Editing Whig Party (United States) (section)

== Legacy ==
{{Further|Third Party System|American School (economics)}}
[[File:Abraham Lincoln in the United States Congress by.jpg|thumb|225x225px|[[Abraham Lincoln (Bittinger)|Portrait depicting Abraham Lincoln as a young Whig congressman]] by [[Ned Bittinger]], 2004]]
[[File:John Marshall Harlan 1.jpg|thumb|right|upright|[[John Marshall Harlan]], who began his career as a Whig officeholder, served on the Supreme Court from 1877 to 1911.]]

===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".<ref>Guelzo (2001), pp. 71–73</ref> 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.<ref>Guelzo (2001), pp. 74–75</ref>

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",<ref>Donald T. Critchlow, ''The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History'' (2007) p. 103.</ref> a term referred to by [[Donald T. Critchlow|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.<ref name="DCTbk">{{cite book|last1=Critchlow|first1=Donald T.|title=The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP right made political history|year=2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BhEPuq-Xh8MC|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0674026209|access-date=May 9, 2016}}</ref>

===Namesakes===
After the dissolution of the Whig Party, the term Whig remained part of the name of various newspapers, including the ''[[Quincy Newspapers|Quincy Herald-Whig]]''. Several ephemeral small parties in the United States, including the [[Florida Whig Party]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.floridawhig.com/|title=The Florida Whig Party|access-date=September 22, 2014}}</ref> and the "Modern Whig Party",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://outfront.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/22/is-it-time-for-a-new-political-party/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120414173407/http://outfront.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/22/is-it-time-for-a-new-political-party/|url-status=dead|archive-date=April 14, 2012|title=Is it time for a new political party?|access-date=September 22, 2014}}</ref> have adopted the Whig name. In [[Liberia]], the [[True Whig Party]] was named in direct emulation of the American Whig Party. The True Whig Party was founded in 1869 and dominated politics in Liberia from 1878 until 1980.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Dominik Zaum|author2=Christine Cheng|title=Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace?|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L8GoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA133|year=2011|publisher=Routledge|page=133|isbn=978-1136635922}}</ref>

===In popular culture===
Two [[alternative history]] works depicting histories where the [[American Civil War alternate histories|Confederacy won the American Civil War]] include a Whig Party having a major role in the postbellum world. In [[Ward Moore]]'s ''[[Bring the Jubilee]]'', a revived Whig Party is one of the two main parties of the rump United States, being the right-wing party whose platform reflects an acceptance of the United States' humbled status following its defeat in the War of Southern Independence. Conversely, in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[Southern Victory Series]]'' a Whig Party emerges as the dominant political party of an independent Confederacy, representing the interests of the [[slavocracy|plantocratic elite]] and dominating Confederate politics until the rise of the Freedom Party following the [[First World War|First Great War]].