They were compelled either to sacrifice their standards to the conditions of popular efficiency or the chance of success to the integrity of their standards.

In point of fact they pursued precisely the worst course of all.

They abandoned their standards, and yet they failed to achieve success.

Down to the Civil War the fruits of victory and the prestige of popularity were appropriated by the Democrats.
The Whigs, like their predecessors, the Federalists, were ostensibly the party of national ideas.

Their association began with a group of Jeffersonian Republicans who, after the second English war, sought to resume the interrupted work of national consolidation.