Free Soilers Failed as a Third Party and Prospects for Successful New Ones now are Dim

 

An anti-Free Soil cartoon shows party leaders as warlocks brewing up a poison pot.

Note--You would think the political chaos of the second Trump residency would invite new third party challengers to the polarized warring establishments but once promising alternatives--Libertarians on the Right and Greens on the Left have faded as adherents of each answered the call not to divide forces in an Armageddon like final battle.  Anti-Trump Republicans have failed to rally an alternative to the MAGA cult.  Instead of taking the opportunity to launch a new Socialist party on the heels of recent election triumphs, the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) are locked in an increasingly bitter battle with establishment centrists for the future of the Democratic Party. 

The history of third party movements in this country is strewn with failure, futility, and frustration.  Yet often they set the stage for great change to come.  That was certainly true of the first important third party, the Free Soilers, born on August 9, 1848 at an outdoor convention in Buffalo, New York’s Court House Park.

The party arose from the bitter debate about the status of territories recently obtained by conquest in the Mexican War.  Southern zealots wanted the whole territory including parts of Texas, New Mexico (including the future Arizona), California, and parts of the future states of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada open to slavery without reservation.  Northern states had enough power in Congress to block that.

Northern Democrats, always seeking accommodation, officially advanced the doctrine of Popular Sovereignty—letting the citizens of the new territories decide their status by popular election.  

The areas shown in tan on this map of U.S. territorial growth include Texas and the lands acquired by conquest in the Mexican War.  The Wilmont Proviso would have banned slavery from all but Texas.  It was doomed to failure in Congress, but its ardent supporters would form the nucleus off the new Free Soil Party.

This outraged anti-slavery Northern Whigs and a minority of Democrats centered in Up State New York. These factions endorsed the Wilmot Proviso as an 1846 proposed rider to an appropriation bill for the costs of negotiating a peace with Mexico.  The Proviso would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico.  Although it was defeated, advocates hoped to resurrect it in some form.

In the run-up to the 1848 Presidential Race the Whigs, always an unstable coalition of former anti-Jacksonians, side-stepped the issue in their platform but nominated war hero Zachary Taylor, a Louisiana plantation and slave owner who was presumed to be sympathetic to the extension of slavery.  Although it later turned out that Taylor was not, outraged anti-slavery Whigs centered in Massachusetts and New England began to look for alternatives.

Up-state New York Democrats dubbed Barn Burners for threatening to split the party in support of the opposition to the extension of slavery into Western territories, a policy first advanced in Congress as the Wilmont Proviso.

Meanwhile the Democrats nominated Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, the leading proponent of Popular Sovereignty leading to a similar crisis among anti-slavery elements of that party.

Things came to a head earlier in 1847 at the New York State Democratic Convention where the majority refused to endorse the Wilmot Proviso.  Almost half of the members of the convention, the so-called Barn Burners, centered in heavily anti-slavery Up State, walked out.  But they did not entirely abandon the party until Cass’s nomination.

Opponents of the Free Soil Party--and they were legion--mocked its embrace of the tiny, largely symbolic abolitionist Liberty Party. A reluctant Martin Van Buren, third from left is shown being shoved into the arms of Negros by Democratic Barn burners and Boston Whig snobs.

A meeting was called in Utica at which it was decided to invite anti-slavery Whigs and members of the tiny abolitionist Liberty Party to join the Buffalo Convention and form a new party.

Although the meeting was engineered by the Barn Burners and supporters of the old Albany Regency, the nation’s first state-wide political machine, which had been put together by Martin Van Buren in the late 1820’s, the leading strategists at the convention became Ohio’s Salmon B. Chase, a Whig and erstwhile maverick Democratic Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire.  Since his election to the Senate by a surprise coalition of minority Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats in the New Hampshire legislature in 1847, Hale had quickly established himself as the most voracious opponent of slavery in the Senate.  His experience led him to have faith in the possibilities of a fusion of the anti-slavery factions of the two established parties.

Although the Free Soilers were a party devoted to stemming the expansion of slavery, they were not the single-issue party often portrayed in history.  Their platform adopted planks shrewdly designed to appeal to former partisans of the older parties.  On the one hand they endorsed Federal spending on internal improvements, a cause dear to Henry Clay Whigs and Westerners and on the other opposed protective tariffs, long a cornerstone of Democratic platforms.  They also advanced a proposal for disposing of government land in the West by homesteading.

Still, their party platform proclaimed, “...we inscribe on our banner, ‘Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor and Free Men,’ and under it we will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions.”

The convention turned for the head of its national ticket to former President Van Buren, who had been ousted after one term by the Whigs who smeared him, unfairly, as an elitist fop and William Henry Harrison who aped the populism of Andrew Jackson.  The aging former Red Fox of the Kinderhook was a shrewd politician and saw a possibility of a comeback, or at least a vindication of his tarnished reputation.  But Van Buren had been strangely mum about slavery in national office, understandable as Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of State, second Vice President, and protégée.  As President he maneuvered for the annexation of Texas, which was bitterly opposed by anti-slavery factions.

But Van Buren announced he had always been an opponent of slavery’s expansion in his heart.  And hoping that a ticket led by a former President would give them instant respectability, the convention went along.

Opponents of the Free Soil Party--and they were legion--mocked its embrace of the tiny, largely symbolic abolitionist Liberty Party. A reluctant Martin Van Buren, third from left is seen as being shoved into the arms of Negros by Democratic Barn burners and Boston Whig snobs.

For Vice President the convention turned to a familiar family name—Adams.  Charles Francis Adams was the son and grandson of Presidents.  His father, John Quincy Adams was lionized by Massachusetts Whigs as Old Man Eloquent for his long post-presidential service in the House of Representatives as an outspoken anti-slavery man.  The studious young Adams was supposed to garner support among the Boston elite.

The new party gained some important support, notably from intellectuals like educator Horace Mann, who had filled John Quincy Adams’s House seat after his death; journalist and editor Richard Henry Dana, Jr.; Charles Sumner leader of Boston’s Conscience Whigs and future Senator; poet/editor William Cullen Bryant of New York City; the Quaker Hoosier John Greenleaf Whittier; and Walt Whitman who became a Brooklyn party leader and editor of the Brooklyn Freeman, a party newspaper.

The Free Soilers also ran candidates for Congress and for several state legislature seats.

This Massachusetts Free Soil rally featured former anti-slavery Whig, rising Party star, and future U.S., Senator Charles Sumner.

The party was careful to pitch itself as moderate.  It did not attack slavery as a fundamental evil or advocate for its abolition where it was in force.  Instead, it argued that the extension of slavery was a threat to Free Labor and that blocking expansion would eventually cause it to “wither away” even in the Deep South.  That drew the scorn of Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who charged that it was “White manism.”  Still, a lot of moderate slavery opponents were drawn to the party.

During the campaign it became apparent that things were not working out as hoped and planned. Of course, the party had no hope in the South.  That region was split between Democrats supporting Cass, and Whigs in the corner of slave holding Taylor.  But Van Buren could not shake the elitist reputation so successfully hung on him damaging his appeal to Northern voters, particularly in the big cities.  Worse, New England Whigs deeply distrusted him as Jackson’s former crony.  Many held their noses and voted for Taylor or sat on their hands in the election.

When the votes were counted, the ticket of Van Buren and Adams got a respectable 291,501 votes and 10.1% of popular votes cast for a distant third place.  They failed to get a single Electoral College vote and were probably the margin of difference that gave the close race between Taylor and Cass to the old general.

On the bright side, the party won seats in Congress and enough state legislative seats so that in combination with liberal Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs they were able to elect candidates like Sumner to the Senate.  Although a small minority in both houses, the Free Soilers in Congress became an important voice in the national debate.

After the Compromise of 1850 most Democrats drifted back to their old party.  But a stalwart few remained steadfast with the Free Soilers.

In the election of 1852, the Party offered little known John P. Hale for President and Representative George Julian of Indiana for Vice President.  The ticket garnered half of the popular votes won by Van Buren and just over 5% of the total.

Salmon P. Chase of Ohio led the remnants of the Free Soil Party into the new Republican Party and in 1860 was a major contender against Abraham Lincoln and others for the Presidential nomination.  Lincoln held his nose and appointed Chase as his Secretary of the Treasury. 

After Northern outrage against the Kansas Nebraska Act, most remaining Free Soilers followed leaders like Salmon P. Chase into becoming an important part, even the backbone, of the new Republican Party, which in the four short years between its nominations of John C. Frémont in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860 became the first and only third party ever to achieve major party status.

How Winfield Scott’s Plan to Put a Fatal Squeeze on the Rebellion

A Civil War era illustration of Winfield Scott's  Anaconda Plan to win the war against the Confederacy.

On May 3, 1861 aged Lt. General Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, presented President Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet, with his Anaconda Plan to conduct the war against secessionist rebel states.    The plan was widely derided by the press and public, which believed that a quick, decisive battle with the main Confederate army in Virginia would win the War of Rebellion.  Scott knew better.  He anticipated a long and bloody conflict.  

Lincoln may have wished for a short, glorious war, but the former Black Hawk War militia Captain read everything on military strategy and tactics that he could lay his hands on in the Library of Congress and sensed that his Commanding General may be right. Although he did not accept Scott’s proposal in every detail, questioned his timeline, and felt he had to order a major attack on Richmond to keep public support, from that point on despite the public ridicule and outcry the President conducted the war broadly on Scott’s plan.

The plan called for:   

1. Blockade ports in the Atlantic and Gulf to reduce foreign supplies and cotton and tobacco exports from Confederate ports.

2. Blockade the Mississippi River to reduce grain and meat shipments from the western to eastern Confederacy and foreign supplies through neutral Mexico. 

3. Control the Tennessee River Valley and a march through Georgia to prevent cooperation among the eastern Confederate states. 

4. Demonstrations against Confederate capital to keep the main Rebel Army pinned down and on the defensive with a campaign by Army troops with Navy support along the James River. 

And that is pretty much exactly how the war was won by the Union.  

Commanding General of the Army Winfield Scott presents his plan to Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet. 

The Navy successfully blockaded most Confederate ports and captured key ports like Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans.  Western troops, experiencing much greater success than the ponderous Army of the Potomac in the East, secured the length of the Mississippi with the capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 (coincidently the also the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg) splitting the Confederacy in two.  Another Yankee Army drove down the Tennessee River protecting the loyal border state of Kentucky, splitting divided Tennessee, and setting up Sherman’s campaign through the railroad and industrial heart of the South in northern Alabama and Georgia, including the capture of Atlanta, which cut off the lower South.  

Campaigns in Virginia and along the James, under incompetent leadership were long, bloody, and inconclusive until the end, but without the logistical support of the rest of the nation, Lee’s legendary Army of Northern Virginia was doomed.  Just about the way Scott foresaw.  

In 1861 Scott was winding down a 47-year Army career serving 14 presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln.   He served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars, Black Hawk War, and Mexican War.  He was the Commanding General of the Army for twenty years, longer than anyone before or since and was the first officer since George Washington to carry the rank of Lt. General.  No other officer in American history served with such distinction at every rank—militia enlisted man, artillery captain, infantry regimental commander, leader of a victorious army in the field, and Commanding General.  He has been called the greatest American soldier ever.

General Scott in full regalia at the beginning of the Civil War.

Yet he also cut something of a ridiculous figure.  His once powerful 6-foot 3-inch frame frame ballooned to over 300 pounds.  Notoriously vain, he swathed that mass in outrageously gaudy uniforms with gigantic epaulets, extravagant gold braid and decoration, every medal he was ever awarded, topped off with a great Napoleonic Era plumed hat.  Ailing from both gout and narcolepsy—uncontrollably lapsing into sleep—he knew that he would not be able to take command of his troops in the field. 

Instead, he offered field command to fellow Virginian Col. Robert E. Lee, universally regarded as the ablest officer in the service.  Unfortunately, unlike Scott, who unhesitatingly placed his loyalty to his nation over that of his native state, Lee chose Virginia and the Confederacy.  

Scott had to entrust the command of the rapidly swelling Volunteer army to the untried hands of Brigadier Gen. Irvin McDowell.  Scott despaired of both McDowell and the ill trained, short term enlisted Volunteers.  During his whole career he advocated for a highly trained professional army with militias and volunteers called to service and thoroughly trained before introduction to combat.  

Instead of ending his career abruptly, young artillery Captain Winfield Scott's clash with the Army's Commanding General James Wilkinson in 1808 enhanced his reputation when Wilkinson was exposed as a Spanish agent and treasonous plotter.

In 1808, as a young Virginia lawyer and a corporal in the militia cavalry, he secured an appointment as a Captain of Artillery in the tiny Regular Army.  He made his mark early by crossing his superior, Commanding General James Wilkinson, a corrupt scoundrel and innervate plotter.  Wilkinson had him court-martialed for insubordination and suspended for a year.  After Wilkinson was exposed as Spanish secret agent—just one of his many intrigues that included plotting with Aaron Burr to set up an independent inland republic—Scott was able to resume his duties with his reputation enhanced.  

In the War of 1812, he made his mark as a commander and a hero.  Captured in the Battle of Queenston Heights in 1812 when the New York Militia refused to cross into Canada in support of his Regulars, Scott was paroled and went to Washington to appeal to raise regiments of regular troops. 

The following year as a full colonel he planned and led the amphibious assault on Ft. George which required a coordinated crossing of the Niagara River and a landing from Lake Ontario, which was considered the most brilliant American maneuver of the war.  

In 1814 as a brevet Brigadier General Scott commanded the American First Brigade in the Niagara campaign.  He trained and drilled his Regulars to a fine edge for months.  But unable to secure regulation blue cloth for their uniforms, outfitted them sharply in gray with tall shako caps.  When the British saw them marching in disciplined ranks into battle, a horrified officer exclaimed, “That’s not the Terrytown militia.  Those are by God Regulars!”  

American Regular Army troops trained by Col. Winfield Scott proved that they were the match of British veterans at the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane in the American attempt to invade Canada during the War of 1812, but Scott was grievously wounded in action.

Those regulars soundly whipped veteran British troops at in the Battle of Chippewa and then held the battlefield at fiercely fought Lundy’s Lane, where Scott and overall American commander Major General Jacob Brown were both severely injured.  

Although the invasion of Canada was stalled, Scott was hailed as a hero for showing that American troops could beat British professionals in a stand-up battle.  The battles were commemorated at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, where the Corps of Cadets still wears grey uniforms and shakos.  And the Confederate Army, dominated by West Pointers would, ironically adopt a gray uniform.  

In the years after the war, Scott turned to the routine occupation of a Regular Army Officers—Indian wars.  Scott was assigned command of 1000 Regulars and Volunteers from the East to relieve expiring volunteers units in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Unfortunately, the men brought the cholera with them, not only rendering them unfit for service, but unleashing a deadly epidemic in the West.  Although Scott never got to the battlefield, he arrived on the scene to play a critical role in negotiating Black Hawk’s surrender and drafting a peace treaty.  

Three years later he was commanding a large column fruitlessly chasing hostiles in the Florida swamps during the Second Seminole War.  

No sooner was that bit of business concluded than President Andrew Jackson called on Scott to be the Federal brawn behind the Force Act, meant to compel South Carolina to honor the Tariff of Abominations in the face of Nullification threats.  Sent with reinforcements to the garrison at Ft. Sumner at Charleston, South Carolina, Scott had to juggle the bellicose desire of the President to “Hang the traitors,” and Joel R. Poinsette’s delicate task of rallying South Carolina Unionists while a new tariff acceptable to the state was moved through Congress.  

He got high marks for both his strong military resolution and for local diplomacy.  When the city caught fire, he dispatched troops from the garrison to help quell the blaze—and improved relations with the locals. 

With the crisis passed Jackson’s successor President Martin Van Buren turned to Scott to enforce the Cherokee Removal from the Eastern states.  Scott disapproved of the policy but did a soldier’s duty.  He considered it the low point of his career.  He was able to negotiate the voluntary removal of a large number under the leadership of Chief John Ross and managed to round up other bands with a minimum of bloodshed.  He tried, as far as possible, to make conditions on the march tolerable, ordering rides, assistance, and extra rations for children, the elderly, and infirm.  Where his reliable Regulars were in charge, things went relatively smoothly.

But many bands were escorted by undisciplined volunteers who abused, harassed, and stole from their charges without mercy.  Scott meant to personally accompany the first body of evacuees on the march west from Athens, Georgia but was recalled to Washington for a delicate diplomatic mission upon reaching Nashville.  

Scott was sent to the Maine/Canada border to negotiate a peace in the bloodless Aroostook War which threatened to erupt into another shooting war with the British.  For his success and service, he was promoted to Major General, the highest rank active in the Army.  

Scott repeated as a diplomat when he negotiated a solution to another border crisis with Britain, this one over St. John Island in the Pacific Northwest in 1859. 

                                

                                            Major General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz in the Mexican War.

But first there was the Mexican War.  President James Knox Polk forced the war on Mexico by moving troops into disputed land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. This army, made up mostly of volunteers under the command of Scott’s service rival Zachary Taylor scored victories in heavy fighting at Monterey and Buena Vista but was hundreds of miles north of the capital city, separated by daunting desert.  

Scott conceived of a second attack by a sea landing at the port of Veracruz and driving quickly to Mexico City.  He executed the first major amphibious assault in American history when he successfully landed 12,000 Regular Army, Marines, and well-trained Volunteers and all their artillery and baggage outside the fortified city.  

In coordination with the Naval Squadron under the command of Commodore Mathew Perry, he laid siege to the fortified city, which was reduced by Army artillery and naval gunfire and surrendered after 12 days.  With the port open to keep his supply line clear, Scott began his march west, roughly following the route of Cortez.  Yellow Fever struck the Americans and Scott was only able to move with 8,500 healthy troops, among them many future Civil War generals including Lee, U.S. Grant, George Meade, and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson.  

Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna moved from the Mexico City at the head of 12,000 well-armed and trained troops.  He entrenched across the road at Cerro Gordo, roughly halfway to the city.  Instead of a frontal assault, Scott sent artillery into the rugged mountains and enfiladed the Mexicans in deadly fire and flanked the dug-in Mexicans, who were routed with heavy casualties.  

Several other sharp engagements marked the march to the capital, culminating in the attack on the Mexican Military Academy at the Castle of Chapultepec.  When that fell, Scott negotiated a peaceful entry to the city. 

The Duke of Wellington upon studying Scott’s campaign declared him to be “the greatest living general.”  The offensive is still studied and much of later Army combat doctrine was drawn from the experience.  

The President appointed Scott the Military Governor of Mexico City, where he drew praise for enforcing bans on looting and molestation of citizens.  He threaded the thorny issue of what to do with the captured San Patricios—Irish deserters from the U.S. Army who took up the Mexican cause.  He was appalled when a court martial sentenced 72 of them to hang.  The former lawyer scoured his law books to find excuses to vacate the sentences of as many as possible.  He objected to the death penalty in 22 of the cases and later pardoned or commuted the sentences of 15 more.  

With Scott still on administrative duty in Mexico City, his rival Taylor arrived back in the States and won the Presidency on the Whig ticket.  Scott was sure he would have been a better man for the job.  Taylor died leaving Millard Fillmore to complete his term.  

Shattered over slavery, the Whigs took 54 ballots to nominate Winfield Scott as their candidate in 1852.  He was trounced by the handsome non-entity Democrat Franklin Pierce, a subordinate Volunteer general in the Mexican War.  Despite the loss, he served the new President loyally as Commanding General of the Army.

When the Democrats in 1852 nominated handsome, dashing Franklin Pierce, one of Scott’s less distinguished subordinate Volunteer generals in Mexico, the Whig convention stalemated before finally dumping Fillmore and nominating Scott on the fifty-fourth ballot.  

The party was split on slavery, particularly the issue of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.  The Party platform endorsed enforcement over Scott’s objection leading to loss of support of the Whig ticket in New England, and disillusion with the candidate among pro-slavery Southerners who jumped en-mass to the Democrats.  Despite his personal popularity Scott carried only four states.  It was also the last hurrah of the shattered Whigs as a national party.  

Scott, his vanity bruised, none-the-less went back to work as Commanding General.  

It is fortunate for Lincoln and the Union that he stayed as long as he did.  But after McDowell’s raw and ill trained volunteer army was routed at First Bull Run, Lincoln had to turn to the ambitious Democrat George McClellan as his field commander.  McClellan, popular with the troops and with the press, was openly insubordinate to the Commanding General and plotted to replace him.  Seeing the writing on the wall and in ill health, Scott finally retired in November.  McClellan got his job while retaining field command.  

In the classic but wildly inaccurate Warner Bros. Custer bio-pic They Died with their Boots On Sydney Greenstreet portrayed Winfield Scott still in command deep into the Civil War, seen here listening to an appeal from Olivia de Haviland as loyal Libby Custer.

McClellan would be just as insubordinate to the President as he was to Scott and despite assembling a massive, well trained, and well-appointed Army proved too timid.  Lincoln replaced him as Commanding General with General Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, a plodding administrator who did not get in the way of the field commanders like Grant and Sherman who could actually win battles.

Winfield Scott, Old Fuss and Feathers, as he was known by his men, died at West Point in 1866.

  

The 1827 Birth of the Democratic Party

 

This early anti-Jackson cartoon lampooning his anti-bank policies shows a loyal Martin Van Buren cleaning up after Old Hickory's jackass.  It was one of the earliest, if not the earliest, uses of the donkey as the symbol for the Democratic Party.  But it didn't take immediately.  Anti-Democrat cartoonist Thomas Nash used the Tammany tiger as the party mascot at first.  The Democrats did not embrace the donkey until well into the 20th Century, long after the GOP had adopted the elephant.

Note—Yesterday we examined Andrew Jackson’s stunning victory at New Orleans in 1815.  Today we look at one of the most consequential results of the battle—the creation of America’s oldest political party. 

The Democratic Party was founded at a Baltimore convention 198 years ago on January 8, 1827.  You may celebrate or lament the occasion depending on your viewpoint.  It was cobbled together from elements of the shattered Democratic Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison which had dominated American politics since the Revolution of 1800 and the virtual disappearance of the Federalist Party after the War of 1812.  The wizard of the new alignment was the boss of the New York State political machine known as the Albany Regency, Martin Van Buren, in the service of a charismatic leader—General Andrew Jackson. 

Martin Van Buren, master of the Albany Regency and shrewd political operative, who organized the Democratic party as Jackson's creature.

The election of James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty of Founder Presidents after the collapse of the Federalists in 1822 ushered in what historians have called the Era of Good Feeling due to the lack of competition for the Democratic-Republicans.  The domination was so deep that even John Quincy Adams, the son of the only Federalist president, had joined the ascendent and served a Monroe’s Secretary of State and was his heir apparent to the Executive Mansion. 

Unfortunately for Adams, he had incurred the wrath of the tempestuous general who mistakenly believed that the Secretary of State had been behind a court martial for illegally invading Spanish Florida and executing two British citizens who he believed had been arming Creek warriors.  It’s a long and complicated story but the truth was that although Adams was aghast at Jackson’s behavior which complicated efforts to acquire Florida by purchase and threatened a possible new conflict with Great Britain, he had come to Jackson’s defense against the charges. 

Whatever the truth, Jackson vowed revenge by running against Adams in the election of 1824.  Jackson was the greatest military hero since George Washington and wildly popular in the South and West.  In a head-to-head contest Jackson would have won handily, but two others also entered the race—Georgia’s William Crawford, a Jeffersonian “Old Republican” and another Westerner and rising political star Henry Clay of Kentucky.  Although Jackson led winning the popular vote, carrying 11 states, and winning 99 Electoral College votes with Adams behind with 7 state wins and 86 Electoral votes, the other two candidates each won 3 states and enough votes to deny a majority and Electoral College win. 

Three of the main actors in the 1824 Presidential Election drama--Kentucky's Henry Clay who swung support to John Quincy Adams (center) in House of Representatives and was appointed Secretary of State and General Andrew Jackson.  Adams won a Pyrrhic victory.

The election was thrown into the House of Representatives where each state delegation cast a single vote.  Only the top three candidates—Jackson, Adams, and Crawford—were included in the House Vote.  Clay not so secretly rallied his former supporters for Adams who carried the House vote by a lop-sided margin.  Jackson was outraged, especially after Adams selected Clay to be his Secretary of State and by tradition a virtual heir apparent.  Jackson charged a “corrupt bargain” had been struck by Adams and Clay to win the election. 

Meanwhile, in New York State, Van Buren’s Albany Regency finally got the upper hand against the Clinton political organization in New York City which long led half of a political axis of the two most populous states, New York and Virginia, in support of the Jeffersonian party.  He saw a national ally in Jackson and began quietly organizing key political figures and operatives in every state in support of Jackson.  That led to the founding convention in Baltimore in time to organize behind Jackson and against Adams in the election of 1828.  

Running as a man of the people, painting Adams as aristocratic, and backed by an effective political organization Jackson humiliated and swamped the incumbent by an Electoral College vote of 178 to 83 carrying 15 states to 9.  The platform of Jackson and his party was individual liberty (for White men), limited government (except where Jackson himself chose to execute power), opposition to the Second Bank of the United States, opposition to federally funded internal improvements advocated by Henry Clay, rapid Western expansion, removal of Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River, and lowered tariffs. 

Both Jackson’s policies and abrasive leadership style alienated many who began to coalesce into a new anti-Jacksonian party, the Whigs.  It was an inherently unstable and contradictory collection—remnant old New England Federalists like Daniel Webster, business interests appalled by the destruction of the Bank of the United States and resultant currency instability and wildcat banks leading to periodic financial panics, advocates of Clay’s American System of internal improvements, and largely aristocratic Southern Jeffersonians.  

After Jackson threatened to use military force against South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff, his own Vice President, Southern firebrand John C. Calhoun joined the Whigs asserting states’ rights—and expansion of slavery into all new territories and states.  The combination of pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery New Englanders made the Whigs a feeble coalition.  Democrats continued to dominate the Presidency and national politics up to the Civil War with only two Whig presidential victories, both by military heroes who quickly died in office and left weak vice-presidents with little or no party loyalty in charge.  The Whigs imploded and disappeared after Winfield Scott’s loss to Democratic nonentity Franklin Pierce in 1854.  Eventually the Republicans emerged as a new major party leading to the victory of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when Democrats split three ways over slavery issues. 

This illustration for a Civil Service reform publication in the 1880's celebrated Jackson as the founder of the Spoils System.  But at that time Republican administrations reaped the benefit of the system.

The Democrats long thrived on Jackson’s spoils system which replaced almost all Federal employees with loyal political appointees who provided an army of campaign workers in every corner of the country. 

A campaign banner for the last Whig Presidents.  Mexican War Hero Zachary Taylor died in office after splitting the Whigs over the extension of slavery.  Northerner Fillmore proved more amenable to Southern interests in the name of national unity and became a perpetual contender for being the worst president in American history, at least until the current Resident.

The Democrats are now the oldest electoral party in the world by a wide margin, but they have flipped positions many times over their long history.  They were the backbone of the Jim Crow Era in the South and began to make strong inroads in big Northern cities with ethnic-based political machines.  They were for hard money and against greenback Treasury Notes.  With Republicans in national ascendancy, the party suddenly became advocates of civil service reform. 

In the 1890s a large portion of Democrats in the West and South became populists in favor of the “free coinage of silver” against a pure gold standard that made cash scarce and kept prices high; agitated for railroad rate reform and against monopolies, and in favor of democratic reforms like voter referendums and recall elections.  They continued to struggle with business and hard money conservative elements of the Party. 

Despite this dramatic cartoon, William Jennings Bryan never really swallowed the Democratic Party even after he won nomination on a populist free silver platform.. Progressives remained an important, but minority part of the Democratic coalition.

In the early 20th Century, they began to attract support of major labor unions and vied with the Socialist Party for others.  Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic party progressive, enacted some major labor reforms in the areas of child labor, job safety, and working hours.  Yet the same administration violently crushed World War I strikes and led the worst domestic suppression of dissent in the post-war Red Scare years.  Wilson became a hero to liberals for his post-war vision of the Fourteen Points and for the League of Nations.  Democrats largely became advocates of international action and against isolationism.  The establishment of the Federal Reserve System put the party firmly behind national banking. 

Opposition to draconian Republican immigration restrictions in the 1920’s and in favor of the repeal of Prohibition earned the loyalty of many working class voters. 

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal pro-labor policies won the enduring loyalty of workers and the union movement.

In the face of the Great Depression Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal put an end to Jacksonian limited Federal powers.  The President and his party borrowed heavily from old Socialist Party platforms to enact Social Security and unemployment insurance, guarantee labor union rights, use public works programs, and many other popular reforms.  Even Southern Democrats bought in as long as Blacks were largely excluded from the benefits. 

World War II and its aftermath created support for a vast standing armed forces with virtually unlimited funds for new arms and weapons and backed world-wide interventionism whenever American—read business—interests might be threatened. 

The Civil Rights Movement gained steady support among national Democrats and Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act began the process of Southern Democrats abandoning the party for the Republicans who had gone from the Party of Lincoln to states’ rights fans and were increasingly willing to employ wink-and-nod code words in favor of white supremacy.  By the 21st Century that process was complete. 

Meanwhile opposition to the Vietnam War led to growing anti-war sentiment through much of the party and peace advocates continued to struggle with cold-warriors and interventionists.  Widespread support for the Equal Rights Amendment, gender protections under Civil Rights law, and for abortion rights led to a steady swing of women, particularly college educated and middle class women, from the Republicans to the Democrats who now enjoy a substantial edge in that demographic. 

Blacks have become the most loyal Democratic party supporters by a wide margin and Latinx voters with the exception of Florida Cubans also usually reliable.  Together with the college educated and youth voters they elected Barack Obama as the first Black President. 

Black voters turned out in droves in 2018 despite elaborate Republican voter suppression efforts like the ones in Georgia that closed convenient polling places in minority areas causing long lines and waits.  Democratic support for voting rights protections continue to be important to them.

Recognizing that expanding the voter pool worked against them, Republicans have become relentless in attempting voter suppression, gerrymandering, and other attacks on access to the polls.  Meanwhile they have exploited resentments of many working class voters who believe they have been insulted and ignored by an elite cabal robbing complacent and ineffective Democratic Party leadership of once solid support. 

Democratic Socialists became a small but growing part of the party in Congress and scored electoral victories around the country.  Their policies are aimed at, among other things, winning back working class support by providing life-changing new benefits.  Party so-called centrists fret that they will be labeled communists, or that powerful business backers of the party will turn on them. 

Donald Trump kept a portrait of Andrew Jackson overlooking his Oval Office desk in his first term.  His other political role modle  was Adolph Hitler whose Mein Kamf  he long kept on his bed table for inspiration. 

However, that struggle turns out, the Democratic Party today bears almost no resemblance to the one founded by Van Buren and Jackson.  But it is telling that Jackson is the Orange Menace’s, favorite presidential role model.  Both share fragile egos, inflated self-importance, and dictatorial impulses.  And like Jackson, Trump has a political party personally loyal only to him. 

But despite this, it is impossible to imagine the nationalist and staunchly unionist Jackson not responding to even a pathetic rag-tag insurrection and attempt to seize the Federal Capital with anything less than all of the fully armed troops at his disposal and canon loaded with grape shot, and hanging the leaders—especially those elected to uphold the Constitution with little mercy or ceremony.