Whig party – U.S. to 1877

November 20, 2013

Wilentz Discusses the Inevitable Showdown

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In chapters 21 and 22, Wilentz discusses the inevitable fight over slavery between the pro-slavery southern Whigs, led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, and the adamant abolitionists, led by John Taylor, during the compromise of 1850. After the victory over Mexico in the recent war and the gain of the California, New Mexico, and Texas territories, the debate of whether these new states would host slavery or not dominated the American political system. Newly inaugurated President Taylor wanted to be his own man, and attempted to create his own party of Taylor Republicans with strong feelings over slavery and territorial expansion. While the figureheads of the pro-slavery movement Clay and John C. Calhoun were fed up with the apparent northern aggression. Summarizing Wilentz on page 343, President Taylor wasn’t scared by the threat of southern secession, and it seems Calhoun wasn’t afraid to act on his promise. This unfaltering resolve on both sides of the fight, further fueled by the failed compromise of 1850, propelled the country into the Civil War.

Even though many thought that Whig-candidate Zachary Taylor would be an indecisive president, they never thought he would turn on his party entirely. Himself a slave owner, Taylor thought that “the southern insistence on slaveholders’ rights was a divisive conceit that might destroy; the Union in the name of legalistic abstractions.” (Wilentz 342) While he may have participated in slavery, Taylor believed that the issue over slavery was exaggerated by the wealthy plantation owners in the south and believed their puerile fighting would destroy the fundamental unity of the country. In his steadfast determination to show the “ultra-Whigs” (338) they were going to tear apart the Union, Taylor also showed that he wouldn’t back down from a fight. Although commendable, his aggressive stance only elevated the situation and forced the Whigs to act on their promise to secede.

Although I have repeatedly talked about how much I enjoy Wilentz’s depiction of Calhoun in my previous blog posts, I think the way he discusses Calhoun on page 345 is by far the most entertaining. He portrays, “The dying John C. Calhoun sat at his desk, wrapped in flannels, his eyes blazing from behind pale and hollowed cheeks.” Almost depicted as the archetype of the devil, Calhoun is shown as the symbol of unyielding pro-slavery. As Wilentz writes, “Calhoun blamed “sectional discord on Congress’s long-standing and systematic promotion of national legislation favorable to the North.” (345) Calhoun concluded that the oppression would end only if the North ceased its aggression and as Sherwood mentioned, perhaps the “slavocrats” felt backed into a corner and felt obligated to stand strong. Calhoun gave an ultimatum to Taylor and the abolitionists, “were California admitted as a free state, either under Taylor’s plan or Clay’s, the southern states could no longer ‘remain honorably and safely in the Union.’”

In nearing the start of the Civil War however, the 1850 compromise or other concessions like the Fugitive Slave Law couldn’t stop the inevitable conflict. The death of Calhoun on March 31, as Wilentz says, didn’t solve anything either. Rather, “the spirit of Calhounism lived on, in an even more radical disunionist form, picked up by a new generation of unswervingly pro-slavery Deep South Democrats.” (349) In his blog, Sherwood questioned whether the stubborn, inflexible positions either side was the best way to resolve the problem of slavery and defuse the situation. I would answer that the country was headed towards this conflict regardless. Even attempts of diplomacy, such as the attempted compromise measures or the Fugitive Slave Law concession, all failed and only delayed the unavoidable conflict.

November 13, 2013

The Anti-Climactic Flip-Flop

Chris Masone
His 141
Blog Post

In our discussion in class on Tuesday, we raised the point that when President Harrison died in office a month after his inaugural address, both parties were seemingly in shock and, for a moment, the country experienced a brief constitutional crisis over presidential succession. Even more surprising, in the Whig moment of triumph after defeating incumbent Martin Van Buren, the party suddenly collapsed. To add insult to injury, Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler, suddenly turned against the Whigs and vetoed Clay’s bank bill along with other Whig-backed measures. The political climate, much to the joy of the Jacksonian Democrats, had abruptly flipped and now the Whigs were once again struggling to maintain power. Even though the Whig party was in shambles, the democrats had not yet fully recovered from Van Buren’s defeat. Rather, they may have been worse off than before due to new divisions over banking, internal improvements, and the complicated issues of slavery and interpreting the constitution. The Democratic Party was split into multiple sub-parties, like the Hunkers, the Locofocos, the Barnburners, the loyal Jacksonians, and most surprisingly the Democratic Calhounites.

Although I discussed briefly John C. Calhoun in my last blog post, I would like to revisit him because of his interesting career and his strong platform. Because he hated Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy Calhoun did not know which party to conform to. While the Whig party was anti-Jackson and pro-banking, Calhoun chose against running for president in 1824 under the Whig ticket. After the flip-flop after Harrison’s death, Calhoun switched sides and sided with the democrats. As Wilentz describes on page 279, “The most surprising development within the Democracy was a growing enthusiasm, among some of the most radical northeastern hard-money advocates, for, of all people, John C. Calhoun.” As Sarah put it, “specifically [Wilentz’s] vilification of John C. Calhoun,” is interesting to note because, “It is clear that Calhoun was not Wilentz’s ideal political representative.” Just from Wilentz’s diction, it is obvious that he was surprised at Calhoun’s sudden support from radical democrats. Wilentz’s bias against Calhoun from the last section bleeds into this chapter, as Sarah noted. I think that Wilentz’s, as I would put it, political favoritism shows as he clearly does not like the idea of Calhoun running for the Democrats after attacking previous democratic presidents like Jackson and Van Buren.

Wilentz’s bias makes it difficult to take an objective view of Calhoun in chapters 17 and 18. His account of Calhoun’s ideas and policies feels sardonic, for example on page 280, “Calhoun’s brilliant essential perception- that in modern societies, aggregations of whole interests and classes, and not individuals, had become the basic unites of politics- was offset by his favoring some interests over others.” In this quote, he seems to be patronizing the ideas in Calhoun’s summary view of politics, “Disquisition on Government.” Wilentz seems angry that the deepening divisions among the various sub-parties of the Democracy were complicating the chances of a clear democratic candidate for the next presidential election.

As a side note, Wilentz introduces the Dorr War in the same chapter. After discussing what happened with Thomas Dorr and Rhode Island’s government under the colonial charter of 1663, Wilentz concludes “the Dorr War was an exceptional case in the history of American democratization before the Civil War.” I believe the juxtaposition of the Dorr War with the fragmentation of the Democratic Party into sub-parties like the democratic Calhounites in this chapter could be an attack on the Whig Party. I believe that Wilentz attempts to argue that because of the Whig’s interference with Jacksonian Democracy, the Whigs were eventually responsible, or at least played a large role in, the civil war.

November 10, 2013

A Party for the People

Jackson came into office with the platform to return the power, which had long been in the hands of the elite, to the people. The Jacksonians prided themselves on majoritarian politics, but as Jackson would see, being president meant trying to please many different groups of people, and in doing so, not always protecting the common man. While historians often represent Jackson as a man who stood by his own beliefs no matter what others said, Wilentz describes how even Jackson got caught up in trying to please too many people. For example, abolitionists thought Jackson was trying to annex Texas in order to spread slavery and help the planter elite, while on the other hand the southern elite were angry about Jackson’s attacks on the Bank and on their appeals for a nullification law. I agree with Nate’s point (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/an-era-of-uncertainty/) that Jackson tried to balance his own beliefs with the beliefs of all the different groups he was trying to appease. In doing this, he ended up being attacked by most people and left office with the country on the brink of financial disaster and a sectional battle still brewing. Van Buren, like Jackson, spent his presidency attempting to satisfy as many people as possible, but in the end, he was also attacked from both sides and was not able to accomplish much during his presidency because of it.

While Jacksonians took power with the idea of a party for majoritarian politics, they did not truly stick to that notion. The party constantly tried to maintain their bases of elite voters while not worrying as much about the common man. This could be seen as a misstep in the fight to return the government to the people, but I like Wilentz’s opinion that Jacksonians actually helped advance the people’s struggle. By not actually staying true to their promise to the people, it allowed for the Whig party to develop with a platform that attacked Jacksonians on the basis that they were not for the common man. Future party developments, then, were based on which party could appeal to the common man more, which actually propelled majoritarian politics to the front of the minds of party leaders and government officials.