The Quarterly Journal VOLUME 2 APRIL, 1912 NUMBER 3 A Sketch of the Early Political Parties in the United States O. G. LIBBY, Professor of History, University of North Dakota In the growth of political parties in this country one can but be struck by the simplicity of their origin and the relative clarity of the issues which furnished the basis for division. Religious differences such as played so prominent a part at critical times in France, Germany, and England, seem to be totally absent here. The animosity engendered by personal ambition or factional jealousy appears but spasmodically and was never a powerful determinant in early party divisions. The obscuring influence of corporate wealth did not then confuse the vision of the leaders nor mask dangerous theories behind a semblance of popular principles. The lessons of old world experience and the demands of a new and untried environment prevented much immature or idealistic experimenting. Everything had to be tried by the test of reality and immediate usefulness. Besides this there was an ever present factor of buoyant optimism and hopefulness which arose partly from the recoil of the freedom from old time tradition and partly from the boundless opportunities open to the humblest newcomer on our shores. The first national political parties in this country, the Loyalists, or Tories, and the Whigs, arose from the friction that naturally resulted when a more or less traditional form of government attempted to impose its customary methods and long established precedents upon the American colonies. In England the principles of self government inherited from the more primitive Anglo Saxons and developed thru centuries of strife with. a centralizing monarchy had at last taken on a form which was fairly satisfactory to the upper and middle classes. That profitable partnership entered into as early as 1485 between the Tudors and the English middle class had worked well. The ill advised attempt to overthrow it during the rule of the Stuarts had failed utterly. The Hanoverian dynasty of the 18th century was a repetition of the Tudor without its higher qualities of statesmanship, and, until 1760, with hardly a trace of autocratic self-will. The development of a world commerce, the securing of an immense colonial empire and the first stages of the Industrial Revolution, these were the fruits of middle class domination in the English government by 1763, and certainly there could be little complaint of a government so well in hand. Quite otherwise was the case in the American colonies of England. In those colonies where the newcomers were largely of English stock, namely, in Virginia and Maryland, and in New England, certain favoring circumstances had given them leadership in the struggle for local self government. The principal New England colony, Massachusetts, was settled in the period of the personal rule of Charles I., when liberty loving Englishmen were turning to America for that freedom denied them at home. The settlers in this colony, mostly of the non-conforming conservative wing of the radical Puritan party of the time, obtained a charter so entirely favorable to their ideas of local self government and so completely at variance with the theories of the king that it raises a question as to the nature of the influence used to secure such a document. Two other New England colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, ultimately procured very liberal charters from Charles II., and a later attempt to undo the mischief and revoke all three of these New England charters came to nothing on account of the expulsion of the Stuart line from England. The net result of this intelligent and concerted effort on the part of the Puritans in England was the migration of over 20,000 progressive Englishmen of that party to New England, and by 1640 the successful establishment of three self governing commonwealths there. The fourth, New Hampshire, tho later a royal colony, had been long enough under the tutelage of Massachusetts to be thoroly imbued with Puritan principles and her people belonged, of course, very largely to that party. In Virginia the purchase of a majority of the stock in the Virginia company by the Puritans of England resulted in the establishment of a system of local government in the colony in 1619 quite in harmony with their theories of government. And altho in 1624 their charter was declared forfeit and Virginia became a royal colony, the beginning had been made and the colony became a refuge for many Puritans from this time on. The important migration to Virginia, however, did not take place until after the victory of the Puritans in England. Between the years 1649 and 1660, over 30,000 Englishmen of the middle class, who sympathized with the king and who were especially opposed to the military despotism of Cromwell, migrated to Virginia, giving this colony thereafter the leadership in America. This migration, far from making Virginia monarchic in tendency or laying the foundation for a feudal aristocracy, established at this focal region in America the English middle class theory of government, which the Stuarts had risked everything to overthrow. Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 is an excellent proof of the existence of these ideas in Virginia at this early date and of the presence of a large class ready to defend them even by force of arms. Maryland, too, by the peculiar circumstances attending the granting of her charter, had deemed it politic to adopt a liberal and conciliatory policy and by the invasion of Puritans and the constant aggressions of her stronger neighbor, Virginia, she had become in the course of time quite affiliated with the rest of the liberal self-governing colonies of pure English stock already described. The English revolution of 1688 gave a great impetus to the development of colonial self government. This impulse was not immediately counteracted by any checks imposed by the English government in the interests of central control. For the next three generations, owing to external pressure and internal weakness and dissension, England had quite enough to do in maintaining the new dynasty secure on the throne, and the colonies continued to expand into fuller realization of their own capacity for self rule. By 1760, when George III. came to the throne, every one of the English colonies had some form of representative assembly and the process of holding an irresponsible executive in check by legislative control over taxation had been quite completely worked out and was being applied with marked effect in such representative colonies as Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.* At many points on the Atlantic sea *An excellent presentation of the later phases of this development has recently come to hand, see McCormac, Colonial Opposition to Imperial Authority during the French and Indian War. University of California Publications in History, Vol. I., No. 1, Nov. 23, 1911. board, physiography had a specially noticeable influence in the direction of colonial growth. New England was a physiographic unit isolated from the rest of the English colonies, having its peculiar people, institutions, and modes of thought. The soil was, as a rule, poor, making agriculture almost from the beginning a subsidiary occupation. Its sea frontage and excellent harbors, abundant pine forests and the presence of exhaustless fisheries pointed the way to sea faring occupations, for which originally the people seem to have been but poorly prepared. Fishing and commerce led to manufacturing, and all three were helped rather than hindered by the prevailing restrictive theory of national commerce, while the lax enforcement of the navigation acts, a policy which Walpole favored, prevented the application of even the ordinary hindrances to independent commercial development on the part of these American colonies. It followed naturally enough that by the middle of the eighteenth century the New England colonies had begun to be serious industrial rivals of the mother country, and were, besides, in full possession of well understood English precedents to support the various stages of their growth. Virginia, on the other hand, a purely agricultural colony, had little clash with England's restrictive trade laws. But the imperial size of her original land grant, which had been in no wise diminished by later events, had placed upon her shoulders the responsibility for trans-Alleghany settlement in the face of the opposition of France and her Indian allies. Shenandoah Valley, the greatest natural highway in America, and Cumberland Gap opened the west to the Virginians, and the cost of keeping the way open fell upon them alone. The stirring events of the French and Indian War furnished abundant evidence that Virginia had men capable of leadership, and public spirited citizens fully alive to the gravity of the situation. When George III. summoned his Tory cohorts from their long retirement outside English public life and attempted to reorganize the government on the lines of centralized rule and irresponsible monarchy, he took a very natural step and one quite in harmony with the views of a considerable body of influential Englishmen. The reaction from Hanoverian helplessness had set in, the age of machinery had arrived, commerce was seeking to strengthen old markets and to find out new ones. American colonial affairs had been allowed to run at loose ends long enough. This renascence of English administrative centralization brought on at once an industrial and political crisis in the English colonies. Long established colonial trade interests, vitally involving every one of the thirteen colonies, were clearly jeopardized. The African slave trade, the New England fisheries and her lucrative manufacture of rum and lumber, the export of Virginia tobacco and middle state food stuffs were all threatened. Equally grave was the impending loss to English settlement of the whole Ohio valley which Virginia, at least, regarded as her peculiar possession. Most significant of all, there was a very evident plan afoot to render the colonial governors independent of their respective legislatures and thus overturn the entire machinery of local self government which had been so long in successful operation in the royal and proprietary colonies. This was the real "critical period" in American history, industrial and territorial expansion on the one hand, and the right of local self government on the other, were in serious danger of being thwarted. The united authority of king and parliament supported the aggression and it was a matter of grave doubt whether there were precedents in English history for opposing this sovereign exercise of power. In this crisis a power was evoked which alone was capable of facing the formidable array of forces on the side of England, a call for a united front was issued, a colonial congress was held, and the formation of a national party began. The various colonial factions or parties, that had sprung naturally from the local clash of executive and legislative power, now coalesced into two parties. The party with a program and a fighting plan was, of course, the Whig. The Loyalist party lacked organization, a definite goal, and aggressive leaders. Moreover its members were taken by surprise and were hurried on from stage to stage of the revolt, without being able to offer any effective check to a movement so spontaneous and far reaching. The severity of the crisis may be gauged by the illogical nature of the arguments adduced by the Whigs in their own defense, and the constant and rapid shifting of the successive positions assumed by their leaders during the various stages of the conflict with England. But the objects to be defended were as clear and tangible as their arguments were hazy and indefinite. Western territory, industrial progress, local self government,-these main issues stand out |