I’m specifically wondering what was happening in the American Zeitgeist as Monroe’s second term drew to a close in 1824. In terms of politics, Monroe could be said to have been more successful than any other president (leaving aside George Washington). He presided over a virtual one-party state, the only time this ever happened in America. It came about not because the Democratic-Republicans were so domineering, but because they provided the goods and made Americans happy, while the Federalists blew it.
Jefferson and his two Virginia Democratic-Republican protégés Madison and Monroe enjoyed an astounding run of 24 years in the White House. This was the longest unbroken period for a single political tendency in the nation’s history.
Obviously, nothing can last forever, and in a democracy change is bound to happen. So even though Monroe presided over the “Era of Good Feelings,” dissent was bound to come out. John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson led factions within the Democratic-Republicans that deliberately broke up the big group hug.
Once Jackson succeeded in antagonizing half the country, his opponents formed the Whig party and we were back to a two-party system. (I never understood exactly what JQ was up to with his “National Republican” party. Was it a real political party, a splinter faction of the Democratic-Republicans, or just an ad hoc group thrown together to provide some sort of alternative to the one-party state? Was it a resurgence of Federalists under another name, or what?)
What happened to the Jeffersonian tendency in the Democratic Party after Monroe left office? Did anyone keep it going in any form? Jackson took the party off in his own direction. It’s just that Jefferson left such an impressive political legacy that it’s hard for me to accept that it totally died out leaving no trace.
By now I would have thought this question would get an answer
Unless the brilliant minds of the Dopers are stumped by it
Maybe the one who will answer hasn’t seen it yet
Perhaps it’s worth another try
Early parties were essentially factions. They were people trying to promote or oppose a specific candidate or issue. Once they succeeded or failed, the continued existence of the faction was moot.
The “Era of Good Feeling” lasted less than twenty four years. It actually lasted about a decade. In the aftermath of the end of the War of 1812 and the opening of the Louisiana territory, there weren’t any major issues facing the nation. With no big issues, there were no factions forming. So it was easy for a caretaker presidency to sit back and relax.
Eventually, tensions began to rise. The western parts of the country were growing more populous and felt the east coast states weren’t listening to their concerns. The southern states were starting to realize that if the west continued to expand, the south would not maintain its safe majority in the national government. New Englanders were annoyed that Virginians had been elected for three consecutive presidencies. And the growing working class began to resent their lack of legislative power.
So politicans like Jackson and Adams managed to unite various groups that had grievances and form a party. Essentially they were the first politicians to run as “Washington outsiders”. Once they established themselves as a party, their opponents had to also unite into a party. But unlike previous divisions, the parties became entrenched this time. After the initial victories and defeats, the two sides remained united by new issues and continued their existence. From this point on, party politics were a factor in American politics. Even in situations, where no real issue divided them, politics from now on would be a matter of “us vs them”.
I didn’t mean to imply that the Era of Good Feelings lasted for all 24 years; AFAIK it mainly applies to Monroe’s second term.
In fact, Jefferson’s second term was full of some very nasty feelings indeed. It soured him so much on the presidency that he didn’t even count being president as one of his achievements.
What made me ask the OP question was seeing how Jefferson’s political philosophy was so successful at the polls for 24 years in a row. Madison and Monroe kept it going. Even though Madison’s War of 1812 was a complete fuckup, and the Federalists tried to use it against him, instead he turned the tables and the Federalist opposition to the war wound up sinking the entire Federalist party instead. It looked like Jeffersonianism had completely triumphed over the opposition.
So my question was how could that legacy just vanish without a trace after Monroe retired? Wasn’t there anyone who kept it going in any form? Could any continuity be traced between the legacy of the three Virginians and subsequent political developments?
In 1824, there was a 4-way split in the election. Adams, although nominally a Democratic-Republican, was the heir to whatever Federalist remnants there were, I suppose, by virtue of being the son of the only Federalist president. Clay went on to found the Whig party, the opposition to Jacksonian Democrats. Jackson—I still don’t understand him. I don’t know what he thought of Jeffersonian democracy. The fourth guy in 1824 was Crawford, and I don’t know anything about him.
In all of this, what happened to Jefferson’s legacy?
This goes back to my point that early politics were about factions not parties. There were pro-war and anti-war factions, but once the war was over the factions disipated; there were no parties to keep old issues alive. And in the early 1820’s, there were no current issues to cause new factions to form. Picture what the 1950’s would have been like without political parties; the economy is doing well, we’d won the big war, everyone agreed the Communists are bad. Under those circumstances, why would anyone run against Eisenhower?
As for Jefferson’s idealogy, it was never as solid as it appeared. Jefferson himself went against his own stated principles on several occasions. Jefferson, despite his reputation, was something of an ivory tower intellectual. Once his personal prestige was removed, his platform was bare.
It is debatable whether Jeffersonian democracy vanished without a trace. Some writers speak of the “Jeffersonian-Jacksonian” tradition. Jefferson and Jackson were very different kinds of men but I really see no major points of disagreement between their political views.
Jefferson’s version of the good society was (1) agrarian and (2) politically decentralized – a collection of autonomous and internally homogeneous farming communities. Which is pretty much what de Tocqueville described in Democracy in America. The South was committed to the Jeffersonian vision right up to the Civil War, and even after the war – the Southern Agrarians of the early 20th century looked back to Jefferson. And Jeffersonian thinking certainly influenced the agrarian Populists of the Midwest, and the “America First!” isolationists of the prewar decade, and some political movements now active, such as Patrick Buchanan’s America First Party.
What happened to Jeffersonianism, ultimately, was that the country, starting with the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, gradually and belatedly turned instead towards Hamilton’s vision of an industrial republic. It was not a conscious rejection of Jefferson’s vision, nor an embrace of Hamilton’s. Industry developed because it visibly produced greater wealth than farming, and it simply turned out that industrial society requires more vigorous and more centralized government. And, of course, the North’s victory in the Civil War represented a decisive defeat for Jeffersonianism, although which side Jefferson would have taken in the war is debatable.
I don’t mourn for Jeffersonianism. Hamiltonianism is better. Read Hamilton’s Republic by Michael Lind.
And of course there was the overriding issue of slavery, which eventually dominated national politics. Since the national debate on slavery centered over what power, if any, the Federal government had to limit slavery in the territories or newly formed states, Jeffersonianism eventually became simply State’s Rights anti-Federalism.
That’s too bad. I really admire Jefferson as a man, and it’s sad that his high ideals degenerated into nothing more than an argument to keep slavery. He would have been appalled to see slaveowners using his political philosophy for that purpose.
I like Jefferson so much I keep looking for something to keep his spirit alive in American politics, but that is elusive.
There was one biography of him titled American Sphinx byb Joseph J. Ellis, which said that everybody wants to claim Jefferson’s legacy, but nobody can define what it was he actually stood for, that maybe Jefferson didn’t even really understand himself. This is my problem: if nobody really understands Jefferson, then nobody can say what became of his influence.
As for Jackson continuing Jefferson’s legacy, I really have a problem with that. Jackson was as unphilosophical as Jefferson was philosophical. As attractive as Jefferson is to me, Jackson looks ugly and brutal. I don’t see much resemblance there.
Maybe the country just changed so much in the 1820s and afterward that the conditions that allowed a Jefferson to think his deep thoughts ceased to exist and could not be replicated any more.
Deep down, my point really is: I miss having an intellectual in the White House, dammit!
Interesting topic. I don’t have anything to add other than two questions:
Why didn’t you rephrase this slightly and post it in GD. You’d probably get a lot more input. Also, do you actually think there is one factual answer to the question…?
There are all kinds of intellectuals, Jomo. Hamilton was an intellectual, and probably would have made a better president than Jefferson. Jackson was no intellectual – but how did his politics differ from Jefferson’s?
For better or worse, Jeffersonian ideals (decentralized government, “that government is best which governs least”, agrarianism, etc.) have largely become associated with the Republican party in today’s political environment. I always wondered what he’d think of that turn of events.
Jefferson is a personal hero of mine, but I also recognize his shortcomings. Far from being apolitical, from everything I’ve read about him, he appears to have been the consumate politician who liked to play “philospher king.”
And its about time for my annual pilgramage to Monticello…
Hamilton was a sharp cookie, but not as appealing as Jefferson when it came to democratic ideals.
What eventually worked out, it seems to me, was a compromise of both their visions.
Economically, we have totally developed along Hamiltonian lines. But we have the civil liberties and popular political participation envisioned by Jefferson. (I mean we potentially have the ability for popular political participation, if people would actually vote, which they mostly don’t. But mt point remains valid.)
Jackson seems to be the person who first started the “Democratic Party” as such. Rather than saying the Democratic Party is the continuation of the Democratic-Republican Party, I would say that today’s Democrats originated as one faction of the Democratic-Republicans that was led by Jackson in the 1820s. Other factions became the National Republicans (died out pretty quickly) and the Whigs. The Whigs suddenly ran out of gas for some reason in the 1850s. I blame Millard Fillmore. After he ran the Whig Party into the ground, he joined the Know-Nothings. What a jerk.
Nooooo! Don’t blame it all on Millard! The Whig Party fell apart in response to controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, after Fillmore had left office.
“Jackson seems to be the person who first started the “Democratic Party” as such.”
Credit for this really rests with Jackson’s protege’ and Vice President, Martin Van Buren. Van Buren perfected the political machine (the Albany Regency) and the Party used it as a model throughout the country to build party unity and procedure.
Seems like the Democrats could use another Van Buren today.
Maybe we can find relevance in the Jefferson/Hamilton controversy extending even unto today.
I see Hamilton as the forerunner of today’s conservatives, in that conservatism favors big business and safeguards its interests.
I see Jefferson as the forerunner of today’s liberals, in that liberalism safeguards the people’s civil rights, civil liberties, and democratic participation: freedom of speech, freedom of religion (and reining in the political influence of the fundamentalist clergy*), voting rights.
Also, Hamilton favored an autocratic government that distrusted the people while promoting the interests of the big money guys. Fast forward to today: we have Cheney and Ashcroft carrying out these Hamiltonian tendencies to a nightmarish degree. If Hamilton were alive today, would he have any way to keep big corporations like Enron from massive fiscal fraud? Would he favor Halliburton cleaning up on Iraq oil construction contracts?
Meanwhile the ACLU keeps fighting for the rights of the little guys, to protect our freedoms from being trampled by the government, in a way that would make Jefferson proud. The Patriot Acts are the Alien and Sedition Acts redux.
I agree with John Mace that this thread has earned its place in Great Debates by now. Somebody please move it there before Manny locks it up!
*Jefferson’s famous quote about “tyranny over the mind of man” is usually quoted out of context. Carved in stone on the Jefferson Memorial with important context misleadingly deleted. Here it is in full—
I disagree, Jomo. I believe Jefferson’s legacy, today, is best expressed in populist conservatism – not Libertarianism, nor the pro-business conservatism and foreign-policy neoconservatism that guides the Bush administration, but the isolationist and nativist and religious-traditionalist conservatism of Buchanan’s America First Party (http://www.americafirstparty.org/). Jefferson would have been embarassed (I hope!), but these morons do express the agrarian-decentralist core spirit of Jeffersonianism better than any organization now active, much more so than the ACLU. Just as Andy Jackson expressed the legacy of Jeffersonianism better than any other leader of his time, regrettable though that might be. Jefferson stood for many different and contradictory things, but I am certain that the idea of a vigorous federal government acting to, for instance, protect citizens’ individual rights from violations by states and local communities – as it did in the South in the 1950s and '60s – would have confused and horrified him. He was a decentralist first and foremost (not to mention a slaveowner, which obviously influenced his life and thought more than did his theoretical abolitionist principles). He would never have joined or supported the ACLU.
I agree with Michael Lind, who identified Hamilton as the forerunner, not of Bush-Cheney conservatism, but of Lind’s own political philosophy, which he has variously identified as “National Liberalism,” “Liberal Nationalism,” “Democratic Nationalism,” or “National Democracy.” Essentially, this is Hamiltonianism without the elitism. (Hamilton wanted not only a strong and vigorous national government, but a highly trained and educated meritocratic civil-service elite to run it. Lind is very much a small-d democrat.) Lind identifies Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Teddy Roosevelt as thinkers in this same tradition. In his book The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996) (a volume I hope will one day be ranked with The Federalist Papers!), Lind applies this philosophy to modern circumstances and advocates a new national stated dedicated to “blurring and churning” of class divisions, giving the poor and disadvantaged a leg up, and scrapping race-based affirmative action in favor of an even more vigorous regime of class-based affirmative action. It sounds like socialism but it ain’t – at least, Lind’s intellectual heritage owes very little to socialism even if some socialists might endorse his proposals. Lind developed his ideas further in Up From Conservatism: Why the Right is Wrong for America (New York: The Free Press, 1996); Hamilton’s Republic, a collection of essays by American leaders Lind identifies as belonging to the Hamiltonian-Liberal Nationalist tradition; and (with Ted Halstead) The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics (New York: Doubleday, 2001). You can also find most of Lind’s published articles on-line at the website of the New America Foundation, http://www.newamerica.net.
In my view, we would do well to take Jefferson’s statue out of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington and rededicate it to Hamilton. Hamilton had a much better vision of where the United States could and should go.
By the way, Jomo, if you want a real intellectual in the White House, there’s always . . .
Damn, I can’t think of anybody.
There are real political intellectuals in America, all right, we’ve been discussing some of them, but none of them seem to have any interest in running for public office. They would rather exert their influence through think-tanks and magazine articles. Defining an intellectual in the broadest terms, as simply a person who is passionately interested in knowledge and ideas for their own sake, we haven’t had a real intellectual in the Oval Office since Woodrow Wilson. We’ve had some highly intelligent men, but no intellectuals. There are political intellectuals, and there are career politicians, and while the two groups may have some interaction and communication, there no longer appears to be even the slightest Boolean intersection between the two groups.
Why is that, I wonder? Why, and at what point, did public life in America divorce itself from the life of the mind? Could merit discussion in a whole new thread.