Was the offshoot unionist party of the 1860 election more northern or more southern jn terms of politics, i know the party’s only goal was preservation of union and its founders later joined the democrats in secession but also that most of the party member were former know nothings, so was the party in itself more north leaning or more south leaning?
TL;DR: The party was more southern, but it still had some northern supporters.
The Constitutional Union was a coalescence of the post-Whig parties that had sprung up in the 1850s, such as the American (Know-Nothings) or Opposition Parties. In the 1856 Presidential Election when many northern Whigs and Free Soil Democrats joined the Republican ranks, the southern Whigs and their few nativist allies in the north joined the American Party. While southern Whigs weren’t exactly rabid nativists (there wasn’t a strong immigrant presence in the south to bring about active hatred towards immigrants,) they believed the old elements of the party could unite behind nativism and continue to straddle the line on the slavery issue. This didn’t come to pass, and the Republicans ascended even higher.
Enter 1860. Lincoln had united anti-slavery forces in the north behind the Republicans to great effect, and the prospects of a hypothetical neo-Whig campaign were even more grim. The Constitutional Union Party, the final formation of a Whiggish political party, runs on a pro-union platform, which appeals to pro-slavery, anti-secession southerners. As for northern unionists, the majority are Democrat ‘Copperheads’/‘Doughfaces’ who are voting for Douglas, while another large portion are the Free-Soil, moderate, Republicans. John Bell only passes 10% of the vote in a single northern state (Massachusetts) and only wins three southern states, demonstrating how obsolete the Whig model had become.