History of the Democratic Party: The Party of Jackson; or, what Van Buren built

This series of articles covers the history of the Democratic Party – the oldest continuous political party in the world, one whose history goes back 223 years to nearly the very beginning of the United States government. Its story is as complex as America’s: at times, inspiring; at other times, shameful; and, oftentimes, somewhere in between. There is a thread that connects the party’s history, in my view: namely, that the Democratic Party has always stood, at least in principle, for the ordinary American that deserves as fair a shot at getting ahead as their more privileged, fellow citizens. Even though the Democratic definition of the “ordinary Americans” they stood for has changed over time, this commitment has always been at the core of the party’s values. This series will cover it all – the good, bad, and ugly – and I hope you’ll enjoy it! – Stephen Yellin

Previously in this series: The Party of Opposition: 1789-1800The Party of Jefferson: 1801-1824

As the 1824 election approached, Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party had become the sole political party in the United States. Yet this apparently total victory over the Federalists was both misleading and fleeting. While all prominent politicians (especially on the national level) now called themselves heirs to the Jeffersonian legacy of popular democracy, they disagreed on the course America ought to take. Should Henry Clay’s vision of a strong government playing an active role in an expanding America, what the great historian and Democratic activist Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called “rebaptized Federalism”, lead the way? Or would the “American System” put the needs of a powerful, centralized government ahead of those of the growing ranks of ordinary Americans that were participating in American politics?

The Democratic Party, as a continuous national entity, was created to support the latter course. It emerged from the collapse of the old Democratic-Republican Party after the controversial result of the 1824 Presidential election. No less than 4 viable candidates – Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, General Andrew Jackson, Treasury Secretary Richard Crawford, and Clay - received electoral votes while running under the party banner. While Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, finished first in both the Popular Vote and Electoral College, he failed to win a majority in either. The House of Representatives decided the winner once again, as it had in 1800. Clay, being out of the running after finishing 4th, threw his support to Adams, giving the ex-Federalist and political scion the White House.

Jackson and his supporters cried foul, especially when Adams then made Clay Secretary of State, traditionally the stepping stone to the Presidency (Madison, Monroe, and Adams had all held it prior to their election). Yet popular anger, and a leader popular among the ranks of ordinary Americans both North and South, would only go so far in creating a party in opposition to Adams and Clay. It would take a political genius to forge a coalition of urban Northerners and rural Southerners, merchants and farmers, opponents of slavery and slave owners, into a viable political party. As it turns out, such a genius already resided in the United States Senate. His name was Martin Van Buren, and to him belongs the lion’s share of the credit for the creation of the Democratic Party. Van Buren was the first, and only, President not to speak English as his first language; the son of a Dutch-American farmer and innkeeper, he spoke the language of his ancestors while growing up (as did his wife, Hannah). Despite his humble beginnings he quickly emerged in his native New York as a successful lawyer and political activist, aligning himself with the Democratic-Republicans in opposition to Governor DeWitt Clinton. (The story spread by Van Buren’s political rivals that he was the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr is almost certainly untrue, Gore Vidal’s brilliant novel Burr notwithstanding.) It was while serving as Attorney General in 1817 that Van Buren founded a statewide faction called the “Bucktails”. He and his fellow faction leaders developed the first real political machine, keeping supporters loyal to the party by connecting political success to the control of powerful patronage positions. This proved highly successful, resulting in Van Buren’s clique (known as the “Albany Regency”) ruling New York government for nearly 20 years.

Van Buren took his talent for political organizing to the national level upon his election to the U.S. Senate in 1821. Like James Madison, Van Buren was concerned about the threat to popular democracy posed by centralized government; this led him to join Jackson’s wing of the old Democratic-Republican Party, which was shortened to “Democratic Party” soon after. It departed from the Jeffersonian party in 2 important aspects: it favored a strong Presidency in order to protect ordinary Americans from an activist Congress (as personified by Clay), and it pushed for mass popular participation at the expense of educational elites (like Jefferson and Madison), not just financial ones. It favored American expansionism, also known as “Manifest Destiny”, and tried to avoid taking a stand on controversial issues such as slavery and the tariff (the latter being a crucial economic issue during the 19th century).

It was Van Buren’s adaptation of his Albany Regency machine to the national stage – tying party loyalty to government jobs while running campaigns based on mass organizing, party-backed newspapers and get-out-the-vote operations – that made the Democratic Party a success. (It was one of Van Buren’s allies in the Albany Regency, New York Governor William Marcy who coined the phrase “to the victor belong the spoils”.)  Jackson provided strong leadership for the party to rally behind but “Little Matt” (all of 5 feet, 6 inches) made the party run. In the 1828 Presidential election, for example, it was Van Buren that created the “Hickory Clubs” that celebrated Jackson’s nickname of “Old Hickory”, whose members would plant hickory trees and hand out hickory sticks at mass popular rallies (itself a Democratic Party innovation).

This superior organization contributed greatly to Jackson's landslide victory in his rematch with Adams in 1828. the authors of A People and a Nation, Volume I: to 1877  put it,

“[t]hrough a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party.”

It is not surprising that it was during Jackson’s administration that the first Democratic National Convention was held in 1832, where delegates unanimously chose Van Buren as Jackson’s new running mate. This too helped to bind the party together. It is not the purpose of this article to cover the history of the Jackson Administration. It is sufficient to say that there are good reasons for why many wish to remove the 7th President from the $20 bill. Nor can we dismiss the reality that his party included some of the worst pro-slavery leaders in our nation’s history, such as John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis. (It should be noted that neither Democrats nor Whigs had a monopoly on pro- and anti-slavery leaders; the issue simply wasn’t at the forefront of national politics until the Mexican War.) What matters for the purpose of this series is that Jackson marked the beginning of a new “people’s party”, that, at least in principle, stood for the ordinary American and their right to a better life for themselves and their families against the privileged elite. While the extent of who was meant by “ordinary” would gradually expand over time, and the means of protecting them would change, the Democratic Party has never abandoned that stance in the nearly 200 years since it began to hold it.

That Van Buren’s Democratic Party worked was shown by his election in 1836, and its survival after his ouster in 1840 by another war hero, William Henry Harrison. (The Whigs, stealing a page from the Jacksonian handbook, successfully portrayed the wealthy plantation owner as a humble backwoodsman after the Democrats slammed Harrison as too lazy to be a good President: he’d “sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider".) Harrison’s death a month into his Presidency saw his Vice-President, former Democrat John Tyler, quickly realign with his old party. Tyler and his successor, fellow Democrat James K. Polk, kept to the Jacksonian government playbook, while Polk used the Van Buren electoral playbook – “Young Hickory” became his popular nickname when running for President in 1844 – to win the White House.

In the long term, however, the Party of Jackson could not hold together. The issue that divided it, and killed the Whig Party, was slavery. It would be vastly preferable to say that the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic Party prevailed in the 1840s and 50s; unfortunately, it did not. Our next article will cover the darkest days of the Democratic Party, both ideologically and politically.