Democrat? Republican?
Apr. 6th, 2007 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowWhat follows is a rumination on US political history - not, I emphasize, on current politics.
The Democratic Party sometimes trumpets its status as "the world's oldest political party", tracing its history back to the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800. The more I learn about the period 1800-1860, though, the more dubious I am of that claim, and my current reading of Skowronek reinforces that doubt. (I'm currently reading his discussion of the presidency of John Quincy Adams.)
My understanding of the years 1801-1828 is roughly as follows. After winning the presidency, Jefferson successfully marginalized the Federalists as quasi-monarchists, scooping all of those outside the Federalist base in New England into a "big-tent" Republican Party. This unity was unsustainable in the long run, and by 1820 or so serious fissures were beginning to appear - this despite Monroe's re-election in that year on an almost unanimous vote of the Electoral College. In 1824, the fracturing party saw no less than four major candidates run for the presidency - John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. The factions led by Adams and Clay later formed the base of the Whig Party; Jackson's faction was the first to call itself the Democratic Party. (Crawford was old and ailing, and by and large left politics after 1824.)
The relevant point here is that the presidency, from 1801 to 1828, was passed on to a series of hand-picked successors, from Jefferson to Madison, to Monroe, to Adams - and it is thus Adams, not Jackson, who has the stronger claim to (political) descent from Jefferson.
Take things a generation further. By the early 1850s, the Whig Party was decaying; most of the Northern Whigs eventually joined the new Republican Party, along with a scattering of other factions, including the Free-Soilers and the northern wing of the Know-Nothings. But that, it would seem, lends support to a claim that it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who can trace direct ancestry to the party of Thomas Jefferson.
That's an overstatement, though. The 1850s were such a tumultuous period, with both the (Jacksonian) Democrats and the Whigs fracturing on North-South lines and a number of new parties sprouting and (mostly) withering, that I don't think it's justifiable to trace any lines of ancestry through that period. One example of the complexity of the period: the Free Soil Party, which became one of the major components of the new Republicans, had nominated for the presidency in 1848 none other than Martin Van Buren - Andrew Jackson's Democratic lieutenant and successor!
It could probably be argued that both major parties have undergone revolutions since 1860 - the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan being milestones on the path - and that "political ancestry" is altogether an illusion. Whether or not this is true, it seems clear to me that claims of (exclusive) continuity between the party of Thomas Jefferson and either of today's major parties are highly dubious.
The Democratic Party sometimes trumpets its status as "the world's oldest political party", tracing its history back to the election of Thomas Jefferson as president in 1800. The more I learn about the period 1800-1860, though, the more dubious I am of that claim, and my current reading of Skowronek reinforces that doubt. (I'm currently reading his discussion of the presidency of John Quincy Adams.)
My understanding of the years 1801-1828 is roughly as follows. After winning the presidency, Jefferson successfully marginalized the Federalists as quasi-monarchists, scooping all of those outside the Federalist base in New England into a "big-tent" Republican Party. This unity was unsustainable in the long run, and by 1820 or so serious fissures were beginning to appear - this despite Monroe's re-election in that year on an almost unanimous vote of the Electoral College. In 1824, the fracturing party saw no less than four major candidates run for the presidency - John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and William Crawford. The factions led by Adams and Clay later formed the base of the Whig Party; Jackson's faction was the first to call itself the Democratic Party. (Crawford was old and ailing, and by and large left politics after 1824.)
The relevant point here is that the presidency, from 1801 to 1828, was passed on to a series of hand-picked successors, from Jefferson to Madison, to Monroe, to Adams - and it is thus Adams, not Jackson, who has the stronger claim to (political) descent from Jefferson.
Take things a generation further. By the early 1850s, the Whig Party was decaying; most of the Northern Whigs eventually joined the new Republican Party, along with a scattering of other factions, including the Free-Soilers and the northern wing of the Know-Nothings. But that, it would seem, lends support to a claim that it is the Republicans, not the Democrats, who can trace direct ancestry to the party of Thomas Jefferson.
That's an overstatement, though. The 1850s were such a tumultuous period, with both the (Jacksonian) Democrats and the Whigs fracturing on North-South lines and a number of new parties sprouting and (mostly) withering, that I don't think it's justifiable to trace any lines of ancestry through that period. One example of the complexity of the period: the Free Soil Party, which became one of the major components of the new Republicans, had nominated for the presidency in 1848 none other than Martin Van Buren - Andrew Jackson's Democratic lieutenant and successor!
It could probably be argued that both major parties have undergone revolutions since 1860 - the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan being milestones on the path - and that "political ancestry" is altogether an illusion. Whether or not this is true, it seems clear to me that claims of (exclusive) continuity between the party of Thomas Jefferson and either of today's major parties are highly dubious.
