Origin and History of the Democratic Party and the Federal Constitution Term Paper

Introduction

The existence of political parties, as we now understand the term, was almost completely unknown in the United States before the adoption of the Federal Constitution (Jenkins, 1846, p.17). At the start of the Revolutionary struggle for independence, there were a few families in each of the States who, either from the interest or sincere interest to the British Government, were disposed to array themselves in opposition to the revolted Colonialists (Jenkins, 1846, p.18).

In addition, the public enthusiasm which greeted the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence soon compelled them to openly take sides with the mother country as the great mass of the people were united, heart and hand, in the determination to resist the arbitrary enactments of the British Parliament. Those who supported the claims of England and who were generally designated as “Tories” were regarded and treated on all sides as alien enemies rather than the citizens of this country (Jenkins, 1846, p.18).

The acknowledgement of the USA independence by the Great Britain and the ratification of the treaty of peace of the 1783 at once led to the formation of schemes and the organization of factions, having in view the aggrandizement of particular individuals and particular sections of the country. A few years experience after the peace convinced intelligent and reflecting men that the Articles of Confederation adopted in 1777 were wholly incompetent to preserve the integrity of the Union and to regulate the commerce of the nation and its intercourse with the foreign governments; and that a new plan of government or constitution ought to be created to act upon the citizens of each State.

Various opinions and theories of government were rife in the world, which later resulted in the division of the statesmen and the politicians of the country into separate organizations and from this period, the rise and progress of political parties in States and the wider nation began (Jenkins, 1846, p.19).

The origin of the Democratic Party

When the United States achieved independence, there existed no political parties but leaders disagreed on various issues, yet had no ability to organize themselves into groups that could actively promote particular set of policies (Anderson, 2007, p.18). During the eight years of George Washington as the USA president, the first political parties developed and one of the parties was the Democratic Party (Anderson, 2007, p.18). At that time, one group of the politicians favored the federal system of government; the group was led by Alexander Hamilton, who served as Washington’s secretary of the treasury.

Hamilton and his group were convinced that, it was the strong central government that was needed in order to promote the American economic growth. They were strong in the states of the Northeast and were generally backed and supported by people of property and also those who owned businesses in trade and manufacturing. They further supported the need for close ties to Britain, the country’s main trading partner. This group came to be known as the Federalists (Anderson, 2007, p.20).

Another group disagreed with the Federalist position and Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and who was Washington’s secretary of state, was the leader of this group. He and his supporters wanted stronger state governments and a weaker federal government (Anderson, 2007, p.20). They pushed for laws that were in favor of the farmers rather than the business owners and also wanted close ties to France which had been a key ally during the American Revolution (Anderson, 2007, p.21).

In 1792, Jefferson started organizing regular meetings with the like-minded members of the U.S. congress, the meetings popularly known as caucuses, were used to advance their position and strategize on how to defeat the Federalists (Anderson, 2007, p.21). In 1796, after two terms as president, George Washington decided to retire and in his farewell address to the people he warned the nation’s leaders not to divide the government by forming political parties, an advice they did not listen to (Anderson, 2007, p.21). The exit of Washington was followed elections that were won by John Adams to become president in 1796, while Jefferson settled for the vice president role (Anderson, 2007, p.21).

Adams, who was a Federalist, joined with Federalists in the Congress in supporting a Sedition Act law, which had proposed harsh penalties for speaking or writing against the government (Anderson, 2007, p.21). Jefferson viewed this law as an assault against freedom of speech and which the First Amendment to the Constitution was meant to protect (Anderson, 2007, p.21). Jefferson was the mastermind of resolutions that involved covenants between and among various states As a result, whenever “the general government assumes undelegated powers” the states have the power to declare the action “void, and no force” (Anderson, 2007, p.21).

This marked the introduction of states’ rights, the idea that the power of state governments should be greater than that of the federal government and which was the basic position of the Democratic Party for many decades (Anderson, 2007, p.22).

Jefferson, still as the vice president to Adams, began to formally organize his supporters and by 1800, the Democratic-Republicans had been formed. Democratic-Republicans, supporters, came to be known this way, for what Jefferson, termed as their opposition to a government by aristocrats and which the Federalists supported. The Federalists then added the tag “Democrats” to this group, which implied that, Jefferson and his supporters were in favor of ‘mob rule’ and therefore the party came to be known as the Democratic-Republicans (Anderson, 2007, p.22). The years that followed, saw the Federalists die out and replaced by other parties in waging opposition to the Democrats.

The Party founders’ political Ideologies

Jefferson Thomas (1743-1828)

Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 at Shadwell plantation in what would later become to be known Albemarle County, Virginia. He was educated at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he studied law after completing undergraduate studies in mathematics, philosophy and French and the direction of William Small, a Scot and the only layman on William and Mary’s faculty of Anglican clerics (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.369). He married Martha Wayles Skelton, who was a widow, in 1772.

Jefferson started his political life in 1769, when he was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and where he served as representative for Albemarle County until 1776. (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.369). With the deepening hostilities between the American colonies and the Britain, Jefferson became instrumental in preparing a draft of instructions for the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress in 1774, which was published as a summary View of the Rights of British America to some acclaim (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.369).

Jefferson was elected the youngest delegate from Virginia, together with George Washington, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, Richard Henry Lee and Edmund Pendleton, to the second Continental Congress in 1775. While there, during the summer of 1776, he prepared the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, which was approved with minor revisions and amendments by the Congress (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.369).

Three states, Pennsylvania, Delaware and South Carolina, were objected to the Declaration but after this objection was overcome, the Declaration was passed unanimously on July 4, 1776, with New York abstaining and it then served to launch American colonies in their revolt against Britain (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.370). This Declaration became one of Jefferson’s greatest contributions to the American political thought.

In the Declaration, Jefferson’s thought was: in the first paragraph, Jefferson stated that, the sovereignty of the colonies and their standing as a free and equal nation in the eyes of the world. His assertion that the colonies were “one people” was very central in shaping the consciousness of the colonists as engaged in a common struggle against the British Empire (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.370).

Still in the Declaration’s first paragraph, Jefferson stated that, the American Revolution was to be a fundamentally political revolution that was concerned with changing forms of governments rather than remaking society in its entirety and that the revolution would be civil, insofar as a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind” and required the colonists to submit the reasonable causes of their grievances to the scrutiny of the world (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.370).

The Declaration second paragraph outlines the general principle of liberty, equality and popular government upon which the American Revolution was premised which Jefferson believed in. In the Declaration, it is the case that governments derive their “just powers” only “from the consent of the governed” and that, “all people are created equal” that as human beings they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” among which are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends”, the people have the right to abolish that government and to form another more conducive to their “Safety and Happiness” (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.370).

After serving in the Virginia House of Delegates and two terms as governor of Virginia, Jefferson was elected a delegate to the Congress from the state of Virginia in 1783 under the Articles of Confederation and shortly afterward, he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to Europe in 1784 and by 1785, he replaced Benjamin Franklin as the minister to France (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.370). In 1793, Jefferson resigned after disagreeing with Alexander Hamilton over the foreign treaties and constitutionality of a national bank, to which Jefferson objected vehemently (Fremont-Barnes, 2007, p.371)

Democratic Party racial issue

Between the Civil War and the election of 1928, majority of African American voters were Republicans. This loyalty was due to the fact that, the Republican Party was anti-slavery while on the other hand, the Democratic was closely identified with slave-holders and secession (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126). The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had signed the Emancipation Proclamation and his allies and successors passed and enforced the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments. During the reconstruction, newly enfranchised black voters in the South helped the Republican Party achieve national political hegemony that lasted until at least 1880 (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126).

The South remained overwhelmingly Democratic after the Renstruction and it solidified its dominance by disfranchising African Americans and the passing of the Jim Crow laws. When they could, the blacks voted against Southern racism and the Democratic Party by voting Republican, and which they did in every major, local, state, and national election for more than 60 years (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126).

By the late 1920s, the national Republican Party hit upon a new strategy to use its conservative principles to woo white Southern voters. This process, described as “lily-white” strategy, combined with the economic misery of the Great Depression, began a process by which African American voters switched their party allegiances (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126).

In 1934, Arthur W. Mitchell switched from Republican to Democrat and won election to the House of Representative from Illinois. Mitchell was the first black Democrat elected to Congress (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126). New Deal Democrats in Northern cities and especially in New York and Chicago began reaching out to black voters and promising relief from the Great Depression and thus, the black voters supported the policies of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126).

Africans Americans were happy with Roosevelt “Black Cabinet” which was an official group of prominent blacks who advised the president on race relations and also the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt who publicly associated with blacks and was an outspoken proponent of racial equality (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126). Nevertheless, many older blacks continued to vote Republican but in New York more than 81 per cent of black voters voted for Democratic in 1936, which was an increase of 50 per cent from the 1928 (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126).

New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration(WPA) and the National Recovery Administration(NRA), helped Africans Americans learn to read and get back on their feet financially. Also the WPA sent oral historians to interview aging-slaves about their lives before and during the Civil War (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.126). Southern blacks were less likely to support the party of Roosevelt, because to them, the Democratic Party was and had always been party of segregation and white supremacy. However, today a large majority of both Northern and Southern blacks routinely cast votes for Democratic candidates (Earle and Earle, 2000, p.127)

Democrats and the 1932 New Deal realignment

The New Deal realignment of the 1930’s occurred during a political era that was very different from the party era in which the political realignments of the 1850s and 1890s took place (Shafer, 1991, p.90). The residual political involvent within the electorate helped make the realignment possible whereby Former Socialists, Progressive voters and the Farmer-Laborites were brought into the party’s voting block (Shafer, 1991, p.90).

The process which stressed on mobilization and “conversion” helped into building the majority of New Deal Democratic coalition, who had earlier voted irregularly before 1930, and also young people who had become potential voters especially after the Great Depression were also recruited and they significantly increased the turnout and turn rates to the now dominant Democratic coalition (Shafer, 1991, p.90).

The New Deal electoral coalition was also mobilized in part by a variety of other organizations outside the Democratic party, which penetrated the localities dominated by Republicans and in Democratic had performed poorly it the 1920s and where it would have been very hard for the party to undertake this task alone (Shafer, 1991, p.90). The crucial organizations that played important role in the creation of the coalition included; The Farmer-Labor, American Labor and the Liberal parties. Also, the expanding bureaucracy of the welfare state and the a mass labor movement, again played great roles in the creation of a coalition that influenced government policy as well as elections foe a generation beyond the New Deal itself (Shafer, 1991, p.90).

Significant Developments of Democratic Party

Significant developments of the Democrats can be clearly captured in the administration regime of Roosevelt and the New Deal plan. The New Deal plan helped to give birth to the idea within American of the ‘semi-welfare’ state and that the government had a responsibility to look after the welfare of its citizens (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.239). It extended the rights of the workers and began for many of them social security payments.

It further introduced the much needed controls on the banking system and stock exchange and also set up a central banking system (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.239). It began the idea of government having a responsibility for regulating the economy that was in contrast to the laissez-faire economic thinking of many in the 1920s (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.239). Thousands of miles of roads, many bridges and the TVA dams are today the visible legacy of the New Deal era, and also, during the era, Washington became much more important as a centre of political power (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.239).

At a time of economic depression, the Deal helped to restore national morale for it offered hope to groups that had felt excluded from the mainstream of the American life, and these groups included mainly the Catholics, the Jews, Blacks and the women, they became increasingly represented in the Roosevelt administration (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.239).

Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)

With unemployment rate high in 1933 and likely to rise, measures had to be taken to reverse this alarming trend (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.108). FERA was therefore created and put under the chairmanship of Hopkins. He believed that the unemployed should be given work and not dole and that work relief was better than the dole since it gave the unemployed self-respect (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.108). That it was good for their morale and could result in the completion of a number of socially useful projects (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.108). Through this, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was created in November 1933, and it spend one billion dollars on short-term projects for the unemployed and within two months, work for four million Americans had been found, who received 40 cents per hour if unskilled and one dollar if skilled (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.109)

The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)

It was established under the New Deal and its aims were to raise commodity prices to pre-1914 levels by ‘adjusting’, effectively reducing the size of farm crops, hence, if smaller amounts of farm produce were sold at market, prices would rise (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.123). To encourage farmers to take fields out of production, financial compensation would be offered, as a result, cotton farmers were encouraged to plough ten million acres of their crop back into the ground and received generous compensation for doing so (Willoughby and Willoughby, 2000, p.123).

Conclusion

The period preceding the New Deal saw the Democrats rule almost uninterrupted for three decades. That it is from the Roosevelt policy of the New Deal that the party became popular to the American electors. The broad agenda that the party still maintains up to now was set by Roosevelt during his rule which placed much emphasis liberal politics and that are the foundation of Democratic Party and also the duty of the government to care for its people. Currently, the Democratic Party has firm belief in the mixed economy and a meek welfare state.

Works Cited

Anderson, Dale. The Democratic Party: America’s Oldest Party. MN, Compass Point Books. 2007. Web.

Earle, Jonathan and Earle, Halperin. The Routledge atlas of African American history. NY, Routledge. 2000. Web.

Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Revolutions and New Ideologies, 1760-1815. CT, Greenwood Publishing Group. 2007. Web.

Jenkins, Stilwell. J. History of political parties in the State of New-York: from the acknowledgement of the independence of the United States to the close of the presidential election in eighteen hundred forty-four. NY, Alden & Markham. 1846. Web.

Shafer, Byron. E. The End of realignment: interpreting American electoral eras. WI, University of Wisconsin Press. 1991. Web.

Willoughby, Douglas and Willoughby, Susan. The USA 1917-45. NH, Heinemann. 2000. Web.