Last updated on May 24, 2025
On Disaffiliation
Hello Libertarians! This is one of a series of opinion articles I’ll be privileged to write for you once per month on an “inside baseball” topic for the Libertarian Party. I encourage everyone who has an opinion on whatever we’re talking about this month to comment or send phillies@4liberty.net your longer editorials, which may well be published.
For some time now members of the Libertarian Party have been writing online about the national party disaffiliating one or more of its state parties. Most of the time people are talking about New Hampshire, but that’s not the only state. I’ve been keeping a pretty open mind about it, not wanting to make a snap judgment about a complicated issue, but eventually a time comes to gather all the arguments for and against and start coming to some conclusions.
One of the frustrating things about this topic is that there aren’t hard and fast rules about it. It’s not immediately clear that there are obviously right and wrong moves to make based either on the expected results of disaffiliation or on a sense of justice about it. If we start by looking at the history of disaffiliation in the LP we come away with some murky ideas about those things, but nothing really clear cut.
In the early history of the LP, mostly in the 1970s, there were several “silent” disaffiliations because state parties would go inactive. The natural lifecycle of many activists is to get excited by a Presidential campaign and then to lose interest afterwards, and it takes a few of those cycles to find people who are in it for the long haul. If the national headquarters couldn’t get in touch with anybody from a state that had previously been active, after a while they would put the word out in LP News for anyone who wanted to try to get things restarted. I don’t think there’s a lot for us to learn from that except that it was nice to have a national newsletter that would go out to all the members, and also that if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.
The first significant formal disaffiliation I’m aware of was of the Arizona LP in the year 2000 in response to them placing their favored candidate, L. Neil Smith, on the ballot instead of Harry Browne, who was nominated at the national convention. There was more to it than that, but those are the basic pertinent facts. I don’t know the history of the Arizona LP in the early 2000s enough to be able to say whether that state party functioned well after the new group was affiliated or whether it limped along and the two factions in Arizona continued to fight for a while. It does seem like 25 years later that particular wound has scarred over and isn’t causing problems any more, but it’s been a quarter of a century and I don’t know if they had a rough decade or two after that.
Overall, though, I think it was probably a necessary thing to do. More on that below.
The only other disaffiliation I know of was of the New Mexico LP a few years ago, officially in response to them screwing up remote participation of two state conventions in a row. It did seem like the LNC at that time took joy in making that decision, and it seemed to me at the time that a significant amount of the reason for the disaffiliation was that the new LNC was of a different faction than the leadership of the New Mexico Libertarian Party.
In response to their disaffiliation the old party became one of the founding state affiliates of the Liberal Party. The new affiliate, called the Free New Mexico Party, seems to be functioning at a basic level, though it’s very far away from thriving. If I had to guess I would say it’s likely that neither state party is likely to function very well in the near future.
There are examples from other small political parties of state parties breaking away from the national group or the national group kicking out state parties, but that almost always occurs when the small party is going through its death throes. I don’t know of any example where it turned out to be a sign of good things to come.
The two major political parties don’t do it at all. Neither did the other three large, successful political parties in American history, the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, and the Whigs.
The main lesson I take from all of that is that there had better be a really good reason to disaffiliate a state party. It should be a good enough reason that you would be willing for that disaffiliated/reaffiliated state to not function well for the next 10 years after you do it.
What are some reasons that are not good enough to disaffiliate a state party? There are three off of the top of my head that come to mind.
First, it is not a good enough reason to disaffiliate a state party to express frustration with it or out of a desire to punish its members or its leadership. There are other avenues to vent those emotions and to seek retribution – disaffiliation is not the proper tool for that.
Second, it is not a good enough reason to disaffiliate a state party for the mere fact that they broke a rule or a bylaw. States parties do break internal rules sometimes, some even fairly often, and it might seem unjust that there’s no way for the national party to correct that behavior. Disaffiliation, however, is too drastic a response for most rule breaks, and we ought instead to get comfortable with the fact that rules will sometimes be broken.
Third, it is not a good enough reason to disaffiliate a state party to preserve ideological purity. That way madness lies.
So if those aren’t good enough reasons, what are some that would be?
There is one action that a state party can take which should make any member of the Libertarian National Committee more inclined to disaffiliate a state than not. If a state party puts anyone on the ballot for President other than the candidate chosen at the national convention, the LNC should disaffiliate it. The natural consequence of the state parties getting into that habit would be the national LP losing its structural integrity and flying apart. We must all be pulling in one direction when it comes to that specific election.
The only other reason that national should consider disaffiliating a state party is if the state party is doing extreme (and it has to be extreme) reputational damage to the national party AND there’s no indication that it will get better on its own without disaffiliation. Sometimes state parties will do embarrassing things. How bad does it have to be before disaffiliation becomes the correct move? Where’s the line?
From a mathematical perspective, you could say that if any state is doing more than one state’s worth of damage to the movement as a whole, you should take it offline. That’s not very helpful though, because it’s very hard to measure.
We might be able to drill down to a more acceptable and precise answer with the following questions: How much more difficult is the behavior making it for someone in a different state to get a new member to join the party? How soon during a conversation at a county fair booth in another state will that worker have to apologize for the behavior? How often does it shift the average conversation with an informed voter away from what we would rather be talking about? Finally, how often does it discourage someone who is a basic member of the party from getting involved as a booth worker, a door-knocker, or a candidate?
These aren’t questions with hard numbers attached to them, but it’s as close as I can get. After considering those questions, it’s clear to me that New Hampshire is doing more than one state’s worth of damage and should be disaffiliated, even though it’s very likely to make the New Hampshire LP significantly dysfunctional in its ability to field candidates and otherwise function for about the next ten years.
The likely fallout from that disaffiliation is that there will be two New Hampshire LPs, the old one (toxic) and the new one (small). It is always awful when that happens, but the only alternative I can see is to continue to have the other 50 affiliates apologize to the average informed voter for the next few decades. Surgery sucks, but it’s better than cancer. It’s not going away by itself.
Mr. Flood,
I’ve refreshed my memory with some online searches. I’ll work my way back around to Mr. Rowlette’s contentions and my follow ups ; please be patient and bear with me.
If you’re talking about 1860, that’s a completely different split. The Democratic Party which is nominally the same one as exists today was created in 1828 and the Republicans in 1854.
The Democratic-Republican Party existed in 1792-1824/8, and was actually also formally known as the Republican Party, but had nothing to do with the Republican Party that was founded in 1854 and existed ever since, although like today’s Democrats their coalition and position stances changed a lot over the decades. To avoid confusion with today’s Republicans or Democrats, modern historians call the 1792-1834 Republicans “Democratic Republicans” or “Jeffersonian Republicans”. However, at the time it was simply the Republican Party.
That Republican party was started by Jefferson, Madison and friends as the successor to the Antifederalists, and its opposition was the Federalist party. The federalist party collapsed after 1800, and especially after 1815.
For a while, the Republican party which we call Democratic-Republican today was the only major party – the “era of good feelings”.
They splintered after 1824. One side evolved into the Democratic-Republicans formally, and soon after that into the Democrats. He other side became the Whigs, which can be argued to have been in some respects the heir of the Federalists, although it wasn’t a continuous or direct transition.
In this schematic, the Democrats of 1828- came from the Antifederalists, which is more or less true, while it can be said somewhat less precisely that the Whigs were the successor to the Federalists.
However, both the Democrats and Whigs of the 1828-1860 period were from the start, and increasingly as that period went on, split over slavery related questions, especially as they related to westward expansion and the creation of new territories and States.
The Whigs were split the most over such questions, and by the 1850s collapsed as a major party. The Republicans of 1854- were one of the minor parties which started to take their place in the north, and quickly absorbed the others to become the new opposing major party in congress and in the presidential election of 1856.
Meanwhile, in the South most Whigs left them for the American Party (which also existed in the north). Over a century later, some of us drew inspiration from that American Party to start a new one of that same name, also known as American Independent – vestiges of which still exist, mainly in Western states, today.
The original American Party was created by the merger of the American Republican party, a local patriotic nationalist organisation in New York City in 1843, and Southern and pro-Southern Whigs. It was a somewhat major party in the 1840s and 50s.
A derisive, and I think very unfair, colloquial name for them was Know Nothings, which stemmed from their secretiveness about organisational specifics but has been used, especially retroactively, to falsely portray them as ignorant and stupid, and by extension apply that same slur to those of us who continue to carry on their legacy. That original American Party declined after 1856.
In 1860, southern ex-Whigs mostly backed the Constitutional Union Party, They were conservative, but anti secession. Northern and pro-northern or anti States Rights Whigs mainly became Republicans, who thus quickly became a new major party.
Some southern “border states” ex Whigs in the 1850s branded themselves as the Opposition Party or Union Party, and evolved into the Constitutional Union for the 1860 election. During the war itself they were the Union Party.
The Democratic Party also split for that election, as Dr. Phillies alluded to. Southern Democrats ran Breckenridge for President, and swept the Southern states. Northern Democrats ran Douglas and carried only Missouri, ironically a border/slave state, although Douglas was himself an Illinois Yankee just like the Republican candidate, Lincoln – see “Lincoln Douglas debates,” which started when both ran against each other for office up in Illinois.
Constitutional Union carried Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia, which then still included today’s West Virginia. Lincoln won everywhere north of the Mason Dixon line and in the far Western states, which were then only California and Oregon.
During the war, there continued to be elections. See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1864_United_States_elections which has both congessional seat and presidential elector maps. Personally, I find that congressional map to be especially interesting.
After the war, Southern Democrats reconciled back into the Democratic Party. Southern Republicans became largely extinct for the better part of a century after the end of reconstruction. They began very slowly to reemerge as northern democrats began to enforce forced integration starting with the military to certain extent in WWII, as well as in opposition to the big government New Deal / fdr agendas. That brings us back around to the history of 1948-68 which I mentioned last round. I can do some of the latter from personal memory, but that needs refreshing too now unfortunately with reading of the same sort as I’ve done and summarised here of events that happened before I was born.
The 1964 republican party split I referred to in the comment you replied to (Mr. Flood, if the length of this comment kicks it out of hierarchy) was related to the things I wrote about here. Goldwater aligned with the views and interests of Southern conservatives like myself when I was a kid at that time (teen, 1964) while the other side of the Republican party was unhappy with his nomination and some may have I seem to recall walked out or (bringing it back to Mr. Rowlette’s point at last) disaffiliated, as I mentioned last time.
The other event I referred was 1912, and was unrelated.
Neither one was the split of the Democratic-Republican party of the 1820s, which I only wrote about on this round, not the one to which you replied yesterday, 24 may. What I wrote about last round was splits within the Republican party founded in 1854 which occurred in 1912 and 1964. Not splits within the Republican aka Democratic-Republican party which evolved in the 1790s that then occurred in the 1820s, which as best I understand it is what you are talking about.
For the 1964 events I supported Goldwater as I said. But I was a teenager, albeit politically active, and still thought of myself primarily as a Democrat, and it was over 60 years ago so I need refreshing.
Which of these incidents involved formal state party disaffiliations? That’s a matter of definition, because as you go back further in this history the methods of party organizations were far less formal and structured and much more skeletal than nowadays. By 1964 they were quite modern, but Republican parties in the deep South were quite skeletal, and a few convention delegates walking out or protesting a national presidential nomination may have constituted De facto state party disaffiliations – perhaps you or others reading know or remember better than do I?
Pat Jones, That is an impressive history review. Thank you.
The Democratic-Republican Party (1792 – 1825) split into the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party (1824 – 1834.) Whig Party #2 (1833 – 1854) was formed out of the dissolution of the National Republicans and Anti-Masonic Party #1 (1828 – 1840). I say Whig Party #2 because there had been an earlier one which supported independence during the Revolution and which included both future Federalists and future anti-Federalists. And there was a second Anti-Masonic Party from 1872 – 1888.
Then, as you said, the Whigs split into the Republicans in the north and in the South those who could not bring themselves to join the Republican Party mostly initially joined the already-existent, anti-immigrant American Know-Nothing Party (1844 – 1860.) As the Civil War drew closer, the former Whigs in the South then started to leave the American Know-Nothing Party for the 1858 Opposition Party and then the 1860 Constitutional Union Party, or they aligned with anti-secession Democrats.
In my state (which I prefer not to mention), in order to be a official member of the state LP, be an officer, or even vote at a party convention, one must be a member of National. (That’s why I’m not active in this state).
In a state such as this, instead of disaffiliation, the offenders’ National membership could be revoked, making them ineligible to participate in the offending state party.
” It is always awful when that happens, but the only alternative I can see is to continue to have the other 50 affiliates apologize to the average informed voter for the next few decades.”
This is the situation in which the Libertarian Party currently finds its. The “mainstream” libertarians are compelled to apologize for the “outlanders”, who have a knack for drawing attention to themselves. But, this problem is not unique to minor parties. The Democrats are compel to respond to their “woke” element, and the Republicans are compelled to respond to their “rube” element.
“There is one action that a state party can take which should make any member of the Libertarian National Committee more inclined to disaffiliate a state than not. If a state party puts anyone on the ballot for President other than the candidate chosen at the national convention, the LNC should disaffiliate it”
I seem to recall that in 2008, the New Hampshire LP put a candidate on the ballot, whose name escapes me at the moment, other than the nominee of the national convention.
I believe it was our esteemed editor, unless the name is a complete coincidence. However, national nominee Bob Barr was also on the ballot for POTUS in NH that year. If I’m not mistaken, both were listed as independent. The New Hampshire full party petition requires significantly more signatures.
As I mentioned earlier, in 2004 the libertarians failed to qualify any presidential candidate in New Hampshire, allegedly due to sabotage by the state libertarians chairman, who the sources I read – I no longer remember where – claim was a Bush supporter. I don’t know how I would verify such claims of sabotage – I only recall reading them.
There were two Libertarians on the ballot for President in NH in 2008: Bob Barr & George Phillies
Well said.
Cancer always needs to be dealt with…sometimes by surgery.
Ignoring cancer leads to death and certain toxic behavior by LPNH have been ignored for too long by LNC.
The “new” LPNH will be fine. There are many people in NH not satisfied with the “old” LP who will eventually step up.
Let’s hope LNC does the right thing regarding the Redpath motion.
I have my doubts though.
Hello again, Mr. Rowlette. I’m not your intended audience, since you begin with “Hello libertarians” but I hope you and the management will allow me to comment nevertheless. I’m here because I have a long history with different minor (as well as major) parties. I’m a conservative independent with a classical liberal streak.
(Optional aside – As to the libertarians, I agree with their stated end goal, have voted for their candidates for various offices a few times over the years, signed their silly pledge 38 years ago to help Ron Paul seek their presidential nomination, never formally revoked that pledge, and sent them token financial contributions which briefly made me a dues paying member in 1987-9 and 2008-9. I’ve attended a small handful of their local and events in Florida and Georgia over those 38 years, as well as national conventions in Seattle, Washington (1987), Philadelphia, PA (1989), and Denver, CO (2008). I called myself a libertarian and registered to vote as one a few times over the years, but currently do neither.
I’m an independent, and have participated in various such ways in other minor and major parties throughout my life. My participation in minor parties goes back to traveling to several states to help George Wallace get on the ballot for president in 1967-8 before I could actually vote and as recent as donating to Randall Terry for President in 2024 even though I didn’t vote for him).
A lot of libertarians tell me very, very vehemently that I could never have been a real libertarian, especially but not only whenever I make the mistake of thinking I am, therefore I agree – I’m not. But, at least in name only if not in current practice, this is third party watch, as in all minor parties, not liberal-libertarian war room. I have an interest in minor parties, even if at the moment it’s limited to watching them somewhat at arms length. For the paranoid among you, no, not on behalf of any agency, and not out of hostility – they can still at times be useful in various ways, and represent an important safety valve and insurance policy .
With apologies for the lengthy introduction, I don’t think you prove the premises used to illustrate your point. My aging memory is unfortunately failing me, but I’ll match you in crowdsourcing to other readers here and looking up your imo unproven contentions that
1) “The first significant formal disaffiliation I’m aware of was of the Arizona LP in 2000…” to me the key words there are I’m aware of. So, admittedly you don’t know for sure, and admittedly I don’t either. If anyone is reading this and does, would you please chime in and or recommend good resources for anyone who might want to investigate the claim?
2)”The only other disaffiliation I know of was of the New Mexico LP a few years ago,” again this betrays a hole in our current knowledge base – did others occur in between? Anyone?
3) “There are examples from other small political parties of state parties breaking away from the national group or the national group kicking out state parties, but that almost always occurs when the small party is going through its death throes. I don’t know of any example where it turned out to be a sign of good things to come.”
These are very broad ranging claims with very scant backing. I must admit to a great deal of frustration with my age related mental decline here, as I should be able to provide a great deal of detail from 60+ years of wide ranging personal experience and reading on this very subject, but to be honest at the moment I’m scratching my once blonde and now silver noggin to come up with either confirmation or counterexamples. It’s life alert time, metaphorically, and likely soon enough also physically – you may be familiar with the advertisements, “help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” – any help, anyone?
4)”The two major political parties don’t do it at all. Neither did the other three large, successful political parties in American history, the Federalists, the Democratic-Republicans, and the Whigs.” I don’t believe this is true, but once again I’m frustrated to say I’ll need to brush up on the subject. I don’t want to do all the heavy lifting as far as disproving your claims. You make this one more categorically than the others. Can you provide proof, or can anyone beat me to the research or have a better memory than I do anymore and provide counterexamples?
4)”If a state party puts anyone on the ballot for President other than the candidate chosen at the national convention, the LNC should disaffiliate it. The natural consequence of the state parties getting into that habit would be the national LP losing its structural integrity and flying apart” Is this claim unique to the libertarians ? I can tell you with absolute certainty that major parties have survived state parties putting a different candidate on the ballot than the national convention nominee many times, as have all manner of minor parties.
To take just one example, the Democratic Party went through a bout of this starting with the Thurmond for president campaign in 1948, unpledged electors and the like in the 1950s and 60s, and on to the AIP – Wallace was still primarily a Democrat before and after the AIP presidential run, ran in Democratic presidential primaries in 1972 and, I just remembered, 1976, and served as the Democratic governor of Alabama in -1967; 1971-1979; 1983-1987. While I was helping her husband get on the ballot as AIP etc in some states adjacent to the old Mason Dixon line, Mrs. George Wallace was the sitting Democratic governor of Alabama.
Republicans, Constitution Party, your own LP, many others – all have survived state defections regarding the presidential line, some more the worse for wear than others. Iirc, by at least 2008 if not 2004, Arizona was no longer a problem for the Libertarian party, and by 2016 you were back on 50+ ballots and achieving your highest vote totals ever.
5) “Sometimes state parties will do embarrassing things. How bad does it have to be before disaffiliation becomes the correct move? Where’s the line?”
That’s a good question I don’t know the answer to, but the version of libertarianism I feel most kinship to is decentralised and decentralist – they would say it’s the national party which embarrasses them as much or more than the other way around. Disaffiliation from the national committee is one mess – who gets to keep the ballot line is another. I seem to recall that in your Arizona example the disaffiliated state unit kept the ballot line and the national party tried but failed to get its nominee on the ballot. I also seem to recall reading you’ve faced other such issues with various states over the years – Oregon, Michigan, Colorado, New Mexico, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Montana, etc. In some but not all cases your national nominee made it on, in some more than one libertarian did, in some ballot access failed, in some defection was threatened but not carried out, etc.
While the embarrassment at state units doing the “great macho flash” is certainly a concern, so is a crescendo or avalanche of purges, disaffiliations, and secessions of state and local party units, tying each other up in lawsuits over territorial rights and copyright issues, and dragging your national and other state groups into their fights gathering steam/ momentum from state to state . Unfortunately, I’ve been through this with a number of parties – both current major parties, American (Independent), reform, ustp / constitution, and it’s not brand new – but newly at a higher frequency than ever before – with y’all.
This isn’t even the first time your NH party went through it. From what I read recently, and I think also years ago, in 2004 their state L.P. Chairman was a Bush supporter who arguably sabotaged their ballot access and in 2008 they had two libertarian presidential candidates on the ballot.
I’m sorry for rambling at a such length; hopefully it will be approved, even if it needs to be edited down to fit. You ask a lot of good questions, Mr. Rowlette, and make a good faith effort to find answers, even though I think there’s a lot you may have gotten wrong in your process to reach your conclusions, which I’m unsure of (and, it’s rather not my problem or business which states you do or don’t affiliate – I’m just interested in the general subject, not taking sides in your faction fights)
“I encourage everyone who has an opinion on whatever we’re talking about this month to comment or send phillies@4liberty.net your longer editorials, which may well be published.”
My first two attempts were published, the last 2-3+ were published only as comments despite my stated intent, and several more have not been written because I asked for guidance in what would and wouldn’t be welcome and didn’t get it. My comment submissions are always available for editing down or combining and publishing as articles or as comments, as a standing offer. My email, which I rarely use at all anymore, must remain insulated from political public comments for personal reasons I can’t and won’t make public. If some version of this where elevated to article my working title would be More On Fracturing and would contain links to this article and our previous article exchange, but of course it’s entirely up to the editor.
Secessions within major parties: In 1860, well before anyone left the Union, the Democratic Party split in two. As usual, I shall recommend David Potter’s The Impending Crisis for a historical study.
I’ll have to look into that.
Republicans have had their splits as well. Quite recently the Michigan party, for example.
Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 might count – the former Republican president ran unsuccessfully as a minor party candidate to regain the office and split Republican state parties between supporters of himself and his chosen and later disavowed successor, President Taft. I’d have to refresh my memory as to whether any state Republican parties were formally disaffiliated or reorganized under new leadership as a result, but Taft won a contested nomination and Roosevelt went on to run as a Progressive.
In 1964, Goldwater’s nomination caused rumblings among some Republicans. Back then there wasn’t much of a Republican party in the deep South and I seem to recall that some states were represented by racial agitators at the cow palace convention. I think some staged protests and maybe walked out over Goldwater’s nomination. Goldwater won handily in the deep South – the only places he won outside his own Arizona – but it’s possible some (then skeletal) state Republican parties were replaced as a result of the nomination fight.
I was a Goldwater supporter, though far too young to vote, but not a Republican at that time.
Those are some possible elections for those interested in this subject to look into, but there are probably other ones as well – I’m just not recalling at the moment.
I remember reading in a book that in the 1960’s there was talk of the conservative Reagan wing of the republican Party breaking away and starting a new party. Ultimately Reagan and others decided it would be very difficult for this new party to succeed and they decided to stay in the Republican Party.
I only mentioned when and where splits actually happened, not when they were merely contemplated.
Around 1976 there was a great deal of impetus for conservative exit from the GOP, but the actual split ended up being in the AIP instead – Maddox on the ballot in some states, TJ Anderson in some – likewise in the 1990s many “peasants with pitchforks” planned an exit which, to such extent as it actually happened (Howard Phillips, and later also Par Buchanan 2000) was quite underwhelming. Perot appealed to many of us, but wasn’t one of us.
As recently as 2021 there was a great deal of speculation about a Patriot Party that went nowhere, much like any ideas of the Tea Party becoming an electoral party in the decade or two prior, etc.
I mentioned 1964 for a specific reason, that the Republican parties in some Southern States were still so unorganized that if I’m remembering right that their delegates walked out of the Republican convention, that might have been a De facto disaffiliation. Those same States ended up supporting the Republican nominee in November that year, but that’s because many Southern Democrats didn’t support LBJ, much as many Republicans didn’t support Goldwater.
Since I was then a Democrat for Goldwater, underage, and it was long ago, I can’t say for sure that state disaffiliations actually occurred, which is why I’m seeing what others here ma might know or think they know.
The 1968 AIP ticket was Wallace, who was before and after that a Democrat, and LeMay, who was otherwise usually a Republican. Wallace ran in the Democratic primaries in 1972 and 1976, Ashbrook in the Republican primaries in 1972, and John Schmitz who had been a California Republican congressman and was later again a California Republican legislator was the A(I)P presidential nominee in 1972.
In 1976 Ashbrook was among those who flirted with bucking the GOP but didn’t. Viguerie actually did. Etc.
To be more specific, it was the Democratic Republican Party that split in two.
My reply got kicked out of the comments hierarchy due to length. Hopefully it will be approved, in which case scroll up to see it.
My apologies, I just noticed you were actually replying to Dr. Phillies, not to me. Nevertheless my other (currently in moderation queue) comments still hold. The D-R party did not split in 1860. They split in 1828ish into Democrats and Whigs. Previously the D-R party was more formally known simply as Republicans.
However that was unrelated to the Republican Party of today, which was founded in 1854 as a minor party and quickly became a major party as the Whigs fell apart. While this later Republican party absorbed elements of the Whigs, it did not come from any D-R split. Other elements of the Whigs went elsewhere – details in my longer comment.
The Democrats did split in 1860. In fact, they split so much that they ran two candidates.
My second attempt to reply to Dr. Phillies posted in the wrong place too. In case it does it again,
@ “The Democrats did split in 1860. In fact, they split so much that they ran two candidates.” My reply :
Dear editor,
Yes, I addressed that in the longer comment, named them, and which states the Yankee one won . The most relevant paragraph to that was
“The Democratic Party also split for that election, as Dr. Phillies alluded to. Southern Democrats ran Breckenridge for President, and swept the Southern states. Northern Democrats ran Douglas and carried only Missouri, ironically a border/slave state, although Douglas was himself an Illinois Yankee just like the Republican candidate, Lincoln – see “Lincoln Douglas debates,” which started when both ran against each other for office up in Illinois.”
What Mr. Flood got wrong was “it was the Democratic Republican Party that split in two.” The Democratic party did split in two in 1860, the Republican party did not. There was a Democratic-Republican party in 1828 which split into the Democratic and Whig parties. That party had previously been called Republican. However, the Republican party of 1860 had not split from any branch of that. Rather, it was founded in 1854 as a minor party and then quickly absorbed other minor parties and elements of the northern Whigs. No party named Republican, in whole or in part, split in 1860. It was that statement from Mr. Flood which I was addressing. You got it right; Mr. Flood got it wrong in his response.
Please approve this version, not the other two. It should make sense regardless of whether it kicks it out to top level or not.