Everything about Constitutional Union Party United States totally explained
The
Constitutional Union Party (also known as the Bell-Everett Party in California) was a
political party in the
United States created in
1860. It was made up of conservative former
Whigs who wanted to avoid disunion over the
slavery issue. These former Whigs teamed up with former
Know-Nothings to form the Constitutional Union Party. Its name comes from its extremely simple platform, a simple resolution "to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution...the Union...and the Enforcement of the Laws." They hoped that by failing to take a firm stand either for or against slavery or its extension, the issue could be pushed aside.
In short, it was a place to go for Whigs and Know-Nothings unwilling to join Democrats or the Republicans. Senator
John J. Crittenden of Kentucky,
Henry Clay's successor in border-state Whiggery, set up a meeting among fifty conservative, pro-compromise congressmen in December 1859, which led to a convention in Baltimore the week of
May 9,
1860, one week before the
Republican Party convention.
The convention nominated
John Bell of
Tennessee for
President and
Edward Everett of
Massachusetts for
Vice President.
In the
1860 election, the Constitutional Unionists received the great majority of their votes from former southern Whigs. Although the party didn't get 50% of the popular vote in any state, they won the electoral votes of three states,
Virginia,
Kentucky, and
Tennessee, largely due to the split in
Democratic votes between
Stephen A. Douglas and
John C. Breckinridge. Everett's home state of Massachusetts and
California were the only non-slave states in which the party received more than 5% of the popular vote.
The party and its purpose disappeared after 1860. Bell and many other Constitutional Unionists later supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, but backers of the party from north of the Carolinas tended to remain supporters of the Union. Constitutional Unionists were influential in the
Wheeling Convention, which led to the creation of the Union loyalist state of
West Virginia, as well as in the declaration of the
Kentucky State Legislature for the Union.
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