History
Democratic Republican Party
The Democratic-Republican Party was an American political party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the 1790s. It advocated for a limited federal government, states' rights, and an agrarian society. The party was a major force in American politics during the early 19th century and eventually evolved into the modern Democratic Party.
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9 Key excerpts on "Democratic Republican Party"
- Kenneth F. Warren(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
By 1820, the Federalist Party was no longer a national party, leaving the Democratic-Republican Party as the only national political party. By 1824, the party had split into a number of factions. Its last congressional nomi-nating caucus, in 1824, nominated William Crawford as the party’s presidential candidate. The House of Repre-sentatives also decided the election that would lead to its demise. John Quincy Adams, with Henry Clay’s support, was elected president. Four years later, Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams. In 1832, Jackson’s party would convene their first national party convention as the Republican Party. During the rest of that decade, the party would often be referred to as the Democratic-Republican Party. The party officially became the Dem-ocratic Party in 1845. SEE ALSO: Anti-Federalists; Federalist Party; National Repub-lican Party. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Lance Banning, ed., Liberty and Order: The First American Party Struggle (The Liberty Fund, 2004); Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ide-ology (Cornell University Press, 1978); S.G. Brown, The First Republicans: Political Philosophy and Public Policy in the Party of Jefferson and Madison (Syracuse University Press, 1954); N.E. Cunningham, Jr., Jeffersonian Republicans: The Forma-tion of Party Organization: 1789–1801 (University of North Carolina Press, 1958); N.E. Cunningham, Jr., The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power: Party Operations 1801–1809 (University of North Carolina Press, 1963). J EFFREY K RAUS W AGNER C OLLEGE Democratic “Rules of the Game” ANALYSTS SOMETIMES DRAW a parallel between democratic institutions and the rules of sports games, explaining that formal and informal rules characterize the interactions of the participants. Players often cheat, improving their chances for short-term success at the risk of reputation or punishment.
No longer available |Learn more- John Geer, Richard Herrera, Wendy Schiller, Jeffrey Segal(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-300 300 CHAPTER 9: POLITICAL PARTIES Alexander Hamilton and John Adams) and strong state governments (led by Thomas Jefferson). Washington wor- ried that opposing views could lead to organized political parties that would cause conflict in the new nation. 11 Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and the Emergence of the Democratic Party After winning the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson used his victory to transform his fledgling political party into a viable long-term organization known as the Democratic- Republicans (most candidates shortened the name to Republican), while the supporters of Adams and Hamilton united around the Federalist Party. 12 The Democratic- Republicans occupied the White House for the next twenty-eight years with the terms of Jefferson (1801–09), James Madison (1809–17), James Monroe (1817–25), and John Quincy Adams (1825–29). The Federalist Party slowly faded away as a force in politics. The Democratic-Republicans soon split over the nomi- nation process for president. Specifically Andrew Jackson, an ambitious politician, wanted to take the party to a new level of inclusiveness and use that wider reach to become president. Jackson, from Tennessee, had served in both the House and the Senate, but he made his national reputa- tion during the War of 1812, especially as the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. After his military service ended, Jackson returned to Congress and attempted to win the presidential nomination of the Democratic-Republicans in 1824. 13 At that time, presidential nominations were decided by party caucuses in Congress. Only about a fourth of the members of the party showed up to cast their votes, and no one won a majority. As a result there were four Democratic-Repub- lican “nominees”: Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.
eBook - ePubAndrew Jackson and the Rise of the Democrats
A Reference Guide
- Mark R. Cheathem(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
CHAPTER 1
PARTY DEVELOPMENT IN THE NEW REPUBLIC
U nderstanding the evolution of the Democratic Party requires looking at the origins of the American political system. From its inception, the United States was divided about how best to preserve the liberties won by the Revolution. Two distinctly different approaches developed during the first decade of the Early Republic, creating the first American party system between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans and providing a foundation on which Jacksonian Democrats and their opponents constructed their political coalitions in the 1820s and 1830s.THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC
The Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods witnessed the United States conceiving a new political system. Prior to the Revolution, “society had been a hierarchically structured, gentry-dominated one, committed to the ideal of organic unity under the leadership of gentlemen.” By the 1770s, change was underway in colonial American society, change that the Revolution exacerbated. Throughout the rest of the 1700s, a movement began “that joined those mistrustful of power with vast numbers of traditionally powerless people in a common attempt … to challenge the eminence of a gentlemanly few.”1Colonial intellectuals and politicians adhered to a political theory, commonly referred to as classical republicanism by historians, that helped Americans of diverse interests understand the struggle that they faced. According to historian John R. Howe Jr., this worldview placed “events … in apocalyptic terms with the very survival of republican liberty riding in the balance.” Many of the European intellectuals who contributed to classical republican thought expressed their concerns about “malevolent plots and plotters.” Ironically, the Enlightenment, which emphasized rational scientific thought, encouraged conspiratorial thinking because “[i]n such a liberal and learned world there could no longer be any place for miracles or the random happenings of chance.” Just as previous generations often looked for supernatural answers to explain God’s “mysterious ways,” those American colonists influenced by the Enlightenment “sought to understand the concealed or partially exposed wills of human beings” by identifying patterns of behavior and attributing good effects to good causes and bad outcomes to bad causes. By identifying the battle between power and liberty as essential to the colonies’ future, this conspiratorial outlook shaped American colonists on both sides of the Revolution and carried over into the Early Republic’s political world. Many colonists began to believe that if they wanted equality and the freedom to pursue their own course, then they must support the fight against the ever-encroaching reach of power that threatened to corrupt their society as it had other parts of the British Empire.2
eBook - PDF- Richard S Katz, William J Crotty, Richard S Katz, William J Crotty(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
The opposing sides, Federalists and Jeffersonian Democrats, did not consider them-selves to be parties in the contemporary sense of offering electors alternative voting choices and as representing group coalitions intended to dominate governance, although of course this is what they did. The divide was far more serious and involved nothing less than what the United States should become as a nation: what the text of the Constitution actually meant in practice; the distribution of powers within the federal system; the rights to be PARTY ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES 27 guaranteed to individuals; the manner in which political power was to be exercised; and the economic and political sectors that should, by right, be favored by the government. There was little give on either side, limited room for compromise, and a belief in the total acceptance of one set of values over the other: The Federalists and Republicans [Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans] did not think of each other as alternating parties in a two-party system. Each hoped instead to eliminate party conflict by persuading and absorbing the more acceptable and ‘innocent’ members of the other; each side hoped to attack the stigma of foreign allegiance [England for the Federalists; France for the Jeffersonians] and disloyalty to the intractable leaders of the other, and to put them out of busi-ness as a party. (Hofstadter, 1969: 8) The Federalists were a party without a broad mass base. After their defeat in the presidential election of 1800, they soon disappeared, leav-ing a period of one-party dominance by the Jeffersonians.
eBook - PDFIdeas of Power
The Politics of American Party Ideology Development
- Verlan Lewis(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
As Republican ideology adopted Federalist ideas, the Federalist Party dissolved and left a one-party system. While the Republicans changed their theory of governance and theory of eco- nomic intervention, the more foundational aspects of their party ideology remained largely intact. 4.1 Historical Context of the Jeffersonian Era In the early nineteenth century, the American people, including both major parties, moved to embrace more national government power and more intervention in the economy than was generally acceptable in the late eighteenth century. The second war for independence, the War of 1812, exposed many of the weaknesses of the American state, and in “the first few years following the war . . . the spirit of nationalism was in vogue” (Risjord 1965, 8). This resulted in greater support by both parties for a stronger army, a national bank, and more national infrastructure. The expansion of American settlers beyond the Appalachian Mountains also resulted in a call for more national infrastructure projects to unify the 88 Ideas of Power expanding republic. Since the Republican Party ran the US government, it was responsible for most of the nationalist legislation of this period, and its ideology changed to catch up with its institutional and policy positions. While the nation, as a whole, generally moved in a direction welcoming more national government power and more economic intervention, the two parties moved differently, in relation to each other, as predicted by the political institutional theory of party ideology development: The party in power moved farther in the direction of government intervention than the party out of power.
eBook - PDFSocial Class and Democratic Leadership
Essays in Honor of E. Digby Baltzell
- Harold J. Bershady(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
2j8 Victor M. Lidz portance in American politics. Most Federalists felt themselves at a loss about what to do beyond holding onto whatever offices they retained. Neither Federalists nor Jeffersonians thought of elections based on compe-tition between parties as a permanent form of political life. It had been an evil that could be tolerated only under the special circumstances of 1800. 67 As the Jeffersonians consolidated power, they did not abandon efforts to maintain their party. The crisis of 1800 was past, but they did not return to the ideal of politics without parties. Instead, they used the slogan of the Revolution of 1800 to connect their party with the heritage of republi-can freedom. The Democratic Party was proclaimed a protector of free-doms that should continue to play a vital role in politics. A critical step was thus taken in legitimating party organization, and the Democrats were freed to set about strengthening their party in an open fashion that had been unthinkable before 1800. During the years of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, the Democrats established a national coalition among high office-holders, promoted the formation of sympathetic voluntary as-sociations, firmed up alliances with newspaper publishers, used the party to popularize policies designed to please a broad-based electorate, devel-oped continuing loyalties among the voters, and did their best to exclude everyone but party members from offices at all levels of government. By these means they were able to consolidate a near monopoly over promising political careers. To gain offices of any importance or exercise effective influence on matters of public policy, it now became necessary to be a reliable Democrat. Old Federalists and their political heirs gradually under-stood that they had to join the Democrats in order to hold open possibili-ties for political careers.
eBook - PDFEmbracing Dissent
Political Violence and Party Development in the United States
- Jeffrey S. Selinger(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- University of Pennsylvania Press(Publisher)
Hofstadter betrays this modern bias when he characterizes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe as politically and intellectually na ï ve. He observes, for example, that Washing-ton’s “intellectual confusion about the problem of government and opposi-tion was altogether genuine and that it partook of an intellectual diffi culty quite common among his contemporaries.” 30 If, for some scholars, the acceptance of party represents a step in the pro-gressive enlightenment of American statesmen, the rise of parties also regis-ters as a net gain in the political advancement of yeoman farmers, settlers, and working-class men—at the expense of the gentry’s control of politics. The second generation of American statesmen were lawyers, professionals, and businessmen who repudiated the patrician norms and practices of the Founders. A new class of men, unwilling to defer to their “betters,” made 10 Chapter 1 their way into politics—and with them came their chosen organizational form: political parties. Thus, the status of party gained ground as the com-mon man began to assert himself in politics. 31 With the democratization of the electorate came a corresponding decline of republican norms and values. Indeed, the decline of republican values has been closely associated with the advancement of party. For scholars of early American political thought, republican ideology, drawn in particular from English commonwealthmen, uniquely informed the political, social, and constitutional outlook of the revolutionary generation. 32 With its emphasis on public virtue—understood as the willingness of a frugal and industrious citizenry to forgo the expression of individual self-interest and its portrait of the common good as the good of a homogenous people—republicanism is hostile ideational terrain for the advancement of party.
eBook - PDFThe Party Decides
Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform
- Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, John Zaller(Authors)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
We see three fairly distinct devel-opments: The emergence of a Republican press to spread party propaganda; the emergence of citizen activism against the incumbent administration; and the formation of party nominating committees to coordinate electoral The Creation of New Parties 55 activity. Together, they describe the birth of the Republican Party. We take each in turn. Newspapers and Party Formation Like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, the earliest partisan debate had little impact on national opinion because no newspaper reported it in much detail. But that changed in 1791 when Thomas Jefferson, who may be seen as both an intense policy demander and an ambitious politi-cian, recruited a firebrand editor to run a paper giving the Republican view of events. This paper lasted only two years, but a second Republican paper emerged on its own—that is, independent of Jefferson and other office-holders—and built a nationwide circulation. Meanwhile, the older Gazette of the United States became more openly pro-Federalist. Partisan vitupera-tion now spread across the nation. Even Hamilton and Madison, despite a code of honor that frowned on engagement in public controversy, joined the fray. As the election of 1792 approached, Madison wrote an article called “A Candid State of Parties,” in which he stated the obvious: that the country was now divided between two parties. As he described them, the first was a “Republican Party” that trusted the wisdom of the people and the other was an “antirepublican party” that distrusted the people and played to the “opulent” classes (1791). The high master of partisan mudslinging from the other side was William Cobbett of Porcupine’s Gazette , who described Jeffersonian Republicans in these terms: “refuse of nations”; “yelper of the Democratic kennels”; “vile old wretch”; “tool of a baboon”; “frog-eating, man- eating, blooddrinking cannibals” (Warren 1931, 90–91).
No longer available |Learn more- (Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- College Publishing House(Publisher)
______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ Chapter- 5 History of the United States Republican Party The United States Republican Party is the second oldest currently existing political party in the United States. Creation The Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party was first organized locally in 1854 The Republican Party was first organized in 1854, growing out of a coalition of anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soil Democrats who mobilized in opposition to Stephen Douglas's January 1854 ______________________________ WORLD TECHNOLOGIES ______________________________ introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act into Congress, a bill which repealed the 1820 Missouri Compromise prohibition on slavery north of latitude 36° 30' in the old Louisiana purchase territories, and so was viewed as an aggressive expansionist pro-slavery maneuver by many. Besides opposition to slavery, the new party put forward a radical vision of modernizing the United States—emphasizing higher education, banking, railroads, industry and cities, while promising free homesteads to farmers. They vigorously argued that free-market labor was superior to slavery and the very foundation of civic virtue and true republicanism—this is the Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men ideology. The Republicans absorbed the previous traditions of its members, most of whom had been Whigs; others had been Democrats or members of third parties (especially the Free Soil Party and the American Party or Know Nothings). Many Democrats who joined up were rewarded with governorships. or seats in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Since its inception, its chief opposition has been the Democratic Party, but the amount of flow back and forth of prominent politicians between the two parties was quite high from 1854 to 1896.
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