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Political Party History

What are the origins of the Democratic and Republican Parties?
How have their platforms evolved since 1800?

It should be made clear at the outset, that the Constitution’s Framers were terrified that the government they were fashioning would be destroyed by political parties, or what they called factions.1  They embedded mechanisms into the novel political system to minimize any faction’s ability to undermine the fledgling democracy.2 In Federalist Papers #10 and #51,  James Madison famously argued for the Constitution’s ratification by claiming that the new political system would “cure the mischiefs of faction.”  Similarly, in his 1796 Farewell Address, Washington warned the people against the threat that factions posed to the nation, having witnessed first-hand their expanding presence and influence in Congress.  What the Framers failed to grasp, nor could Madison predict, however, was that two parties would form because parties are indispensable to democracies.3

American party history is usually divided into developmental stages: the proto-party stage (1789 – 1800), the first stage, often referred to as the Era of Good Feelings (1800 – 1828), the second stage (1828 – 1856), the third stage (1856 – 1896), the fourth stage (1896 – 1932), and the fifth stage (1932 to the present).  There is considerable debate among political scientists about whether the US entered a sixth stage sometime between 1980 and 1992.  The latter stage will be briefly discussed below. 

Proto-Party Stage: 1789 – 1800.4  The origins of America’s parties can be traced to the meetings held in the first Congresses from 1789 through 1800.5  As the representatives and senators debated bills that addressed the major problems facing the new nation — eg, whether to create a national bank, to establish close ties with England or France, to impose tariffs and if so, on what goods — the members found themselves dividing along two fault lines.  One group favored a strong national government with the nation’s economy based on business and commerce; its members mostly represented mid-Atlantic and New England states.  These were men who favored the Constitution’s ratification and called themselves Federalists.  In contrast, a second group supported strong state governments and favored an economy founded on small, independent family farms; its members mostly represented southern states and opposed the Constitution’s ratification.  They were named the Anti-Federalists, a derogatory label that by 1800 had gone by the wayside, replaced with Democratic-Republicans. 

Presidents Washington and Adams were Federalists, and their administrations’ policies supported the foundation of a commercial republic by advancing the interests of businesses, traders and manufacturers.  They used the federal government’s powers to standardized policies across the country.  The opposition, eventually led by Jefferson, advocated for the interests of farmers and for each state government’s place in the new system.  Jefferson preferred to see the political system operate as it had under the Article of Confederation, which had a much weaker federal government (this came to be called the states’ rights position).6  By the late 1790s, the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans in Congress were nominating candidates for the presidency and House and Senate seats, while their followers at the state level were doing the same within their state legislatures across the nation.7

First Stage: 1800 – 1828.  In the 1800 election, Jefferson defeated Adams at the polls but tied his vice president, Aaron Burr, in the Electoral College.8  Democratic-Republican candidates also won control of both houses of Congress.  The Federalist Party, thoroughly humiliated in defeat, never recovered, to the point that it failed to win the presidency or majorities in Congress again.  It just faded away, leaving the Democratic-Republicans in total control nationally and in most states.  But this Era of Good Feelings masked ongoing divisions within society that manifested themselves politically as factions within the Democratic-Republican Party.  Former Federalists joined with disillusioned Democratic-Republicans who believed that states’ rights had gone too far, especially regarding the slavery question, and that the nation’s commercial needs had been ignored far too long.  These people supported John Quincy Adams for the presidency in 1824, others favored Andrew Jackson, while still others backed Henry Clay and William Crawford.  With four presidential candidates, no candidate received an Electoral College majority, which sent the decision to the House.  There, Henry Clay threw his support to Adams, leaving Jackson angry and bitter.9  Over the next four years, Jackson and his followers distinguished themselves from Jefferson’s old party, calling themselves the Democratic Party.  In the rematch four years later, Jackson easily defeated Adams. 

Second Stage: 1828 – 1860.  Although Jackson served eight years and his vice president, Martin Van Buren,10 won in 1836, presidential elections thereafter witnessed oscillating control of the White House and Congress between the Democrats and the new Whig Party, composed of disaffected Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.  The defining issue of this period was slavery: its morality, constitutionality, regulation and adoption in new states.  Some contend that the major issue was states’ rights, ie., the theory, generally found in southern states, that the federal government’s powers had extended too far, infringing on states’ powers to meet their citizens’ needs, particularly regarding slavery.  Democrats defended slavery while Whigs opposed it, in particular its spread to newly admitted states.  Not all of either party’s members were fully on board with their party’s position on slavery, which was especially true of the Whigs.  Slavery splintered that party to such a degree that, in 1836, there were five Whig candidates running for the presidency.  Between 1840 and 1856, disenchanted Whigs ran as candidates of the American Party (also referred to as the Know Nothings), the Liberty Party, and the Free-Soil Party.  By 1856, the various anti-slavery parties came together under the banner of a new party, the Republicans, and nominated John C. Freemont, who lost to the Democrat,  James Buchanan, the only Pennsylvanian elected to the office.  Buchanan’s indecisiveness responding to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) added to the fissures within the Democratic Party and to voters’ perceptions that the Democrats were not the party to solve America’s problems.11

Third Stage: 1860 – 1896.  In 1860, Lincoln (Republican) defeated three other candidates in the Electoral College but only received 40% of the popular vote.  The other candidates performed as follows: Stephen Douglas (a northern Democrat) 29%, John C. Breckinridge (a southern, avowedly pro-slavery Democrat) 18%, and John Bell (Constitutional Union Party) 13%.12  The Republicans dominated national politics, thereafter, winning the presidency in every election up to 1912, except in 1884 and 1892, when Democrat Grover Cleveland was victorious, and holding majorities in Congress until 1875.  With the Civil War’s end and Reconstruction’s start, the Party of Lincoln had a coalition of voters consisting of immigrants, farmers, small businesspeople, factory workers and the owners of large corporations.  The Democrats were confined to the states of the Confederacy.  The passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments gave citizenship, freedoms and the franchise to African Americans, who overwhelming gave their votes to the Grand Old Party (the GOP), as the Republican Party became known.

Rifts emerged within the Republican ranks, however, as the party splintered into the Radicals,13 who favored the vigorous enforcement the 14th and 15th Amendments not just in the South but across the country, and the Liberal or Stalwart Republicans, who promoted the business interests of their wealthiest supporters that included high tariffs14 to protect America’s growing industrial sector. 

By 1876, the Democrats had achieved near parity across the nation with the Republicans by championing the issues important to workers, especially those in big cities of the North.  The presidential election that year marked another transition in party competition, as Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote yet lost a contested Electoral College vote to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, after a secret deal was negotiated by congressional party leaders to give the presidency to Hayes in return for a total end to Reconstruction.  With the withdrawal of the remaining federal troops and Republican disinterest in protecting black voters in the South, southern state governments, dominated by Democrats, passed Jim Crow laws that included disenfranchising African Americans. 

Fourth Stage: 1896 – 1932.  The critical election of 1896 witnessed a significant realignment of voters across the nation as the Democrat’s candidate, William Jennings Bryan, alienated factory workers, especially Catholics, in northern cities, which had been trending to the Democrats, because he supported prohibition, lowering tariffs, and the move from the gold standard to a silver standard for the valuation of US currency.  Republican William McKinley condemned the silver standard as inflationary and any reduction of tariff rates.  His major financial supporters, the owners of large industrial sectors like coal, steel, railroads, and sugar refining, agreed with him.  They told their employees that, if Bryan won, their operating costs would increase and their businesses would be unable to compete with cheaper foreign goods, which would lead to many employees being fired.15  These same workers also enjoyed their beer and wine, and viewed prohibition with great suspicion.  Although Bryan did gain support for the Democrats in most of the Plains and Mountain States while retaining the former Confederate states, McKinley won all the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Mid-Western states as well California and Oregon — the states with the largest populations.  This new coalition held firm until 1932, with two exceptions: the 1912 and 1916 presidential elections (won by Woodrow Wilson).16

In the years after WWI, Republicans held the presidency and, for most years, majorities in Congress as well.  The GOP’s platforms favored the interests of big businesses, especially high protective tariffs, and supported the states’ right to regulate their economies rather than the federal government doing so.  The Party’s philosophy was considered “liberal” because it was based on Adam Smith’s theory of laissez-faire capitalism, that is, a free market economy with no government interference.  Other major issue during these years were factory working conditions, poverty and immigration.  Republicans preferred to have state governments deal with these matters, while Progressives in both parties argued that the only the federal government had the capacity to address these problems.  The Great Depression intensified the debate over these issues and precipitated the last dramatic voter realignment.

Fifth Stage: 1932 – ?.  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s victory in 1932 was not just historic for its size — he lost only five states, of which Pennsylvania was one — but he created one of the more durable voting coalitions in history: the New Deal Coalition.  It consisted of union members, non-union blue-collar workers, Catholics, racial and ethnic minorities including Jews and African Americans, small farmers, intellectuals, and socially conservative Southern Democrats.  FDR’s New Deal was based on the Progressive idea that government had the capacity and authority to address the people’s needs.  This included, if necessary, regulating businesses when their practices endangered the people’s well-being.  For example, ending child labor, providing financial support for old people who could no longer work, providing electricity in parts of states that lacked it, and protecting workers’ rights to unionize were among the causes championed by the Democrats.  Progressives adopted the term “liberal” as their own to describe their philosophy.  Republicans responded by identifying themselves as conservative, as they defended the laissez-faire practices of Hoover and his immediate predecessors, and argued against “big government”. 

Cracks began to appear in the New Deal coalition when FDR proposed adding justices to the Supreme Court, and after he unsuccessfully campaigned against conservative Democrats running for reelection in 1938, who opposed his New Deal program.17  Despite their divisions, Democrats held the White House and majorities in Congress through most years (with the exception of 1947 – 1949 and 1953 – 1955) until President Eisenhower assumed office in 1953.  Beginning with President Nixon in 1969, divided government became common, with one party occupying the While House and the other controlling one or both houses of Congress.

It is here that disagreement arises over whether voters are “de-aligning,” that is, registering as independent or not strongly identifying with either party, or whether they are weakly aligning with the parties. There are some scholars who contend that a sixth stage of party development occurred with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, George W. Bush’s election in 2000, or Donald Trump’s election in 2016.  None of these elections, however, meet Key’s criteria for a critical election (see footnote 4).

  1. The word party appears nowhere in the document.  Many political scientists and historians consider the Constitution to be an anti-party document.   ⇧
  2. The Framers were well-aware of Europe’s experience with parties, which they perceived as the source of political conflict.  Parties were viewed self-interested groups (factions) that cared more about their own needs rather than those of their country.  When the parties battled, both literally and figuratively, over control of the government, the results often were the loss of thousands of lives and the fall of governments.   ⇧
  3. See the Democracy 101 entry  “Why do we have a Two-Party System?”.  Also, there is Duverger’s Law, which argues that political systems with single-member districts and first-past-the-post election systems will produce two-party systems rather than multi-party systems.  Maurice Duverger,  Political Parties, 1954.   ⇧
  4. Political scientist V.O. Key proposed a theory of critical or realigning elections that supports the stages of development presented here.  Key wrote that a critical (or realigning) election is one that “creates durable new coalitions of voters, revealing a sharp alteration in a ‘pre-existing cleavage’ in the electorate.”  The three features of a critical election are that the opposition party replaces the party that had controlled the federal government — the presidency and Congress — for a relative long time; that the opposition also wins control of many state governments; and that the new majority party maintains its dominance for a relatively long time, at least 28 years.  See Key,  “A Theory of Critical Elections,”  Journal of Politics.  17:3 – 18,  Walter Dean Burnham,  Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics, 1970,  and William Nesbit Chambers, The American Party System: Stages of Political Development, 1975.   ⇧  ⇧
  5. America’s party origin story is distinctive in world history because the parties emerged within Congress, rather than outside the legislature from groups present prior to the formation of the legislature.  For example, beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215, England created the first constitutional monarchy with a Parliament to advise and check the King.  (England’s Parliament is often listed as the first, though Iceland’s Althing was founded in 930.)  The parties that formed reflected the interests of the major groups (divisions) that already existed in England, viz. the Church/clergy, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie (bankers, etc.) and trade groups or guilds (stone masons, iron workers, shipwrights, etc.)  Each group had its own parliamentary party.  See James Sterling Young,  The Washington Community: 1800 – 1828.  New York: Columbia University Press, 1966.   ⇧
  6. The famous debates between Jefferson, who served Washington as Secretary of State, and Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, were dramatized in the Broadway musical Hamilton.  Hamilton’s positions won the day with Washington, which drove Jefferson to step down as secretary and lead the opposition faction.   ⇧
  7. The practice of each party’s congressional delegation (sarcastically referred to as “King Caucus”) nominating its party’s candidates for federal offices became a point of contention between Jackson and J.Q. Adams.  After he became President,  Jackson had his new party hold a nominating convention where party leaders decided who the party’s candidates would be.  By the 1890s and early 20th Century, Progressives argued for the use of primary elections to replace the smoke-filled rooms where party bosses made all the important decisions, ignoring the preferences of the party’s voters.  After their disastrous 1968 convention in Chicago, Democrats adopted primaries to select their presidential candidates; Republicans followed suit by 1976.   ⇧
  8. This was the first presidential election to be decided in the House.  The Constitution states that if no presidential candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College vote, the House receives the names of the top two vote getters, and each state casts one vote each for a candidate.  Each state’s delegation votes to decide how to cast its single vote.  Famously, Hamilton supported Jefferson, angering Burr, with dire consequences for Hamilton.   ⇧
  9. Jackson labeled the deal between Adams and Clay “the corrupt bargain” because Adams named Clay to be his Secretary of State after the House vote.   ⇧
  10. Van Buren, the first person elected president whose entire professional career was in politics, authored a document that defended the two-party system.  He argued that the losing party was essential because it acted as the loyal opposition and kept a check on the party in power.  See James Ceaser, Presidential Selection: Theory and Development.  Princeton University Press, 1979.  (“Loyal” here refers to the opposition not being seditious, but still loyal to the government.)   ⇧
  11. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise.  It allowed new states to vote to adopt slavery.  Dred Scott affirmed that slaves were property and could not gain their freedom even if they escaped to a free state.  ⇧
  12. Bell was an anti-secessionist, pro-slavery Democrat.  ⇧
  13. The Radicals were also known to harbor nativist (ie, anti-immigrant) and anti-Catholic feelings, as well as skepticism of the motives and practices of the Robber Barons of their time.  They also favored prohibition.   ⇧
  14. Prior to the Civil War, the federal government derived the bulk of its revenue from tariffs and excise taxes, ie, taxes on the sale, use or manufacture of targeted goods and services.  A personal income tax was instituted during the Civil War to help pay its cost, but it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Pollack v. Farmers’ Home and Trust (1895).  The income tax was made constitutional with the passage of the 16th Amendment in 1913.   ⇧
  15. McKinley’s campaign manager, Mark Hanna, is sometimes credited as inventing the “modern” presidential campaign, especially fundraising.  Even in 1896, it was still customary for presidential candidates to avoid direct public appeals to the voters.  Hanna, however, brought voters by train to McKinley’s Ohio home where McKinley would speak to them from his porch.  Hanna also divided the business community into sectors, eg, coal, sugar, etc., and assigned trusted party operatives to each sector.  He had the operatives visit the owners of the largest corporations to inform them that, if they did not financially support Republicans, the tariffs that protected their business from cheaper foreign goods would be lowered, thereby reducing their profits.  This worked to generate lots of cash for the Party.  Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the first candidates to campaign for the presidency directly with the voters.   ⇧
  16. Wilson’s victory in the 1912 election was aided by a division within the Republican Party.  When Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt failed to win his Party’s nomination, he ran his own campaign under the banner of the Bull Moose, which split GOP voters.  Wilson won 42% of the popular vote and a huge majority of the Electoral Vote, TR won 27% of the vote, while Taft, the Republican Party candidate, won only 23%, and Socialist Eugene Debs 6%.   ⇧
  17. When those conservative Democratic Representatives and Senators returned to Congress in 1939, they would vote with Republicans to defeat some of FDR’s most liberal bills.  This voting bloc came to be known as the Conservative Coalition in Congress.  See James Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933 – 1939.  1967. 
      Fun Fact: The terms “left” and “right” first became associated with liberal and conservative political philosophies during the French Revolution of 1789.  At the first meeting of the National Assembly, delegates assembled in a semi-circle around the presiding officer, the president.  Those who sat to his right supported the monarchy and the Church, those on the left backed the Revolution and those in the middle considered themselves moderates, favoring neither the traditional monarchy nor the Revolution’s radicals.   ⇧

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