The Whigs Survive

[mspence]

The American Whigs were the other major American political party of the 19th century after the end of the Federalists. Divided over slavery, they broke up and gave birth to the Republican Party. But WI they had managed to develop a more coherent position on slavery? Could they have survived the Civil War?

 

[UCB79]

Problem was, if the Whigs had become(like the Republicans)consistently anti-slavery, they would have lost their southern wing. If they went pro-slavery, they would have lost their northern wing(or @ the very
least, most of it). If they tried to temporize- well, IOTL one can see where that got them. In short slavery placed the Whigs- always a party ridden by factions in the best of times*- in an impossible situation that it could not survive. In a very real sense, the party was the first casualty of the ACW.

*- Their harmony, quipped historical novelist Irving Stone, was well “illustrated by the story of the man who sat in the parlor every night holding his wife’s hand: if he ever let go, she would kill him.” Irving
Stone, THEY ALSO RAN, pp. 62-63 of the 1964, Pyramid paperback edition.