WHIGS vs. DEMOCRATS Slavery, Freedom, crisis Union 1840-1877 Democracy America: The Whigs Democrats Many Americans half nineteenth century a powerful federal government a threat individual liberty supported sovereignty state local government.

Slavery, freedom, and the crisis of the Union 1840-1877: Considering economic policies and the balance of power between national and local government, how did Whigs and Democrats differ in their definitions of American freedom and its relationship to government authority? Use two examples from both the Democrats and Whigs to support your claims.

Ever since the birth of America, two competing strains of thought ran through the American consciousness. The first was the Jeffersonian idea that the government which governed best, governed least and that a relatively weak central government was a facilitator of liberty. The contrasting Hamiltonian notion stressed that a strong federal government was required to protect individual liberties and the state as a whole. These tensions were later embodied in the clashing political positions of the Democrats and Whigs. The Democratic Party was created in the spirit of Jefferson and supported a weak federal government and states' rights, and became associated with the interests of the South (What's in a name, 2009). In contrast, "the Whigs started off as a coalition of those opposed...

Many southerners in the Whigs professed admiration for Jackson but were clearly uncomfortable with his latter policies on banking" (What's in a name, 2009). Jackson's destruction of the second federal bank of the United States (one of the founding concepts of Hamiltonian democracy) was keeping with his Jeffersonian principles and his advocacy of states' rights.
The Democrat's supporters were predominantly agrarian in nature, and perceived the federal government as representing the interests of the industrialized north. In contrast, the Whig Party supported what it saw as progress for the new nation in the form of industrialization. Although it would ultimately prove to be a fractious, difficult-to-unify coalition of interests, "Whig Party's platform of federal support for internal improvements such as roads and canals, protective tariffs, and a national bank....[demanded] a stronger national role in regional economic development" (Baker 2007). The Democrats viewed these policies as supporting a minority of 'big business,' industrial interests vs. The interests of the people. The Whigs criticized the populist Democrats for their corruption, and alleged that the use of a 'spoils system' often put into place by Democrats, in which only the party in power's political supporters were allowed…