During the early republic, attitudes toward political parties in the United States underwent a profound transformation from hostility to toleration and finally to acceptance of party as a positive good. The terms party and faction were used interchangeably in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Slowly, party began to mean something positive whereas faction retained its negative connotations. Despite the antiparty beliefs, political parties did form. Unlike modern parties, however, these parties were temporary organizations formed to defeat a specific foe. The general public in the United States did not begin to accept the idea of a legitimate opposition in politics until the 1820s. Party theorists of the early 19th century came to believe that the biggest threat to the republic was not conflict but apathy. From this perspective parties protected democracy and majority rule instead of threatening them.
English Whig writers on politics, party, and faction greatly influenced political leaders in North America. The concept of a loyal opposition did not exist in England until the 1820s. It was not until 1826 that those who disagreed with the ruling party were called “His Majesty’s Opposition.” To oppose the king prior to the early 19th century was to invite charges of disloyalty and unpatriotic behavior. Thus there are important parallels between the United States and Great Britain regarding the attitudes toward parties and political opposition. Two British writers who had great influence upon political ideas in the United States are Lord Bolingbroke and Edmund Burke. In the first half of the 1700s, Bolingbroke published Remarks on the History of England (1700) and A Dissertation upon Parties (1735) in which he detailed the evils of faction. Bolingbroke and Burke defined party or faction as a group of men who sought office for personal gain. Thus parties were by definition corrupt and thwarted the general good.
After the 1760s, Burke began to modify his view of parties. He believed that a “party of principle” was needed to combat the evils of faction. A “party of principle” was not founded on the basis of self-interest; instead, it was built upon some agreed-to principle, and all members worked to promote the national interest “by their joint endeavors.” From this perspective, a “party of principle” would be a temporary expedient to defeat and eliminate corruption after which the party would govern in the public interest.
Still, most Britons believed that factions and parties were symptoms of a troubled nation. In the ideal nation, there were no parties, but society and governance was based on consensus and harmony. The family was the most appropriate metaphor for the ideal state. The king was the father and his subjects his children. As one can define a common goal and interest of a family, one could do so for the nation as well. (See also CORPORATISM.) Opposition to the government was akin to disobeying one’s father and betraying the family. Consequently, there was little room in the political culture for legitimate dissension. The king had a special responsibility to produce unity among his subjects. If he promoted one interest at the expense of the common good, he failed his family, and hence his nation. Bolingbroke’s “patriot king” perhaps best illustrates what many thought made an ideal leader. The “patriot king” rose above partisanship and united the nation. He governed in the interest of the nation as a whole, and not one particular group or faction. For revolutionary Americans in a republic there was no king to which the people would pledge their filial loyalty. But once the United States Constitution was adopted, many believed that the president would fulfill the role of patriot king.
Bolingbroke and Burke’s ideas easily translated to colonial and revolutionary America and contributed to the ideology of REPUBLICANISM. In colonial America, parties or factions largely conformed to this view. Factions were amorphous and changed in response to personal loyalty and issues. In some colonies, such as New York, there were more or less permanent factions organized around the colony’s most prominent families. In others, issues were more important although personal patronage networks played a role everywhere. The Revolution altered the political landscape by removing royal officials, but it did not change attitudes toward party or faction and no permanent organizations developed. During the contest over the Constitution, Federalists and anti-Federalists mustered their forces in all of the states. Both groups expected that once the Constitution’s fate had been decided that their party would cease to exist. Sure enough these groups did formally disband. Although most proponents of the Constitution found themselves associated with the Federalist Party in the 1790s, there is no direct correlation between the two federalist parties. One of the most famous Federalists in 1787 and 1788, James Madison, became a leader of the opposition party in the 1790s.
Many people in the United States believed that republics, especially one as extensive as the United States, were too fragile to withstand party competition. Thus the new United States had to be protected from parties. Madison tried to allay these fears in the Federalist Papers (especially Federalist No. 10) by asserting that a large, diverse nation actually safeguarded a republic from the evils of party. He argued that multiple interest groups would in fact serve to preserve the republic because they would prevent one minority interest from dominating the government. By 1792, Madison further revised his view of party, only because he now believed that parties could not be prevented and thus should be steered into performing a purpose for the republic. Parties could check the excesses of each other. While Madison was eventually willing to tolerate parties, he did not celebrate them. His compatriots would not be so accepting of parties or faction even as they acted as partisans themselves.
In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” He cautioned that party contests served “always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration.” Although he believed divisions to be natural, he did not want to see parties in elective governments. Indeed, factions threatened the republic because they narrowed political motives and activities to the promotion of self-interest at the expense of the general good. Parties only created and exacerbated jealousies and disagreements and hence were “a spirit not to be encouraged.” He called on the nation to be vigilant in order to defeat faction.
Two of Washington’s former cabinet members, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of State Thomas Jeeeerson, certainly agreed with Washington even as they engaged in highly partisan activities. These two men led the Federalist Party and Democratic-Republican Party, respectively. Although they headed these parties and gave advice and direction to party activists, Hamilton and Jefferson saw no contradiction to their firmly held antiparty ideas. Each saw his party as a Burkean “party of principle” that would rescue government and the Constitution from special interests. Jefferson thought Hamilton’s Federalist Party governed not in the interest of the whole people and endangered the republic, and Hamilton thought the same of Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. Each believed that his party would vanquish the other and then unify the nation under his leadership. Jefferson hoped for suppression of parties and the return of harmony and expressed this hope for a renewal of national unity in his first inaugural address when he declared “we are all republicans, we are all federalists.” Like Jefferson, John Taylor oe Caroline, a leading Democratic-Republican Party theorist, continued to adhere to antipartyism. He believed that parties were part of the problems plaguing the young republic because they represented “a division of a whole,” and not the solution. Despite and perhaps because of the party contests of the 1790s, many people in the United States persisted in their opposition to the idea of party.
Although the Federalist Party continued to contest elections into the latter part of the 1810s, the War of 1812 (1812-15) marked the triumph of antiparty ideas and seemingly the end to party contests in the United States. Politicians celebrated the demise of party. James Monroe’s inaugural addresses praised the passing of party spirit and asserted his belief that without party strife, the United States could “soon attain the highest degree of perfection of which human institutions are capable. . . . ” Furthermore, the government and the nation would “exhibit such a degree of order and harmony as to command the admiration and respect of the civilized world.” His successor, John Quincy Adams, shared Monroe’s feelings. He quite self-consciously sought to banish party considerations from all his decisions whether they involved policy or appointments.
Only in the 1820s was the old antiparty consensus replaced with a new pro-party consensus. The changing ideas about political parties paralleled the process of democratization of civic culture and the expansion of the electorate.
Further reading: Lance Banning, Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995); Ralph Ketcham, Presidents above Party: The First American Presidency, 1789-1829 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984); Jackson T. Main, Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973).
—Terri Halperin
World History
