Persistent Whiggery in the Confederate South, 1860-1877

Why No Parties?: Investigating the Disappearance of Democrat-Whig Divisions in the Confederacy

“…Students of the South's political history are not unaware that the Constitutional Union party of 1860 was substantially a continuation of the Whig party of the South; but the rare mention of the term "Whig" in studies of the section after 1860 would seem to imply that the party disappeared with the firing of the first gun at Fort Sumter, and that its leaders promptly forgot that they had venerated Henry Clay or vilified their Democratic opponent. 22 Popular voting results from this era substantiate Alexander's claim. Joel Silbey notes that Southern voting patterns in the late-1850s, especially in the upper-South, were quite consistent with patterns from earlier two-party periods.…”

Amnesty Policy and Elite Persistence in the Postbellum South: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

“…3 Alexander (1961) writes that when voting rights were restored, "such a large proportion of the Southern Whigs was now within the Democratic and Conservative parties of the Southern states that the chief issue wealth of the planter elite because excepted landholders could not reclaim property that was confiscated or abandoned during the Civil War. 4 I estimate the effect of being excluded from general amnesty on ex-post officeholding and future wealth using two samples: known slaveholders who lived in the South in 1860 and delegates who served in Reconstruction conventions held subsequent to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in March of 1867.…”