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Partisan politics in the United States has not always been an established structure. Rather, party alignment grew out of societal divisions in the early republic. The founding fathers—most notably Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson—recognized the natural divisions present in any society (between the commoner and aristocrat), and each took a firm position. Additionally, a sense of party loyalty emerged from controversial Federalist actions championed by Hamilton himself, and major divisions turned into strong opposition. Then, after the divisions had crystallized into two parties, Jefferson’s presidential administration demonstrated the plausibility in a transit of power, where one administration’s actions need not cancel those of its predecessors. Through the actions of Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans, partisan politics not only emerged, but also demonstrated their effectiveness in the early American Republic. The views of founding fathers such as Jefferson and Hamilton (around whom the parties could be said to have been formed) created an environment in which organized partisanship could emerge. Both of them, and especially Jefferson, understood society to have two major divisions—divisions between the many commoners and the aristocratic few. Society is “naturally divided into two parties,” claimed Jefferson, and parties would simply be a natural expression of this division. He and Alexander Hamilton merely disagreed regarding where among the parties the privilege of rule ought to be bestowed. Hamilton, the Federalist aristocrat, felt that the affluent minority deserved a “distinct, permanent share” in government, whereas Jefferson believed the commoners are “our dependence for continued freedom.” Ever since the social stratification of the late 1700’s, aristocrats and commoners were emerging as separate political groups. These views helped foster a two-party structure of government, soon to be bolstered by controversial disputes over certain government actions. As the Revolutionary War ended, America was left with large debts to pay off. Its method of doing this, pioneered by the Federalists, would compound the divisions in society and create party boundaries. In the 1790’s the Hamiltonian Federalists implemented the debt assumption plan, by which the Federal government would take on all debt incurred by the war. Included in this plan were two very controversial measures—one to create a national bank, the other to impose an excise tax on goods like whiskey. The former of these was viewed as a government suppression of states’ rights. (Jefferson, the strict constructionist, believed that chartering banks was a matter for the states) The latter was seen as an unfair stricture on the success of the lower class. As a result, the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 flared up among the backwoods distillers in the Alleghenies. These issues were the first in which citizens demonstrated long-term two-party thinking by supporting either the aristocratic Federalists, or the more populist Republicans. The foundations of the system were laid, but had yet to be tested in a transition of authority , from one president to the next. The Jefferson administration was this test. In 1800 the transition was made from Adams’ Federalist majority to Jefferson’s Republicans. This presidency would determine whether or not the two ideologically differing parties would be able to maintain a stable government under a new leader. Jefferson’s actions ultimately demonstrated that such a transit of power was plausible. Although the new president eliminated the excise tax on Whiskey, he retained the rest of the Hamiltonian economic structure. Eventually his Republican party endorsed the creation of an even larger bank. And, using the Hamiltonian system, national debt was reduced by roughly $50 million dollars by 1812. Although he had maintained the stable government set up under the Federalists, he still managed to apply his Republican ideology—for example, he pardoned Sedition act victims, reduced the naturalization laws to five years, and as previously mentioned eliminated the excise tax. What this achieved was a historical example of how the transition of power between parties need not destroy the government. Having passed this test, the stage was set for the political parties to remain in American politics throughout most of the nation’s subsequent history. Partisan politics emerged out of natural societal divisions, embraced in different ways by Jefferson and Hamilton. Through Thomas Jefferson’s opposition to the Federalists, and his alignment with the common people, political parties developed into official structures. Even events such as the Whiskey rebellion further demonstrate the alignment of America’s citizenry, either for or against the aristocratic oligarchy. And as the completing act of partisanship’s gestation, it was made clear by Jefferson’s administration that party politics was a workable system. Jefferson’s prominence in all of this helped shape the partisan nature of American politics, and demonstrated its competence, allowing a two-party system to endure throughout most of American democratic history. |
