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The Unionist party was composed of slave-state supporters of the compromise of 1850, which admitted California to the Union as a free state and put the question of slavery up to a referendum in two territories, but also ensured slaves who escaped could to the North could be forcibly returned to their masters and did not have rights. Many Southern politicians who supported the compromise formed a new party to win the support of Southern Whigs and pro-compromise Democrats in a coalition against anti-compromise Democrats. During the 1860s, the similarly-minded Unconditional Unionist and Constitutional Unionist parties were also formed, and the Unionist Party supported the Constitutional Unionist candidate, John Bell, in the 1860 election. The Party also supported Abraham Lincoln’s National Unity ticket in 1864. Many politicians who had been Unionists in the run-up to the civil war were appointed to positions of power in the Reconstruction South, and in occupied territories during the civil war, sometimes maintaining the Unionist party label.