page_title: Whig Party (United States)
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Whig Party (United States) / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Scholars and enthusiasts alike believe this portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken on November 8, 1863, eleven days before his famed Gettysburg Address, to be the best photograph of him ever taken. Lincoln’s character was notoriously difficult to capture in pictures, but Alexander Gardner’s close-up portrait, quite innovative in contrast to the typical full-length portrait style, comes closest to preserving the expressive contours of Lincoln’s face and his penetrating gaze.
context_page_description: The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States during the late 1830s, the 1840s, and the early 1850s, part of the Second Party System. Four presidents were affiliated with the Whig Party for at least part of their respective terms. Other influential party leaders include Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Seward, John J. Crittenden, and Truman Smith.
  The Whigs emerged in the 1830s in opposition to President Andrew Jackson, pulling together former members of the National Republican Party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and disaffected Democrats. The Whigs had some weak links to the defunct Federalist Party, but the Whig Party was not a direct successor to that party and many Whig leaders, including Henry Clay, had aligned with the rival Democratic-Republican Party. In the 1836 presidential election, four different regional Whig candidates received electoral votes, but the party failed to defeat Jackson's chosen successor, Martin Van Buren.
caption: Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig congressman, won the 1860 presidential election on the Republican ticket.
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