1852
Franklin Pierce and the 1852 map
Franklin Pierce won a landslide in the last election where the Whig Party was competitive. General Winfield Scott, the Whig nominee, suffered from the party's deep divisions over slavery. Pierce, a northern Democrat acceptable to the South, swept nearly the entire country. The Whig Party effectively collapsed after this defeat, replaced by new anti-slavery coalitions that would become the Republican Party. Pierce's support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act would inflame sectional tensions.
Slavery compromise; Whig Party collapse; Mexican-American War veterans
Last election where the Whig Party competed nationally; party collapsed afterward
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