Jacksonian Democracy

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how from the termination, in 1815, of Federalism, the political concept supporting a strong central government, to the rise of the slavery problem in the 1850s, American political history was typified by bitter partisan conflict on the part of the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and the Whigs. It shows how the major transformation in the Jacksonian Era was the materialization of a solid two-party system. It shows how the party eventually to become known as the Republican Party has given the U.S. the basic political formation that survives to this day and how the present Republican and Democratic parties have much in common with their ancestors.

From the Paper:

"A lot of Jacksonians considered themselves as strangers to the old Jeffersonian political order, which they assumed had wandered away from true republican values. Fraction of their aggression was intended at Quincy Adams, not for the reason that he diverged from the Democratic-Republican principles of 1816, but for the reason that he personified them all too well. If, as William Ward has declared, Jackson was the "symbol for an age," it was mainly alien to the old Democratic-Republicans. Jackson's America was more democratic, as well as more unrestricted than the one practiced by Jefferson and anticipated by Quincy Adams (James, 1938)."

More papers on Jacksonian Democracy:

• Term Paper # 17400 : "Era of Jacksonian Democracy"
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• Research Paper # 98208 : "Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracies"

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