The Whig Party was formed in 1834 by a coalition of National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and disgruntled Democrats, who were united by their opposition to “King Andrew” Jackson and his “usurpations” of congressional and judicial authority. The party took its name from the seventeenth-century British Whig group that had defended English liberties against the usurpations of pro-Catholic Stuart Kings. Like the Democrats, the Whigs were a coalition of sectional interests, class and economic interests, and ethnic and religious interests....