Death throes, 1852–56
Millard Fillmore, the last Whig president1852 was the beginning of the end for the Whigs. The deaths of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster that year severely weakened the party. The Compromise of 1850 fractured the Whigs along pro- and anti-slavery lines, with the anti-slavery faction having enough power to deny Fillmore the party's nomination in 1852. Attempting to repeat their earlier successes, the Whigs nominated popular General Winfield Scott, who lost decisively to the Democrats' Franklin Pierce. The Democrats won the election by a large margin: Pierce won 27 of the 31 states including Scott's home state of Virginia. Whig Representative Lewis Davis Campbell of Ohio was particularly distraught by the defeat, exclaiming, "We are slayed. The party is dead——dead——dead！" Increasingly politicians realized that the party was a loser. For example, Abraham Lincoln, its Illinois leader, simply walked away and attended to his law business.
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act exploded on the scene. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs strongly opposed it. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs in 1854 joined the Know-Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants. In the South, many Whigs were partyless, until a variation of the Know-Nothings called the American Party won over their votes between 1855 and 1859. Some Whigs supported Fillmore in 1856; after a three month delay, he renounced nativism, accepted the American Party nomination and campaigned against the danger of civil war should Republican John C. Fremont be elected. Historians estimate that, in the South, Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters. He won only 13% of the northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column. The future in the North, most observers thought at the time, was Republican. No one saw any prospects for the shrunken old party, and after 1856 there was virtually no Whig organization left anywhere. Holt p 979-80
In 1860, many former Whigs who had not joined the Republicans regrouped as the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated only a national ticket; it had considerable strength in the border states, which feared the onset of civil war. John Bell finished third to ex-Whig Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party and Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge in a four-way race （with Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas fourth）, triggering the American Civil War. During the latter part of the war and Reconstruction, some former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves "Conservatives", and hoping to reconnect with ex-Whigs in the North. They were soon swallowed up by the Democratic party in its struggle and achievement of single party white rule of the South.
Presidents from the Whig Party Presidents of the United States, dates in office
William Henry Harrison （1841）
John Tyler （see note） （1841-1845）
Zachary Taylor （1849-1850）
Millard Fillmore （1850-1853）
Note: Although Tyler was elected vice president as a Whig, his policies soon proved to be opposed to most of the Whig agenda, and he was officially expelled from the party in 1841, a few months after taking office. Additionally, John Quincy Adams, elected President as a Democratic Republican, later became a Whig when he was elected to the House of Representatives.
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