Party of the People A History of the Democrats

Chapter 1 AN UNWANTED PREGNANCY, 1775-1792 THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY of the United States, the oldest existing in the world, was in a sense an illegitimate child, unwanted by the founding fathers of the American Republic. They had no intention of bringing about the birth of any such institution, and in fact the first president, George Washington, warned darkly against the conception of any political parties. The American colonies had managed without them through their early political struggle for independence from the British, and in their first efforts to create governing mechanisms of their own in the newly declared independent states. The Continental Congress came and went without party structure, and the Articles of Confederation offered no provision for parties. They were widely regarded as hostile to the pursuit of a harmonious society and were seen as the agents of all manner of special interests. Thomas Jefferson once famously observed: "If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." This attitude was not surprising in a young nation that was being shaped out of a European tradition that had also essentially shunned political parties-organizations created to embrace and advance common positions across a broad range of public matters. Rather, it had been the practice for like-minded individuals to come together temporarily to advance specific, narrow interests and to disband upon the success or failure of such alliances. They were usually called "factions" or "interests," never "parties." Americans of the time were conditioned less by internal political differences than by their opposition to the British crown that led to the American Revolution. When independence was won, their most prominent political figures, largely patrician members of the landed and commercial gentry, found themselves engaged together in the heady and positive task of building a new government. Washington, the military hero of the Revolution, stood above politics and was universally recognized as the new nation's unifying figure. But the fierce competition of ideas between two other brilliant men-Alexander Hamilton, the dashing, stylish aristocrat bent on shaping a national government of privilege based on the British model, and Jefferson, the unpretentious defender of the pioneer spirit determined to establish an unprecedented representative democracy-was at the core of the series of events that eventually led to the existence of parties and, ultimately, the Democratic Party of today. Many other men were involved in the fight, most notably James Madison, principal architect of the Constitution, as the chief ally of Jefferson. But in essence it boiled down to whether Hamilton or Jefferson would have his way. Hamilton had a colorful if questionable pedigree. Derided by John Adams in his autobiography as "the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar," Hamilton was born in 1755 on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean West Indies. His mother was a brilliant and attractive French Huguenot who recognized his talent as a writer as well as his industry and ambition. Sent to America at age fifteen to be educated, he attended King's College (later Columbia), fought in the Revolution, became an aide to Washington and a literary celebrity who gained entry into the world of aristocracy, of which he became an outspoken protagonist. He was short and slender, with reddish hair on a large head of fair complexion. Historian Claude G. Bowers described him as "graceful and debonair, elegant and courtly, seductive and ingratiating, playful or impassioned, he could have fitted into the picture at the Versailles of Louis XV." But he also was, Bowers wrote, a vain egotist "singularly lacking in tact, offensively opinionated, impatient and often insulting to well-meaning mediocrity, and dictatorial. He did not consult-he directed. He didWitcover, Jules is the author of 'Party of the People A History of the Democrats', published 2003 under ISBN 9780375507427 and ISBN 0375507426.