First Party System

Not to be confused with One-party system.

First Party System

c. 1792–1824

Presidential-election results from 1796 through 1824. Green denotes states generally carried by Republicans; orange denotes states generally carried by Federalists or Federalist-supported candidates.

The First Party System was the first period of organized, nationwide party competition in the United States. Historians generally date it from the emergence of the Federalist Party and the opposition Republican Party in the early 1790s to the collapse of sustained Federalist–Republican competition after the War of 1812. Its endpoint is not exact: the Federalist Party declined sharply after 1816, the Republicans fragmented during the presidential election of 1824, and the rival coalitions associated with Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams developed into the Second Party System during the later 1820s.

The Federalists, led most prominently by Alexander Hamilton, supported the financial and administrative program of President George Washington's government, including federal assumption of state debts, the First Bank of the United States, public credit, a professional diplomatic and military establishment, and a comparatively broad interpretation of federal power. The Republicans, organized principally by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, opposed Hamilton's program and argued that it endangered representative government by concentrating authority in the federal executive and by binding the government to financial and commercial elites. Republicans favored a narrower construction of federal power and presented an agrarian political economy as a safeguard of republican independence.

Foreign affairs intensified the division. Federalists generally sought neutrality combined with stable commercial relations with Great Britain, whereas Republicans were more sympathetic to the French Revolution and more suspicious of British power. These alignments were neither absolute nor permanent, and both parties contained regional and ideological differences. The parties were national coalitions rather than simple sections or social classes: Federalists were strongest in New England, commercial centers, and among many merchants, while Republicans were especially strong in the South and in rural districts but also developed durable organizations in the Mid-Atlantic and northern states.

Neither organization resembled a modern mass-membership party. National leaders, members of Congress, state politicians, newspaper editors, local notables, and officeholders built overlapping networks that nominated candidates, distributed ballots and pamphlets, coordinated newspapers, and mobilized eligible voters. Participation increased during the period as many states loosened property qualifications for white men, but voting rules varied widely. Women were generally excluded from the franchise, enslaved people had no political rights, and the voting rights that some free Black men possessed were increasingly restricted in several states.

Origins

Ratification debate and political antecedents

Further information: Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalism

The labels used during the struggle over ratification of the Constitution did not identify the same parties that competed during the 1790s. In 1787–88, Federalists supported ratification and Anti-Federalists opposed it or demanded major revisions. The ratification Federalists included George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Anti-Federalists objected to the absence of a bill of rights and warned that the proposed national government could threaten state authority and individual liberty. Their criticism contributed to the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

The Federalist Party of the 1790s was not simply the continuation of the pro-ratification coalition, and the Republican Party was not merely the renamed Anti-Federalist movement. Madison, a leading advocate of ratification, became an architect of the Republican opposition; some former Anti-Federalists later supported the Federalist Party. The later parties instead grew out of disagreements over how the new federal government should operate.

Formation during the Washington administration

Further information: Presidency of George Washington § Rise of political parties

The Constitution did not mention political parties, and many political leaders associated permanent parties with corruption, faction, and civil disorder. Members of the First Congress initially formed shifting coalitions rather than disciplined parties. The administration's economic program gradually produced more durable alignments. Hamilton's proposals to fund the national debt, assume state debts, charter a national bank, and raise federal revenue attracted supporters of energetic national government and alarmed opponents who feared concentrated power and unequal privilege.

Alexander Hamilton was the principal architect of the Federalist financial program.

Hamilton's supporters became known as the pro-administration faction and, by the middle of the decade, as Federalists. Jefferson and Madison coordinated opposition in Congress and cultivated allies in the states. Madison used Republican for the emerging opposition in 1792; contemporaries most often called its members Republicans, although historians commonly use Democratic-Republicans to distinguish them from the later Republican Party.

The elections of 1792 showed the beginnings of coordinated partisan competition, although Washington was reelected without opposition. In New York, Federalist-supported John Jay challenged Republican-aligned governor George Clinton. In Congress, voting patterns became increasingly polarized over economic policy and, after 1793, foreign affairs. Organization remained uneven, and personal, local, ethnic, and religious loyalties continued to shape state politics.

In 1793, supporters of the French Revolution established Democratic-Republican Societies in several states. Federalists accused the societies of encouraging disorder, and Washington criticized them after the Whiskey Rebellion. The societies declined after 1794, but the controversy helped both sides define the legitimacy and limits of popular political organization.

Issues and constituencies

Economic policy and constitutional interpretation

Federalists defended Hamilton's system as necessary to establish public credit, integrate the interests of creditors and states with the new government, and promote commerce and manufacturing. Republicans argued that the system favored speculators, expanded federal authority beyond the powers enumerated in the Constitution, and risked reproducing the corruption they associated with Britain. The dispute over the national bank crystallized competing approaches to constitutional interpretation: Hamilton defended implied powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause, whereas Jefferson and Madison advanced a narrower reading of federal authority.

Republican administrations did not dismantle the entire Federalist program after 1801. Jefferson and Treasury secretary Albert Gallatin reduced some taxes and military expenditures and sought to lower the public debt, but they retained the national bank and federal debt system. The Louisiana Purchase also required Jefferson to exercise national power more flexibly than his earlier constitutional arguments suggested. The pressures of the War of 1812 later led Republicans to support measures—including a second national bank and a protective tariff—that resembled parts of the earlier Federalist program.

Foreign policy

War between revolutionary France and Britain beginning in 1793 transformed domestic political conflict. Washington proclaimed American neutrality. Republicans emphasized the alliance and ideological ties created during the American Revolutionary War, while Federalists feared that attachment to revolutionary France would draw the United States into a destructive European war. The administration's insistence that French minister Edmond-Charles Genêt cease efforts to enlist American support helped produce the Citizen Genêt affair.

The Jay Treaty, negotiated with Britain in 1794 and ratified in 1795, prevented an immediate conflict and resolved some issues left by the Revolution, but it did not end British restrictions on American shipping or impressment. Republicans denounced the treaty as an accommodation with monarchy and British commercial power. The public campaign for and against it encouraged leaders in different states to coordinate petitions, meetings, pamphlets, and newspaper arguments, thereby accelerating national party organization.

Relations with France deteriorated during the Adams administration. The XYZ Affair and attacks on American shipping led to the undeclared naval Quasi-War of 1798–1800. Federalists expanded the army and navy and enacted new taxes. Republicans charged that the military buildup endangered liberty; Federalists answered that it was required for national defense. President John Adams ultimately resisted pressure for a full war and negotiated the Convention of 1800, which ended the crisis.

Regional, religious, and social patterns

Federalists drew substantial support from merchants, creditors, commercial farmers, many Congregationalists in New England, and voters who associated social order with established institutions. Republicans attracted many southern planters, small farmers, artisans, immigrants, and religious dissenters, but neither coalition was socially uniform. Slaveholders held leading positions in both parties, and northern as well as southern communities contained competitive party organizations. State and local circumstances often mattered as much as national ideology.

Party competition intersected with slavery and territorial expansion. Republican leaders defended an agrarian republic while many of the party's most powerful southern figures, including Jefferson and Madison, enslaved people. Federalists criticized the political influence generated by the Constitution's Three-fifths Compromise, but the party did not adopt a consistent national antislavery program. Both parties supported policies that dispossessed Native nations, although they disagreed over aspects of western land policy, federal authority, and war.

Party organization and political culture

Newspapers and print politics

Further information: History of American newspapers

Partisan newspapers were central to the system. Federalist and Republican leaders subsidized editors, supplied essays, arranged government printing contracts, and circulated material for reprinting. The Federalist Gazette of the United States, edited by John Fenno, defended the Washington and Adams administrations. The Republican National Gazette, edited by Philip Freneau, attacked Hamilton's policies, while the Philadelphia Aurora under Benjamin Franklin Bache and William Duane became a leading Republican organ. The National Intelligencer, founded in Washington in 1800, later reported congressional proceedings and supported Republican administrations.

The press conveyed political information across long distances, helped national leaders communicate with local activists, and subjected public figures to personal abuse. Editors routinely reprinted articles from allied papers, creating recognizable partisan narratives across the country. Newspapers did not cause every political conflict attributed to them—the chain of events leading to the Burr–Hamilton duel, for example, involved a broader culture of honor as well as published accusations—but print was a primary arena of early national politics.

Electoral organization

Parties developed legislative caucuses, correspondence networks, local committees, public celebrations, petitions, pamphlet campaigns, and systems for distributing printed ballots. Because voting was conducted under state law and the secret Australian ballot had not yet been adopted, party workers often printed tickets and brought them to the polls. Managers such as Republican John J. Beckley assembled voter information and coordinated local organizers. Similar methods appeared in both parties and became more systematic over time; claims that either party invented modern campaigning or conducted the world's first organized get-out-the-vote drive go beyond the available evidence.

Presidential nominees were eventually selected through congressional nominating caucuses. These caucuses strengthened coordination but were not authorized by the Constitution and were criticized as undemocratic. State legislatures chose presidential electors in many states, while other states used popular elections; the methods changed repeatedly during the period. Consequently, national popular-vote totals for early presidential elections are incomplete and are not directly comparable with modern totals.

Party alignments in Congress

The labels applied to members of the earliest Congresses are retrospective and sometimes uncertain. The Senate's historical tables describe members of the first Congresses as Pro-Administration and Anti-Administration before using Federalist and Republican. Roll-call analysis nevertheless shows that congressional voting became increasingly structured into two blocs during the 1790s, especially during the controversy over the Jay Treaty.

Crisis and transfer of power, 1797–1801

Thomas Jefferson, principal organizer of the Republican opposition and victor in the election of 1800

The presidency of John Adams exposed divisions both between and within the parties. Adams faced Republican opposition and conflict with the High Federalists associated with Hamilton. During the Quasi-War crisis, the Federalist-controlled Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The laws lengthened the residency requirement for naturalization, authorized the removal or detention of certain noncitizens, and criminalized some criticism of the federal government. Federalist officials prosecuted several Republican printers and politicians, including representative Matthew Lyon. Republicans condemned the laws as unconstitutional and used the controversy to mobilize voters.

Jefferson and Madison anonymously drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which argued that the federal government had exceeded its constitutional powers. The resolutions did not produce a unified state response, and their theories of state authority remained controversial. They nonetheless became important statements of Republican constitutional opposition.

The election of 1800 was intensely partisan. Under the original electoral system, each elector cast two undifferentiated votes; Republican electors produced a tie between Jefferson and his intended running mate, Aaron Burr. The House of Representatives chose Jefferson on the thirty-sixth ballot in February 1801. The crisis contributed to ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, which required distinct electoral votes for president and vice president.

Jefferson called the result the “Revolution of 1800.” Its lasting importance lay partly in the transfer of control of the executive branch and Congress from one organized party to its opponent without civil violence. The transfer did not mean that the parties had accepted all modern principles of loyal opposition, but it demonstrated that constitutional procedures could survive an intensely contested change of power.

Before leaving office, Adams appointed several Federalist judges, including John Marshall as chief justice. Jefferson's administration withheld a number of undelivered judicial commissions, a dispute that produced Marbury v. Madison (1803). Jefferson removed some Federalist officeholders but did not conduct a complete purge of the civil service. The new administration combined partisan change with selective continuity in policy and personnel.

Republican predominance and Federalist decline

Republicans won commanding congressional majorities after 1800 and carried the next five presidential elections. Their coalition nevertheless contained significant disagreements. John Randolph of Roanoke and the Old Republicans criticized what they considered Jefferson's and Madison's departures from limited government. Regional tensions also grew as western and southern Republicans advocated measures that many northeastern members opposed.

Foreign-policy crises continued to shape party fortunes. Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807 attempted to use commercial pressure against Britain and France but severely disrupted American trade and provoked strong opposition, especially in New England. Under Madison, continued British impressment, maritime restrictions, and conflict on the frontier contributed to the declaration of the War of 1812. Most Republicans supported the war, while Federalists—particularly in New England—opposed it, although neither party voted with complete unanimity.

Federalists recovered some electoral strength during the embargo and the war but remained geographically limited. New England Federalists met at the Hartford Convention in 1814–15 and proposed constitutional amendments and regional measures to address wartime grievances. The convention did not adopt secession, but its secrecy and timing allowed Republicans to portray the party as disloyal after news of the Treaty of Ghent and the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans. This damaged the party's national reputation, although Federalists continued to win some state and local offices into the 1820s.

Era of Good Feelings and dissolution

Election-day activity in Philadelphia in 1815, painted by John Lewis Krimmel

James Monroe's near-unopposed reelection in 1820 symbolized the decline of national two-party competition. The period known as the Era of Good Feelings was not free of conflict: disputes over the Panic of 1819, slavery and the Missouri Compromise, tariffs, banks, internal improvements, and the balance between regions divided the Republican majority. With no effective national opposition party, these conflicts increasingly operated within Republican ranks.

The election of 1824 exposed the party's fragmentation. Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay all ran as Republicans or within the old Republican coalition. No candidate won an electoral majority, and the House selected Adams. Jackson's followers denounced the result as a “corrupt bargain” and built a durable opposition organization. By 1828, Jacksonian Democrats and Adams supporters were competing as rival national coalitions; Adams's supporters became known as National Republicans, many of whom later joined the Whig Party. Historians therefore commonly place the end of the First Party System around 1824 while treating 1824–28 as the transition to the Second Party System.

Historiography

The phrase First Party System is an analytical category developed by historians and political scientists, not a term used by participants for the period as a whole. Scholars have debated its precise chronology, the degree of discipline within the parties, and the relationship between national alignments and local political cultures. Studies based on congressional voting, state elections, newspapers, and party correspondence generally find increasing national coordination during the 1790s but substantial variation by state and locality.

Another major subject is the gradual acceptance of organized opposition. Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison all used partisan organization while often describing their opponents as a dangerous faction rather than a legitimate alternative government. Historian Richard Hofstadter argued that the peaceful transfer of power after the election of 1800 helped establish the practical legitimacy of opposition even before political leaders fully accepted a permanent two-party system. Later scholarship has emphasized that this development occurred alongside limited suffrage, slavery, the dispossession of Native peoples, and a partisan public sphere in which personal defamation and political violence were common.

Interpretations of the two parties have changed over time. Older accounts sometimes portrayed Jeffersonian Republicans as the straightforward champions of democracy and Federalists as aristocratic opponents. Later historians have treated both coalitions as internally diverse and have examined Federalist contributions to state-building, Republican commitments to popular mobilization, the centrality of slavery and settler expansion, and the gap between each party's republican language and political practice.

See also

• Federalist Era
• Party systems in the United States
• List of United States House of Representatives elections (1789–1822)
• American election campaigns in the 19th century
• History of the United States (1789–1849)
• Political history of the United States

Further reading

• Banning, Lance. The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology. Cornell University Press, 1978.
• Chambers, William Nisbet, ed. The First Party System: Federalists and Republicans. Wiley, 1972.
• Cunningham, Noble E. Jr. The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization, 1789–1801. University of North Carolina Press, 1957.
• Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism. Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Hofstadter, Richard. The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840. University of California Press, 1970.
• Pasley, Jeffrey L. The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. University Press of Virginia, 2001.
• Sharp, James Roger. American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis. Yale University Press, 1993.
• Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815. Oxford University Press, 2009.

External links

• “Formation of Political Parties”, Library of Congress
• “Party Division”, United States Senate Historical Office
• A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns, 1787–1825, Tufts Archival Research Center