“Compromise Measures of 1850” (q.v.). To its authors this compromise seemed essential to the preservation of the Union; but it led directly to the destruction of the Whig party. In the North, where the inhumane Fugitive Slave Law grew daily more odious, the adherence to the Compromise on which Clay and Webster insisted weakened the party fatally. The alternative, namely, a committal of the party to the repeal of the obnoxious law, would have driven the Southern Whigs into the camp of the Democrats, leaving the Northern Whigs a sectional party powerless to resist the disruption of the Union. The only weapons that the Whigs knew how to use in defence of the Fugitive Slave Law were appeals to patriotism and sectional bargaining, and these could be employed only so long as the party remained intact.
The National Whig Convention of 1852, the last that represented the party in its entirety, gave to the Northern Whigs the naming of the candidate — General Winfield Scott — who was defeated in the ensuing election, and to the Southern the framing of the platform with its “finality” plank, which, as revised by Webster, read as follows: “That the series of acts of the Thirty-second Congress, the act known as the Fugitive Slave Law included, are received and acquiesced in by the Whig party of the United States as a settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which they embrace . . . and we will maintain this system as essential to the nationality of the Whig party and the integrity of the Union.”
Two years later the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act demonstrated that “this system” could not be maintained, and that in committing the Whig party to the policy of its maintenance the Convention of 1852 had signed the death-warrant of the party.
Among the services of the Whigs the first in importance are these: During the thirty critical years in which under the leadership of Clay and Webster they maintained the national view of the nature of the Union, the Whigs contributed more than all their rivals to impress this view upon the hearts and minds of the people. During this same extended period as peacemakers between the sections they kept North and South together until the North had become strong enough to uphold by force the integrity of the Union. And lastly they bequeathed to the Republican party the principles on which, and the leader, Abraham Lincoln, through whom the endangered Union was finally saved.
Bibliography. — See Alexander Johnston, American Political History, 1763-1876 (New York, 1905; edited by J. A. Woodburn); J. A. Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems in the United States (ibid., 1903); J. P. Gordy, History of Political Parties in the United States (ibid., 1900); J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period (ibid., 1897); Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency (Boston, 1898); James Schouler, History of the United States (New York, 1899); H. E. von Holst, Constitutional and Political History of the United States (Chicago, 1899), especially the second volume; Niles' Register (Baltimore, 1811-1849); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Boston, 1872-1877); Horace Greeley, The American Conflict (Hartford, 1864-1866); F. D. Hammond, History of Political Parties in the State of New York (Albany, 1842); G. W. Julian, Political Recollections, 1840-1872 (Chicago, 1884); H. A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union (Philadelphia, 1872); The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, 1851); The Works of Henry Clay (New York, 1898); and among many important biographies, Carl Schurz's Life of Henry Clay (Boston, 1887), H. C. Lodge's Daniel Webster (ibid., 1883), G. T. Curtis's Life of Daniel Webster (New York, 1870), H. E. von Hoist's John C. Calhoun (Boston, 1882), A. M. Coleman's Life of John J. Crittenden (Philadelphia, 1871), L. G. Tyler's Letters and Times of the Tylers (Williamsburg, Va., 1884-1896), The Autobiography of Thurlow Weed (Boston, 1883), and J. G. Nicolay and John Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York, 1890).
WHIP, in general, an instrument for striking, usually consisting
of a handle of a flexible nature with a lash attached (see
Whipping,
below). In English parliamentary usage, a “whip” is a
member (or members) chosen by the leader or leaders of a
political party for the special duty of securing the attendance
of the other members of that party on all necessary occasions,
the term being abbreviated from the whipper-in of a hunt.
The name is also given to the summons urging members of the
party to attend. Whips are, of course, always members of
parliament, and for the party in power (i.e. the government)
their services are very essential, seeing that the fate of an
important measure, or even the existence of the government itself,
may depend upon the result of a division in the House. Where
the majority of the party in power is not large it is very necessary
that there should always be at hand a sufficient number of its
supporters to make up a majority, and without the assistance of
the whips it would be impossible to secure this. The chief
whip of the government holds the office of patronage secretary to
the treasury, so called because when offices were freely
distributed to secure the support of members, it was his chief duty
to dispose of the patronage to the best advantage of his party.
He is still the channel through which such patronage as is left
to the prime minister is dispensed. He is assisted by three junior
whips, who are officially appointed as junior lords of the treasury;
their salaries are £1000 a year each, while the patronage secretary
has a salary of £2000. The parties not in office have whips
who are unpaid. Attendance of members is primarily secured
by lithographed notices sent by the whips to their following,
the urgency or importance of the notice being indicated by the
number of lines underscoring the notice, a four-line whip usually
signifying the extremest urgency. The whips also arrange for
the “pairing” of such of the members of their party who desire
to be absent with those members of the opposition party who
also desire to be absent. The chief whips of either party arrange
in consultation with each other the leading speakers in an
important debate, and also its length, and give the list of speakers
to the speaker or chairman, who usually falls in with the arrangement.
They take no part in debate themselves, but are
constantly present in the House during its sittings, keeping a finger,
as it were, upon the pulse of the House, and constantly informing
their leader as to the state of the House. When any division
is regarded as a strictly party one, the whips act as tellers in the
division.
An interesting account of the office of whip is given in A. L. Lowell's Government of England (1908), vol. i. c. xxv.
WHIPPING, or Flogging, a method of corporal punishment
which in one form or another has been used in all ages and all
lands (see Bastinado, Knout, Cat-o'-Nine-Tails). In ancient
Rome a citizen could not be scourged, it being considered an
infamous punishment. Slaves were beaten with rods. Similarly
in early medieval England the whip could not be used on the
freeman, but was reserved for the villein. The Anglo-Saxons
whipped prisoners with a three-corded knotted lash. It was
not uncommon for mistresses to whip or have their servants
whipped to death. William of Malmesbury relates that as a
child King Æthelred was flogged with candles by his mother,
who had no handier weapon, until he was insensible with pain.
During the Saxon period whipping was the ordinary punishment
for offences, great or small. Payments for whipping figure largely
in municipal and parish accounts from an early date. The abolition
of the monasteries, where the poor had been sure of free
meals, led during the 16th century to an increase of vagrancy, at
which the Statute of Labourers (1350) and its provisions as to
whipping had been early aimed. In the reign of Henry VIII.
was passed (1530) the famous Whipping Act, directing vagrants to
be carried to some market town or other place “and there tied to
the end of a cart naked and beaten with whips throughout such
market town till the body shall be bloody.” In the 39th year
of Elizabeth a new act was passed by which the offender was to
be stripped to the waist, not quite naked. It was under this
statute that whipping-posts were substituted for the cart.
Many of these posts were combined with stocks, as that at
Waltham Abbey, which bears date “1598.” It is of oak, 5 ft.
9 in. high, with iron clasps for the hands when used for whipping,
and for the feet when used as stocks. Fourpence was the old
charge for whipping male and female rogues. At quarter-sessions
in Devonshire at Easter 1598 it was ordered that the
mothers of bastard children should be whipped; the reputed
fathers suffering a like punishment. In the west of England
in 1684, “certain Scotch pedlars and petty chapmen being in the
habit of selling their goods to the greate damage and hindrance
