History of the Democratic Party
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Democratic Party
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Blue Red (until the 2000 United States elections) |
The Democratic Party of the United States is the oldest voter-based political party in the world, tracing its heritage back to the anti-Federalists of the 1790s. During the "Second Party System", from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins. Both parties worked hard to build grassroots organizations and maximize the turnout of voters, which often reached 80 percent or 90 percent. Both parties used patronage extensively to finance their operations, which included emerging big city political machines as well as national networks of newspapers. The Democratic party was a proponent for farmers across the country, urban workers, and new immigrants. It was especially attractive to Irish immigrants who increasingly controlled the party machinery in the cities. The party was much less attractive to businessmen, plantation owners, Evangelical Protestants, and social reformers. The party advocated westward expansion, Manifest Destiny, greater equality among all white men, and opposition to the national banks. In 1860 the Civil War began between the mostly-Republican North against the mostly-Democratic, slaveholding South.
From 1860 to 1932, in the era of the Civil War to the Great Depression, the opposing Republican Party, organized in the mid-1850s from the ruins of the Whig Party and some other smaller splinter groups, was dominant in presidential politics. The Democrats elected only two presidents to four terms of office for 72 years: Grover Cleveland (in 1884 and 1892) and Woodrow Wilson (in 1912 and 1916). Over the same period, the Democrats proved more competitive with the Republicans in Congressional politics, enjoying House of Representatives majorities (as in the 65th Congress) in 15 of the 36 Congresses elected, although only in five of these did they form the majority in the United States Senate. The Party was split between the "Bourbon Democrats", representing Eastern business interests, and the agrarian elements comprising poor farmers in the South and West. The agrarian element, marching behind the slogan of "free silver" (i.e. in favor of inflation), captured the Party in 1896, and nominated the "Great Commoner", William Jennings Bryan in 1896, 1900 and 1908; he lost every time. Both Bryan and Wilson were leaders of the "Progressive Movement", 1890s–1920s.
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