and more open to the prospect of secession than their Whig counterparts. Northern Whigs divided into two major factions concerning slavery: the anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and the pro-South Cotton Whigs. While the "Consciences" were noted for their moral opposition to slavery–many, like John Quincy Adams, brought over their crusading fervor from Anti-Masonic days The other faction was tied to the cotton-based textile industry, which depended on Southern cotton. They de-emphasized the slavery issue. In Massachusetts, notable Consciences included Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson and Charles Francis Adams while the Cottons were led by such figures as Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop and Abbott Lawrence. During the mid-1850s, several Conscience leaders played an important role in the founding of the Republican Party. Legacy Historical reputation Historian Allen C. Guelzo writes that "no major political movement ... has suffered more sheer dismissal, more impatient contempt at the hands of political historians than the American Whigs". Guelzo traces the start of this "dismissal" to the writings of Henry Adams, who dismissed the Whigs as bereft of ideas, and through to the writings of historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who labeled the period during which the Whigs were active as the "Age of Jackson". The Whigs' historical reputation began to recover with the publication of The Political Culture of the American Whigs by historian Daniel Walker Howe in 1979. Rather than accepting the traditional understanding of the Whigs as Eastern elitists who sought to exploit the masses, Howe cast the Whigs as "sober, industrious, thrifty people" who sought to promote industrialization and national unity. In today's American political discourse, historians and pundits often cite the Whig Party as an example of a political party that lost its followers and reason for being, as in the expression "going the way of the Whigs". a term referred to by Donald Critchlow in his book, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History. Critchlow points out that the application of the term by Republicans in the Republican Party of 1974 may have been a misnomer—the old Whig party enjoyed more political support before its demise than the Republican Party in the aftermath of Nixon's resignation. Namesakes After the dissolution of the Whig Party, the term Whig remained part of the name of various newspapers, including the Quincy Herald-Whig. Several ephemeral small parties in the United States, including the Florida Whig Party and the "Modern Whig Party",