The American political system quickly evolved into a two-party system, a fact which has lent stability to the American political process. (Many nations in the Western world have experienced periods of instability or even upheaval as a result of multiparty systems, which almost automatically lead to instability, if not chaos.)
In the beginning there were two parties: Patriots and loyalists. During the Revolutionary era the country was divided sharply into those who desired to remain under the Crown and those who desired to break free. Those two parties, however, had resulted from the split in the basic American political position of the pre-revolutionary years, when most colonists were rebelling in some way against English rule, which they saw as heavy-handed if not outright destructive. The initial break in political attitudes, then, was how to proceed in order to achieve American rights: independence or reform. By the time the fighting started in 1775 hopes for reform were slim; and of course once independence was declared, reform was no longer an issue: It was either, in the words of some patriots, “liberty or slavery.”
The next political break-in came about in a similar manner. Under the Articles of Confederation the federal government, which many believed should be a national government, was incapable of managing the affairs of the nation either domestically or in foreign affairs. The division came over how to correct the problems. Should the country amend the Articles of Confederation, which would retain a large measure of state sovereignty, or should the Articles be tossed out and replaced by a more workable system? Those who wanted significant reform were successful in getting the Congress to call a convention, but only for the purpose of amending the Articles. When the convention met, however, those who favored complete reform, led by James Madison and his fellow Virginians, among others, moved quickly for an agenda that would result in a new constitution.
That constitution having been written, the next political divide, which was the forerunner of our first political parties, was between the Federalists and Antifederalists—those who supported adoption of the Constitution and those who were opposed. When the Constitution was ratified the Anti-Federalist movement was of course superseded, but those who call themselves Antifederalists, political leaders who feared too much power in the federal government, transformed themselves into a new political party, the Democratic Republicans or “Republicans.” Their leader was Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who had been an ardent Federalist during the fight for ratification, moved over into the republican Camp and became an ally and protégé of Jefferson.
The Federalist group, which had supported ratification and won its case, became the Federalist party, whose leaders were John Adams and Alexander Hamilton. Although George Washington was ostensibly above politics, he nevertheless came down on the side of the Federalists during his two administrations as president. As President of the Constitutional Convention and first signor of the Constitution, he had of course supported ratification, which at least in his own State of Virginia may have been the difference between ratification and rejection.
The point of this exercise is to examine the history of American political parties in the early Republica with the above as background.
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Updated October 4, 2007