Where did the name “Whigs” come from?
The American Whig Party (roughly from 1834-1856) The Whig Party, in the United States, was for most of its history concerned with promoting internal improvements, such as roads, canals, railroads, deepening of rivers, etc. This was of interest to many Westerners in this period, isolated as they were and in need of markets. Abraham Lincoln was a Whig for most of this period. The name came into use in the 1680s in England when there was the threat of establishment of a line of Catholic Kings, starting with James II. The Protestant element, who held that Parliament could prevent such a succession, came to be called Whigs after a radical Presbyterian group in Scotland, the Whigamores, while the party tending to the doctrine of the rights of King James II (and naturally containing Catholic as well as simply royalist elements), were called Tories after some bands of Irish Catholics who had been driven to become outlaws due to the crusade of the English against the church they clung to. The d
