<P> In 1854 , the Kansas -- Nebraska Act , which opened the new territories to slavery , was passed . Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed . Most remaining Northern Whigs , like Lincoln , joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act , appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise . Other Whigs joined the Know - Nothing Party , attracted by its nativist crusades against so - called `` corrupt '' Irish and German immigrants . In the South , the Whig party vanished , but as Thomas Alexander has shown , Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades . Historians estimate that , in the South in 1856 , former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate . He won only 13 % of the northern vote , though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column . The future in the North , most observers thought at the time , was Republican . Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant , and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level . Twenty - six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856 . The convention met for only two days and on the second day ( and only ballot ) quickly nominated Fillmore for president , who had already been nominated for president by the Know Nothing party . Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for vice president . Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes . </P>
<P> In 1854 , the Kansas -- Nebraska Act , which opened the new territories to slavery , was passed . Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed . Most remaining Northern Whigs , like Lincoln , joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act , appealing to widespread northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise . Other Whigs joined the Know - Nothing Party , attracted by its nativist crusades against so - called `` corrupt '' Irish and German immigrants . In the South , the Whig party vanished , but as Thomas Alexander has shown , Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades . Historians estimate that , in the South in 1856 , former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate . He won only 13 % of the northern vote , though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column . The future in the North , most observers thought at the time , was Republican . Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant , and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level . Twenty - six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856 . The convention met for only two days and on the second day ( and only ballot ) quickly nominated Fillmore for president , who had already been nominated for president by the Know Nothing party . Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for vice president . Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes . </P>
who supported the republican party that was formed in 1854
who supported the republican party that was formed in 1854
Northern Whigs
Northern Whigs