The Whig Party was a political party that existed in the United States during the mid-19th century. Besides the larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. The Whig base of support was centered among entrepreneurs, professionals, planters, social reformers, devout Protestants, and the emerging urban middle class. It had much less backing from poor farmers and unskilled workers.

They borrowed the name Whig from the British party opposed to royalty. The Whigs also faced the difficulty of uniting former National Republicans, Anti-Masons, and states' rights Southerners around one candidate. The Whig Party vanished after the 1850s, but Whiggism, as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades. It played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state governments during Reconstruction.