Editing Whig Party (United States) (section)

===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>