First Parties, Part III

The National Republican Party lost the next two elections (J.Q. Adams to Andrew Jackson in 1828 and Henry Clay to Andrew Jackson in 1832) and dissolved. Most of the National Republicans, along with other groups, joined to form the Whig Party. The Whig Party fell apart shortly before the Civil War as most of its members joined the new Republican Party (the same Republican Party of today).

The new Democratic Party represented the original Democratic-Republican positions. Democrats favored states' rights and a limited central government, an economy based on agriculture, a revenue tariff, and nullification. This party had its strength in the South and West, although it had significant strength in some of the northern states.

The National Republicans, the Whigs, and finally the Republicans more closely followed the Federalist principles. These parties basically favored a stronger central government with a more centrally controlled economy based on industry and business interests, a protective tariff, a central bank, judicial review, and opposition to states' rights and nullification. These parties had their greatest strength in the North and Northwest, with little or no power in the Deep South.

The two major parties, especially the final Democrats and Republicans, became more and more sectional, with Republicans being synonymous with the North and Democrats with the South. The Southern view of the Union was that expressed in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. It said that the sovereign states created the federal government, and joined it voluntarily. Just as any sovereign state could, they had the right to leave this Union any time they wished (in much the same way the United States joined the United Nations and could leave it any time it wished). For their precedent, they often quoted the writing of Jefferson and Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, a powerful precedent given the standing of these two political giants.

These basic differences between the two original parties, never resolved, eventually led to the Civil War, often called "The Inevitable Conflict." These two basically opposite and incompatible views of government could not be resolved through the normal political process and made the Civil War inevitable.

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