-Nebraska bill could be defeated and the Whigs saved as a bi-sectional party if just a few more Upper South Whigs would have voted against the bill. I will recycle it here, even though I am less confident now than I was when I posted it that this would do anything more than delay the War.

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I have been reading Michael Holt's *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party* (Oxford Univeristy Press 1999). I would strongly advise anyone iterested in the political background of the ACW to read it. (It is probably the most comprehensive account of the history of any major American political party.) Holt emphasizes the importance of the disintegration of the Whigs (as a bi-sectional alternative to the Democrats) and their replacement by the Republicans as a cause of the Civil War. Significantly, he states "Next to Tyler's Texas adventurism...no Whig action did more to destroy the party and bring on the war than southern Whigs' easily avoidable support for the Nebraska Act in 1854, a mistake that many of them later rued." pp. 982-3 (yes, it's a long book!)

So what if a few more Southern Whigs had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Initially, the Southern Whig press was very hostile to Douglas' proposal. It would do nothing for the South, they explained--slavery could never flourish on the Western plains, and "squatter sovereignty" in particular would guarantee that it would not do so--but would only lead to a reopening of slavery agitation in a manner very dangerous for the South. Unfortunately, the first major statement of opposition to the K-N act was the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" by the most extreme anti-slavery men in Congress--Sumner, Chase, etc. Far from claiming that the Union was being jeopardized for the sake of an abstraction, the "Appeal" argued that slavery was a real danger in the West. After that, any Southern Whig who opposed the K-N Act would be jeered at as an "abolitionist."

Yet in spite of this, some Southern Whigs did vote against the K-N Act. On May 22, the Act passed the House by 113-100. "Southern Whigs split thirteen for, seven against, and four not voting. One of the abstainees, Samuel Carruthers of Missouri, missed the vote because he was paired with an absent northern Whig, and he later announced that he would have supported passage, as did the three Missouri Whigs who voted. Had half of those fourteen Southern Whigs--say, Felix Zollicoffer and Charles Ready of Tennessee, John Kerr of North Carolina, and the four Kentucky Whigs who voted Yea--instead voted Nay, the bill would have been defeated.." p. 821 Furthermore, there were three abstainers--two from Maryland and one from Kentucky--who probably opposed the bill even if they did not dare vote against it. In short, Southern Whigs provided the crucial margin for the bill, even though 100 of its 113 supporters were Democrats.

What would it have taken to get Upper South Whigs to oppose the bill as Northern Whigs *unanimously* did? Perhaps if Clay or Webster had lived a few years longer. They would have emphasized the danger of the K-N Act to the Compromise of 1850, the "finality" of which was dogma to Southern Whigs. "You are undermining the pro-finality forces in the North and thereby endangering the South, the Whig Party, and the Union, and all for an abstraction" would be their theme. They would demolish Douglas' sophistry about the Compromise of 1850 having intended to repeal the Missouri Compromise. They could well have swayed the few needed votes.

Or even without Clay and Webster, if conservative northern and border-state Whigs had taken the lead in opposing the bill at an early stage, thereby pre-empting the Chases and Sumners, the bill might have failed.

Suppose this had happened. Then the Whig Party could have stayed alive as a bi-sectional alternative to the Democrats. "Bleeding Kansas" and the attack on Charles Sumner--two of the precipitating events of the rise of the Republican Party--do not occur. The Whig Party becomes the anti-Nebraska party--but a *conservative* anti-Nebraska party whose motto is "No change in the laws on slavery--repeal neither the Missouri Compromise nor the Compromise of 1850, including the fugitive slave act." Such a party would have widespread support in both the North and the Upper South. It could unite Seward and Lincoln and Everett and Corwin with Crittenden and Bell. (It is often forgotten that when Sumner introduced a measure to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law, even antislavery Whigs like Seward and Hamilton Fish voted No. Only after the passage of the K-N Act had rekindled sectional warfare did the attempt to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act with "personal liberty laws" really get off the ground.) To be sure, there will be some Free Soilers who refuse to support the Whigs, but they will have nowhere near the strength of the Republican Party in OTL.

To say that the Whig Party would stay alive does not mean it would not have its troubles. The most obvious would be the rise of Know-Nothingism. Still, Know-Nothingism would eventually have blown over as it did in OTL--with the difference that whereas most northern ex-Know Nothings in OTL supported Lincoln, in this time line they would probably support whoever the Whigs nominated in 1860.

Another question is whether some other event, like the Dred Scott decision, would have broken up the Whigs and caused the formation of something like the Republican Party. But without the Kansas-Nebraska Act, *Dred Scott* might have been decided on a a narrow basis; it was the conflicts caused by the passage of that Act that led some Justices to conclude that a broad decision was necessary to put down free-soil agitation once and for all. (Of course, as I once mentioned, the matter might come before the Court in a manner that did not allow evasion--for example, if Kansas were organized without repealing the Missouri Compromise, but Missourians who dominated the first Kansas legislature pass a slave code anyway, to get the constitutionality of the Compromise tested by the Court.)

There is of course another possibility--that proslavery Democrats would eventually gain control of Congress by a sufficient margin to pass the Kansas-Nebraksa Act even if Upper South Whigs opposed it, and that this would lead to the same kind of realignment as happened in OTL. But once it would have been defeated the first time, I think the psychological dynamics would have changed. The Democrats would now be cast as the party that was disturbing the Union by continually trying to bring up again an already defeated and discredited bill. After all, in OTL even some Southerners saw that the attempt to make Kansas a slave state would probably be futile.

Let me again quote Holt (pp. 981-2): "The death of the Whig Party thus had consequences, and none graver than the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861. This is not to say that there never could have been a civil war had a bisectional Whig Party survived. If anything, this study should show how rapidly contingent events could change things. But surely the circumstances provoking that war and its chronology would be different. The historical Civil War, the one that started in April 1861, resulted primarily from the fact that an exclusively northern and overtly antisouthern Republican party, not a bisectional Whig party, benefited most from anger at the Democrats in 1856 and defeated Democrats for the presidency in 1860. That soithern fire-eaters who had unsuccesfully sought secession for decades could have exploited the election of a Whig president, supported by southern Whigs, to trigger disunion seems doubtful."
 
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They need to be the anti-slavery party

That seems to be the case. I do think it would be interesting to see the Democrats become the anti-slavery party while the Whigs become the pro-slavery party.

An old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

I had another soc.history.what-if post many years ago on how the Kansas-Nebraska bill could be defeated and the Whigs saved as a bi-sectional party if just a few more Upper South Whigs would have voted against the bill. I will recycle it here, even though I am less confident now than I was when I posted it that this would do anything more than delay the War.

So the Whigs probably lose almost all of their support in the deep South (Georgia and Louisiana still had strong Whig Parties). Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky are the obvious southern states that are still winnable for the party, and maybe Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri as well. I'm assuming that Democrats in New England are hit hard, losing support to both Whigs and Free-Soilers. What happens to the West? Would the future states of Oregon, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, etc. be more favorable to Democrats or Whigs?
 
That seems to be the case. I do think it would be interesting to see the Democrats become the anti-slavery party while the Whigs become the pro-slavery party.

Not really viable. The Southern Democrats (aka the slavers) preferred Free Trade, whereas the Whigs inherently preferred Protectionism.
 
How were the Whigs able to do well in many Southern states then?

There were Southerners who supported Clay's "National System", and the promotion of manufacturing throughout the country, including the South. Also, there were Southerners who supported high tariffs on hemp and sugar, to protect Southern producers.

The anti-tariff militants were not so much concerned about the economic effects of a high tariff as about the fiscal effects and the resulting effect on government structure. If the Federal government collected a lot of revenue from tariffs, that would lead to greater Federal spending and a greater role for the Federal government, and by implication greater Federal power. And that was perceived as a threat by those who were most pro-slavery.
 
There were Southerners who supported Clay's "National System", and the promotion of manufacturing throughout the country, including the South. Also, there were Southerners who supported high tariffs on hemp and sugar, to protect Southern producers.

The anti-tariff militants were not so much concerned about the economic effects of a high tariff as about the fiscal effects and the resulting effect on government structure. If the Federal government collected a lot of revenue from tariffs, that would lead to greater Federal spending and a greater role for the Federal government, and by implication greater Federal power. And that was perceived as a threat by those who were most pro-slavery.

Interesting, people with a certain agenda act as though the South was a purely agrarian society opposed to the overwhelmingly industrial North (I'm not accusing Maeglin of this). I know the South had some industry, it just never seems to be discussed.
 
Interesting, people with a certain agenda act as though the South was a purely agrarian society opposed to the overwhelmingly industrial North (I'm not accusing Maeglin of this). I know the South had some industry, it just never seems to be discussed.
There were some Southerners (IIRC they were among the militant "Fire-Eaters") who held up the South as a temple of agrarian virtue, never to be defiled by the dark mills of industry. Obviously, not all Southerners felt this way, e.g. the owners of the Tredegar works in Richmond, and others.

Thus Southern opinion was divided on tariffs, and a protectionist like Clay could draw 35%-50% of the vote in slave states. Whereas Southern opinion was all but unanimous on slavery, and an anti-slavery man like Lincoln drew only 2% of the slave-state vote, 3/4 of it from German immigrants in St. Louis, Missouri.

The very radical act of declaring secession required overwhelming popular support; thus it was possible only on an issue like slavery.
 
How were the Whigs able to do well in many Southern states then?

First of all, not all Southerners were free traders. Louisiana, in particular, wanted protection for its sugar. Kentucky wanted protection for hemp, and so to a lesser extent did Tennessee (where the Whigs were strong) and Missouri (where they weren't). And southern Whigs who favored internal improvements realized that a tariff was necessary to pay for them--though they certainly would not want it to be as high as, say Pennsylvania Whigs (or for that matter many Pennsylvania Democrats!) would desire.

Secondly, a lot of elections in that era simply were not about the tariff. The Compromise Tariff of 1833 had seemed to settle the issue for awhile--and southerners who voted for Hugh White (or in the Upper South William Henry Harrison) in 1836 or Harrison in 1840 were not necessarily voting for protection. True, the tariff of 1842 was disliked by many southerners, but even as southern a president as John Tyler signed it (whereas he had vetoed other key items of the Whigs' economic program) because the need for revenue was so pressing. Nor was the election of 1844 mainly a mandate for lower tariffs: Polk won Pennsylvania largely because the Kane letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_Letter convinced the voters in that state that he was a protectionist. "As Sellers points out, the Kane letter (to a Philadelphia VanBurenite) was not the straddle some historians have accused it of being. In it, Polk specifically endorsed both "protection" and "discrimination," actually using both of these dangerous terms several times: "In adjusting the details of a revenue tariff, I have heretofore sanctioned such moderate discriminating duties, as would produce the amount of revenue needed, and at the same time afford reasonable incidental protection to our home industry." He opposed, he said, "a tariff for protection *merely,* and not for revenue." Pennsylvania Democrats were so jubilant that they even claimed that Polk was a better protectionist than Clay, and took credit for the 1842 tariff!..." http://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/5YBOkJ94/yet-another-way-for-clay-to-beat-polk-in-1844

You might think that the 1848 election would be about the 1846 Walker Tariff--or as Horace Greeley called it, the "Tariff Reduction and Labor Destruction Bill." https://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA235 Opposition to the law certainly helped the Whigs carry Pennsylvania in 1848. But Taylor was not a protectionist https://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA235 and there was no national Whig platform that year. The South was more concerned with the Wilmot Proviso and the alleged danger to slavery, and generally concluded that the Louisiana slaveholder Taylor, not the northerner Cass, was the best man to handle that problem.

In general, the prosperity that followed the discovery of gold in California lessened the importance of the tariff issue (as of course did the growing salience of the slavery and nativism issues). Even the 1856 Republican platform, while advocating internal improvements and a railroad to the Pacific, said nothing about the tariff. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29619 It was really the depression of 1857 that revived the tariff issue.
 
@David T

You mentioned that book a few years ago, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party - everything you mention a book i generally go off and buy it!

Anyway I would generally assume that even having better President/VP candidates may also help. Clay and Harrison did not like each other, nor was Tyler exactly a Whig at all but rather an anti-Jacksonian democrat. Scott and Taylor did not like each other and the VP choice seems to have been mostly between Fillmore and Seward (Seward being a distinct possibility in 1848) its just that Fillmore was more acceptable to the Southern whig members of the party, and was also a rival to Seward.
 
Anyway I would generally assume that even having better President/VP candidates may also help. Clay and Harrison did not like each other, nor was Tyler exactly a Whig at all but rather an anti-Jacksonian democrat. Scott and Taylor did not like each other and the VP choice seems to have been mostly between Fillmore and Seward (Seward being a distinct possibility in 1848) its just that Fillmore was more acceptable to the Southern whig members of the party, and was also a rival to Seward.

True, it did seem like the party had a lot of potential, but just wasn't very good at elections.

There were some Southerners (IIRC they were among the militant "Fire-Eaters") who held up the South as a temple of agrarian virtue, never to be defiled by the dark mills of industry. Obviously, not all Southerners felt this way, e.g. the owners of the Tredegar works in Richmond, and others.

Thus Southern opinion was divided on tariffs, and a protectionist like Clay could draw 35%-50% of the vote in slave states. Whereas Southern opinion was all but unanimous on slavery, and an anti-slavery man like Lincoln drew only 2% of the slave-state vote, 3/4 of it from German immigrants in St. Louis, Missouri.

The very radical act of declaring secession required overwhelming popular support; thus it was possible only on an issue like slavery.

Was the tariff issue important to Southerners when they were choosing between the Southern Democratic Party and the Whig remnants operating under the Constitutional Union Party in 1860?

First of all, not all Southerners were free traders. Louisiana, in particular, wanted protection for its sugar. Kentucky wanted protection for hemp, and so to a lesser extent did Tennessee (where the Whigs were strong) and Missouri (where they weren't). And southern Whigs who favored internal improvements realized that a tariff was necessary to pay for them--though they certainly would not want it to be as high as, say Pennsylvania Whigs (or for that matter many Pennsylvania Democrats!) would desire.

Secondly, a lot of elections in that era simply were not about the tariff. The Compromise Tariff of 1833 had seemed to settle the issue for awhile--and southerners who voted for Hugh White (or in the Upper South William Henry Harrison) in 1836 or Harrison in 1840 were not necessarily voting for protection. True, the tariff of 1842 was disliked by many southerners, but even as southern a president as John Tyler signed it (whereas he had vetoed other key items of the Whigs' economic program) because the need for revenue was so pressing. Nor was the election of 1844 mainly a mandate for lower tariffs: Polk won Pennsylvania largely because the Kane letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_Letter convinced the voters in that state that he was a protectionist. "As Sellers points out, the Kane letter (to a Philadelphia VanBurenite) was not the straddle some historians have accused it of being. In it, Polk specifically endorsed both "protection" and "discrimination," actually using both of these dangerous terms several times: "In adjusting the details of a revenue tariff, I have heretofore sanctioned such moderate discriminating duties, as would produce the amount of revenue needed, and at the same time afford reasonable incidental protection to our home industry." He opposed, he said, "a tariff for protection *merely,* and not for revenue." Pennsylvania Democrats were so jubilant that they even claimed that Polk was a better protectionist than Clay, and took credit for the 1842 tariff!..." http://soc.history.what-if.narkive.com/5YBOkJ94/yet-another-way-for-clay-to-beat-polk-in-1844

You might think that the 1848 election would be about the 1846 Walker Tariff--or as Horace Greeley called it, the "Tariff Reduction and Labor Destruction Bill." https://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA235 Opposition to the law certainly helped the Whigs carry Pennsylvania in 1848. But Taylor was not a protectionist https://books.google.com/books?id=5aGyVFn3VnMC&pg=PA235 and there was no national Whig platform that year. The South was more concerned with the Wilmot Proviso and the alleged danger to slavery, and generally concluded that the Louisiana slaveholder Taylor, not the northerner Cass, was the best man to handle that problem.

In general, the prosperity that followed the discovery of gold in California lessened the importance of the tariff issue (as of course did the growing salience of the slavery and nativism issues). Even the 1856 Republican platform, while advocating internal improvements and a railroad to the Pacific, said nothing about the tariff. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29619 It was really the depression of 1857 that revived the tariff issue.

What did Westerners think of tariffs? I know that California and Texas rejected the Whigs when they were on the ballot in those states, but Texas could be explained by Whig opposition to annexation. If the Whigs remain viable into the 1860s can they compete east of the Mississippi?
 
@David T

You mentioned that book a few years ago, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party - everything you mention a book i generally go off and buy it!

Anyway I would generally assume that even having better President/VP candidates may also help. Clay and Harrison did not like each other, nor was Tyler exactly a Whig at all but rather an anti-Jacksonian democrat. Scott and Taylor did not like each other and the VP choice seems to have been mostly between Fillmore and Seward (Seward being a distinct possibility in 1848) its just that Fillmore was more acceptable to the Southern whig members of the party, and was also a rival to Seward.

(1) Tyler would probably call himself a (Jeffersonian) Republican, not a Democrat. He adhered to the Whigs in the late 1830's and early 1840's because the party was formed in opposition to the "executive tyranny" of Jackson and Van Buren and was therefore 'republican." He could in good faith share a ticket with Harrison because he honestly didn't think that Harrison supported "neo-Federalist" measures like the National Bank or a protective tariff. Eventually, once the Whigs rallied behind Clay's nationalistic economic policies, he moved closer to the Democrats, but would probably agree with what Calhoun wrote in 1838: "In this connection I must say I object to the name of democrat as applied to us or our party. It has been more particularly appropriated to those who have adhered to the administration while we have assumed the name of State rights and Republican party. In truth the word democrat better applies to the north than the South and as usually understood means those who are in favour of the government of the absolute numerical majority to which I am utterly opposed and the prevalence of which would destroy our system and destroy the South..." https://archive.org/stream/correspondenceof00calhrich#page/398

(2) I think the problem the Whigs had in 1852 was that their economic program no longer had much political appeal once the discovery of gold in California helped assure a plentiful currency better than any bank could do, and the Whigs were more divided on slavery and the Compromise of 1850 than the Democrats were. I don't think any candidate could have solved the party's problem, but Michael F. Holt may have been right that the Whigs would have done better to nominate Fillmore, something I discuss at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...lmore-wins-1852-election.319955/#post-9335720:

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True, Fillmore will do better than the Seward-supported Scott in the South. (In addition to Kentucky and Tennessee, which Scott carried, Fillmore can probably carry North Carolina and maybe Louisiana and Delaware.) But in the North, I can see a lot of anti-slavery Whigs defecting to the Free Soilers.

Still, it can be argued that Scott's refusal to explicitly endorse the Compromise in public and his support by Seward may have hurt him as much as it helped him *even in the North.* In New York for example Scott ran 7,000 votes behind Whig gubernatorial candidate Washington Hunt (who nevertheless lost to Horatio Seymour). Obviously, Scott was "cut" by some anti-Seward Whigs. Michael Holt lists Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Indiana and Maine as other northern states where there were some conservative Whig defections to Pierce. (And of course some simply abstained.) Admittedly, not all of the defections were due to Scott (or at least his supporters) being seen as too anti-slavery. Some for example were doubtless due to Protestant dislike of Scott's clumsy attempts to woo immigrant and Catholic voters. Still, Robert Toombs may have had a point in gloating after the election that "it must have satisfied the northern Whigs that free soil don't pay any better at the North than at the South." (Quoted in Holt, *The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party*, p. 760.)

In short, Fillmore, because he was more clearly pro-Compromise and because he would not have tried to woo Catholic voters as Scott (completely unsuccessfully [1] ) did, would probably have been a stronger candidate overall. Still, I just don't see him carrying the big northern states he will need to win, even with an improved showing in the South. Though of course it might help if Pierce got publicly drunk in an undeniable way...

All in all, though, a frustrated Whig campaigner in Pennsylvania, though talking about the Scott campaign, probably said something equally applicable if Fillmore had been nominated: "'To make a fight in November was something like pissing against the wind, when blowing about sixty miles to the hour." http://books.google.com/books?id=_KhoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA754

[1] As Tom Corwin would later lament about Catholic voters, "we know they *all* voted the other ticket." http://books.google.com/books?id=5woSAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA41
 
Was the tariff issue important to Southerners when they were choosing between the Southern Democratic Party and the Whig remnants operating under the Constitutional Union Party in 1860?

The CUP only ran a presidential ticket. In many parts of the South, especially the Upper South and Border, the Whig remnants campaigned for Congress under the "Opposition" rubric. I don't think there was any "platform" explicitly adopted by these candidates, but as they were all former Whigs (either elected as such, or known supporters of the Whig party in the past), their position on these issues could be safely assumed. (The "Opposition" Representatives elected in 1858 mostly stayed in attendance till the end of the 36th Congress; only one was from a Deep South state. It would be interesting to see hiow they voted on the Morill Tariff.)

Correction: there were two CU Representatives elected in 1860. Most of the non-Democrats of the South ran as Unionists. No one used the Opposition label in 1860, apparently.
 
Where Barnburner Democrats and anti-slavery agrarian populist(Free-soilers) will go to...

I can't see pro-business whigs, so they would have to make a third party if so what would it be called.

I mean Whig for right or wrong had made themselves the party of big business so any anti-slavery populist steer clear from them in my mind eye
 
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Where Barnburner Democrats and anti-slavery agrarian populist(Free-soilers) will go to...

I can't see pro-business whigs, so they would have to make a third party if so what would it be called.

I mean Whig for right or wrong had made themselves the party of big business so any anti-slavery populist steer clear from them in my mind eye
So did the Republican Party. It’s not purely a anti slavery party. It’s platform even before the Civil War is very pro business.
 
So did the Republican Party. It’s not purely a anti slavery party. It’s platform even before the Civil War is very pro business.
Republican were coming up party with no baggage made former free-soiler, democrats and whigs...

How it turn out that mixture of people wants and party leaders.

You see Whigs saddled with its history of policy stances thus see as less flexible as Republicans did
 
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