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Political eras of the United States refer to a model ofAmerican politics used in history and political science to periodize thepolitical party system existing in the United States.[1]
TheUnited States Constitution is silent on the subject of political parties. TheFounding Fathers did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan. InFederalist Papers No. 9 andNo. 10,Alexander Hamilton andJames Madison, respectively, wrote specifically about the dangers of domesticpolitical factions. In addition, the first President of the United States,George Washington, was not a member of any political party at the time of his election or throughout his tenure as president.[2] Furthermore, he hoped that political parties would not be formed, fearing conflict and stagnation, as outlined in hisFarewell Address.[3]
Generally, the political history of America can be divided into eras of partisan hegemonic control of the federal government. These hegemonic eras are:
The political significance of these five defined eras can be reinforced by the feature of each era beginning with near-unanimousElectoral College presidential victories for the respective party or parties:
Using these hegemonic eras as a framework, the more detailed specifics of party realignments and the seven party systems they take place in are described in detail below:
The "First Party System" began in the 1790s with the1792 re-election of George Washington and the1796 election of John Adams, and ended in the 1820s with the presidential electionsof 1824 andof 1828, resulting inAndrew Jackson's presidency.
The beginnings of the Americantwo-party system emerged fromGeorge Washington's immediate circle of advisers, which split into two camps:
Ironically, Hamilton and Madison wrote theFederalist Papers against political factions, but ended up being the core leaders in this emerging party system. Although distasteful to the participants, by the time John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ran for president in 1796, partisanship in the United States came to being.[8][9]
This era was dominated by theDemocratic-Republican party as the Federalists became irrelevant. The disastrousPanic of 1819 and the Supreme Court'sMcCulloch v. Maryland reanimated the disputes over the supremacy of state sovereignty and federal power, between strict construction of the US Constitution and loose construction.[10] TheMissouri Crisis in 1820 made the explosive political conflict between slave and free soil open and explicit.[11] Only through the adroit handling of the legislation by Speaker of the HouseHenry Clay was a settlement reached and disunion avoided.[12][13][14]
"Jacksonian democracy" is a term to describe the 19th-centurypolitical philosophy that originated with the seventh U.S. president, TheUnited States presidential election of 1824 brought partisan politics to a fever pitch, with GeneralAndrew Jackson's popular vote victory (and his plurality in theUnited States Electoral College being overturned in theUnited States House of Representatives).[citation needed]
With the decline in political consensus, it became imperative to revive Jeffersonian principles on the basis of Southern exceptionalism.[15][16] The agrarian alliance, North and South, would be revived to formJacksonian Nationalism and the rise of theDemocratic-Republican Party.[17][18] As a result, the Democratic-Republican Party split into aJacksonian faction that was regionally and ideologically identical to the original party, which became the modernDemocratic Party in the 1830s, and aHenry Clay faction that regionally and ideologically resembled the old Federalist Party, which was absorbed by Clay'sWhig Party.[citation needed] The term "Jacksonian democracy" was in active use by the 1830s.[19]
Many historians and political scientists use "Second Party System" to describe American politics between the mid-1820s until the mid-1850s. The system was demonstrated by rapidly rising levels of voter interest (with high election day turnouts), rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.[20][21] It was in full swing with the1828 United States presidential election, since theFederalists shrank to a few isolated strongholds and theDemocratic-Republicans lost unity during the buildup to theAmerican Civil War.[22]
This party system marked the first in a series ofpolitical realignments, a process in which a prominent third party coalition, often one that wins >10% of the popular vote in multiple states in a presidential election, realigns into one of the major parties, allowing that major party to dominate the federal government and/or presidency for the following decades. The first and most significant Second Party System realignment was a realignment of the differing factions of theDemocratic-Republican Party of the more slave sparse Southern areas and the non-coastal Northern counties, particularly those factions that voted forAndrew Jackson,Henry Clay andWilliam H. Crawford, into the new Jacksonian/Democratic Party.
The opposition, leftover Federalist-aligned voters who formed the Clay and Adams factions in the Coastal North, realigned into theNational Republican Party in 1828. This northern base, alongside the wealthy slave owners of the dense Southern slave centers and the Anti-Masons in Vermont, Massachusetts, Northern New York state and Southern Pennsylvania, realigned into the newly formedWhig Party in 1836. With the fall of the Whig Party in 1856, the remaining Whig coalition (those not effected by the Free Soil movement in New England and the Great Lakes Region) realigned into theKnow Nothing ticket that same year then realigned into theConstitutional Union Party in 1860 at the start of the next party system.
Thepolitical party system of the United States was dominated by two major parties:
After taking office in 1829, PresidentAndrew Jackson restructured a number of federal institutions. Jackson's professed philosophy became the nation's dominant political worldview for the remainder of the 1830s, helping his vice president (Martin Van Buren) secure election in thepresidential election of 1836. In thepresidential election of 1840, the "Whig Party" had its first national victory with the election of GeneralWilliam Henry Harrison, but he died shortly after assuming office in 1841.John Tyler (a self-proclaimed "Democrat") succeeded Harrison, as the first Vice President of the United States to ascend to the presidency via death of the incumbent.
Minor parties of the era included:
The"Third Party System" refers to the period which came into focus in the 1850s (during the leadup to theAmerican Civil War) and ended in the 1890s. The issues of focus during this time:Slavery, the civil war,Reconstruction, race, and monetary issues.
The Third Party System was marked by a realignment of theFree Soil Party movement of New England and the Great Lakes Region into theRepublican Party after the1856 election, and a realignment of the more northern portion ofWhigs,Constitutional Union voters andKnow Nothing voters along the Coastal Midatlantic into the Democratic Party after the1864 election.
It was dominated by the newRepublican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising thefreedmen, while adopting many Whig-style modernization programs such asnational banks, railroads, high tariffs,homesteads, social spending (such as on greaterCivil War veteran pension funding), and aid toland grant colleges. While most elections from 1876 through 1892 were extremely close, the oppositionDemocrats won only the1884 and1892 presidential elections (the Democrats also won the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 presidential elections, but lost theelectoral college vote), although from 1875 to 1895 the party usually controlled theUnited States House of Representatives and controlled theUnited States Senate from 1879 to 1881 and 1893–1895. Indeed, scholarally work and electoral evidence emphasizes that after the 1876 election the South's former slave centers, which before the emancipation of Republican-voting African Americans was electorally dominated by voting wealthy slave owners who made up the southern base of Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists, realigned into the Democratic Party due to the end ofReconstruction; this new electoral base for the Democrats would finish realigning around 1904. The overall national support forReconstruction collapsed around 1876 as well.[24] The northern and western states were largely Republican, except for the closely balanced New York,Indiana,New Jersey, andConnecticut. After 1876, the Democrats took control of the "Solid South".[25]
Historians and political scientists generally believe that the Third Party System ended in the mid-1890s, which featured profound developments in issues ofAmerican nationalism,modernization, and race. This period, the later part of which is often termed theGilded Age, is defined by its contrast with the preceding and following eras.
The "Fourth Party System" is the term used in political science and history for the period in American political history from the mid-1890s to the early 1930s, It was dominated by theRepublican Party, excepting when 1912 split in whichDemocrats (led by PresidentWoodrow Wilson) held the White House for eight years. American history texts usually call the period theProgressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" byE. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.[26]
The realignments that marked the beginning of the Fourth Party System was that of theGreenback Party, which dominated the greater Rust Belt region (which included upstate New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Baltimore), into the GOP after1896, and the realignment of thePopulist Party, which dominated the Midwest, into the Republican Party after the1900 and1904 elections.
The era began in thesevere depression of 1893 and the extraordinarily intenseelection of 1896. It included theProgressive Era,World War I, and the start of theGreat Depression. The Great Depression caused a realignment that produced theFifth Party System, dominated by the DemocraticNew Deal coalition until the 1970s.
The central domestic issues concerned government regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the money issue (gold versus silver), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, the introduction of the federal income tax, direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government, women's suffrage, and control of immigration. Foreign policy centered on the 1898Spanish–American War,Imperialism, theMexican Revolution, World War I, and the creation of theLeague of Nations. Dominant personalities included presidentsWilliam McKinley (R),Theodore Roosevelt (R), andWoodrow Wilson (D), three-time presidential candidateWilliam Jennings Bryan (D), and Wisconsin's progressive RepublicanRobert M. La Follette Sr.
TheFourth Party System ended with theGreat Depression, a worldwide economic depression that started in 1929. A few years after theWall Street Crash of 1929,Herbert Hoover lost the1932 United States presidential election toFranklin D. Roosevelt.
TheFifth Party System describes a period in American history from the 1930s to the early 1980s in which progressives in the North and conservative Democrats in the South joined a broad coalition called the "New Deal Coalition" to share control of government over the more business-aligned Republican Party, particularly as a result of the Republican Party's failure to contain theGreat Depression while in power in the early 1930s.
The Fifth Party System began as a result of a realignment of theProgressive Party of the Western Coast and the greaterRust Belt region (which includes New York, Massachusetts, Baltimore and New Jersey), and a realignment of theSocialist Party of the Western Coast andSun Belt, into the otherwise conservative Democratic Party after the1932 and1936 elections.
Key figures of the Fifth Party System includeFranklin D. Roosevelt, the key founder of the New Deal coalition and president during most of the Great Depression and most ofWorld War II;Harry S. Truman, successor to Franklin Roosevelt;John F. Kennedy; and civil rights championLyndon B. Johnson.
Because there has been no significant change of hands in Congress since the beginning of the Fifth Party System, historians have trouble placing dates and specifications for the modern party systems that succeed this one.
TheSixth Party System describes a system that began in 1980, known for the period in which Republicans used the "Southern strategy" to realign Dixiecrats from the South into the party, which began in 1964 when Goldwater became the first Republican sinceReconstruction to win the Deep South (although he lost the overall South)[k] and finalized in 1984 when Reagan kept the South permanently Republican. This allowed the party to gain dominant control of the Presidency after 1968 or 1980, though dominant control of Congress would remain in Democratic hands because of the Southern seats in Congress remaining a solid Democratic bloc until the Republicans flipped the Congressional South in the 1994Republican Revolution. Because of this realignment lag the first half of this party system is heavily dominated by ticket-splitting (i.e. the "Nixon Democrats" and "Reagan Democrats"). Then, a second realignment occurred amongst Centrist "Independent" voters from the North and West who supportedJohn B. Anderson andRoss Perot into the Democratic Party from 1996 to 2008, allowing the Democrats to make the Presidency competitive. This half of the party system is dominated by polarization.[citation needed]
Some political scientists suggest that a new party system (Seventh Party System) may be emerging in the United States, especially following Donald Trump’s 2016 election and the resulting realignment of party coalitions.[27]
This shift is often linked to the broader international wave of populism, which challenges liberal-democratic institutions and party structures.[28]
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