The Rise and Fall of the Whigs

Upon the re-election of President Andrew Jackson in 1832, Henry Clay set about coalescing the many parties that opposed King Andrew.  Thus, the Whig Party was born in 1833.  By 1836, the Whigs nominated several candidates to oppose Jackson's VP and selected successor, Martin Van Buren.  They went down to defeat.  However, the Whigs held a third of the Senate and 40% of the House.  The party was growing.  In the midterms of 1838, the party increased its representation in both houses of Congress.  The Panic of 1837 earned the president an unwanted nickname: Martin Van Ruin.  1840 would be the year for the Whigs.

William Henry Harrison had been one of the four Whig candidates in 1836, winning the most votes and most states among them.  Despite his age (67), he was nominated as the sole candidate for 1840.  "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" was the slogan that won the presidency.  Better yet, the Whigs took control of the Senate (29 out of 52 seats) and the House (142 out of 242 seats).  Senator Henry Clay prepared a slate of legislation that would reverse Jacksonian policies and finally put his ambitious American System in the driver's seat.  However, President Harrison wasn't as pliant as Clay hoped.  Nonetheless, Harrison was a Whig who would push Whig policies.  There was nothing to stop the abrupt change in direction of the country.

President Harrison died.

After only one month in office, Harrison hadn't done anything yet.  Vice President Tyler, who had retreated to his plantation in Virginia after the inauguration (who needs a useless VP milling in Washington), was called to the capitol.  While Henry Clay was considering who could replace Harrison as president, Tyler took the oath of office.  The Constitution didn't say what happened if a president died in office and wouldn't until 1967.  Worse, Tyler insisted that he was now president and there would be no majority vote in the cabinet to determine what action he could take.  Worse still, Tyler suddenly resumed his Democrat views; he had broken with the party in the wake of the Nullification Crisis but now decided he was more Democrat than Whig.  He vetoed bill after bill from Congress, preventing the implementation of the Whig agenda.  The great victory of 1840 dissolved.

Though the Whigs would win the presidency again in 1848, they never again held the majority in both houses.  The death of President Harrison was also the death of the Whigs as a majority party.  The Whigs remained an opposition party until the mid 1850s, when it was absorbed by the newly-formed Republican Party.