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The Whig Party was a mid-19th century political party in the United States. Alongside the Democratic Party, it was one of two major parties between the late 1830s and the early 1850s and part of the Second Party System. As well as four Whig presidents, other prominent members included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, William Seward, John J. Crittenden, and John Quincy Adams. The Whig base of support was amongst entrepreneurs, professionals, Protestants, and the urban middle class. It had much less backing from poor farmers and unskilled workers.
The 1852 United States presidential election was the 17th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. Democrat Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott. A third party candidate from the Free Soil party, John P. Hale, also ran and came in third place, but got no electoral votes.
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states had already abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the states that would become the Confederacy seceding from the Union. This marked the first time that a Republican was elected president. It was also the first presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1904, 1920, 1940, 1944, and 2016.
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
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The presidency of Millard Fillmore began on July 9, 1850, when Millard Fillmore became President of the United States upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, and ended on March 4, 1853. Fillmore had been Vice President of the United States for 1 year, 4 months when he became the 13th United States president. Fillmore was the second president to succeed to the office without being elected to it, after John Tyler. He was the last Whig president. His presidency ended after losing the Whig nomination at the 1852 Whig National Convention. Fillmore was succeeded by Democrat Franklin Pierce.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
The 1851 Georgia gubernatorial election was held on October 6, 1851, to elect the governor of Georgia. Howell Cobb, nominee for the newly formed Constitutional Union Party, defeated the Southern Rights Candidate, Charles McDonald.
Unionists in the border states organized political parties to oppose secession from the United States during the American Civil War. They extended critical support to the wartime administration of Abraham Lincoln while remaining outside Lincoln's Republican Party. While some harbored antislavery sympathies, most Unionists viewed the abolitionist movement with hostility and initially resisted Lincoln's efforts on behalf of emancipation. Unionist governments were opposed by Copperheads who opposed Lincoln's wartime policies and in some cases the war itself, as well as Confederate regular and irregular military forces.
References
- ↑ Webster died on October 24, 1852, nine days prior to the election.
- ↑ Murray, Paul (December 1945). "Party Organization in Georgia Politics, 1825-1853". Georgia Historical Quarterly. 29 (4): 206.
- ↑ Holt, Michael F. (1983). The Political Crisis of the 1850s. New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 91–92.
- ↑ Holt, Michael F. (1999). The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University. pp. 608–9, 614–16.
- ↑ Holt, Crisis, 98.
- ↑ Murray, 206.
- ↑ Holt, Crisis, 92.
- ↑ McPherson, James M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University. p. 259.
