What happened to the Whigs in the 1850s? And will the same thing happen to today’s Democrats?

After the Federalist Party of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams collapsed in the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Whigs arose to replace them as the alternative to the Democratic Party that took its nascent form around the legacy of Thomas Jefferson and which, at least in the early decades of our nation’s life, was organized to defend state sovereignty — and the agenda of slave owners — while it opposed banks and high tariffs. Andrew Jackson gave the party its national character. As late as the eve of the Civil War, northern Democrats such as Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas struggled to find ways to keep the increasingly warring internal factions together. He failed, even though the Whig

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