Party structure Rejecting the automatic party loyalty that was the hallmark of tight Democratic party organization, the Whigs suffered from factionalism throughout their existence. On the other hand, the Whigs had a superb network of newspapers that provided an internal information system; their leading editor was Horace Greeley of the powerful New York Tribune. In their heyday, the 1840s, Whigs won 49 percent of gubernatorial elections with strong bases of support in the manufacturing Northeast and the border states. The trend over time, however, was for the Democratic Party to grow more quickly, and for the Whigs to lose more and more marginal states and districts. After the closely contested 1844 elections, the Democratic advantage widened and the Whigs were only able to win nationally by splitting the opposition. This was partly because of the increased political importance of the western states, which generally voted for Democrats, and Irish Catholic and German immigrants, who also tended to vote for Democrats.
The Whigs won votes in every socio-economic category, but appealed more to the professional and business classes: doctors, lawyers, merchants, ministers, bankers, storekeepers, factory owners, commercially-oriented farmers and large-scale planters largely supported the Whigs. （In North Carolina, however, the large-scale planters were more often Democrats.） In general, commercial and manufacturing towns and areas voted Whig, save for strongly Democratic precincts in Irish Catholic and German immigrant communities; the Democrats often sharpened their appeals to the poor by ridiculing the Whigs' aristocratic pretensions. Protestant religious revivals also injected a moralistic element into the Whig ranks, which sent many targets of moralism （such as those affected by calls for prohibition） to seek refuge within the Democratic party.
The early years In the 1836 elections, the party was not yet sufficiently organized to run one nationwide candidate; instead William Henry Harrison ran in the northern and border states, Hugh Lawson White ran in the South, and Daniel Webster ran in his home state of Massachusetts. It was hoped that the Whig candidates would amass enough U.S. Electoral College votes among them to deny a majority to Martin Van Buren, which under the United States Constitution would place the election under control of the House of Representatives, allowing the ascendant Whigs to select the most popular Whig candidate as President. The tactic failed to achieve its objective, although it did play a role in throwing that year's Vice-Presidential election into the Senate.
In 1839, the Whigs held their first national convention and nominated William Henry Harrison as their presidential candidate. Harrison went on to victory in 1840, defeating Van Buren's re-election bid largely as a result of the Panic of 1837 and subsequent depression. Harrison served only 31 days and became the first President to die in office. He was succeeded by John Tyler, a Virginian and states' rights absolutist. Tyler vetoed the Whig economic legislation and was expelled from the Whig party in 1841. The Whigs' internal disunity and the nation's increasing prosperity made the party's activist economic program seem less necessary, and led to a disastrous showing in the 1842 Congressional elections.
A brief golden age By 1844, the Whigs began their recovery by nominating Henry Clay, who lost to Democrat James K. Polk in a closely contested race, with Polk's policy of western expansion （particularly the annexation of Texas） and free trade triumphing over Clay's protectionism and caution over the Texas question. The Whigs, both northern and southern, strongly opposed the war with Mexico, which they （including Whig Congressman Abraham Lincoln） saw as an unprincipled land grab, but they were split （as were the Democrats） by the anti-slavery Wilmot Proviso of 1846. In 1848, the Whigs, seeing no hope of succeeding by nominating Clay, nominated General Zachary Taylor, a Mexican-American War hero. They stopped criticizing the war and adopted no platform at all. Taylor defeated Democratic candidate Lewis Cass and the anti-slavery Free Soil Party, who had nominated former President Martin Van Buren. Van Buren's candidacy split the Democratic vote in New York, throwing that state to the Whigs; at the same time, however, the Free Soilers probably cost the Whigs several Midwestern states.
Compromise of 1850
Taylor was firmly opposed to the Compromise of 1850, committed to the admission of California as a free state, and had proclaimed that he would take military action to prevent secession. But in July 1850 Taylor died; Vice President Millard Fillmore, a long-time Whig, became President and helped push the Compromise through Congress, in the hopes of ending the controversies over slavery
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