Unconditional Union Party
Political party in United States / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Unconditional Union Party?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The Unconditional Union Party was a unionist political party in the United States during the American Civil War. Also called the Union Party, it was a regional counterpart to the National Union Party that supported the wartime administration of Abraham Lincoln.[1] The party was active in the border states and Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy. After the war, it formed the nucleus of the Republican Party in the Upper South; a minority joined the Democratic Party, notably including Francis Preston Blair Jr.[2][3]
Unconditional Union Party | |
---|---|
Other name |
|
Leader | Francis Preston Blair Jr. |
Founded | 1861; 163 years ago (1861) |
Dissolved | 1866; 158 years ago (1866) |
Merger of | American Party Constitutional Union Party Republican Party War Democrats |
Merged into | Democratic Party Republican Party |
Ideology | Unconditional Unionism Abolitionism |
National affiliation | National Union Party |
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 United States presidential election on a platform that called for the exclusion of slavery from the U.S. territories.[4] In the ensuing secession crisis, Southern Unionists resisted efforts to engineer the secession of the slave states and organize an independent Southern Confederacy. The unionist movement included conditional unionists who preferred a compromise consistent with southern interests but held out the possibility of secession as a last resort, as well as others whose commitment to the Union was unequivocal.[5] These latter unconditional unionists continued to oppose disunion following the commencement of hostilities in April 1861. Unionists in the border states formed political parties that contested critical elections preceding the July 4 emergency session of Congress and successfully foiled secessionist efforts to take their states out of the Union.[6]
The party attracted support from unionists of diverse partisan pedigrees, including former Know Nothings, Whigs, Republicans, and some unionist Democrats.[7] Initially hostile to abolitionism, by 1863, most Unconditional Unionists accepted the necessity of emancipation as a wartime exigency.[8] Unconditional Unionists attended the National Union Convention that nominated Lincoln and Tennessee unionist Andrew Johnson for the 1864 United States presidential election and supported the ticket in the fall campaign, completing the party's absorption into the National Union coalition.[9]