CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY

U.S. political party that sought in the pre-Civil War election of 1860 to rally support for the Union and the Constitution without regard to sectional issues. Formed in 1859 by former Whigs and members of the Know-Nothing Party, the party nominated John Bell for president and Edward Everett for vice president. In attempting to ignore the slavery issue, its platform particularly appealed to border states, in which the party won 39 electoral votes. A by-product of the same ideological and sectional antipathies that had led to the formation of the Republican Party in 1856 and the splitting of the Democratic Party in 1860, the Constitutional Union Party was a short-lived vehicle for moderates that collapsed by the start of the Civil War. It succeeded only in helping to disperse the 1860 vote sufficiently to ensure the election of the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln.