Download Matthew Tseu Period 4 12/10/11 Group 4 Prompt 4 Democratic Party

Matthew Tseu
Period 4
12/10/11
Group 4 Prompt 4
Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other
being the Republican Party. Historically, the Democratic Party has supported organized labor,
ethnic minorities, and progressive reform. It tends to favor greater government intervention in
the economy and to oppose government intervention in the private, noneconomic affairs of
citizens. The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas
Nast in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never been officially adopted by the party.
The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and among the
oldest political parties in the world. It traces its roots to 1792, when followers of Thomas
Jefferson adopted the name Republican to emphasize their antimonarchical views. The
Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Republicans, advocated a decentralized
government with limited powers. Another faction to emerge in the early years of the republic,
the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, favored a strong central government.
Jefferson’s faction developed from the group of Anti-Federalists who had agitated in favor of
the addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. The Federalists called
Jefferson’s faction the Democratic-Republican Party in an attempt to identify it with the
disorder spawned by the “radical democrats” of the French Revolution of 1789. After the
Federalist John Adams was elected president in 1796, the Republican Party served as the
country’s first opposition party, and in 1798 the Republicans adopted the derisive DemocraticRepublican label as their official name.
In 1800 Adams was defeated by Jefferson, whose victory ushered in a period of prolonged
Democratic-Republican dominance. Jefferson won reelection easily in 1804, and DemocraticRepublicans James Madison (1808 and 1812) and James Monroe (1816 and 1820) were also
subsequently elected. By 1820 the Federalist Party had faded from national politics, leaving the
Democratic-Republicans as the country’s sole major party and allowing Monroe to run
unopposed in that year’s presidential election.
Republican Party, byname Grand Old Party (GOP), in the United States, one of the two
major political parties, the other being the Democratic Party. The Republican Party traditionally
has supported laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The party
acquired the acronym GOP, widely understood as “Grand Old Party,” in the 1870s. The party’s
official logo, the elephant, is derived from a cartoon by Thomas Nast and also dates from the
1870s.
The term Republican was adopted in 1792 by supporters of Thomas Jefferson, who
favoured a decentralized government with limited powers. Although Jefferson’s political
philosophy is consistent with the outlook of the modern Republican Party, his faction, which
soon became known as the Democratic-Republican Party, ironically evolved by the 1830s into
the Democratic Party, the modern Republican Party’s chief rival.
The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former
members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension
of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. At
meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July 1854), they
recommended forming a new party, which was duly established at the political convention in
Jackson.
At their first presidential nominating convention in 1856, the Republicans nominated John C.
Frémont on a platform that called on Congress to abolish slavery in the territories, reflecting a
widely held view in the North. Although ultimately unsuccessful in his presidential bid, Frémont
carried 11 Northern states and received nearly two-fifths of the electoral vote. During the first
four years of its existence, the party rapidly displaced the Whigs as the main opposition to the
dominant Democratic Party. In 1860 the Democrats split over the slavery issue, as the Northern
and Southern wings of the party nominated different candidates (Stephen A. Douglas and John
C. Breckinridge, respectively); the election that year also included John Bell, the nominee of the
Constitutional Union Party. Thus, the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was able to
capture the presidency, winning 18 Northern states and receiving 60 percent of the electoral
vote but only 40 percent of the popular vote. By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration as president,
however, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and the country soon descended
into the American Civil War (1861–65).
The 1860 election is regarded by most political observers as the first of three “critical” elections
in the United States—contests that produced sharp and enduring changes in party loyalties
across the country (although some analysts consider the election of 1824 to be the first critical
election). After 1860 the Democratic and Republican parties became the major parties in a
largely two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in
rough balance—except in the South, which became solidly Democratic. The two parties
controlled Congress for almost equal periods, though the Democrats held the presidency only
during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (1885–89 and 1893–97).
The prolonged agony of the Civil War weakened Lincoln’s prospects for reelection in 1864. To
broaden his support, he chose as his vice presidential candidate Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union
Democratic senator from Tennessee, and the Lincoln-Johnson ticket subsequently won a
landslide victory over Democrat George B. McClellan and his running mate George Pendleton.
Following Lincoln’s assassination at the end of the war, Johnson favoured Lincoln’s moderate
program for the Reconstruction of the South over the more punitive plan backed by the Radical
Republican members of Congress. Stymied for a time by Johnson’s vetoes, the Radical
Republicans won overwhelming control of Congress in the 1866 elections and engineered
Johnson’s impeachment in the House of Representatives. Although the Senate fell one vote
short of convicting and removing Johnson, the Radical Republicans managed to implement their
Reconstruction program, which made the party anathema across the former Confederacy. In
the North the party’s close identification with the Union victory secured it the allegiance of
most farmers, and its support of protective tariffs and of the interests of big business eventually
gained it the backing of powerful industrial and financial circles.