Those who disagree with Jackson's expansion of executive power have united and formed the Whig Party in 1834, calling Jackson "King Andrew I" and seeking to identify themselves as modern-day opponents of governmental overreaching, they name their party after the English Whigs who opposed seventeenth British monarchy,

The American Whigs are modernizers who see President Andrew Jackson as "a dangerous man on horseback" with a "reactionary opposition" to the forces of social, economic and moral modernization.

The Democratic-Republicans who form the Whig Party, led by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, draw on a Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government and territorial expansion combined with national unity and support for a Federal transportation network and domestic manufacturing.

Despite the apparent unity of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans from 1800 to 1824, the American people ultimately prefer partisan opposition to popular political agreement.

As Jackson purges his opponents, vetoes internal improvements and kills the Second Bank of the United States, alarmed local elites fight back.

In 1831, Henry Clay had re-entered the Senate and started planning a new party, defending national rather than sectional interests.

Clay's plan for distributing the proceeds from the sale of lands among the states in the public domain was intended to serve the nation by providing the states with funds for building roads and canals, which would stimulate growth and knit the sections together.

However, his Jacksonian opponents distrust the federal government and oppose all federal aid for internal improvements and they had again frustrated Clay's plan.

Jacksonians promote opposition to the National Bank and internal improvements and support of egalitarian democracy, state power and hard money.

The Tariff of Abominations of 1828 had outraged Southern feelings—the South's leaders hold that the high duties on foreign imports give an advantage to the North (where the factories are located).

Clay's own high tariff schedule of 1832 had further disturbed them as did his stubborn defense of high duties as necessary to his American System.

However, Clay had moved to pass the Compromise of 1833, which met Southern complaints by a gradual reduction of the rates on imports to a maximum of twenty percent.

Controlling the Senate for a while, Whigs passed a censure motion denouncing Jackson's arrogant assumption of executive power in the face of the true will of the people as represented by Congress.

The Whig Party begins to take shape in 1833.

Clay had run as a National Republican against Jackson in 1832, but carried only forty-nine electoral votes against Jackson's two hundred and nineteen and the National Republicans had become discredited as a major political force.

The Whig Party had emerged in the aftermath of the 1832 election, the Nullification Crisis and debates regarding the Second Bank of the United States, which Jackson denounces as a monopoly and from which he abruptly removes all government deposits.

People who help to form the new party included supporters of Clay, supporters of Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, former National Republicans, former Anti-Masons, former disaffected Jacksonians (led by John C. Calhoun), who view Jackson's actions as impinging on the prerogatives of Congress and the states; and small remnants of the Federalist Party, people whose last political activity was with them a decade before.

he "Whig" name emphasizes the party's opposition to Jackson's perceived executive tyranny and the name will help the Whigs shed the elitist image of the National Republican Party.