As a fledgling democracy, there were many ideas for how best to run the US government - the early politicians effectively had a blank canvas to work with. As two main blocs formed, the Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties emerged: the first party system in the US.
The Federalists had supported the first two Presidents of the United States. After the collapse of the Federalist party by 1815, the Democratic-Republican Party remained the only political group in the United States. How do you define Democratic Republican vs Federalist? What were the Democratic Republic Party beliefs? And why did the Democratic Republican Party split? Let's find out!
Democratic Republican Party Facts
The Democratic-Republican Party, also known as the Jefferson-Republican Party, was founded in 1791. This party was run and led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Fig. 1 - James Madison
When the First United States Congress met in 1789, during George Washington’s presidency (1789-97), there were no formal political parties. The United States Congress simply consisted of a number of Representatives from each of the states, some of whom were the Founding Fathers.
Fig. 2 - Thomas Jefferson
The lead-up to the creation of the United States Congress was rife with political disagreement. This is because after the American Revolution ended and American independence was won in 1783, there was some confusion about how the nation should be governed.
Democratic Republican vs Federalist
It was a series of differences which eventually led to the split into two political parties - there were lots of problems with the original Articles of Confederation, and those in Congress were split as to how to solve them. Although the Constitution was a compromise of sorts, the divisions grew and eventually forced the split into these two political parties.
Continental Congress
Initially, the Continental Congress, which predated the United States Congress, decided that the nation should be governed by the Articles of Confederation. The Articles provided that the States of America should be loosely bound by “friendship”. America was effectively a confederation of sovereign states.
However, eventually, this meant that there was a lot of ambiguity as to what role the federal government held, and the Continental Congress had little to no power over any of the States. They had no way of forcibly raising money, for example, and so debts skyrocketed.
American Constitution
Some Founding Fathers pushed for the creation of an American Constitution, and in 1787, a convention was called in Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation.
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia from 25 May to 17 September 1787. Although its official function was to revise the current system of government, a few key figures, such as Alexander Hamilton, intended from the outset to create an entirely new system of government from scratch.
Fig. 3 - The signing of the US Constitution following the Constitutional Convention
The Convention devised the system we know today - a tripartite government consisting of an elected Legislature, an elected Executive, and an appointed Judiciary. The delegates eventually settled on a bicameral legislature consisting of a lower House of Representatives and an upper Senate. Eventually, a Constitution was drafted and agreed upon. The 55 delegates are known as the Framers of the Constitution, although only 35 of them actually signed it.
Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, all Founding Fathers and Patriots, are considered the most staunch proponents of the Constitution and the reason it was passed. These three drafted the Federalist Papers, a series of essays that promoted the ratification of the Constitution.
Patriots
The settler-colonists and colonists who fought against the rule of the British Crown Colony were the Patriots, and those who supported the British were the Loyalists.
Ratification
Giving official consent or agreement that makes something official.
James Madison is often considered the Father of the Constitution because he played the most important role in its drafting and ratification.
Publius' Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers were published under the pseudonym Publius, a name that Madison had already used in 1778. Publius was a Roman aristocrat who was one of the four principal leaders in the overthrow of the Roman Monarchy. He became a consul in 509 BC, which is usually considered to be the first year of the Roman Republic.
Think about the reasons for the USA coming into existence - why did Hamilton choose to publish under the name of a Roman, famous for overthrowing the Roman Monarchy and establishing a republic?
The Ratification of the Constitution of the United States
The road towards the ratification of the Constitution was not as simple as had been hoped. The Constitution needed to be agreed upon by nine of the thirteen states for it to be passed.
The main issue was that the new Constitution was written by Federalists, who effectively argued that the nation should be governed by a strong central government. This caused many issues because some states refused to ratify, not wanting to lose the power that they had. The opposition was known as the anti-Federalists.
One of the most common arguments against the ratification of the Constitution was that it did not contain a Bill of Rights. Anti-Federalists wanted the Constitution to lay out some unalienable rights for the states and lay out the power which the states would be able to retain. The Federalists disagreed with this.
The persuasive Federalist papers eventually led to many anti-Federalists changing their stance. The Constitution was eventually ratified on 21 June 1788. However, there remained many in Congress that were extremely unhappy with its final result, especially with the lack of a Bill of Rights. This unhappiness led to ideological splits and fractures within Congress.
Alexander Hamilton's Financial Plan
These issues were further compounded by the approval of Hamilton's financial plan.
Hamilton’s financial plan was rather intricate, but at its core, it advocated for a strong and centralised government that effectively controlled or presided over the economic interactions in all the land. Thus, his plan carefully intertwined economic recovery with what historians argue was Hamilton's own political philosophy.
Hamilton believed that political power should remain in the hands of a few wealthy, talented, and educated people so that they could govern for the good of the people. He also believed that the nation's economy should be run by this similar subset of society. These ideas are some key reasons Hamilton's plan and Hamilton himself garnered a lot of criticism and led to the eventual party system in America.
Hamilton’s Financial Plan
Hamilton's plan set out to achieve three main objectives:
The Federal government should assume all the debts accrued by the individual states in the wars for the American Revolution - that is to say, pay off the states’ debts. Hamilton argued that the Federal government would source the money by lending out security bonds to investors that accrued interest over time. This interest, for Hamilton, worked as an incentive to investors.
A novice taxation system that essentially implemented tariffs on imported goods. Hamilton hoped this would aid domestic businesses to thrive and also increase federal revenue.
The creation of a United States central bank that presided over the financial resources of all the states - the First Bank of the United States.
Security Bond
These are a way to gain capital (money). The government gets loans from investors, and the investor is guaranteed interest on the loan repayments.
Anti-Federalists viewed this plan as favouring the interests of North and North Eastern states' commercial interests and sidelining the southern agrarian states. Although President George Washington (1789-1797) seemingly took the side of Hamilton and the Federalists, he believed strongly in Republicanism and did not want the tensions to undermine the ideology of the government. This underlying ideological tension led the Congress to split; Jefferson and Madison created the Democratic-Republican Party in 1791.
Democratic Republican Party Ideals
The party was formed because it didn't agree with the Federalist notion that the government should have executive power over the states.
Fig. 3 - The Democratic-Republican Tricolour Cockade
The guiding principle for the Democratic-Republicans was Republicanism.
RepublicanismThis political ideology advocates for the principles of liberty, freedom, democracy, and individual rights.
This was the main ideology held by the Patriots in the American Revolution. However, the Democratic-Republicans felt that this idea had been undermined by the Federalists and the American Constitution after independence.
Democratic-Republican Worries
They worried that the policies pushed forward by the Federalists mirrored some elements of the British aristocracy and had some of the same limitations to liberty that the British Crown did.
Jefferson and Madison believed that the states should have been awarded state sovereignty. That is to say, they believed the states should have been allowed to run themselves in practically all capacities. For Jefferson, the only exception to this would be foreign policy.
Unlike the Federalists, who argued for industrialisation, trade, and commerce, the Democratic-Republicans believed in an agrarian-based economy. Jefferson hoped that the nation would be able to sell their crops to Europe for profit, as well as self-sustain their own people.
Agrarian-based economy
An economy based on agriculture (farming).
Another point the two groups disagreed on was that the Democratic-Republicans believed that all adult white males should be enfranchised and that the working class should be able to govern for the good of everyone. Hamilton personally disagreed with this point.
Enfranchisement
The ability to vote.
Hamilton believed that the wealthy should run the economy and that the rich and educated should govern for the good of everyone. He did not believe that working-class people should be given that kind of power and, by extension, that they shouldn't be able to vote for those that held that power.
President Thomas Jefferson
Although the early era of American politics was dominated by the Federalists (1798-1800), in 1800, Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican candidate, was elected as America's third President. He served from 1801-1809.
This coincided with the beginning of the fall of the Federalists, who eventually ceased to exist after 1815.
Jeffersonian Republicanism
During Jefferson’s presidency, he tried to broker peace between the opposing sides. In the beginning, he was relatively successful in this. Jefferson combined some Federalist and Democratic-Republican policies.
Jefferson's Compromises
For example, Jefferson kept Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States. However, he removed the large majority of the other Federalist policies implemented, such as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
These acts passed during the Federalist presidency of John Adams' (1797-1801) consisted of two main elements.
- The Act prevented 'aliens' (immigrants) with subversive intentions from spreading elements of the French Revolution to the United States. The Alien Act allowed the President to expel or imprison immigrants at his own discretion.
- The Act also censored publications from spreading anti-Federalist material and limited the freedom of speech of people who opposed the Federalist Party.
Jefferson garnered some rather large criticism from his own party because of his attempts to incorporate Federalist policies. He was accused of taking the sides of the Federalists, and this fostered splits within his own party.
During his first term, Jefferson largely sided with the revolutionaries in the French Revolutionary Wars - but this eventually came back to haunt Jefferson in his second term. In 1804, Jefferson won a second term, during which he faced issues from the Federalists in New England.
Federalist New England
New England was historically a hotbed for the Federalist Party, and it had benefited largely from Hamilton’s financial plan - particularly its trade policies. These issues arose as a result of the wars between France and Great Britain. When conflict broke out between Britain and France in 1793, Washington took a stance of neutrality. In fact, he issued a proclamation of neutrality, which served to benefit the United States tremendously.
This was because this statement of neutrality allowed the United States to trade freely with the opposing nations, and because both nations were heavily involved in a war, their demand for American goods was high. During this time, the United States made a significant profit, and areas such as New England benefitted economically.
After Washington's presidency, Congress was no longer domestically or internationally neutral. As such, Jefferson's favouring of the French over the British led to British retaliation by confiscating American ships and cargo for France. Jefferson did not secure a mutual trading agreement with the increasingly aggressive Napoleon, and therefore he cut off trade with Europe in the 1807 Embargo Act. This enraged many New Englanders, as it destroyed American trade, which had been booming.
Following his unpopularity in New England, Jefferson decided not to run for a third term and pushed forward the campaign for his long-standing Democratic-Republican peer James Madison.
James Madison (1809-1817)
During Madison's presidency, the issues with trade continued. American trade was still being attacked, mainly by the British, who imposed restrictions on American trade.
This led to Congress approving a war, the War of 1812, which it was hoped would resolve these trade issues. In this war, America took on the world's largest navy force, Great Britain. General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) led the American forces through this conflict and emerged as a hero in the end.
Who was Andrew Jackson?
Born in 1767, Andrew Jackson is a much more contentious figure today than the hero he was considered to be by many of his contemporaries. Through a series of unprecedented events, discussed below, he lost the 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams, but before entering politics, he was an accomplished lawyer and judge, sitting on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Jackson eventually won the presidency in a landslide election victory in 1828, becoming the seventh President of the United States. He saw himself as a champion of the common man and initiated several programs to make the government more efficient and to combat corruption. He is also the only President to date to have completely paid off the US national debt.
A polarising figure in his time, Jackson's heroic legacy has been increasingly repudiated, especially since the 1970s. He was a rich man whose wealth was built on enslaved peoples' labour on his plantation. Furthermore, his presidency was characterised by a marked increase in hostility to indigenous peoples, enacting the 1830 Indian Removal Act, which forced most members of the so-called Five Civilised Tribes from their own land onto Reservations. They were forced to make this journey on foot, and the resulting paths became known as the Trail of Tears. Jackson also opposed Abolition.
The war eventually ended with a peace agreement. Britain and America concluded that they both wanted peace, signing the 1814 Treaty of Ghent.
The War of 1812 also had important implications for the domestic politics of the land and effectively ended the Federalist Party. The party had already declined significantly after the defeat of John Adams in the election of 1800 and the death of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, but the war was the final blow.
Democratic Republican Party Split
With no real opposition, the Democratic-Republican Party began to fight amongst themselves.
Many of the issues cropped up in the 1824 election, where one side of the party supported the candidate John Quincy Adams, son of the former Federalist President John Adams, and the other side supported Andrew Jackson.
John Quincy Adams was the Secretary of State under James Madison and had negotiated the Treaty of Ghent. Adams also oversaw the official handing over of Florida to the United States from Spain in 1819.
Both figures were nationally revered for their contributions during James Madison's presidency, but when they decided to run against each other, fractures emerged in the Democratic-Republican Party. This was mainly because John Quincy Adams won the 1824 election, and Andrew Jackson accused him of stealing the election.
1824 Presidential Election In Detail
The 1824 election was very unusual, and it hinged on the way Presidents are elected, which remains the same today. Each state has a certain amount of electoral college votes, depending on its population. Elections are held in each individual state, and the winner of a state wins all of that state's votes, no matter how small the margin of victory (apart from small exceptions in Maine and Nebraska today, which didn't exist for this election). To win the presidency, a candidate has to win more than half of the electoral college votes. This means that it's possible for someone to win the presidency without winning the popular vote across all the states by winning just enough states by a small margin to get more than half the electoral college votes. This has happened five times - including 1824.
What sets this election apart is that there were four candidates, so even though Jackson won the popular vote across all the states and got more electoral college votes than the other three candidates, these votes were split amongst four candidates. Therefore, he only got 99 of 261 electoral college votes - fewer than half. As nobody got more than half of the electoral college votes, under the Twelfth Amendment, it passed to the House of Representatives to decide the election - here, each state got one vote, decided on by the states' representatives. As there were 24 states, 13 were needed to win the election, and 13 voted for John Quincy Adams - handing him the election, despite not having won the popular vote or the electoral college vote.
The results of the 1824 election led to Andrew Jackson's supporters splitting into a party faction labelled the Democratic Party in 1825 and Adams supporters splitting into the National Republican Party.
This ended the Democratic-Republican party, and the two-party system which we recognise today emerged.
Democratic Republican Party - Key takeaways
The Democratic-Republican Party, also known as the Jefferson Republican Party, was founded in 1791 and led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. It ushered in the era of two-party politics that we recognise today.
Initially, the Continental Congress, which predated the United States Congress, decided that the nation should be governed by the Articles of Confederation. Some Founding Fathers pushed for the creation of a Constitution instead, as they felt the severe limitation of Congress' powers made their jobs undoable.
Many anti-Federalists, especially Thomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State and James Madison, argued against the Federalists, who supported a new Constitution. This led Congress to split, and Jefferson and Madison created the Democratic-Republican Party in 1791.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison went on to become the first two Democratic-Republican Presidents.
The party eventually split in 1824 into the National Republican Party and the Democratic Party because the decline of the Federalist Party exposed disagreements within the Democratic-Republican Party itself.
References
- Fig. 4 - 'Tricolour Cockade' (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tricolour_Cockade.svg) by Angelus (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ANGELUS) licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
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