The History of Political Parties in the United States
The History of Political Parties in the United States
The Founders distrusted political parties. They saw them as engines of self-interest and division that were at odds with the public good. But political parties formed quickly in the early republic, starting only a few years after the Constitution was ratified. The subsequent development of a two-party system became an invaluable way of organizing the American people into blocks of voters with shared ideas about important issues. The waning strength of organized parties in recent decades has had important consequences for American politics today.
The Founders frequently wrote about the dangers of political parties. They often labeled them “factions” that were divisive and rooted in self-interest. In Federalist #10, James Madison wrote that factions were a majority or minority animated by “some common impulse of passion, or of interest” harmful to the rights of others and the common good. They could be a source of unjust laws and a threat to popular self-government. President George Washington concurred and warned in his 1796 Farewell Address that “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” included strong passions, jealousies and revenge, dissention, and despotism.
Despite the Founders’ opposition to them, political parties developed within only a few years of Washington taking office. Americans split over domestic and foreign policy as they debated Hamilton’s financial plans, the centralization of the national government, and foreign policy with France and Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson was the unofficial leader of the Republican Party, which was the party of small government, state power, independent farmers, and pro-France foreign policy with a base of support largely in the South. Alexander Hamilton was the leader of the Federalist Party, which was the party of a stronger national government, national economic development, national security, pro-British foreign policy, and a base of support largely among artisans and merchants in the North.
Following the War of 1812 with Great Britain, the Federalist Party collapsed. American government experienced one-party rule. The Republicans of this “Era of Good Feelings” soon split into factions in which the two-party system reemerged. The Jeffersonians coalesced around President Andrew Jackson in the 1820s and later became known as the Democratic Party. The Democrats were the party of small government, low national debt and taxes, opposition to the national bank, and the protection of slavery. The Democrats built power around the spoils system, which was a system of patronage rewarding supporters with federal jobs to keep their loyalty. Martin Van Buren was the political genius who built a strong Democratic party organization and mobilized party allegiance with rallies, speeches, picnics, and parades.
“National” Republicans called themselves Whigs and organized a party in opposition to “King Andrew” (Jackson) and his Democrats especially because of the Whigs’ concern about Jackson’s vigorous exercise of executive power. The Whigs stood for national economic development with the national bank and federal internal improvements such as canals and railroads. They wanted equal opportunity for self-improvement and social mobility for all. Many Northern Whigs were hostile to slavery, though Southern Whigs were not. The sectional split in the party, especially over slavery, would cause its decline in the early 1850s.
The 1830s and 1840s were a period of party allegiance and democratic political participation. Most states dropped the property requirement for voting, which led to universal male suffrage for whites. Suffragettes met at Seneca Falls and argued for women’s suffrage based upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, though they would not achieve their goal for several decades. Party enthusiasm encouraged participation rates among voters to increase dramatically from 25 percent in 1824 to 79 percent in 1848. Most states also allowed ordinary voters to choose their delegates for the Electoral College. And while parties previously held caucuses in which members of Congress determined presidential candidates, this era saw the rise of state and national party conventions that selected presidential candidates. Democrats and Whigs both had partisan newspapers pushing their respective views of current events.
The 1850s witnessed the rise of the modern Republican Party. President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans preserved the Union and emancipated millions of enslaved people with the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) during the Civil War. Republicans added the Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) amendments to protect the civil rights of Black Americans. Republicans advocated national expansion, big business, tariffs to protect American industry, and equal rights for Blacks. Their base of support was primarily in the Northeast and West. Republicans dominated national politics and the presidency after the 1896 election during this Third Party System. Democrats continued to be the party that favored state power, small farmers, and segregation. The South was known as the “Solid South” because Democrats exercised firm control over the area politically and opposed the expansion of Black rights.
At the turn of the century, Progressives introduced several important electoral and political reforms that significantly altered the place of parties in American political life. Reformers sought to weaken parties and the grip of local and state party bosses whose political machines provided jobs and services to immigrants and the poor in exchange for votes. They also wanted to give greater power to the people to control democratic processes. The creation of the federal civil service was meant to end the patronage system and make government bureaucratic positions independent of partisan tides. Among the voting reforms was the direct primary in which the people, not party bosses, choose candidates for their respective parties. The Seventeenth Amendment provided for the direct election of senators by the people rather than by machine-dominated state legislatures. The people could also place issues on the ballot with the initiative and recall politicians that they believed were not serving the public interest. With the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, women won the right to vote.
President Franklin Roosevelt oversaw great changes in American electoral politics. During the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt and the Democrats forged a “New Deal coalition” comprising groups of reliable voters including organized labor, ethnic whites, Jews, and Blacks, with the expansion of the scale and scope of government especially social welfare programs. Roosevelt was elected president an unprecedented four times as Democrats ended Republican dominance. Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress for most of the period until 1968 during this Fourth Party System.
In recent decades, the electoral map and politics changed significantly. Party rules at conventions and candidate-focused primary campaigns helped make parties more hostile and angrier toward each other. Democrats became increasingly progressive on social issues, expansive government, and higher taxes, with an increasing focus on winning voters with college degrees, Blacks, and Hispanics. In the second half of the twentieth century, Republicans became more populist and called for smaller government, lower taxes, and a strong national defense aimed at their coalition of working-class voters, evangelical Christians, and southerners. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Republicans became even more populist by denouncing earlier Republican positions like free trade, immigration, and interventionist foreign policy.
The role of political parties in the American political system changed dramatically over the past two centuries. Even though the Founders had a negative view of parties, they organized and helped to mobilize voters in elections and governing. Their long-term decline and loss of influence is part of an evolution of American politics, but parties still play an important role in self-government.