The Evolution of American Political Parties
Copyright © Henry J. Sage 2005

The creation of America's first political parties has been covered elsewhere. This page expands the development of parties into modern times.

The evolution of America's political parties was to a great extent the outgrowth of the British political system, which in an oversimplified analysis, can be said to have been divided into conservatives, who tended to support the monarchy and the power of the King, and liberals, who sought to restrain royal prerogatives and enhance the legitimacy of Parliament as an alternate power source.

Those political sensitivities were known by the colonists, who from their earliest days developed a sense of political identity. In the Virginia colony the first representative assembly in North America, the House of Burgess is, was created in 1619. In 1620 the Mayflower compact for all the earmarks of a modern constitution, and conveyed a sense that the Pilgrims, and creating what they called a civil body politic, were attuned to the ideas of republican government, even as they still supported the monarchy.

Political divisions during the American Revolution or obvious and stark: Patriots and loyalists. The Patriots were, of course, those who supported the revolution and independence from Great Britain. As is always true, even within a major political sector, divisions exist, as they did when the early patrons were divided over whether or not to declare independence. Many who are perfectly willing to fight Great Britain for their political freedoms were nevertheless quite unprepared to sever their ties with the monarchy altogether. The Patriots, of course, won that debate but the divisions remained not far below the surface.

The loyalists, sometimes called “Tories,” were those who opposed independence and supported the King. Many of them fought in the American Revolution on the side of the British, and following the revolution and the American victory thousands of them left the country never to return. Even among the loyalists, however, there were gradations of political belief from those who supported the King with near blind allegiance, to those who respect to the monarchy no were in favor of major reforms.

At the conclusion of the Revolution partisan political feelings became somewhat amorphous as the country sought to find its way as a new Republic. The articles of Confederation, created in 1777 and finally ratified in 1781, reflected the nation's ambivalence about its future political course. The articles did not create a strong central government, but rather a loose confederation of states that still considered themselves sovereign and independent. Thus the first political division in America after the Revolution comprised groups who felt that the Articles were more than sufficient to meet America's needs, and those who felt that a strong central government with real power was necessary for the nation to move forward. Those forces, headed by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, pushed for and got Congress to call for the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

Political philosophies were fought out during the hot summer in Philadelphia as the Constitution was being written, but when the document was finally signed on September 17, 1787, the great debate in America became whether or not to ratify. Those who supported the ratification of the Constitution call themselves Federalists, a somewhat ironic name, as the term federalism generally refers to the diffusion of federal power in favor of greater state autonomy. Nevertheless less the Federalists supported the Constitution and its strong central government. Those who opposed the Constitution were known as Antifederalists, and they fought vigorously against ratification of the Constitution. In several states they came very close to being successful, including the important states of Massachusetts, Virginia and New York. The Constitution was of course ratified, and the Federalists continued to operate as a political party headed by George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton. ( Washington was supposedly “above the fray,” as he did not like partisanship; but it is clear that his sympathies lay with the Federalists.) James Madison, who had been a staunch Federalist, helped to get the Constitution rolling by having authored major portions of the Federalist papers, and by overseeing the incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution.

Even as early as Washington's first administration, however, political divisions reappeared in the form of those who were not content to acknowledge the strong powers of the national government and felt that federal power should be circumscribed as greatly as possible consistent with the Constitution. This group, headed by Thomas Jefferson and soon joined by James Madison, became known as the Democratic Republicans, or Republicans, as they called themselves. The two parties—Federalists and Republicans—were bitterly divided over how the Constitution should be applied. Because the Constitution is subject to interpretation, the arguments were difficult to resolve definitively.

In 1800 the divisions between the two parties were such that one historian has suggested that if the Republicans had not won in 1800, unseating Adams and the Federalists, the country might well have sunk into civil strife over political differences. At the core of the divisions between Republicans and Federalists were their feelings about Great Britain and France, especially in the context of the ongoing French Revolution and the wars that followed. The dangerous nature of European politics caused by the wars exacerbated the political divisions in America, which found itself flailed by the backlash of the great conflict raging on the Continent and on the seas.

By 1815 the Federalists had begun to see their political troubles as personified by what they referred to as the “ Virginia dynasty,” the presidencies of Washington, Jefferson and Madison, soon to be followed by another Virginian, James Monroe. New Englanders had bitterly opposed the War of 1812 and in the Hartford Convention of 1815, old Federalists proposed a number of constitutional amendments designed to give local areas a greater ability to influence national affairs. But the end of the war that was seen as successful, even though it was essentially a draw, left the Federalists shattered, and the two political parties as active institutions faded for a time.

James Monroe ran for president unopposed in 1820, suggesting a lack of any real political opposition to the dominant party. By 1824 the presidential election race began among five candidates, and the victory eventually settled on John Quincy Adams, who is sometimes referred to as a National Republican. But in 1828 newly elected President Andrew Jackson redefined the Democtratic-Republican Party under the name Democrats. Jackson formed a tight political organization that included his kitchen cabinet and other close political advisers in the party machinery that he brought with him to Washington. Because Jackson was a strong president, who sometimes felt that the national legislature had not always acted in the best interests of its citizens, he set out to strengthen the presidency. He was successful and soon his detractors began to refer to him as “King Andrew.” The Anti- Jacksonians, united in their opposition to Jackson, began to call themselves Whigs. Thus the two-party system was reborn: Democrats and Whigs.

The Whig party was successful enough to elect presidents in 1840 in 1848, but since its unifying force had been primarily anti-Jackson, when Jackson's protégé, James K. Polk, was not reelected in 1848, the end of the Jacksonian reign had come. By that time the country was becoming more and more divided over the bitter issue of slavery, and that division fractured the Whig party as well.

Following the very controversial Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, fathered by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, a new coalition began to form, made up of old Whigs and disenchanted Democrats opposed to the repeal of the Missouri compromise, which was part of the Kansas-Nebraska act and others opposed to the extension of slavery who were looking for a political home. These groups coalesced in 1854 and founded the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin, the ancestor of the modern Republican Party. Thus by the mid-18 50s the two modern parties had come into existence as more or less permanent entities.

Liberals and Conservatives: Republicans and Democrats

The question that has always interested in students of American political history has been how the designations liberal and conservative line up with Republican and Democratic. What makes the business especially interesting is the fact that those labels have taken on different shades of meaning as circumstances of American political life have evolved. The disconnect between the president passed can be seen in the fact that both Democrats and Republicans claimed Thomas Jefferson as their political ancestor, and both have reason to do so.

Jefferson in his time was a liberal, perhaps even a radical liberal. Liberals in those days tended to be anti-monarchy and anti-authoritarian. Although not anti-religious, they did oppose the power that churches had wielded over people for centuries and were staunch advocates of religious freedom. Jefferson mentioned explicitly in his inaugural address of 1801 the fact that America had ended “religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered.” He advocated a “wise and frugal” government which maximized personal freedom. In that regard he reflects the sentiments of many modern Republicans or conservatives.

How did Jefferson's liberalism become a cornerstone of modern conservative thinking? Conversely, how did Jefferson’s liberal views become associated with a desrie for stronger government? In Jefferson's time, the institutions which had been most likely to thwart personal liberty were the church and the crown. Both had been set aside in America, and Jefferson as an 1800 Republican struggled to keep the United States government under the Constitution from becoming too monarchist.

One hundred years after Jefferson's inauguration another force had come to dominate the lives of Americans. That force was big business—capitalism. Run by industrialists and financiers, the Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts and Carnegies, these “Robber Barons” wielded power at least as great as government had held since Jefferson's time. There were so powerful, in fact, that they ran roughshod over the very liberties for which the Republic had been created. They bribed political figures, use cutthroat methods to destroy competing businesses and treated workers like cannon fodder. They were a force unto themselves. In the words of the Populist platform of 1892, they had reduced America into “two great classes-tramps and millionaires.”

By the turn of the century it became apparent that the only force capable of reining in these new wielders of power was the government. Thus the Progressive Movement was born. As things evolved, it became apparent that government, which in Jefferson's time had been the enemy of liberty, now would have to become the preserver of liberty, maximizing people’s opportunities to engage in the pursuit of happiness. Conservatives became those who sought to protect and defend big business, just as conservatives a century earlier had been those who tended to support the power of the King. Liberals were those who wanted to constrain the power of big business just as they had wanted to restrain the powers of the King. In other words, liberal and conservative views of the propoer role of government had flip-flopped.

That division has continued into modern times. For many conservatives, the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt, which saw an enormous expansion of federal government power, went too far, and restraining government once again became a goal, this time the goal of conservatives.

Liberals have continued to believe that human freedom must be advanced by protecting the civil rights of all Americans, even if it takes strong government action to achieve that goal. While conservatives are not opposed to human rights, they feel that their extension should not be taken to the extreme that it threatens the very structure which has provided so many Americans with a standard of living unprecedented in the history of the world.

The debate goes on.

History 121 | History 122 | Updated June 16, 2005