Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: When was the Whig party founded?
The Whigs were a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, they contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute monarchy. The Whigs played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies of the Stuart kings and pretenders, who were Roman Catholic. The Whigs took full control of the government in 1715 and remained totally dominant until King George III, coming to the throne in 1760, allowed Tories back in. The Whig Supremacy (1715–1760) was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whigs thoroughly purged the Tories from all major positions in government, the army, the Church of England, the legal profession and local offices. The Party's hold on power was so strong and durable, historians call the period from roughly 1714 to 1783 the age of the Whig Oligarchy.[9] The first great leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government through the period 1721–1742 and whose protégé Henry Pelham led from 1743 to 1754.
The association of Toryism with Lord North's government was also influential in the American colonies and writings of British political commentators known as the Radical Whigs did much to stimulate colonial republican sentiment. Early activists in the colonies called themselves "Whigs", seeing themselves as in alliance with the political opposition in Britain, until they turned to independence and started emphasising the label Patriots. In contrast, the American Loyalists, who supported the monarchy, were consistently also referred to as "Tories". Later, the United States Whig Party was founded in 1833 and focused on opposition to a strong presidency just as the British Whigs had opposed a strong monarchy.[34]
Originally a Whig, Wilson was a founder of the Free Soil Party in 1848. He served as the party chairman before and during the 1852 presidential election. He worked diligently to build an anti-slavery coalition, which came to include the Free Soil Party, anti-slavery Democrats, New York Barnburners, the Liberty Party, anti-slavery members of the Native American Party (Know Nothings), and anti-slavery Whigs (called Conscience Whigs). When the Free Soil party dissolved in the mid-1850s, Wilson joined the Republican Party, which he helped found, and which was organized largely in line with the anti-slavery coalition he had nurtured in the 1840s and 1850s.
In his first term in the legislature, which met in the state capital of Nashville, Johnson did not consistently vote with either the Democratic or the newly formed Whig Party, though he revered President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat and fellow Tennessean. The major parties were still determining their core values and policy proposals, with the party system in a state of flux. The Whig Party had organized in opposition to Jackson, fearing the concentration of power in the Executive Branch of the government; Johnson differed from the Whigs as he opposed more than minimal government spending and spoke against aid for the railroads, while his constituents hoped for improvements in transportation. After Brookins Campbell and the Whigs defeated Johnson for reelection in 1837, Johnson would not lose another race for thirty years. In 1839, he sought to regain his seat, initially as a Whig, but when another candidate sought the Whig nomination, he ran as a Democrat and was elected. From that time he supported the Democratic party and built a powerful political machine in Greene County. Johnson became a strong advocate of the Democratic Party, noted for his oratory, and in an era when public speaking both informed the public and entertained it, people flocked to hear him.
From the late 1830s until the early 1850s, Tennessee was politically divided between the Democratic Party and the Whig Party, with the Whigs drawing much of their support from East Tennessee. The collapse of the Whig Party over the issue of slavery in the mid-1850s left East Tennessee's Whigs in a difficult position. Most Northern Whigs joined the new Republican Party, but Southern Whigs generally found this unpalatable due to the Republicans' abolitionist sentiments. Some prominent East Tennessee Whigs switched their allegiance to the Democratic Party, though most turned to third party movements, such as the American Party ("Know Nothings"). By the late 1850s, former Whigs, Know Nothings, and a few disgruntled Democrats had formed the Opposition Party to counter rising secessionist sentiment.
The True Whig Party (TWP), also known as the Liberian Whig Party (LWP), is the oldest political party in Liberia. Founded in 1869 by primarily Americo-Liberians, the party dominated Liberian politics from 1878 until 1980. The nation was virtually a one-party state, although opposition parties were never outlawed. Initially, its ideology was strongly influenced by that of the United States Whig Party (which was later succeeded by the Republican Party).
Waleed Ghani and his fiancée Felicity Anscomb applied to register the Whig Party with the Electoral Commission on 27 May 2014. The Whig Party was registered with the Electoral Commission on 15 September 2014. The Electoral Commission lists Waleed Ghani as its Leader and Nominating Officer and Felicity Anscomb as its Treasurer. Ghani founded the party with the intention of filling a vacuum he saw in British politics. Jesse Norman, a Conservative Member of Parliament who in 2013 published a biography of the famous Whig politician Edmund Burke, proposed that Ghani may have exaggerated Whigs' historical progressive achievements.
Following the failure of the Free Soil Party in the election that year, most Conscience Whigs returned to the Whig fold, and more followed after the Compromise of 1850 temporarily neutralized the slavery issue. During the mid-1850s, several Conscience leaders played an important role in the founding of the Republican Party.
In 1991, the party faced a challenge from a new group, which identified as the "National True Whig Party of Liberia." TWP chairman Momo Fahnbulleh Jones threatened legal action to induce the newly founded party to change its name.
When Weed returned to the United States, the Whig Party had splintered over the Kansas–Nebraska Act, with southern Whigs leaving the party to join the Democrats, and northern Whigs including Seward, forming the Republican Party as an anti-slavery party and the main opposition to the Democrats. Weed joined the Republicans, and the "Evening Journal" became a leading Republican newspaper.
When new issues of nativism, prohibition and anti-slavery burst on the scene in the mid-1850s, few looked to the quickly disintegrating Whig Party for answers. In the North, most ex Whigs joined the new Republican Party and in the South, they flocked to a new short-lived American Party.
Lyons was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and the State Senate for many years, and was active in Whig Party politics, often a delegate to Whig National Conventions, and serving as Chairman of the Virginia Whig Party. He authored the Virginia Whig platform of 1840, pledging to oppose a National Bank and protective tariffs. Twice elected to the Virginia state Senate, when he resigned, he was elected to the House of Delegates. 
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.
Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party. The Democratic Party had a small but decisive advantage over the Whigs until the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery.
Upon the death of President William Henry Harrison thirty days into his term Vice President John Tyler took office, with constitutional uncertainty, and would serve for the remaining four years of Harrison's term. Despite the fact that Harrison and Tyler were both members of the Whig Party, Tyler found much of the Whig platform unconstitutional, and he vetoed several bills favored by party leader Henry Clay. In 1841 Tyler was forced out of the Whig party after continued contention with Whig leaders. One year later the Whig party was routed in 1842 House elections where the party lost sixty nine seats and by 1844 the Whigs would lose control of the Senate.
The Florida Whig Party is a now defunct political party in the state of Florida. The party chose to revive the 19th century Whig Party name. In 2008, the party aligned itself with the Modern Whig Party, a national organization of about 30,000 members initially founded by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as a "comeback" of the historic Whig Party.
However, the Florida Whig Party discontinued this association in late 2009, largely due to its increasingly conservative platform. The Florida Whig Party was the first "Whig" state political party to officially run candidates for federal office in over a century.
Following his congressional tenure, Morehead resumed his law practice and management of his plantations. In 1852, he was a presidential elector for Winfield Scott, and in 1853, he served another term in the Kentucky House. By early 1855, sectional divisions had ripped apart the national Whig Party. In Kentucky, many former Whigs associated with the Know Nothing Party. Morehead was among these; he claimed that the Know Nothing Party was more "Union" than the Democratic Party. The ex-Whigs hoped to take over the Know Nothing Party and reshape it into a Unionist Whig organization. Accordingly, when the Know Nothing candidate for governor, Judge William Loving, withdrew from the race due to failing health, the influx of ex-Whigs nominated Morehead to replace him for the gubernatorial election of 1855. Prior to the dissolution of the party, most had expected the Whigs would nominate Morehead at their own party's convention in April.
The Democratic Republican Party (or the Democratic Party) and the Whig Party (which had been pretty well destroyed after the 1852 elections) had been the major political parties in the United States. Corbett had been a Whig and follower of Henry Clay but when the Republican Party was founded on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan, he was one of its early and enthusiastic supporters. The Republican Party was founded as the anti-slavery party in opposition to the pro-slavery Democratic Party in one of the few fundamental reorganizations of the American political system.
Following the nationwide collapse of the Whig Party in 1854, many of Knoxville's Whigs, including Brownlow, were unwilling to support the new Republican Party formed by northern Whigs, and instead aligned themselves with the anti-immigrant American Party (commonly called the "Know Nothings"). When this movement disintegrated, Knoxville's ex-Whigs turned to the Opposition Party. In 1858, Opposition Party candidate Horace Maynard, with Brownlow's endorsement, soundly defeated Democratic candidate J.C. Ramsey (J.G.M. Ramsey's son) for the 2nd district's congressional seat.
In Liberia, the True Whig Party—named in direct emulation of the American Whig party, was founded in 1869 and it dominated politics in that country from 1878 until 1980.
On 9 December 2014, Ghani was interviewed by Jo Coburn on the BBC's "Daily Politics". Ghani has also received support from American Whigs. The party was founded without any policies, but instead a group of values such as human rights, love of country and diversity, for which they use the Swedish word "mångfald" (meaning "diversity", "variety" or "multitude"). In early 2015, the Whig Party formed an agreement with Something New that meant both parties would cross-endorse candidates and they would not stand opposing candidates in the same seats.
The Modern Whig Party is a political party in the United States founded in 2007. The party describes itself as a mainstream, middle-of-the-road grassroots movement representing voters who do not strictly accept Republican and Democratic positions. 
The party's general platform supports fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, and integrity and pragmatism in government. Members of the party have won a handful of local elections, but did so under other party labels or as independents. In recent years the party has not nominated candidates for any major office. The Modern Whig Party underwent a major overhaul of its structure and leadership in late 2014 and re-launched in the early spring of 2015.
According to "The News & Observer", the Modern Whig Party was founded by U.S. troops while they were in "the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan." The Modern Whig Party was organized as a grassroots movement in the beginning of 2007.
After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their Southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market, but cared little about slavery one way or another. However, many Whig voters in the North thought that slavery was incompatible with a free labor, free market economy and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which did not pass Congress, but would have stopped the expansion of slavery. No one found a compromise that would keep the party united. Furthermore, the burgeoning economy made full-time careers in business or law much more attractive than politics for ambitious young Whigs; thus, the Whig Party leader in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, simply abandoned politics after 1849, instead attending to his law business.
During the latter part of the American Civil War and during the Reconstruction Era, many former Whigs tried to regroup in the South, calling themselves "conservatives" and hoping to reconnect with ex-Whigs in the North. Thus in Virginia and elsewhere moderate, nationalist, and economically innovative ex Whigs used the party name “Conservative” in order to avoid identification with the Democratic party. In a few years the Conservative Party merged into the Democratic Party in the South. However the ex-Whigs continued to promote modernization policies such as large-scale railroad construction and the founding of public schools.
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.