Secessionist strength was strongest in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. In the first three of these states there arose local Union or Constitutional Parties to counter the radical Southern Rights parties which were forming. In South Carolina the Southern Rights agenda was already the dominant force in the state, and its leaders were already pressing the other states for secession. The new Union parties attracted the overwhelming majority of Whigs in the three states. In Alabama and Mississippi the Whigs had been weak, and the creation of the Union parties revitalized the opposition to the dominant state Democratic Parties.