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In a way it did. The dissolution of the Whigs created a political vacuum that enabled the new Republican Party to gain power. It essentially comprised many of the same (or similar) people that had once belonged to the Whig Party. The Republican party was formed by former Whigs, by abolitionists, free-soilers, frontiersmen, farmers from the middle west, businessmen, common workers, industrialists, merchants from the eastern States and New England. The Republican Party formed around 1854; Abraham Lincoln became their first elected President in 1860.

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13y ago

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