The Second American Party System Using your knowledge of information read in the textbook, and/or review book, and the documents attached prepare a synopsis of the Second Party System. As a group you have thirty minutes to analyze the material and present the story of the Second Party System to your classmates while paying attention to some of the questions below. Please do not limit yourselves to just those questions as they are meant to get you started. Remember your classmates will not have the documents so you must be clear in addressing each of them in your presentation. You will have no more than five to six minutes to present your in-depth findings. Questions to ponder: Why did the country develop a second party system at this time? Did we need a second political party? Was it a reaction to anything? How did the second party develop? Who joined and why? What was their political ideal? You may present any manner or style you choose, preferably not standing up and talking...that s boring, right? Make sure to include details and reference to the information contained in the attached packet.
The Democratic Party The Democratic Party was the first of these two competitors to form. Combining disparate foes of John Quincy Adams's presidential administration (1825-1829), it coalesced around Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign in 1828. As President Jackson alienated some of his initial supporters who would join the opposition to him, but his actions cemented the loyalty of far more of his initial voters as well as many others. Jackson won reelection in 1832, his Vice President and chosen successor Martin Van Buren would be elected in 1836, and his Tennessee lieutenant James K. Polk would win the presidency in 1844. Particularly strong in the Deep South and newer western states as well as Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine, the Democratic party was committed to the strong exertion of executive power vis-a-vis Congress and state legislatures, states' rights, Indian removal, the sale of federal land in the West at low prices, and territorial expansion. It strongly opposed positive governmental intervention into the economy in the form of charters for banks and other corporations, the sale of state bonds, subsidies for internal improvements like road and canal construction, and protective tariffs because it believed that such actions created privilege for the wealthy at the expense of others' equal rights. As a result, almost everywhere in the nation its strongest bases of voter support were in areas still outside the nexis of the market economy and among those in urban areas who believed they had been victimized by the market economy. Democrats were also far more hospitable to Catholics and immigrants than were their political rivals just as they were far more hostile to abolitionists and the rights of blacks than those rivals. The National Republican Party Between Jackson's election in 1828 and the formation of the Whig party in early 1834, Jackson's political foes were divided among three or four groups. Most important was the National Republican party. Supporters of the Adams administration took this name after Adams's defeat in the election of 1828. Led by Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John M. Clayton of Delaware, and Samuel Southard of New Jersey, the National Republican party was almost non-existent west of Ohio and south of Maryland and Kentucky, save for Louisiana whose sugar planters wanted protective tariffs. In sharp distinction to the Jacksonian Democrats, National Republicans were committed to using the national government to promote economic and social development. In particular, they were adherents of Henry Clay's "American System" which called for Congress to charter a national bank to supply the nation with a uniform and ample currency, pass a protective tariff to foster the development of manufacturing, and subsidize internal improvement projects to facilitate trade among different regions of the country. National Republicans also unanimously opposed Democrats' Indian Removal Act of 1830, which called for moving tribes from southeastern states west of the Mississippi River, and that opposition contributed to their unpopularity in much of the South. In 1832 National Republicans ran Henry Clay for president against Jackson, and to provide Clay with what they expected to be a winning issue, they encouraged Nicholas Biddle to seek a new charter for the Bank of the United States that year. This tactic not only provoked Jackson's famous veto of the new charter which rallied Democrats to his support. It also tarnished National Republicans as eastern elitists who championed a a privileged institution that Jackson had successfully labeled as a monster. Unable to rally all of Jackson's foes. Clay won only 49 electoral votes compared to
Jackson's 219. Clearly uncompetitive, the National Republicans would shortly be subsumed by the new Whig party. The Antimasonic Party One reason Clay could not rally all of Jackson's opponents in 1832 was that in much of the Northeast a different anti-democratic party, the Antimasonic party, also existed. Started in 1826 to protest the official cover-up of the suspected murder of a defecting Mason in western New York, Antimasonry developed into the nation's first powerful populistic third party. Protesting that Freemasonry was a dangerous, unrepublican, and all-powerful secret society that privileged its members legally, politically, and economically over all nonmembers by controlling state and local governments, Antimasons called on voters to restore true self-government by driving Masons from elected office and having new governments pass state laws declaring the fraternity to be illegal. The movement spread like wild-fire, for Antimasons seemed to provide a plausible explanation why government seemed unresponsive to popular demands namely that Masons controlled it and used it exclusively to benefit other Masons. Though Antimasons cooperated with the Adams men in 1828, by 1830 they had displaced National Republicans as Democrats' primary opponent in New York and Pennsylvania. And in New England, where National Republicans controlled most state governments, Antimasons openly opposed them. Nor would they support Clay, himself a Mason, in 1832; instead they ran their own presidential candidate, William Wirt. Founded upon the fundamental proposition that no man or group of men was above the law, Antimasons would respond to Whigs' cry that Jackson had flouted the law and the Constitution. By the late 1830s, with a few exceptions in New England who became Democrats, almost all of them would join the Whig party, giving it an egalitarian, populistic patina to counter the elitist stigma of National Republicans. The Whig Party The Whig party would combine National Republicans and Antimasons as well as two different groups of southern anti-jackson men who had refused to support Clay in 1832 because they considered National Republicans' nationalistic economic program an unconstitutional violation of states' rights. One was South Carolina's Nullifiers who shortly after Jackson's reelection in 1832 declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void in their state. Their chief spokesman in Congress, Senator John C. Calhoun, who was Jackson's Vice President during his first term, would help form the Whig party in the winter of 1833-34, but he and most South Carolina Nullifiers would rejoin the Democratic party in 1837. The second group, however, would remain Whigs. These were one-time Democrats who considered South Carolina's attempts to nullify a federal statute nonsensical but who also bridled at the strong nationalistic stance Jackson took in his December 1832 proclamation against nullification and his call on Congress for a "Force Bill" to suppress it. By mid-1833 these men referred to themselves as Independent States Rights men to express their political distance from Nullifiers, Jacksonians, and National Republicans alike. What brought these disparate anti-jackson men together in the Whig party in 1834 was their common anger at Jackson's executive order of September 1833 removing federal deposits from the Bank of the United States. Since the Bank's charter of 1816, which ran
until 1836, called for federal money to be deposited in the BUS, Jackson's action struck these men as illegal, unconstitutional, and high-handed executive tyranny. Thus Whigs initially rallied against executive tyranny and Jackson's monarchical pretensions. That was what the very name "Whig," which Revolutionary patriots had also used to signify their opposition to King George III, was meant to convey, and throughout their twenty-year history, the Whig party would rail against executive actions by both presidents and governors that threatened the autonomy and power of Congress and state legislatures. But Whigs would also embrace the National Republicans' American System after the Panic of 1837 and advocate the positive economic legislation in states that Democrats opposed: the chartering of banks and other corporations; the liberal circulation of paper-money banknotes; and subsidization of internal improvement projects that required the issue of state bonds. Where Democrats favored territorial expansion in the 1840s, Whigs would oppose it. Where Democrats pushed for the reduction of prices for federal lands in the West, Whigs wanted to keep the prices high and to distribute the revenue from federal land sales to state governments. Where the Democratic electorate was strongest in areas still outside the commercial, monetized market economy, Whigs throughout the nation were strongest in those areas and among those groups already in the market sector or who aspired to enter it. That aspiration is clearly what attracted Abraham Lincoln to the Whig party and kept him a devoted Whig until the party's final death throes in 1856. Nativist and Antislavery Third Parties Although the vast majority of Americans who went to the polls between 1834 and 1854 remained loyal to the Democratic or Whig parties, those major parties did not go totally unchallenged in those years. In the 1830s and 1840s small anti-immigrant or nativist American Republican or Native American parties appeared in northeastern cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and they proved a particular headache for Whigs, whom most immigrants and Catholics already distrusted. Starting in 1839 a small abolitionist Liberty Party appeared in the North, and it would run James G. Birney for President in 1840 and 1844, when Birney won about 63,000 votes, enough to help stop Henry Clay from winning. Far more significant was the Free Soil Party which emerged in 1848. Pledged to ban slavery from all federal territories, it drew northern voters from both Democrats and Whigs in that year's presidential election, but it hurt Democrats more, helping the Whigs' Zachary Taylor, for whose nomination Lincoln had worked indefatigably, to win. But equally important, the Free Soil party was a harbinger of the exclusively northern and overtly antislavery, antisouthern Republican Party. The American System and Whig Political Economy Championed by Henry Clay, Lincoln's model statesman, even before Clay helped found the Whig party, the American System was a program of national legislation aimed at developing the economies of the nation's different regions and integrating them together in order to strengthen national unity. It was meant, in short, as a nationalistic antidote to the sectional antagonism ignited by the Missouri crisis of 1819-21. The program advocated that Congress pass protective tariffs to foster the growth of manufacturing in the Northeast, whose firms and workers could then be a market for western foodstuffs and southern cotton; a national bank to provide an ample and uniform citculating currency throughout the
country; and federal subsidies for internal improvement projects like the clearing of rivers and the construction of roads and canals to facilitate the movement of goods among different parts of the nation. By the early 1830s Clay was advocating an important variation on this last goal: the distribution of federal land revenues to the states so that state governments could subsidize internal improvement projects. The Whig party embraced the American System as their model for national economic legislation, but they also wanted activist state governments that would improve people's lives economically and morally, that would charter banks and other corporations, allow an ample supply of paper banknote currency that would mean lower interest rates on bank loans, and that would use public funds, even if it required the incursion of bonded indebtedness, to build or improve transportation infrastructures. Behind these programmatic preferences, all of which were opposed by Democrats, lay three core beliefs that also distinguished the Whig party of Lincoln from Democrats. The first was a belief that the American economy between 1815 and 1850 was essentially underdeveloped because supplies of investment capital were either inadequate or too fragmented among atomistic economic actors. Thus to secure economic development, government should supply the necessary capital directly in subsidies for internal improvements or indirectly by encouraging individuals to pool their resources by investing in corporations, whose stockholders had limited liability for their debts, or manufacturing firms that were protected from foreign competition by high tariffs. The second belief was that ample and cheap credit the ability to borrow money was the lubricant that oiled the engine of economic growth. Thus Whigs favored paper-money banking, government bond issues to raise funds, and low interest rates on loans that would allow farmers to buy lands, businesses to meet payrolls, and cash-poor entrepreneurs to start new enterprises, all of which would help "grow" the economy. Third, and most important, Whigs believed that such government-promoted economic development and diversification would vastly increase individuals' freedom by expanding the choices of career opportunities available to them. This expansion, in turn, would enhance what Lincoln eloquently called men's "right to rise," that is, their ability to pursue and achieve individual upward socioeconomic mobility from a dependent wage-earner status to the independent status of self-employment. Whigs, in sum, did not simply define liberty in political terms as the right of selfgovernment and freedom from executive despotism. For them, liberty also had an economic dimension escape from economic dependence, a liberation from dead-end jobs and inherited occupations, and the freedom to pursue economic happiness and success in any career that an individual wished. The Political-Economy of the Democratic Party Democratic ideas about government's role in economic life differed from those of their Whig opponents. Democrats were hardly opposed to individual and national prosperity. Nor, contrary to what some historians have argued, were they intrinsically adverse to the spread of a cash-based commercial or market economy. Yet they did oppose positive governmental policies that might spur such growth, be they protective tariffs, governmental subsidies, charters of incorporation for businesses, or banking, bank loans, and especially paper-money bank notes. Instead, Democrats embraced laissezfaire or what is sometimes called the doctrine of the negative state, that government should have as little to do with the
private economic sector as possible. "The less government interferes with private pursuits the better for the general prosperity." intoned President Martin Van Buren in 1837. Or as a Democratic journal put it the following year: "The democratic creed may be summed up in this brief formula. As little government as possible; that little emanating from, and controlled by, the people; and uniform in its application to all." Behind this negative state creed lay three core beliefs which differed strikingly from those of Lincoln and the Whigs. First, Democrats contended that the volatility of the nation's antebellum economy, its frequent boom/bust cycles that first inflated prices and then produced unemployment and economic misery, was caused by speculation fueled by too much bank credit and too much paper money. Stabilizing the economy therefore required limiting, if not eradicating, banks and paper money. Second, whereas Whigs saw credit, whether in the form of individual loans from banks or public bond issues, as crucial lubricants for economic growth and faciltators of improved economic opportunity. Democrats pessimistically viewed credit from its flip side as debt, as a form of economic self-enslavement that induced individuals to surrender their economic independence to creditors and governments to increase the tax burden of their residents. Third, and most important, whereas Whigs stressed the enhancement of individuals' economic freedom to rise, Democrats stressed the protection of their equal rights and attacked all forms of government-granted privilege as inimical to those equal rights. Fundamentally, that is, Democrats opposed the positive economic policies favored by Whigs because such policies granted their recipients stockholders in corporations, bankers, manufacturers, or areas that benefited from internal improvements unfair privileges that violated the equal rights of others denied those privileges. Privilege, in short, was antithetical to equality, yet it was inherent and unavoidable in any governmental economic action. Therefore, Democrats believed, the best way to preserve equality was for government to refrain from any economic activity.
Digital History 10/14/11 4:51 PM Back to documents list Here is the full entry for your selection: Gilder Lehrman Document Number: GLC 639.14 Title: The Rise of the Second Party System Author: Thomas Jefferson Year: 1822 Type of document: letter Quotation: "I believe their existence to be salutary" Annotation: Following the War of 1812, American politics was still dominated by deference. Voters generally deferred to the leadership of local elites or leading families. Political campaigns tended to be relatively staid affairs. Direct appeals by candidates for support were considered in poor taste. By later standards, election procedures were undemocratic. Most states imposed property and taxpaying requirements on the white adult males who alone had the vote. Voting was conducted by voice. Presidential electors were generally chosen by state legislatures. Given the fact that citizens had only the most indirect say in the election of a President, it is not surprising that voting participation was generally low, amounting to less than 30 percent of adult white males. By 1840, voting participation had reached unprecedented levels. Nearly 80 percent of adult white males went to the polls. A major reason for the expanded electorate was the replacement of the politics of deference and leadership by elites with a new two-party system. By the mid-1830s, two national political parties with marked philosophical differences, strong organizations, and wide popular appeal competed in virtually every state. Professional party managers used partisan newspapers, speeches, parades, and rallies to mobilize popular support. In 1789, Jefferson had declared, "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." In the following letter, he reverses his early opposition to parties and argues that two political parties are essential to a functioning democracy. Full Text: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=56 Page 1 of 2
Digital History 10/14/11 4:51 PM Full Text: I believe their existence to be salutary inasmuch as they act as Censors on each other, and keep the principles & practices of each constantly at the bar of public opinion. It is only when they give to party principles a predominance over the love of country, when they degenerate into personal antipathies, and affect the intercourse of society and friendship, or the justice due to honest opinion, that they become vicious and baneful to the general happiness and good. We have seen such days. May we hope never to see such again! This site was updated on 14-Oct-11. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=56 Page 2 of 2
Digital History 10/14/11 4:52 PM Back to documents list Here is the full entry for your selection: Gilder Lehrman Document Number: GLC 2919 Title: Party Competition and the Rise of the Whigs Author: James Buchanan Year: 1840 Type of document: letter Quotation: "We are now in the midst of a higher political excitement than I have ever yet witnessed" Annotation: During the 32 years following Andrew Jackson's election to the presidency, the Democratic party controlled the White House all but eight years. It would be a mistaken, however, to assume that the Jacksonians faced no effective opposition. Although it took a number of years for Jackson's opponents to coalesce into an effective native political organization, by the mid-1830s, the Whig Party was able to battle the Democrats on almost equal terms throughout the country, especially on the state and local level. The Whigs, a coalition united by their hatred of Jackson and his "usurpations" of congressional and judicial authority, took their name from the seventeenth century English Whigs who had defended English liberties against the pro-catholic Stuart Kings. In 1836, the Whigs ran three regional candidates against Martin Van Buren. The party strategy was to follow the example of 1824 and throw the election into the House of Representatives, where the Whigs would unite behind a single candidate. But Van Buren easily defeated all his Whig opponents. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=69 In 1840, William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), who had crushed an Indian coalition at the Battle of Tippecanoe in Indiana in 1811, received the Whig's united support. The 1840 presidential campaign was one of the most exciting and colorful in American history. Although Harrison was college educated and brought up on a plantation with 200 slaves, his Democratic opponents had dubbed him the "log cabin" candidate who was happiest on his backwoods farm sipping hard cider. Harrison's supporters enthusiastically seized on this image and promoted it a Page 1 of 2
Digital History 10/14/11 4:52 PM Harrison's supporters enthusiastically seized on this image and promoted it a number of colorful ways. They distributed barrels of hard cider, passed out campaign hats and placards, and mounted log cabins on floats. The Whig campaign brought many innovations to the art of electioneering. For the first time, a presidential candidate spoke out on his own behalf. Harrison's backers also coined the first campaign slogans: "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," "Van, Van is a used up man." While defending their man as the "peoples'" candidate, the Whigs heaped an avalanche of personal abuse on his Democratic opponent. They accused President Martin Van Buren of eating off of golden plates and lace table cloths and drinking French wines. The Harrison campaign provided a number of effective lessons for future politicians, notably an emphasis on symbols and imagery over ideas and substance. Fearful of alienating voters, the political convention that nominated Harrison adopted no party platform. Harrison himself said nothing during the campaign about his principles or proposals. He followed the suggestion of an adviser that he run on his military record and offer no indication "about what he thinks now, or what he will do hereafter." In 1840, voter turnout was the highest it had ever been in a presidential election: nearly 80 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. The log cabin candidate won a landslide victory in the electoral college. In the following selection, James Buchanan (1791-1868), a future Democratic President, comments on the 1840 presidential campaign. Full Text: We are now in the midst of a higher political excitement than I have ever yet witnessed; and it extends over every portion of the Union. The Whigs are perfectly confident of electing Harrison, & they even begin to talk about who shall be the members of his Cabinet. Their exertions have been prodigious, and at one period many of our friends began to be alarmed for the result. The opposition at one time confidently hoped to carry Pennsylvania, in consequence of the threatened division in our ranks in relation to the indulgence given to the Bank. This division has been entirely healthy, at least so far as regards M[artin] Van Buren, & the Democracy of the Keystone will move in solid & irresistible column at the Presidential election... I cannot see how it is possible to defeat Mr. Van Buren. We calculate with much confidence that he will receive every vote south of the Potomack & Ohio, with the exception of Kentucky & possibly Louisiana. We have at least an equal chance for New York & Ohio. Instead of avowing any great principles for the regulation of their conduct, the Whigs endeavored to raise a hurrah all over the Country in favor of their military chieftain. They have built Log Cabins & drunk hard cider every where. This senseless clamor of Log Cabins & hard cider is an insult to the understandings of the people & is everywhere beginning to react with tremendous force against its authors. The hard cider will become sour vinegar, unless I am greatly mistaken, before the end of the dog days. Still it cannot be denied that the hard times & low prices have done their cause much good. I repeat, I entertain little fear of the result. This site was updated on 14-Oct-11. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/documents/documents_p2.cfm?doc=69 Page 2 of 2
The Second American Party System Leaders Democrats Whigs Political Tradition Major Political Beliefs Region Primary Sources of Support Class Ethnicity Religion