History
of The Federalist Party
The
Federalist Party was one of the first two political parties in the United
States, and thus in the world. It originated, as did its opposition, the
Democratic-Republican Party, within the executive and congressional branches of
government during George
Washington’s first administration (1789-1793), and it dominated the
government until the defeat of President John Adams for
reelection in 1800. Thereafter, the party unsuccessfully contested the
presidency through 1816 and remained a political force in some states until the
1820s. Its members then passed into both the Democratic and the Whig parties.
Who
Supported The Federalist Party?
Although
Washington disdained factions and disclaimed party adherence, he is generally
taken to have been, by policy and inclination, a Federalist, and thus its
greatest figure. Influential public leaders who accepted the Federalist label
included John Adams, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay,
Rufus King, John
Marshall, Timothy Pickering and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. All had
agitated for a new and more effective constitution in 1787. Yet, because many
members of the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison had
also championed the Constitution, the Federalist Party cannot be considered the
lineal descendant of the pro-Constitution, or ‘federalist,’ grouping of the
1780s. Instead, like its opposition, the party emerged in the 1790s under new
conditions and around new issues.
The
party drew its early support from those who—for ideological and other
reasons—wished to strengthen national instead of state power. Until its defeat
in the presidential election of 1800, its style was elitist, and its leaders
scorned democracy, widespread suffrage, and open elections. Its backing centered
in the commercial Northeast, whose economy and public order had been threatened
by the failings of the Confederation government before 1788. Although the party
enjoyed considerable influence in Virginia, North Carolina and
the area around Charleston, South Carolina,
it failed to attract plantation owners and yeoman farmers in the South and
West. Its inability to broaden its geographic and social appeal eventually did
it in.
Alexander
Hamilton And The Bank of the United States
Originally
a coalition of like-minded men, the party became publicly well defined only in
1795. After Washington’s inauguration in 1789, Congress and members of the
president’s cabinet debated proposals of Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of
the treasury, that the national government assume the debts of the states,
repay the national debt at par rather than at its depressed market value, and
charter a national bank, the Bank
of the United States. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Congressman
James Madison rallied opposition to Hamilton’s plan. Yet not until Congress
debated the ratification and implementation of the Jay
Treaty with Great Britain did two political parties clearly emerge,
with the Federalists under Hamilton’s leadership. Federalist policies
thenceforth emphasized commercial and diplomatic harmony with Britain, domestic
order and stability and a strong national government under powerful executive
and judicial branches. Washington’s Farewell
Address of 1796, prepared with Hamilton’s assistance, can be read as a
classic text of partisan Federalism as well as a great state paper.
John
Adams
John
Adams, Washington’s vice president, succeeded the first president as an avowed
Federalist, thus becoming the first person to attain the chief magistracy under
partisan colors. Inaugurated in 1797, Adams tried to maintain his predecessor’s
cabinet and policies. He engaged the nation in an undeclared naval war with
France and after the Federalists gained control of both houses of Congress in
the 1798 election, backed the infamous and Federalist-inspired Alien and
Sedition Acts.
In
addition to a widespread public outcry against those laws, which restricted
freedom of speech, Adams met with mounting attacks, especially from the
Hamiltonian faction of his own party, against his military priorities. When
Adams, as much to deflect mounting Democratic-Republican opposition as to end a
war, opened diplomatic negotiations with France in 1799 and reorganized the
cabinet under his own control, the Hamiltonians broke with him. Although his
actions strengthened the Federalist position in the presidential election of
1800, they were not enough to gain his reelection. His party irreparably split.
Adams, on his way to retirement, was nevertheless able to conclude peace with
France and to secure the appointment of moderate Federalist John Marshall as
chief justice. Long after the Federalist Party was dead, Marshall enshrined its
principles in constitutional law.
Decline
of the Federalist Party
In
the minority, Federalists at last accepted the necessity of creating a system
of organized, disciplined state party organizations and adopting democratic
electoral tactics. Because their greatest strength lay in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware, the
Federalists also assumed the aspects of a sectional minority. Ignoring
ideological consistency and a traditional commitment to strong national power,
they opposed Jefferson’s popular Louisiana
Purchase of 1803 as too costly and threatening to northern influence
in government. Largely as a result, the party continued to lose power at the
national level. It carried only Connecticut, Delaware and part of Maryland against
Jefferson in 1804.
That
defeat, the party’s increasing regional isolation and Hamilton’s untimely death
at the hands of Aaron
Burr that same year threatened the party’s very existence. Yet strong,
widespread opposition to Jefferson’s ill-conceived Embargo of 1807 revived it.
In the 1808 presidential election against Madison, the Federalist candidate,
Charles C. Pinckney, carried Delaware, parts of Maryland and North Carolina,
and all of New England except Vermont. The
declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812 brought New York, New Jersey, and
more of Maryland into the Federalist fold, although these states were not
enough to gain the party the presidency.
But
Federalist obstruction of the war effort seriously undercut its newfound
popularity, and the Hartford Convention of 1814 won for it, however unjustly,
the stigma of secession and treason. The party under Rufus King carried only
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Delaware in the election of 1816.
Although
it lingered on in these states, the party never regained its national
following, and by the end of the War of 1812,
it was dead. Its inability to accommodate early enough a rising, popular
democratic spirit, often strongest in towns and cities, was its undoing. Its
emphasis upon banking, commerce and national institutions, although fitting for
the young nation, nevertheless made it unpopular among the majority of
Americans who, as people of the soil, remained wary of state influence. Yet its
contributions to the nation were extensive. Its principles gave form to the new
government. Its leaders laid the foundations of a national economy, created and
staffed a national judicial system and enunciated enduring principles of
American foreign policy.
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