This blog of late has
been sharing the views of the American Whig Party – that were mostly
anti-slavery and probusiness in the early 1800s – as reported by Michael F.
Holt.[1] His admiration for that party is not
difficult to discern, and he owns up to it toward the end of his book. That party’s failure to survive, Holt
suggests, might be considered as a reason for the tragedy of the Civil War.
What does he share that
suggests this thought-provoking claim? To
begin, with its demise, the nation lacked two major parties. Given the funneling function a party provides
(described two postings ago), legitimate interests were left without an appropriate
voice in the national political arena.
This, of course, adds to the disruptive environment that the general
state of polarization was imposing on the nation as it marched toward civil war.
Also, as compared to
the Democrats, the Whigs were uncompromisingly pro-union. As the “anti-slavery” party, anti-slavery Northerners
were, without the Whigs, more or less forced to vote Republican. That was a newer party, which was recruiting
many Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln.
But that switch had a price.
The Republicans, while an
anti-slavery group, was still, in 1860 more of a regional entity – that of the
North – and its candidate winning the presidency added to the insult
Southerners felt. Here, they perceived that
the North was going to dictate to them and that intensified their demand to
secede. And secede they did.
There is a question
Holt leads his readers to ask: if the Whig
Party had survived, could its rhetoric have convinced the South to stay in the
Union? The Whigs, according to Holt, played
that role in 1850. This blogger
questions that. Slavery was an issue
then, but its vibrancy grew during the ’50s.
How? As
the provisions of the Compromise of 1850 took hold, both sides saw that the
addition of each newer state – a number that grew as a result of the Mexican
American War – promised a pitched battle between pro and anti-slavery forces. For example, by 1860 the nation experienced
the consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
It led to a great deal of disruption – e.g., the horrors associated with
“bleeding Kansas” in which pro and anti-slavery forces engaged in guerrilla
warfare against each other.
In addition, while the
Whigs did serve to encourage union, its very lack of a more responsible rationale
or ideology seemed not to meet the challenge of the time. That is, as this blog has reported, the party
prided itself in neither lacking any national ideology nor engaging in
effective disciplinary practices to keep its members in line. While American political parties are not
known for well-thought-out political treatises, given the profound challenge
slavery represented, that party, to be a force, needed to be clear so as to convince
or even sway a national electorate.
On the other hand, the
act of seceding was no small matter and perhaps the addition of any meaningful
voice counseling against it might have made a difference. Either way, one can surmise that if the Whigs
did not prevent the Civil War, one can safely judge that the Civil War or its
approach provided the last nail in that party’s coffin. There was no Whig or near Whig candidate in
the election of 1864. Some limit the
years of the Whig Party from 1833 to 1856.
This blogger can agree with those dates and would only point out there was
no coroner to establish the death of a political party.
In summary, Allen C.
Guelzo offers the following general observations of the party:
· Initially, the party was
spurred by a profound hatred of Andrew Jackson.
They saw Jackson as a militarist threat to American republican
governance.
· It sought to represent
the interest of commercial enterprises – that of small businesspeople,
burgeoning industrialists, cash-crop agricultural interests, and merchants.
· In representing those
interests, they fought for internal improvements and a higher tariff rate.
· To assist business but
also to allow the national government to fund healthy national government projects,
they fought for the rechartering of a national bank.
· And they tended to ally
themselves with moral voices one found in collegiate campuses. Here, the party seemed to adopt a rhetoric echoing
that of evangelical Protestants – values such as personal responsibility,
thrift, and sobriety could be easily found in the language they employed. A federalist message of a “harmony of
interests” along with a general sense of optimism can also be easily detected
in their campaigning. This contrasted with
the language of victimization that the Democrats used.[2]
Guelzo writes,
As Daniel Walker Howe has put it, the Whigs promoted a
society which would be diverse but culturally uniform. Democrats preferred economic uniformity and
equality, especially of an agricultural or agrarian sort, but tolerated the
spread of cultural, ethnic and moral diversity.[3]
And with that, this
blog is ready to move on – although it reserves the right to revisit the Whigs
at some future time. This blogger,
fortunately or unfortunately, finds that party particularly relatable to the
ongoing themes this blog addresses.
No comments:
Post a Comment