Jeffersonian vs. Jacksonian Democracy: Party Shift Explained

The First Party System and Jeffersonian Republicanism

Before discussing how and why change came to American government and politics — from the Jeffersonian era to the Andrew Jackson era — it is useful to set the stage for the Jacksonian period by reviewing the era of Thomas Jefferson, known politically as the "First Party System." Jefferson's influence lasted from roughly the late 1790s to 1824. This period involved the formation of the Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican parties. What divided these two parties philosophically, according to the book Political Behavior of the American Electorate (Flanigan & Zingale), was "their attitude toward the power of the central government" (Flanigan 58).

The Federalists were interested in "increasing the authority of the central government," Flanigan writes, and hence received the firm backing of commercial and financial sectors of American society at that time. The Jeffersonian Republicans, however, "distrusted the centralizing and, in their view, aristocratic tendencies of their rivals." The two parties were actually launched as factions within the U.S. Congress, but as time passed, their influence spread to the state and local level and down to the voting public. These two parties helped develop, form, and fine-tune opinions about issues that were important to the country. Flanigan writes that after 1815 there was a great reduction in the clout of the Federalists — due in no small part to the popularity of Jefferson — and competition "all but ceased" as the Jeffersonian Republicans "gained supremacy" and eased the country into the so-called "Era of Good Feelings."

The Second Party System and the Rise of Jacksonian Democracy

The first presidential election that featured widespread popular participation by voters was the presidential election of 1828. It also marked the "resurgence of party competition for the presidency" (Flanigan 58). The election featured the emergence of the Democrats and Whigs as powerful political parties — along with the launching of Andrew Jackson's era of influence. Flanigan explains that the Democrats (conservatives at that time) and Whigs competed "fairly evenly" for national power right up to the eve of the Civil War.

The Jeffersonian Era: Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe

David Brown writes in the journal Historian (Brown 1999) that while George Washington was a war hero and John Adams was also a "national icon," those two left little behind in terms of political legacy. After Adams suffered "the ignominy of electoral defeat by Jefferson in 1800," the Federalists "rarely competed effectively for national office afterwards," Brown explains. Thomas Jefferson, by contrast, "bequeathed to partisan heirs James Madison and James Monroe the blueprint for a republican political economy of westward expansion," promoted by the "activist agrarian state." Indeed, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe won six straight presidential elections during the period 1800 to 1824, and they enjoyed the benefits of a Congress dominated by Democratic-Republicans throughout that twenty-four-year period.

The Jefferson legacy, Brown continues, served "both the proponents of radical egalitarianism and the champions of Southern slavery." Jefferson was "many things to many people." He was the "apostle of liberty," the author of the Declaration of Independence, and a man whose vision focused on "westward expansion" of the young nation through farmers tilling the land "beyond the reach of intruding institutional restraints." Jefferson backed up his desire to see the nation expand westward by promoting federally financed improvements "in education and transportation" in the period immediately following the War of 1812. Meanwhile, the Jeffersonian coalition had evolved from "a decentralized agrarian opposition to Federalism in the 1790s" into a "ruling party of vigorous nationalists in 1816." Jefferson was known for his desire to have federal funds support education, the arts, roads, rivers, and manufactures. Part of these programs stemmed from Jefferson's strategy for shoring up the homeland. Unable to compel Britain and France to respect American neutrality on the high seas, he helped enact the Embargo Act of 1807, an attempt to halt all American exports of goods into the areas of conflict in Europe.

American manufacturers received a further push from Jeffersonian politics when, after the War of 1812, Jefferson's successor Madison — who feared the United States becoming too dependent on European markets — urged Congress to promote "improvement friendly to agriculture, to manufacturers, and to external as well as internal commerce," Brown continues. This type of nationalism resonated with Democratic-Republicans; most of them recognized that the nation needed a "diversified economy, dependable home market, and military security." Brown quotes Jefferson as saying in 1816: "He who is now against domestic manufacture must be for reducing us either to dependence on a foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns."

But the Jeffersonian push for a strong economy — through federal subsidies of manufacturing and commercial development — ultimately gave way, Brown asserts, to "apprehension that federal promotion of the emerging commercial economy would lead to inequality within American society" and that elite, wealthy people would be the primary beneficiaries.