The Second American Party System Using your knowledge of information read in the textbook, and/or review book, and the documents attached prepare a synopsis of the Second Party System. As a group you have thirty minutes to analyze the material and present the story of the Second Party System to your classmates while paying attention to some of the questions below. Please do not limit yourselves to just those questions as they are meant to get you started. Remember your classmates will not have the documents so you must be clear in addressing each of them in your presentation. You will have no more than five to six minutes to present your in-depth findings. Questions to ponder: Why did the country develop a second party system at this time? Did we need a second political party? Was it a reaction to anything? How did the second party develop? Who joined and why? What was their political ideal? You may present any manner or style you choose, preferably not standing up and talking...that’s boring, right? Make sure to include details and reference to the information contained in the attached packet. The Democratic Party By Michael F. Holt, Ph.D. The Democratic Party was the first of these two competitors to form. Combining disparate foes of John Quincy Adams's presidential administration (1825-1829), it coalesced around Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign in 1828. As President Jackson alienated some of his initial supporters who would join the opposition to him, but his actions cemented the loyalty of far more of his initial voters as well as many others. Jackson won reelection in 1832, his Vice President and chosen successor Martin Van Buren would be elected in 1836, and his Tennessee lieutenant James K. Polk would win the presidency in 1844. Particularly strong in the Deep South and newer western states as well as Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine, the Democratic party was committed to the strong exertion of executive power vis-a-vis Congress and state legislatures, states' rights, Indian removal, the sale of federal land in the West at low prices, and territorial expansion. It strongly opposed positive governmental intervention into the economy in the form of charters for banks and other corporations, the sale of state bonds, subsidies for internal improvements like road and canal construction, and protective tariffs because it believed that such actions created privilege for the wealthy at the expense of others' equal rights. As a result, almost everywhere in the nation its strongest bases of voter support were in areas still outside the nexis of the market economy and among those in urban areas who believed they had been victimized by the market economy. Democrats were also far more hospitable to Catholics and immigrants than were their political rivals just as they were far more hostile to abolitionists and the rights of blacks than those rivals. The National Republican Party By Michael F. Holt, Ph.D. Between Jackson's election in 1828 and the formation of the Whig party in early 1834, Jackson's political foes were divided among three or four groups. Most important was the National Republican party. Supporters of the Adams administration took this name after Adams's defeat in the election of 1828. Led by Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John M. Clayton of Delaware, and Samuel Southard of New Jersey, the National Republican party was almost non-existent west of Ohio and south of Maryland and Kentucky, save for Louisiana whose sugar planters wanted protective tariffs. In sharp distinction to the Jacksonian Democrats, National Republicans were committed to using the national government to promote economic and social development. In particular, they were adherents of Henry Clay's "American System" which called for Congress to charter a national bank to supply the nation with a uniform and ample currency, pass a protective tariff to foster the development of manufacturing, and subsidize internal improvement projects to facilitate trade among different regions of the country. National Republicans also unanimously opposed Democrats' Indian Removal Act of 1830, which called for moving tribes from southeastern states west of the Mississippi River, and that opposition contributed to their unpopularity in much of the South. In 1832 National Republicans ran Henry Clay for president against Jackson, and to provide Clay with what they expected to be a winning issue, they encouraged Nicholas Biddle to seek a new charter for the Bank of the United States that year. This tactic not only provoked Jackson's famous veto of the new charter which rallied Democrats to his support. It also tarnished National Republicans as eastern elitists who championed a a privileged institution that Jackson had successfully labeled as a monster. Unable to rally all of Jackson's foes. Clay won only 49 electoral votes compared to Jackson's 219. Clearly uncompetitive, the National Republicans would shortly be subsumed by the new Whig party. The Antimasonic Party By Michael F. Holt, Ph.D. One reason Clay could not rally all of Jackson's opponents in 1832 was that in much of the Northeast a different anti-Democratic party, the Antimasonic party, also existed. Started in 1826 to protest the official cover-up of the suspected murder of a defecting Mason in western New York, Antimasonry developed into the nation's first powerful populistic third party. Protesting that Freemasonry was a dangerous, unrepublican, and all-powerful secret society that privileged its members legally, politically, and economically over all non- members by controlling state and local governments, Antimasons called on voters to restore true self-government by driving Masons from elected office and having new governments pass state laws declaring the fraternity to be illegal. The movement spread like wild-fire, for Antimasons seemed to provide a plausible explanation why government seemed unresponsive to popular demands—namely that Masons controlled it and used it exclusively to benefit other Masons. Though Antimasons cooperated with the Adams men in 1828, by 1830 they had displaced National Republicans as Democrats' primary opponent in New York and Pennsylvania. And in New England, where National Republicans controlled most state governments, Antimasons openly opposed them. Nor would they support Clay, himself a Mason, in 1832; instead they ran their own presidential candidate, William Wirt. Founded upon the fundamental proposition that no man or group of men was above the law, Antimasons would respond to Whigs' cry that Jackson had flouted the law and the Constitution. By the late 1830s, with a few exceptions in New England who became Democrats, almost all of them would join the Whig party, giving it an egalitarian, populistic patina to counter the elitist stigma of National Republicans. The Whig Party By Michael F. Holt, Ph.D. The Whig party would combine National Republicans and Antimasons as well as two different groups of southern anti-Jackson men who had refused to support Clay in 1832 because they considered National Republicans' nationalistic economic program an unconstitutional violation of states' rights. One was South Carolina's Nullifiers who shortly after Jackson's reelection in 1832 declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void in their state. Their chief spokesman in Congress, Senator John C. Calhoun, who was Jackson's Vice President during his first term, would help form the Whig party in the winter of 1833-34, but he and most South Carolina Nullifiers would rejoin the Democratic party in 1837. The second group, however, would remain Whigs. These were one-time Democrats who considered South Carolina's attempts to nullify a federal statute nonsensical but who also bridled at the strong nationalistic stance Jackson took in his December 1832 proclamation against nullification and his call on Congress for a "Force Bill" to suppress it. By mid-1833 these men referred to themselves as Independent States Rights men to express their political distance from Nullifiers, Jacksonians, and National Republicans alike. What brought these disparate anti-Jackson men together in the Whig party in 1834 was their common anger at Jackson's executive order of September 1833 removing federal deposits from the Bank of the United States. Since the Bank's charter of 1816, which ran until 1836, called for federal money to be deposited in the BUS, Jackson's action struck these men as illegal, unconstitutional, and high-handed executive tyranny. Thus Whigs initially rallied against executive tyranny and Jackson's monarchical pretensions. That was what the very name "Whig," which Revolutionary patriots had also used to signify their opposition to King George III, was meant to convey, and throughout their twenty-year history, the Whig party would rail against executive actions by both presidents and governors that threatened the autonomy and power of Congress and state legislatures. But Whigs would also embrace the National Republicans' American System after the Panic of 1837 and advocate the positive economic legislation in states that Democrats opposed: the chartering of banks and other corporations; the liberal circulation of paper-money banknotes; and subsidization of internal improvement projects that required the issue of state bonds. Where Democrats favored territorial expansion in the 1840s, Whigs would oppose it. Where Democrats pushed for the reduction of prices for federal lands in the West, Whigs wanted to keep the prices high and to distribute the revenue from federal land sales to state governments. Where the Democratic electorate was strongest in areas still outside the commercial, monetized market economy, Whigs throughout the nation were strongest in those areas and among those groups already in the market sector or who aspired to enter it. That aspiration is clearly what attracted Abraham Lincoln to the Whig party and kept him a devoted Whig until the party's final death throes in 1856.