The
Democratic Party emerged under Thomas Jefferson in the 1790s in opposition
to the Federalist Party. It initially drew most of its support from
Southern planters and Northern farmers. Its good organization and
popular appeal kept it in power for most of the time between 1825
and 1860. This included John Quincy Adams
(1825-1829), Andrew Jackson (1829-37),
Martin Van Buren (1837-41), James
Polk (1845-49) and Franklin Pierce
(1853-47). and James Buchanan (1857-61).
The Republican Party was established
at Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854 by a group of former members of the Whig
Party and the Free-Soil Party.
Its original founders were opposed to slavery
and called for the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska
and the Fugitive Slave Law. Early members
thought it was important to place the national interest above sectional
interest and the rights of individual States.
Over the next few years the Republican
Party emerged as the main opposition party to the Democratic Party
in the North. However, it had little support in the South. The party's
first presidential candidate was John C.
Fremont in 1856 who won 1,335,264 votes but was defeated by the
Democrat, James Buchanan.
In the 1860s, Thomas Nast, of Harper's
Weekly, developed the idea of the political cartoon. Nast
originated the idea of using animals to represent political parties.
In his cartoons the Democratic Party was a donkey and the Republican
Party, an elephant.
During the presidency of James Buchanan,
the Democrats split over the issue of slavery.
At its convention at Charleston in April, 1860, Stephen
A. Douglas was the choice of most northern Democrats but
was opposed by those in the Deep South. When Douglas won the nomination,
Southern delegates decided to hold another convention in Baltimore
and in June selected John
Beckenridge of Kentucky as their candidate. The situation
was further complicated by the formation of the Constitutional
Union Party and the nomination of John
Bell of Tennessee as its presidential candidate.
Abraham Lincoln
won the presidential election with with 1,866,462 votes (18 free states)
and beat Stephen A. Douglas
(1,375,157 - 1 slave state), John
Beckenridge (847,953 - 13 slave states) and John
Bell (589,581 - 3 slave states).
After the American Civil War the Republican
Party dominated the political system. Its support
of protective tariffs gained it the support of powerful industrialists
and the Northern urban areas. It was also popular with Northern and
Midwestern farmers and most of the immigrant
groups, except for the Irish, who
tended to support the Democrats. Republican presidents during this
period included Ulysses Grant (1869-1877),
Rutherhood Hayes (1877-1881), James
Garfield (1881) and Chester Arthur
(1881-1885).
Grover Cleveland managed two victories
for the Democrats (1885-89 and 1893-97) and so did Woodrow
Wilson (1913-23). However the Republican
Party continued to be the major party during this
period with victories for Benjamin Harrison
(1889-1893), William McKinley (1897-1901),
Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), William
Taft (1909-1913), Warren Harding
(1921-1923), Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
and Herbert Hoover (1929-33).
The Democratic Party re-emerged during the
Great Depression when Franklin
D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932. Roosevelt became the only President
to be re-elected three times and served for twelve years (1933-45).
During this period the Democrats gained the support of small farmers,
trade unions, liberals, blacks and other minorities. After Roosevelt's
death the Democrats remained in power under Harry
S. Truman (1945-53).
The Republicans selected the war hero, Dwight
D. Eisenhower as its candidate in 1952. During the election the
Republican Party took a strong anti-communist
stance and advocated lower taxes for the rich. It also opposed civil
rights legislation being proposed by the liberal Democratic candidate,
Adlai Stevenson. Eisenhower won by
33,936,252 votes to 27,314,922.
Eisenhower's vice-president, Richard Nixon
was narrowly defeated in 1960 by John F.
Kennedy (1961-1963) who was followed by another Democrat, Lyndon
B. Johnson (1963-1969).
The Republican
Party candidate, Richard
Nixon won in 1968 but was forced to resign in 1974 over the Watergate
Scandal and was replaced by his vice-president, Gerald
Ford (1974-1977). In 1976 Ford was defeated by Jimmy
Carter (1977-1981).
Thomas Nast, Stranger Things Have
Happened, Harper's Weekly (1879)
(1)
John Caldwell Calhoun, speech in the
Senate (4th March, 1850)
How can the Union be saved?
There is but one way by which it can with any certainty; and that
is, by a full and final settlement, on the principle of justice of
all the questions at issue between the two sections. But can this
be done? Yes, easily; not by the weaker party, for it can of itself
do nothing - not even protect itself - but by the stronger. The North
has only to will it to accomplish it - to do justice by conceding
to the South an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do her
duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be
faithfully fulfilled and to cease the agitation of the slave question.
(2)
Abraham Lincoln,
debate with Stephen Douglas in
Alton, Illinois (15th October, 1858)
Stephen Douglas assumes
that I am in favor of introducing a perfect social and political equality
between the white and black races. These are false issues. The real
issue in this controversy is the sentiment on the part of one class
that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another
class that does not look upon it as a wrong. One of the methods of
treating it as a wrong is to make provision that it shall grow no
larger.
(3)
The journalist, Henry Villard, described
the Abraham Lincoln
and Stephen
A. Douglas debate
at Ottawa, Illinois, on 21st August, 1858.
The first joint debate
between Douglas and Lincoln, which I attended, took place on the afternoon
of August 21, 1858, at Ottawa, Illinois. It was the great event of
the day, and attracted an immense concourse of people from all parts
of the State.
Senator Douglas was very small, not over four and a half feet height,
and there was a noticeable disproportion between the long trunk of
his body and his short legs. His chest was broad and indicated great
strength of lungs. It took but a glance at his face and head to convince
one that they belonged to no ordinary man. No beard hid any part of
his remarkable, swarthy features. His mouth, nose, and chin were all
large and clearly expressive of much boldness and power of will. The
broad, high forehead proclaimed itself the shield of a great brain.
The head, covered with an abundance of flowing black hair just beginning
to show a tinge of grey, impressed one with its massiveness and leonine
expression. His brows were shaggy, his eyes a brilliant black.
Douglas spoke first for an hour, followed by Lincoln for an hour and
a half; upon which the former closed in another half hour. The Democratic
spokesman commanded a strong, sonorous voice, a rapid, vigorous utterance,
a telling play of countenance, impressive gestures, and all the other
arts of the practiced speaker.
As far as all external conditions were concerned, there was nothing
in favour of Lincoln. He had a lean, lank, indescribably gawky figure,
an odd-featured, wrinkled, inexpressive, and altogether uncomely face.
He used singularly awkward, almost absurd, up-and-down and sidewise
movements of his body to give emphasis to his arguments. His voice
was naturally good, but he frequently raised it to an unnatural pitch.
Yet the unprejudiced mind felt at once that, while there was on the
one side a skillful dialectician and debater arguing a wrong and weak
cause, there was on the other a thoroughly earnest and truthful man,
inspired by sound convictions in consonance with the true spirit of
American institutions. There was nothing in all Douglas's powerful
effort that appealed to the higher instincts of human nature, while
Lincoln always touched sympathetic cords. Lincoln's speech excited
and sustained the enthusiasm of his audience to the end.
(4) William
Seward, speech, Rochester, New York (25th October, 1858)
The Democratic Party derived its strength originally from its adoption
of the principles of equal and exact justice to all men. So long as
it practised this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became
vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it
has maintained itself not by virtue of its own strength, or even of
its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the
political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage
to take up, and avow, and practice the life-inspiring principle which
the Democratic Party surrendered.
At last, the Republican Party had appeared. It avows now, as the Republican
Party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works, "Equal
and exact justice to all men." The secret of its assured success
lies in that very characteristic, which in the mouth of scoffers constitutes
its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact
that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one - an
idea that fills and expands all generous souls - the idea of equality
- the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as
they are equal before the divine tribunal and divine laws.
(5)
Jefferson
Davis,
inaugural address (18th February, 1861)
The
right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has
been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of the states
subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognizes
in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the
purposes of government. Thus the sovereign states here represented
proceeded to form the Confederacy; and it is by the abuse of language
that their act has been denominated revolution.
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