Scientific racism denotes a form of racial intolerance and white supremacy that used enlightenment era principles to attempt deductive and pseudoscientific proofs of white racial superiority. These methods of reasoning were often used in defense of institutional slavery. Scientific racism was prevalent in the 18th and 19th century and often served the economic self-interest of those who led the Atlantic slave trade.

The Whig Party was a major political party in the United States that originally arose in opposition to Andrew Jackson in the 1830s and dissolved in the mid-1850s as northern members joined the newly formed Republican party, Abraham Lincoln among them. The Whigs supported strong congressional power, as opposed to strong executive power. Among other things, Whigs were critical of the Mexican-American War and doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the view that Americans had the God-given right to colonize the entire western portions of the continent. Prominent members of the Whig Party included Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, and William Henry Harrison. Several other former Whigs, including Lincoln, became American presidents as members of the Republican Party.