As the Courier and Enquirer ceased to be a cutting-edge newspaper, the Whig Party also declined. In line with the ties of many New York merchants to the U.S. South and its slaveholding community, the Courier and Enquirer had always supported American slavery. The paper's coverage of African-Americans was extremely hostile, marked by prejudice and bigotry. While this kind of coverage was little problem for the newspaper in the 1830s and 1840s, the growth of free soil and even abolitionist sentiment throughout the Northern states in the 1850s made the Courier and Enquirer look archaic. Meanwhile, the Whigs, torn apart by the growing slavery crisis, could not field a candidate for the U.S. presidency in 1856. Many New York Whigs joined the new Republican Party.
