How can the Whig Party avoid its collapse with a POD of 1850? Will it require the party to become entirely pro or anti-slavery?
They need to be the anti-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.
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 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.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.
How were the Whigs able to do well in many Southern states then?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.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
Republican were coming up party with no baggage made former free-soiler, democrats and whigs...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.