Any Jefferson history buffs wanna assist with a homework question?

[woodsprite]

Way back when Jefferson was around, he was listed as a Democratic-Republican. The Democratic-Republican party is defined as "specifically, to the Washington administration's fiscal policies and pro-British foreign policy. Organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson with the aid of George Clinton and Aaron Burr, the Democratic-Republicans brought together former Antifederalists and moderate Federalists. They wanted weaker federal government, with most power assigned to the states, an economic policy favoring agriculture, and a foreign policy favoring the French Revolution."

The Federalist party is defined as "supported manufactures, a protective tariff, and assumption of state debts. They favored a strong national government, a broad interpretation of the Constitution, and a sound financial policy based on industrialization, commerce, and urbanization."

So, which would be the basis for the Democratic party? It sounds like the Democratic-Republicans became just the plain old Republican party and the Federalists became the Dem party. Which is the opposite of what my daughter (and I) would have expected. So far I haven't been able to come up with a definitive answer from the web yet.

7th grade homework - gotta luv it! Thanks in advance for the help.

[Hugin]

1. The way I understand it...

From the website democrats.com:

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United
States. Stemming from the Democratic-Republican party.

From Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Democratic-Republican_Party

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Have you read these sites?

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_024300_democraticpa.htm

DEMOCRATIC PARTY
The Democratic party began to assume its modern form during the intense political conflict that divided Americans after the War of 1812. Over the next decade, as the party's organization developed, Democrats argued that they were combating Federalist efforts to impose an aristocratic, centralized government on the American people. The conflict between centralizers and egalitarians, Democrats declared, went back to the Hamiltonian efforts in the 1790s to erect a powerful national authority, threatening to individual liberties.

These Democrats, unlike their Jeffersonian predecessors, accepted the inevitability and legitimacy of popular political conflict and believed that political parties were the best means to handle that conflict. Although the Democrats did not originate conventions, platforms, and highly institutionalized campaigning, they brought these features of the party system to a new level. The leaders of this organizational revolution were Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and a few others.

more at link


http://sd.essortment.com/historydemocrat_rbur.htm

History of the Democratic party
History of the democratic party. The American political party system began with Thomas Jefferson in the late 1700's...

The history of the Democratic Party in the United States goes back to the time of our first Presidents. Thomas Jefferson, in the late 1700's, started the first political party with the conviction that the federal government was assuming too much power over domestic policy and should be stopped. His party became known as the "Democratic" party when candidate Andrew Jackson became President in 1828. Jackson was known as a man of the people. He took the Democratic party that Jefferson and his elite collegues had formed and turned it over to the citizens of the United States. The party held its first convention in 1832 to re-elect Jackson to a second term.


The Democratic National Convention began the Democratic National Committee in 1848. It has become the longest running political organization in the world. The Convention gave the committee the job of promoting the party causes between the conventions and also preparing for each of the next conventions.

more at link

[Zomby Woof]

3. A Brief History of Political Party Time

Parties and their accompanying ideologies morph and the way we define the agendas of the "right" and the "left" are equally elastic throughout time. It's dicey when imposing today's preoccupations and concerns upon those of the past and making them conform to a pre-conceived ideological mold (look at how the neocons have replaced the paleocons as the driving definers of the Republican agenda and ideology as an example of this happening in our lifetimes). Yes, some of the issues have stayed the same - the tariff versus NAFTA comes to mind - and the basic central argument which has always defined America remains a constant: The relationship between federal and state power. The Civil War settled it to the extent that the Federal government reigns supreme, but the tension remains, and has rumblings of unsettlement about it which linger today.

So the evolution of the parties is (very roughly) as follows:

The Democratic-Republicans were often called just "Republicans" in their time, but is NOT the same Republican party of today. The current Republican party started in 1854, and the first Republican president was Lincoln.

The ancestor of the modern Republicans was the Whigs. Before that, no direct ancestor, but populated by a few scattered Federalists, since that party was long dead by the 1810's.

The Democratic-Republican party faded during the tenure of J.Q. Adams in the 1820's, and the modern Democratic party was created in its wake, the world's oldest continuous political party. Jackson was the first Democratic president.

You are on the right track: There is a delineation between the two parties back then that has echoes of familiarity in both ideology and preoccupation - again, informed by the old federal/state dichotomy of power. But just looking at the past 100 years shows that the current Republican party has little in common with the one of Theodore Roosevelt, save the bellicose jingoism of the foreign policy. And the Democratic party of the 1850's was largely pro-slavery and "states rights", at odds with its embracing of civil rights a century later. As I said, it's dicey when trying to follow a direct and neat path from past to present.

[Robeson]

4. If you really want your daughter to mess with her 7th grade teacher...

...have her report on the book the "The Jefferson Conspiracies" which basically lays out the role of Jefferson in the assassination of Meriwether Lewis. It's not a very pretty picture of early "Americana".

Of course, if she actually talked about this in the class, she may get expelled from school, so on second thought, she may not want to talk about this particular topic....;-)

[TroubleMan]

5. I know that at one time the Dems were the conservative party and the

Repubs were the liberal party. Somewhere along the way they switched.

[Whoa_Nelly]

6. I think they "switched" right after the Civil War

[bluestateguy]

7. The Democrats are the descendants of the D-R's.

The D-R's became the majority party by 1820, so big, in fact, that they were the only party in the country for a brief period of time. For a few years, America was a true one party state (the so-called "era of Good Feeling").

Everybody called themselves Democratic-Republicans: J.Q Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, Henry Clay. But these men had different views about many issues, so the party divided again. Jackson's supporters started calling themselves "Democrats" around 1826, as if to suggest that they represented the "real" spirit of Thomas Jefferson and the D-R party, or the "democratic", populist wing of the Democratic-Republican Party. J.Q. Adams and Henry Clay started calling themselves National Republicans, later to be known as the Whig party. Jacksonian Democrats favored a return to Jeffersonian principles, more liberal voter suffrage laws, low tariffs and an agrarian society. Jacksonian Democrats also believed the presidency should be a strong office to combat the entrenched privilege of the mercantalist classes. The president, in their view, was the tribunal of the public will. Another major difference was that Jacksonian Democrats embraced political parties as a positive good, rather than a necessary evil as Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans did. Jacksonian Democrats believed that parties were a voice for the little guy and should be embraced.

I'll be happy to answer more questions if you have any.

So to recap with a timeline:

Democratic-Republicans: about 1791-about 1825

spawns...

Democrats: about 1826-

and

National Republicans: about 1826-1834

From the National Republicans..

Whigs: 1834-1856

From the Whigs..

Republicans: 1854-

note: most northern Whigs became Republicans (Lincoln included), while most southern Whigs became Democrats.

[woodsprite]

8. Thank you all so much. I'm passing this along to my daughter.

Sorry I didn't get back to you guys earlier, but I've been at a meeting for work.

Thanks again! I don't know if she needs more, but if so, I'll check out the sites. I tell ya', some days I get tired with the amount of homework she brings home. I know she must. I guess in my preteen/teen years it didn't bother me much, but at 42 I conk out way before she does and I try to pay attention to everything she's doing in each class. UGH!!!

[Katherine Brengle]

9. The Feds were more like modern Dems, but the modern Democratic

party was really borne out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. If you had to make a rough comparison, my money's on the Dems as Federalists angle.

(Edit: This does not mean that the current Dems are the descendants of the Feds--the parties have flipped back and forth a few times, so the D-Rs are the actual "ancestors" I believe, but it is very convoluted at this point.)