who were the cotton whigs
Antislavery Whigs from Massachusetts, known as Conscience Whigs, opposed the so-called Cotton Whigs in the pro-slavery southern states. Despite the division, the Whig Party, with the popular general Zachary Taylor as its candidate, was successful in the presidential election of 1848.
And by 1854 they had given up the ghost, no longer able to hold the support of âcotton Whigs,â who found a more congenial political home in the Democratic party, or of âconscience Whigs,â who helped form the new Republican party. Historians have interpreted the Whigs in strikingly different ways.