Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently argued that the “Republican Party needs to go the way of the Whigs,” meaning that the GOP should dissolve into factions, hoping that a renewed party of conscience will emerge. That is more or less what happened in the antebellum era, although Milbank exaggerates the extent to which “the GOP was born from the ashes of the Whigs.” In fact, many disillusioned Democrats also participated in the founding of the Republican Party.
Milbank is even more seriously wrong, however, when it comes to describing the Whigs’ demise, putting it this way:
The Whigs in 1848 jettisoned their core principle — limited presidential power — in favor of political expediency. Instead of nominating one of their legendary statesmen — Daniel Webster or Henry Clay — the Whigs went with celebrity war-hero Zachary Taylor, an enslaver who was popular with Southerners but had no governing experience and no fealty to Whig principles. Taylor won, but he savaged Whig leaders and Whig doctrine. The party, split over slavery, dissolved.
I realize that there is a great need for brevity in a newspaper column, but Milbank has collapsed, and therefore seriously misstated, about four years of important history. His obvious intention is to make a connection between Zachary Taylor and Donald Trump, with both presidents leading to the destruction of their respective parties, but the comparison just doesn't work.
It is true that Zachary Taylor was an enslaver with little previous attachment to the Whigs, but once in office he turned out to be the most anti-slavery president since John Quincy Adams. Surprising his southern backers, Taylor opposed the legislation that turned into the Compromise of 1850, including a harsh Fugitive Slave Act.
In any case, Taylor died after only about 16 months in office, and he had nothing to do with the dissolution of the Whigs. It was Taylor’s successor, Millard Fillmore, who endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and signed the Fugitive Slave Act, with the approval of “legendary statesman” Daniel Webster, and ended up doing far more to preserve slavery than would have Taylor.
The actual breakup of the Whigs came four years after Taylor’s death. The Whigs fared poorly in the 1852 elections, having nominated another military hero, Gen. Winfield Scott, who lost in a landslide to pro-slavery Democrat Franklin Pierce -- a doughface, or a northern man with southern principles.
In 1854, midway through the Pierce presidency, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which authorized slavery in territories – ultimately Kansas and Nebraska – where it had been prohibited since the 1820 Missouri Compromise. It was the brazen repeal of the Missouri Compromise that outraged many northerners – mostly Whigs, but also a good number of Democrats – who left their original parties and eventually coalesced as Republicans. Abraham Lincoln and William Seward had been Whigs, of course, but Salmon Chase and Charles Sumner had been Free-Soil Democrats.
The rest is Republican history. The Whigs never fielded another serious presidential ticket. John Fremont was the Republican candidate in 1856, running under the slogan “Free Speech, Free Soil, Free Men, Fremont.” He lost to James Buchanan, another doughface Democrat, but set the stage for Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860.
Milbank’s attempt to draw a parallel between Zachary Taylor and Donald Trump – jettisoned principles, inexperienced celebrity candidate, party demise – just doesn’t work as a matter of historical fact. That doesn’t make Milbank wrong about hoping for the collapse of the current GOP, and its replacement by something better, but it does make him historically inaccurate.
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