The Second Party System

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The breakdown of the second party system was also a reason for the outbreak of the Civil War. In the early 1850’s the Whig party disintegrated, the second party system collapsed and the Republican Party emerged to challenge the Democrats. Southern Revisionists have argued that the collapse of the Union had been preceded by the collapse of the 2nd party system and that the Whig disappeared only to re-emerge as the new Republican party in 1854 supported by nativist Know-Nothing votes. They have also argued that politicians created this tension on purpose to advance their careers, but by doing so they made the 2nd party system collapse. However recent historians, such as Hugh Tulloch, contradict this view by arguing that there is no one single
Previously Whigs would have benefited from this however; as Farmer argues, “the Whig collapse has often been seen as a direct result of the Kansas Nebraska Act”. This emphasises that all the factors are linked as the actions of politicians with the Kansas Nebraska Act and the decisions over slavery caused the Whig party failure. This all built up created the tensions that resulted in the Civil War. Another reason for Whig failure was their inability to deal with the two major issues of immigration and Catholicism. Americans detested the rapidly increasing political power that catholic voters had. It was claimed that Irish Catholics only voted for the party that their political leader/priest told them to vote for. This could be seen as a threat to democracy. This shows that the problems around immigrants cause Whig collapse and the start of the breakdown of the political system, which weakened the country in the lead up to the breakout of the war. Another Whig failure was their 1852 election, where they were actively pro-catholic, which was a mistake as it made traditional Whigs reluctant to vote. This highlights that Americans did not like the sudden change of viewpoint and protested this by not voting for them. Henry Adams Observed, “Of all the parties that have existed in the United States, the famous Whig party was the most feeble in ideas”. This proves that the Whig party was not strong enough to change their views as society changed in the lead up to the war, which lead to their collapse, which ultimately lead to the outbreak of

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