Timeframe: 1968-2008

George Wallace announced on February 8, 1968 that he would run for president as the candidate of the American Independent Party; shortly afterward, he found a running mate, General Curtis E. LeMay, former Air Force chief of staff. His appeal was to racist Democrats in the South where many democratic candidates supported him. Outside the South various rightist groups helps, but it was his appeal to the dissatisfied that threatened to make serious inroads to the old party strength.

He offered an antifederal government, pro-state rights and a law-and-order platform with racism inside the wrapper. He derided intellectuals who he called "pointed heads," beatniks, the Supreme Court, bureaucrats, school busing, "national lbieral parties," pollsters, and the national news media. The party polled 10 million votes, or 13.5% of the total national vote, the highest percentage for a third party since 1924.

In 1972, with Rep. John Schmitz (R-Calif.) heading the ticket, the party received 1,080,670 votes. The remnants of the Wallace movement split in 1976; Lester Maddox (American Independent) and Thomas Anderson (American) polled 170,000 and 160,000 votes. At the present, the American Independent party still exists in some states, as California, where it is under the coalition of the U. S. Taxpayers Party at the present day.

Timeframe: 1849 - 1924

The Free soil party, a political party organized in 1848 on a platform opposing the extension of slavery, was rooted in the growing conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces in the United States. The conflict was intensified by the acquisition of new territories from Mexico and the ensuing argument whether or not slavery would be permitted into those territories. The party evolved from antislavery and otherwise discontented elements in the Democratic and Whig parties. It was eclipsed in the early 1850's by the new Republican Party, which incorporated free soil goals.

American Party is the name of several political in United States history. The first established American party—also called the Know-Nothing party was founded in New York City in 1849 as a secret patriotic organization under the name of the Order of the Star Spangled Banner.

Know-Nothing Movement, a nativist political movement in the United States in the 1850's. It was organized to oppose the great wave of immigrants who entered the United States after 1846. Know-Nothings claimed that the immigrants—who were principally Irish and Roman Catholic threatened to destroy the American experiment. The Roman Catholic church, they charged, was subservient to a foreign prince (the pope), it was growing in power, and it potentially could exert political control over a large group of people. Such nativist sentiments had long existed among many Americans, but they had never before been expressed in such powerful form.

In several Northern states as early as the 1840's there were local nativist parties that drew support from the Democratic and Whig parties. By the early 1850's there was a trend to organize nationally against the presumed immigrant threat. The old parties, the nativists said, had not confronted the danger. The Democrats, it was charged, were supported by the aliens; the party needed their votes and catered to their whims. The Whigs appeared helpless before them.

Originally, nativist party members had worked through a number of secret societies, clandestinely throwing their support on election day with powerful effect to sympathetic candidates. Saying that they knew nothing about such activities, the nativists wreaked havoc with their votes in 1854 in the existing party system. They won sweeping victories at the state and congressional levels. They attracted many Northern Whigs to their point of view along with an important number of Democrats. Southern Whigs also joined because of growing sectional tensions caused by the reintroduction of the slavery issue into national politics in 1854. For a time it seemed as if the Know-Nothings would be the main opposition party in the United States. Publicly backing Millard Fillmore as a presidential candidate in 1856, they won more than 21% of the popular vote and eight electoral votes.

Their platform was inspired by the fear and resentment of native Protestants at the flood of the Roman Catholic immigrants from Europe, and chiefly Ireland, who, on obtaining naturalization, voted themselves into political office in large cities. Their state and national platforms demanded that immigration be limited, that politics be "purified" by limiting officeholding to native-born Americans, and that a 21-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote. They also sought to limit the sale of liquor, to restrict public-school teaching to Protestants, and to have the Protestant version of the Bible read daily in classrooms.

Despite their strength and appeal, the Know-Nothings were already in decline as a national party by 1856. Beset by differences over the slavery issue, many members joined the Republican Party, which seemed sympathetic to much of their nativism and offered additional appeals on other important issues. Know-Nothing parties remained strong in a number of Northern states in the late 1850's, but the party was spent as a national force before the election of 1860.

Essentially, the party’s tenets were those of the American Republican Party founded a few years earlier which had subsequently changed its name to the Native American Party. Among other parties so named was one organized in Philadelphia in 1887. At the convention held in Washington, D.C., on August 14, 1888 it nominated presidential candidates. The party platform advocated 14-year residence for naturalization, exclusion of socialists, anarchists and other supposedly dangerous persons, free schools, a strong navy and coastal defense, continued separation of church and state, and enforcement of the Monroe doctrine. Its candidate, James L. Curtis of New York, recieved only 1,591 votes at the November election. In the 1924 elections a similarly named party sought Ku Klux Klan support for its candidates, Gilbert O. Nations for president and C.H. Randall for vice president, nominated at Columbus, Ohio on June 3. This party also gained a negligible fraction of the vote.

Timeframe: 1827 - 1836

The Anti-Masonic party was founded in 1827-28, chiefly as a result of the mysterious disappearance of Willam Morgan of Batavia, New York, a Freemason, who was planning to publish a book which revealed the secrets of the order. Morgan, an iternant worker, was arrested in 1826 and charged with stealing and indebtedness, apparently as pretext for seizing him. He was convicted and jailed, reportedly kidnapped shortly afterward. This incident touched off an Anti-masonic movement.

Although secret societies in general were frowned upon by early 19th century Americans, the Freemasons long continued exempt from criticism, perhaps because George Washington and other statesmen and soldiers of the Revolutionary period had been Masons. Indeed, in the first quarter of the 19th century membership is a Masonic lodge was almost a necessity for political preferment. In 1826, general approval of Masonry suffered a sudden, dramatic reversal as the Morgan incidend came to an end.

It was popularly believed, although never proved, that fellow Masons had murdered Morgan. Masonry in New York received a nearly mortal blow, membership dwindling in the decade 1826-1836 from 20,000 to 3,000.

Opponents of Freemasonry, including sections of the press, churches, and antislavery elements, joined together in the condemnation of the order. Thurlow Weed, publisher of the Rochester Telegraph and the Anti-Masonic Inquirer, led the press attack on Free-masonry and endorsed anti-Masonic candidates for New York State offices in the election of 1827. When fifteen of these candidates were elected to the state Assembly, an anti-Masonic party formed in 1828 and held its first convention.

The Anti-Masonic Party, formed in New York in 1828, reflected the widespread hostility toward Masons holding public office. Thurlow Weed in 1828 established in Rochester, N.Y., his Anti-Masonic Enquirer and two years later obtained financial backing for his Albany Evening Journal, which became the chief party organ. There was a rapid proliferation of anti-Masonic papers, especially in the Eastern states. By 1832 there were 46 in New York and 55 in Pennsylvania.

The Anti-Masonic Party was the first party to hold a nominating convention and the first to announce a platform. On Sept. 26, 1831, convening in Baltimore, it nominated William Wirt of Maryland for the presidency and Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania for the vice presidency. The political effect of the entrance, for the first time, of a third party into a United States presidential election was to draw support from Henry Clay and to help President Andrew Jackson (who was a Mason) win reelection by a wide margin. Vermont gave the party seven electoral votes and elected an Anti-Masonic governor, William A. Palmer. The party also gained members in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Ohio.

After the elections of 1836, however, the Anti-Masonic party declined. Together with the National Republican Party, it eventually was absorbed into the new Whig Party. It did win a considerable amount of seats in the 23rd congress and survived until 1834 when several prominent leaders founded the Whig Party or switched to the Democratic Party.

Timeframe: 1860 - 1860

The Free soil party, a political party organized in 1848 on a platform opposing the extension of slavery, was rooted in the growing conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces in the United States. The conflict was intensified by the acquisition of new territories from Mexico and the ensuing argument whether or not slavery would be permitted into those territories. The party evolved from antislavery and otherwise discontented elements in the Democratic and Whig parties. It was eclipsed in the early 1850's by the new Republican Party, which incorporated free soil goals.

The Constitutional Union Party was a short lived political party formed chiefly of the remnants of the American Party and the old-line southern wing of the Whig Party, organized for the election of 1860. Persuaded that the agitation over the slavery question could lead only to the disruption of the Union, its founders presented no platform other than a vague appeal for adherence to the Constitution, the Union, and the laws of the United States.

Meeting in Baltimore in May 1860, the party had its founding convention, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president. The formation of the party was prompted by the desire to muster popular sentiment in favor of the Union and against southern secession. The platform adopted by the party advocated support for "the Constitution of the country, the union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws," but took no stand on the slavery issue.

At the convention, where it was called "National Union" in the invitations, John Bell was selected over Sam Houston of Texas, who was the favorite of the American contingent, and Edward Everett was selected for the vice presidential nomination, which he did not want

In the North the Bell movement attracted remnants of the "Americans" and old Whigs. The failure of Fillmore in 1856 and the new-found conservatism of the Republicans caused many former Whigs such as Thomas Ewing of Ohio to support "Lincoln, the Whig" and the Whig policies in the Republican platform.

In the November election the Constitutional Union party found its greatest strength among conservatives in the border states, where the effects of civil conflict were especially feared, although the ticket was supported throughout the nation. The party carried Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Bell trailed the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, and the two Democratic nominees, Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, receiving 591,658 popular votes (only 12.6% of the total). He carried the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee with 39 electoral votes. Leaders of the party, in the ensuing months, called for reconciliation of the sections through a compromise of the slavery issue, but without success.

With the coming of the Civil War the Constitutional Union Party disappeared from the political scene, as the party was dissolved.

Timeframe: 1834 - 1834

In the 1830s, under the starkly new leadership of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, the Democratic party developed the characteristics it retained until the end of the century. It was willing to use national power in foreign affairs when American interests were threatened, but in economic and social policy it stressed the responsibility to act cautiously. Democrats argued that the federal government should do nothing the states could do for themselves, leaving everything in control to the smallest denominator. Jackson, when president, acted to reinforce a coalition, and built the foundations of the party.

In the presidential elections of 1824, the former war hero Andrew Jackson, despite receiving the largest number of popular votes, had lost the election to the House of Representatives. Rejecting "King Caucus" the Jacksonians were soon joined by Senator Martin Van Buren leader of New York’s political machine. Thus the Jacksonians built an alliance between those on the West and Eastern city organizations.

Thus the major source of the party’s cohesion was its strong organization, which enabled it to fight in elections effectively and shape government decisions. The Democratic organization, with its local, district, and statewide committees, conventions, and rallies, spread everywhere to promote the party and principles, drawing up lists of voters. Jackson had to stradle Western demands for internal improvements and Northeastern objections to large federal expenditures, Northeastern demands for the protective tariff and Southern demands for tariff reduction, and Calhoun’s view that any state could nullify a national law.

Calhouns followers, not intent to drop the issue, called a special state nullification convention to proclaim the federal tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the jurisdiction of South Carolina. However, Jackson responded with a proclamation declaring the federal government sovereign and indivisible, thus denying that a state could refuse to obey the law. He received from Congress a force bill that empowered him to use armed forces. Southern Democrats began to split between pro-Calhoun nullifiers and pro-Jackson unionists. Problems erupted with the slavery issue when it came to the annexation of Texas.

Van Buren’s administration hedged on Jackson’s unionist view by agreeing in part to a Calhoun sponsored resolution which said that a state had jurisdiction over slavery within its borders. However, slavery still remained an issue. Democrats spillet into two camps, the "barnburners" and the "hunkers." The issue divided local as well as national Democrats; party leaders as Lewis Cass and Stephen A. Douglas supported "squatter sovereignty". However, this did not please Southern Democrats. The result was electoral disaster, as many northern Democrats, seeking to punish their leaders, joined the emerging Republicans. These defections cost the party northern support.

After the Southern Democrats seceded from the party and the nation, new factional groupings emerged along East-West, war-peace, and mercantile-agrarian lines. National chairman August Belmont of New York led the "War Democrats" in support of Lincoln’s conduct of the war and "sound money programs." Representative Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio became the spokesman for the "Peace Democrats" who criticized Lincoln’s conduct of the war. The Democrats, in 1864 succeeded to nominating George B. McClellan, a Civil War general, for president and giving him a peace platform to run on. President Lincoln in the mean time recruited Governor Andrew Johnson of Tenesee, a war Democrat, for his vice-presidential nominee.

The Republicans charged the Democrats for disloyalty, as they opposed the draft, social changes and government encroachment, and made it an effective campaign slogan for the rest of the century. The tactic, known as "waving the bloody shirt" always hurt the Democrats in close elections until powerful emotional memories faded. They did not regain control of either house of Congress until 1874, and the Presidency until 1884. As the minority party, Democrats became absorbed in the problems of postwar inflation and agricultural depression. Factional interests debated "hard" versus "soft" currency and credit policies. After a stalemate, Horatio Symour agreed to a "soft money" platform while he was a "hard money" leader. From this election emerged Samuel J. Tilden.

Without a leader, the Democrats turned to endorse the 1872 Liberal Republican nominee, who had defected from Grant’s administration. The nominee turned out to be Horace Greeley. Within two years, Tilden became the governor, and in the next election ran as the Democratic nominee. Though he lost, Tilden was an instrumental factor in the winning candidacy of Grover Cleveland.

Cleveland returned the Democrats to control of the White House after twenty-four years of Republican rules. He oversized federal patronage to distribute. Around this time, party fationalism got out of hand, as three groups fought for control in an increasingly harsh atmosphere. One bloc comprised the traditional Democrats behind New York’s Grover Cleveland; they still espoused the conventional policies of limited government activities. A second group consisted of the urban political machines, which won the support of immigrants by helping them adjust to conditions in the country. The third faction was made up of the groups in the South and the West reacting against the industrial economy. Currency and tariff policies became the major issues of the Cleveland era, complicated by a rising output of silver mines, and the need to establish a balance between silver and gold currencies.

Cleveland struck hard for tariff reduction, but was opposed by Democratic protectionists. Angry farmers wanted a shift of government intervention towards there behalf, but were strongly resisted by traditionalists. They provoked a revolt and found William Jennings Bryan a presidential candidate who overthrew Cleveland. William Jennings Bryan led the free silver cause and was supported as well by the Peoples’ Party. The silverites dominated the national convention, and the gold delegates refrained from voting. Bryan endeavored to forge an alliance out of agrarian discontent in the South and Midwest.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Democrats’ minority among voters remained central to their interest. However, a Progressive split in the Republican party helped elect Woodrow Wilson twice. Wilson conceived his party leadership as a parliamentary role, shaping his approach to his legislative program, which he promoted vigorously and successfully, and his patronage and other organizational needs of his party. The Great War, popular at first, backfired against the Wilson administration when large numbers of German-Americans and Irish-Americans protested with their votes against involvement on the English side. The national convention in 1924 was stalemated between the urban-ethnic wing and the older Bryanite-southern groups.

Problems generated in the 18th Amendment set the "wets" against "drys." The South closed ranks to deatlock the national convention of 1920. By 1924, "dry" Wilson, and "wet" Al Smith were the leaders of two factions in the party. In 1928, the nomination of Irish Catholic Al Smith broke the solid South, part of which went Republican for the first time ever in reaction to the social and cultural values represented by Smith. Nevertheless, the first Catholic to be nominated, he raised the Democratic turnout by a substantial percentage, particularly in large cities.

In the mid-20th century, the basic character of the Democratic appeal began to change in a gradual and then rapid manner. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Democrats became a party of vigorous government intervention in the economy and on social issues, willing to regulate and redistribute wealth to protect those least able to help themselves. Urban political machines brought to the party a commitment to social welfare legislation to help immigrant constituents.

The election came at a time of a grave national economic crisis; a disenfranchised public looked to the Republicans as abandoning their interests while the Hoover presidency spent money on private interests. Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the Democratic message to the White House and solidified and expanded the new Democratic commitment to the poor ethnic constituencies in city districts. Increasingly, under Democratic leadership, the government expanded its role in social welfare and economic regulation. Traditional Democrats surged at the polls and the party won over new groups, such as the blacks who had previously gone Republican. The Result was a New Deal coalition which lasted in a dominant role for more than 30 years.

World War II witnessed a new factionalism, as the South prepared to reassert itself. Labor unions now had potent vote getting capacity and urban Democratic machines were attempting to modernize themselves. Roosevelt acquiesced to Southern pressures by withholding support for Vice President Wallace, and instead giving the nomination to Harry S. Truman, who had gained credibility and prominence through investigations of defense spending.

Truman had become president within a year, upon Roosevelt’s death. The reawakening of memories of the New Deal and the depression President Truman’s campaign helped bring him back for a second term. The Republican Congress, seeking to limit union activity, passed the Taft-Hartley Act over Truman’s veto, gaining Truman support of union members. Truman also appointed the Committee on Civil Rights to develop race-relations, but it so inflamed the South that Democratic regulars in Southern states supported a Dixiecrat ticked led by Wallace.

At the next national convention, ideological New Dealers fought to establish a loyalty pledge that would bind delegates to the convention’s choices. Despite efforts to avoid a candidacy, Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois was the compromise choice over the sectional candidacy of Richard B. Russel of Georgia and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The Republicans were victorious with their election of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Stevenson however made efforts to improve party organization and serve as an active spokesman. At the grassroots level, urban machines were working to incorporate new constituents into the party.

The Democrats regained power with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and were able to pass much vigorous legislation. Kennedy’s victory demonstrated that Catholicism need not be the handicap that it was for Al Smith. The Kennedy-Johnson campaign conducted a thoroughly united campaign that brought a narrow victory.

The 1960 election also brought a further breakup of the one-party solid South, as Kennedy’s New Frontier program included new protections for civil rights in the South and for bringing blacks into the ranks of the Democratic party. Robert F. Kennedy had a major responsibility for the implementation of civil rights legislation and registration. Overseas, the Castro regime of Cuba defeated an American-sponsored invasion by anti-Castro exiles at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy also increased Communist pressure on South Vietnam by sending military aid.

The Vietnam War provoked many to challenge it on its anti-Communist foreign policy. At the same time, the revolt of the youth against the draft and on matters of personal behavior and discipline contributed a strong challenge; at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the police culminated in street battles with groups of protesters.

Many anti-war Democrats turned to the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, as Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek renomination. New nominating rules, inspired by the restlessness in the party, led to the nomination of George McGovern. His campaign ended in overwhelming defeat, but the party bounced back after the excesses of Watergate and the tapering off of the war induced fervor.

Former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia swept the primaries and succeeded in unseating President Gerald Ford in a close contest in which labor, blacks, and the South joined to bring a Southerner to the presidency. The clash of social values, and changing economic issues shifted the center of gravity within the party and continued to drive many away. Issues such as inflation gravely hurt the party. Political parties at this time were in general decline, as fewer voters remained loyal to them.

The Democrats, with a ticket of the former vice president Walter Mondale were defeated in the 1984 elections by a greater margin than in 1980, where Carter ran for reelection. The Democrats lost more than a dozen seats in the House, and the Republicans maintained control of the Senate. In the midterm elections of 1986, the Democrats won control of the Senate and gained modestly in the House.

Although in 1988, the Democratic nominee for president, Governor Dukakis of Massachusetts had chosen Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas as his running mate, the South and West carried the Republicans to victory. However, the Democrats strengthened their hold in the House and Senate.

In 1992, after twelve years of Presidential rule by the Republican parties, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas was able to regain the Presidency for the party after winning over President George Bush, blamed for an economic downturn, and Ross Perot. With the country in a recession, the Democrats succeeded in rallying the public around a call for change and a commitment to domestic jobs programs. Bill Clinton was able to pull off a reelection in 1996, though his presidency was plagued with scandals and campaign finance problems. Apathetic voters failed to pay attention to campaign, and missing the major issues, they handed the President reelection. However, the 1994 midterm elections brought a stunning defeat to the Democrats as the Republicans gained control over both hoses of Congress. Democratic support in the South had eroded, but it showed dissatisfaction with Democratic rule nationwide.

Timeframe: 1794 - 1826

During the 1780s, sharp conflicts marked American politics. Since the establishment of the Constitution in 1789, the unanimous election of George Washington, and recommendation for a Bill of Rights, there was a shaper national consensus and conflicts soon developed over the new policies to be developed in the government. In 1790 through 1791, Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the treasury proposed a sweeping fiscal program which included funding and "assumption" by the Federal government of the Revolutionary War debts of the old Confederation and of the states, incorporation of a central national bank, tariffs to promote manufactures, and internal excise taxes. The purpose was to establish the new government, allying itself with powerful mercantile and financial interests.

Adherents to these policies became known as federalists. An opposition to Federalist policies began to emerge by 1791 and became the Republican Party. It found a power base among small farmers, producers, and traders, many Southern plantation owners and some urban artisans. Weak in New England, the party showed some strength in the Middle Atlantic States and in the South. The chief leaders, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were supported by the poet-journalist Philip Freneau in his National Gazette. It was a propaganda instrument which served as an important organizing agency. Other leaders included Albert Gallatin and James Monroe. Though the Jeffersonian party sought mass support it developed as a "cadre" party.

Initial policy orientations reflected the perspectives of the party’s followers, including opposition to Hamilton’s economic proposals, demands for the government responsible to popular majorities, demands for the federal government to operate with a narrow construction of the Constitution, and the denial of the national bank, emphasis on states rights as opposed to centralized government, and emphasis on personal and political liberties, shown in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which condemned the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The party held the support of the agrarian freeholding rural America with industry and merchandising as partners. However, there was no consensus on republican constitutional government and property rights. In foreign policy, they favored France over Britain and sharply criticized Jay’s Treaty.

When Aaron Burr and Jefferson led in electoral votes, the Democratic-Republicans came into power, leading what is called the Revolution of 1800. The electoral system made no provision for separate votes for president and vice president and a contest in the House resulted in Jefferson’s eventual succession to presidency. The Democratic-Republicans won a clear Senate majority and a two-to-one majority in the House.

The increasing acceptance of the principles of the party over Federalist principles brought into tradition the notion of a democratic republic where the elimination of property and taxpaying limits of voting led to universal suffrage. The Jefferson coalition was soon enlarged leading to easy victories for the Virginian presidents Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. The party always had a congressional majority, sometimes overwhelming, and there were more Democratic-republican judges. In 1820, Monroe came within one vote of unanimous election in the electoral college, and thus the nation entered into what was called "The Era of Good Feelings."

Important leaders during this period were Albert Gallatin, John Quincy Adams, and John Taylor, who distributed treatises for the party. The party was also growing with prominent figures like Henry Clay. The policies of the party began in a Jeffersonian direction, but in the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson was forced to diverge from strict constitutional construction, and was faced by John Marshall in the Supreme Court.

The Democratic-Republican party, during the Era of Good Feelings, became a mere label, as partisanship died down. When it reemerged, Andrew Jackson led the Democratic party which split off, leaving the rest in the National Republican Party.

Timeframe: 1794 - 1823

The Federalist Party was born out of the controversy over adoption of the proposed Federal Constitution in 1787-1788, before the American party system itself had been conceived. A well-defined Federalist party did not exist before 1794. After Washington's inauguration in 1789, debate arose in Congress and the cabinet over the proposals of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, subsequently enacted into law, that the national government assume state debts, fund the national debt at par value, and charter a national bank. The opposition to Hamilton rallied around Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Congressman James Madison.

Hamilton pushed through schemes for paying the foreign debt, restoring national credit, and assuming state debts. A United States bank and postal system soon followed, as well as a protective tariff and bounty system to develop manufactures and agriculture. The effortless crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 gave ample evidence of the new national strength.

In the meantime, the refusal of the Federalists to form an alliance with France had fused the Democrats and the Republicans, the two opposition groups to which most of the Anti-federalists belonged. Thomas Jefferson organized and James Madison joined the new Democratic-Republican Party. Not until these congressional debates over Jay's Treaty of 1794 did two parties emerge clearly: the Federalist party led by Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican party of Madison and Jefferson From then on, the Federalists championed commercial and diplomatic harmony with Britain, domestic stability and order, and strong national government under powerful executive and judicial branches.

The most influential of the Federalists besides Hamilton were John Adams and John Jay, and Fisher Ames, Roger Sherman, Jonathan Trumbull, Rufus King, John Marshall, and the members of the "Essex Junto".

By the end of his second term Washington had become closely identified with the Federalists. Washington's Farewell Address of 1796, prepared in association with Hamilton, may be read as a basic text of Federalism. Washington's vice president, John Adams, was elected president as a Federalist in 1796. Adams retained Washington's cabinet officers and sought to continue his predecessor's policies. He prosecuted an undeclared naval war with France, and after the Federalists had gained control of Congress, he supported the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. But Adams met increasing opposition within his own party from the Hamilton faction, especially over his military priorities.

When, as much to undercut mounting Democratic-Republican opposition as to end the war, Adams opened negotiations with France in 1799 and reorganized the cabinet under his own control, the Hamiltonians broke with him. His actions probably enhanced the Federalist party's position in the presidential election of 1800 but not enough to defeat Jefferson.

The party was irreparably split. In the waning days of his presidency Adams was able to conclude a peace with France and to appoint moderate Federalist John Marshall as chief justice. Long after the party was dead, Marshall preserved its principles from the bench.

Finding themselves in the opposition, the Federalists at last created a well-disciplined system of state party organizations and adopted the trappings of democracy in order to lure the voters. Concentrated primarily in the Northeast, they also assumed more of the aspect of a sectional minority. Neglecting ideological consistency and turning against their previous commitment to strong national power, they opposed Jefferson's popular Louisiana Purchase of 1803 as too costly and destructive of Northern influence. As a result, they continued to lose power at the national level, carrying only Connecticut, Delaware, and part of Maryland against Jefferson in 1804.

Strong opposition of Jefferson’s Embargo Act, however, reinforced the Federalists. In 1808 they carried every New England state except Vermont, and also won in Delaware, in parts of Maryland, and in North Carolina. Moreover, the War of 1812 proved so unpopular in the North that in the elections that year, New York and New Jersey also voted Federalist, along with the remainder of Maryland. This resurgence was only temporary, however, for when the war ended, the northern commercial sections withdrew their support.

Meanwhile, many of the party’s old leaders were gone, leaving Rufus King and Charles C. Pinckney leading the party. Other Federalist leaders, as a result of the Hartford Convention of 1814 had been driven from public life.

In 1816, the Federalists carried only Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware, and by 1820 when they failed to have a national candidate, they ceased as a national party. Locally, Federalists managed to retain control in Connecticut and Delaware until after 1820 and in Massachusetts until 1823. The party also lingered for some time in Maryland and North Carolina.

Timeframe: 1848 - 1854

The Free soil party, a political party organized in 1848 on a platform opposing the extension of slavery, was rooted in the growing conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces in the United States. The conflict was intensified by the acquisition of new territories from Mexico and the ensuing argument whether or not slavery would be permitted into those territories. The party evolved from antislavery and otherwise discontented elements in the Democratic and Whig parties. It was eclipsed in the early 1850's by the new Republican Party, which incorporated free soil goals.

Free soil became a political movement and slogan in the 1840's. Abolitionists in the North had already stirred antislavery sentiment, and government plans for annexing Texas created fears that this territory might enter the Union cut up into as many as six slave states. These fears were reflected in the Wilmot Proviso of 1846. The achievement of the small abolitionist Liberty party in defeating Henry Clay's presidential aspirations in 1844 demonstrated that political abolitionism could be effective.

The refusal of the two parties, Whig and Democrat, to endorse principles of the provio convinced the opposition groups of the need for a new party. The major groups involved in the organization of the Free Soil party at a convention in Buffalo, New York, were the abolitionist Liberty Party, the antislavery Whigs, and a radical faction of the New York Democrats, the Barnburners, who had broken with the state party when it came under control of the conservative Hunkers.

Led by Salmon P. Chase and John P. Hale, free-soilers, abolitionists, and others convened in Buffalo, N.Y., in August 1848 to set up a broadly based party. Among those present were discontented New York Democrats known as Barnburners," headed by former President Martin van Buren, who became the convention's presidential nominee.

The Free soil convention nominated Martin van Buren and Charles Francis Adams as candidates for president and vice-president, respectively, adopting a platform opposed to the extension of slavery and calling for a homestead law and a tariff for revenue only. The slogan of the party ws "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." Van Buren polled 291,616 votes in November; more important, the Free Soil party elected fourteen congressmen and two senators. The Compromise of 1850 created more ardent free-soilers, who were outraged by its fugitive slave provision and were generally fearful of the expansion of slavery westward. Such increasing partisanship, however, did not help the Free Soil party itself. Hale, its presidential candidate in 1852, polled only 156,297 votes.

By 1854 the crisis over slavery in the territories had reached proportions beyond the resources of the party, and free-soilers flocked to the Republican party. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the duel over whether Kansas was to be a free or a slave state turned the North irrevocably toward free soil. Finally, the Dred Scott Case of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in effect, that slavery could not be constitutionally restricted to the Southern states, made abolitionists out of most free-soilers and laid the ground for a final confrontation with the slaveholders. Louis Filler Antioch College

Timeframe: 1878 - 1884

The greenback idea came up again in March, 1875, when a national convention met at Cleveland to organize a new party. This was soon followed by a nominating convention at Indianapolis in May, 1876, which named Peter Cooper President. Its platform included the repeal of the Resumption Act of 1875 and issuance of legal tender notes convertible into government bonds with an interest rate not to exceed one cent a day per hundred dollars. Peter Cooper was a well known philanthropist and did not lead much of a campaign.

In the next two years, the party grew rapidly and Labor Reformers had greatly aided the cause and a conference at Toledo in February, 1878, arranged a farmer-labor partnership under the name "National" party, but it became better known as the Greenback Labor Party. In fall elections the third party won a million votes and fifteen members of Congress. The Greenbacks sought labor support which called for an issuance of the greenback and a bimetallistic money policy. The labor groups desired Greenback support for a reduction of working hours, establishment of a labor bureau and a curtailment of Chinese immigration.

In the following year, economic conditions in the nation improved and interest in politics among farmers and workers decreased. At the national convention in Chicago on June 9, 1889 agrarian and labor delegates, including members of a Socialist Labor party composed their differences and adopted a platform.

The convention named for President General James B. Weaver of Iowa, who was a Civil War veteran and a former Republican, elected to Congress in the Greenback wave of 1878. B.J. Chambers of Texas was named for Vice President. Weaver made an active campaign, speaking in all parts of the country and giving a leadership that it needed to dispel the impression it was a refuge for radicals. The return of prosperity and the success of the Resumption Act however removed agrarian and labor discontent. In the election they received only 308,578 votes, but eight Greenback Labor candidates were elected to Congress. In the ensuing years the party continued to decline. Its last national campaign was for the 1884 elections where it ran Civil War general Benjamin Butler, winning 175,370 votes.

Timeframe: 1971 - 1971

The Libertarian Party was founded in 1971, on December 11th, in the home of David Nolan. Dissillusioned Republicans, Democrats, and political newcomers hoped to create an alternative to the old parties, standing on firm principles of individual freedoms and a commitment to government non-intervention. The first national convention was later held in Denver, Colorado. John Hospers, a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California, was nominated as the presidential candidate, and the vice presidential candidate was Tonie Nathan. She became the first woman in United States history to recieve an electoral vote.

The next national convention, in New York city, nominated Roger MacBride and David Bergland on the presidential ticket; they were able to recieve ballot status in 32 states but still only recieved a little amount of popular vote--common for third parties facing the system set up in laws by the two established political parties. Two years later, Ed Clark, a Libertarian candidate for Governor of California, recieved 5% of the vote, and Randolph of Alaska became the first Libertarian legislator.

By 1980, the Libertarian party had recieved ballot status in all 50 states, and the party made their most impressive showing, and were at this time first considered as a political force, albeit one through ideology rather than political presence. The campaign by Ed Clark ran extensive television advertisements, offering the public a look at what the libertarian party had to offer. The next election, the Libertarian party made significant headway; the Louisiana congressional candidate James Agnew recieved 23% of the vote, and the Alaskan gubernatorial candidate Randolph recieved 13% of the vote. The Libertarian party continued to grow in a slow, painful process. Former Congressman Ron Paul of the Republican Party left to join the Libertarian party.

A decade later, in 1990, Libertarian congressional candidates were able to recieve up to about twenty percent of the vote, but would still not be able to win. Yet, the Libertarian party was proud that the Libertarian candidates for Senate recieved over one million votes, the highest total for a nationally organized party since 1914. However, this was greatly dwarfed in 1996, when in every race, candidates of the newly formed Reform Party came in third place, ahead of every Libertarian candidate in the race.

In 1996, the Libertarian party ran Harry Browne as their presidential candidate, with running mate Jo Jorgeson. This year, the Libertarian party recieved the most press coverage, as did all third political parties, who gained significantly higher visibility since the founding of the Reform Party by Ross Perot. The Libertarian candidate, along with other third party candidates were allowed to speak on Larry King Live and in third party debates, being shut out from the televised presidential debates. Yet, this increased visibility was not enough, and the Libertarians still recieved less than one percent of the presidential vote nationwide. Libertarians at this time were dissilusioned by the fact that they were overshadowed by the new Reform Party, and many people with Libertarianistic positions joined the Reform Party instead of them, who were increasingly called by the media, a "fringe group."

Timeframe: 1840 - 1848

The Liberty Party was the first antislavery party, grown out of a split in the ranks of the American Anti-Slavery Society between followers of William Lloyd Garrison’s radical program and a conservative group which held that abolitionist aims could be best obtained by orthodox political means.

The leading initiators of the anti-Garrison movement and the new party were the New York philanthropists Gerrit Smith, Arthur Tappan, and Judge William Jay, and the Ohio antislavery stalwart, Salmon P. Chase. At a state convention in Warsaw, New York on November 13, 1839, James G. Birney, an abolitionist crusader and one-time Alabama slave-holder, was tentatively nominated the Liberty Party’s candidacy for president, with Francis J. Lemoyne for vice president.

At a national convention in Albany, New York, on April 1, 1840, delegates from six states confirmed the nominations, officially adopted the party name, and declared abolition of slavery to be the single plank in its platform.

In the ensuing 1840 national elections, the Liberty party candidates polled only around seven thousand votes, but thereafter the party nominated candidates for local elections and gained strength. Since 1840 the Liberty party had gained recruits and newspaper support and was becoming a threat to the two major parties in close northern states, where it aimed to swing the balance of power. Birney was nominated again in November 1844 and ran with Thomas Morris, this time polling 62,300 votes, which could have secured the election of Henry Clay, but tipped it in favor of James K. Polk. When Texas became a major issue, the Liberty party was in a difficult position; a heavy third party vote might reduce the Whig vote and elect Polk over Clay, committed against Texas. Birney had accepted a Democratic nomination for the Michigan legislature, making it seem as if there was a Liberty-Democratic bargain to defeat Clay. Birney attempted to explain it in terms of local issues, but that hurt his candidacy. The party was also hurt by a forged letter, appearing in Whig newspapers, where Birney promised not to agitate the slavery issue.

In 1848, although the Liberty party had nominated John P. Hale and Leicester King, the party leaders urged the members to vote for candidates of the newly organized Free Soil party instead. Chase presided over Buffalo, New York for the convention of the Free Soil Party on August 9, 1848, which led to the demise of the short lived Liberty party. As such, Hale withdrew his candidacy.

Timeframe: 1828 - 1836

While Jackson was establishing control over the Democratic Party, the opposition, assuming the name National Republican began to form. In the campaign of 1828, these opposing groups had no official names. Both were Democratic-Republicans and were distinguished by such designations as "administration" and "opposition" or Adams men and Jackson men. About 1830 the term "National Republican" began to be used by the Clay following thus combining the old party name with the adjective which suggested its policies.

The new National Republican group was having its troubles; the Adams-Clay group had never been effectively organized into a party, and after the defeat in 1828 it lapsed into the status of a discredited minority with little strength outside of New England, and only portions of the mid Atlantic states and the Ohio valley could be regarded as fighting ground. National leadership was supplied by the Senate, where Clay joined Webster in 1831. The National Intelligencer was at the center of the opposition, edited by Joseph Gales and William W. Seaton. Soon after Henry Clay had seized upon the Maysville veto, his presidential campaign was underway.

Public meeting halls were filled with his speeches where he reiterated his devotion to the "American System" and criticized the administration and was ready to go before the country with the same policies Adams had favored and the same economic appeal.

The National Republicans took issue with the leading policies and acts of Jackson, as they remained committed to the protective tariff, federal support for internal improvements, the recognition of the Supreme Court on Constitutional questions and the importance of the balance of power given by the Senate. They vigorously attacked Jackson for his spoils system and for his handling of relations with Great Britain with regard to the Maine boundary and West India trade. But the campaign did not turn on these points as other movements such as the Antimasons sprung up. Wirt, the Antimason nominee, probably would have withdrawn had the National Republicans and Antimasons been able to unite later on one man.

The leaders of the National Republican party, such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, would later united in the next elections of 1836 to form an opposition Whig party to attack Jackson’s presidency.

Timeframe: 1891 - 1908

A product of the Populist movement, which had ignited the Agrarian west for decades previously, the People’s Party was the successor of the Greenback-Labor party which was formed in the 1880s. One of its chief organizers was the journalist Ignatius Donnelly who was the leader of the Farmer’s Alliance. Aggrieved farmers furnished the driving force and most of the votes; labor’s role was significant but only secondary.

A small group in the Southern Alliance called a convention, which met at Cincinnati on May 19, 1891, with fourteen hundred delegates present including labor representatives. Few Southerners came, for sentiment that the South was against a third party because of successes with the Democratic party. The convention formed the People’s party, but called a conference at St. Louis to secure the cooperation of farmer, labor, and other liberal groups. The conference in St. Louis adopted a platform, the nominating convention set for Omaha in July.

The platform that was adopted called for the free coinage of silver and the issuance of large amounts of paper currency as inflationary measures that it hoped would ease the financial burdens of the nation’s debt-ridden farmers. Its other demands included abolishing the national banking system, nationalizing the railroads, instituting a graduated income tax, electing senators by popular vote, and people participating in the government by means of a referendum. Two thirds of the platform was a bitter indictment of the American economic system and a condemnation of the two parties. Supplementary resolutions, not regarded as part of the platform, declared for the Australian ballot, further restriction of undesirable immigration and contract labor, rigid enforcement of the eight-hour law, abolition of the Pinkerton detective system, adoption of initiative, referendum, and recall, limitation of the Presidency to one term, and an end to subsidies.

In 1892, the party nominated James Baird Weaver for the presidency, over a choice of Colonel Polk, Walter Gresham, and Senator James Kyle. The spirit of the convention carried into the West, but not so much in the South, as Southern Alliance men refused to leave the Democratic party. With the Democrats taking a lot of their issues, Weaver lost but received more than a million votes and 22 electoral ones, and several Populist candidates made it to Congress. In the West, a coalition with the Democrats on electoral tickets resulted in a victory of five and a number of state and Congressional successes.

However, the next election gave the Populists a hard choice, as the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan stole much of their thunder. They managed to win control of the Democratic convention in St. Louis and secured Bryan’s nomination, who they supported and endorsed for the presidency, becoming "Popocrats." After Bryan was defeated, the People’s party split over the issue of continued alliance with the Democrats. In 1900 the Democrats renominated Bryan and the anti-Democrats nominated Wharton Barker. They reunited in 1904, but then its influence was declining and ceased to exist by 1908.

Timeframe: 1912 - 1952

The Progressive Party was the name used to designate several political organizations in the United States, associating with the presidential campaigns of Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, and Henry Wallace.

The Progressive Party, first known colloquially as the Bull Moose party, was founded after a bitter fight for the Republican presidential nomination between William H. Taft, Robert La Follette and Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a dynamic leader of the Progressive Movement, soon grew impatient with Taft’s relatively cautious approaches to reform. Taft’s dismissal of Gifford Pinchot as chief forester angered Roosevelt, who was an ardent conservationist. At the Republican convention in June 1912, most La Follette supporters switched to Roosevelt, but the nomination went to Taft because Taft controlled the party machinery.

Roosevelt, incensed at Taft’s conservative bent, formed the Progressive party, saying he was as fit as a bull moose. His platform called for tariff reform, stricter regulation of industrial combinations, women’s suffrage, prohibition of child labor, and other reforms. Many liberal Republicans went to the new party which nominated Roosevelt for president and Hiram W. Johnson for vice president. Although the Progressives greatly outpolled Republicans in the election the net result was a victory for the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. Progressive candidates for state and local offices did poorly, and the party dissapeared in 1916 when Roosevelt returned to the Republican Party.

In 1924, a liberal coalition, frustrated by conservative domination of both parties, formed the League of Progressive Political Action, popularly called the Progressive party. Robert La Follette, nominally a Republican, decided to run for president on his own. Fearing that a formal party organization would be infiltrated by Communists, he ran as an independent, but later accepted the nomination of the Progressive party. Senator Burton K. Wheeler was nominated for vice-president. The party advocated government ownership of public utilities and labor reforms such as collective bargaining. It also supported farm-relief measures, lower taxes for persons with moderate incomes, and other such laws. His candidacy was thus supported by the Socialist Party.

LaFollette received 17% of the popular vote but only carried Wisconsin. In 1934, LaFollette’s sons organized a Progressive Party in Wisconsin, after being defeated for nomination as a Republican. Under the Progressive ticket, the LaFollettes scored many victories, but disappeared in 1946.

A third Progressive party was formed in 1948 by dissident Democrats, most of whom had been prominent in developing the New Deal program. With former vice-president Henry Wallace and Tugwell among their leaders, Wallace was nominated for the party’s presidential nominee. Charging that both major parties advocated policies that would lead to economic crisis and a war with the Soviet Union, they favored high-level international conferences. They advocated rights for all minority and political groups, curbs on the power of monopolies, and anti-inflation measures such as price and rent controls, and the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Law.

He expected support from blacks, intellectuals and other groups that admired his militant liberalism. However, the support of the Communist Party damaged the Progressives, as the Democrats and Republicans attacked them as Communist-dominated. The progressives maintained their right to accept support from any group backing their program. Wallace only received 2.4% of the vote. In 1950 the party was further weakened when it denounced U.S. entry into the Korean War, and Wallace left the party. They disappeared after the 1952 election.

Timeframe: 1995 - 1995

The previous election year, in 1992, Ross Perot ran on an independent ticket, where he discovered overwhelming pockets of potential support from those disenchanted by the two established political parties. On September 25, 1995 Ross Perot announced on Larry King Live that he was determined to help form a new political party, in order to give those who supported him in 1992 a voice in future elections. Polls showed that nearly two out of every three voters wanted a new political party, including half of all Republicans and Democrats.

Soon thousands of concerned Americans began petitioning their state governments. Depending on state laws, the goal was to either form a new political party in each state or to place candidates on the November 5th ballot. The response from the public was unexpectedly in favor of starting the Reform Party. For example, in California, which had the earliest deadline in the nation, the requirement to put the Reform Party on the ballot was to get 89,007 voters to switch their party affiliation and join the Reform Party. It was not believed that the Reform Party could accomplish this goal, as it had never been done before. In only twenty days, more than 124,000 California voters joined the Reform Party. In North Carolina, more than 166,000 voters signed petitions. This was 100,000 signatures more than the 51,904 signatures the state required. In Texas, where 61,540 signatures were required, more than 161,000 voters signed on. In Florida, more than 110,000 voters signed Reform Party petitions even though only 65,596 signatures were required.

However, in trying to get ballot status in many states, the Reform Party had found need to challenge state laws to ensure the process is open and fair to all Reform Party candidates. For example, in Arkansas the Reform Party won an historic legal battle, becoming the first new party to be recognized by the state in more than twenty years. After the Arkansas Supreme Court denied the Reform Party ballot access for the election of officials at all levels of government, U.S. Federal District Court Judge George Howard ruled from the bench that Arkansas’ conflicting state laws were unconstitutional. Judge Howard granted the Arkansas Reform Party full ballot access and ordered the state to pay all costs for blocking the voters’ right of freedom of association.

Following the 1992 elections, candidates from both established political parties looked for ways to attract the "Perot voters"—now the "Reform Party voters." In the coming elections, there was much speculation about whom would make a try for the Reform Party presidential ticket in 1996. Richard Lamm, a former governor of Colorado, and party of a group of independents dubbed by the media as the "secret seven" who intended to try to make runs for independent candidacies, was first to declare his intent of running with his running mate, Ed Zschau. Richard Lamm had first shown interest in the party when he made a keynote speech at the party’s California convention earlier.

Ross Perot soon after entered the race as well, while Richard Lamm appealed to Reform Party voters to "pass the torch." Ross Perot easily won in a landslide, but Richard Lamm continued to press claims of unfair treatment in the primary process. Ross Perot chose Pat Choate, a prominent economist and protectionist, as his running mate. This time around, many more liberal voters stayed away from the Reform Party, calling its anti-NAFTA stance "right-wing." In all, Ross Perot lost support, as voters figured that he would not win the election. During this time, Pat Buchanan, a prominent Republican candidate, called Ross Perot and the Reform Party a "mortal threat the Republican Party."

During the election and in the aftermath, leaders of the Reform Party fought against an internal splinter group, called the "Shaumberg Group," after the city where they had a convention, who tried to wrest control of the party away by petitioning the FEC. However, the FEC decided that the Shaumberg group was only a small minority in the Reform Party, and refused. The Shaumberg group did succeed in alienating more voters from the Reform Party, who did not know what to make of the internal brawls in the party.

Reform Party grassroots efforts continued to mount in the fifty states in which the party established itself. However, attempts to reach voters by the media were quickly blocked by others. When Ross Perot, in 1997, attempted to buy air time for an infocommercial regarding campaign finance reform, the networks rejected him. During the previous campaign, Ross Perot was also shut out from the presidential debates, unlike the election before that when he did not have a party ticket.

The same year, many prominent members of the established political parties, fed up with the corruption and irresponsibility already imbued in the political system, stated potential support for the Reform Party. Representative James Traficant, a Democrat, stated on Washington Journal on the C-SPAN network that Ross Perot was right all along, and that since the two parties were alike, a third political party was needed. Traficant later released a press release that he would be the keynote speaker at the Reform Party of California convention. Others, such as former congressman David Boren, who had refused the offer of being Ross Perot’s running mate during the election to preserve his position at the university at which he worked, showed interest in the Reform Party.

Timeframe: 1884 - 1884

The Republican Party had been created, seizing the opening given to them by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which invalidated the Missouri Compromise by splitting the Missouri territory into free-soil and slave states. Many northern Whigs, who had no power or national party began to cooperate with the "Anti-Nebraska" Democrats to form the Free-Soil Party. They began to organize a new party in 1854, building on the name Republican, reviving the old term employed by the Jeffersionians. They emphasized absolute opposition to the expansion of slavery into any new territory. In the coming elections, they cooperated with the northern Know-Nothings, most of whom were former Whigs, as the anti-Catholic nativism would add to an appealing platform of the new party.

Together, the Republicans and Know-Nothings won a majority of seats in the House of Representatives in 1854, and became a threat to the ideas put out by the Democrats. In 1856, they nominated John C. Freemont for the Presidency, with the slogan "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont." He won about a third of the popular vote, and the Republican party began to grow, although alienating potential supporters by his failure to oppose immigration.

As tensions mounted over the slavery issue, more anti-slavery Republicans began to run for office and be elected, even with the risks involved with taking this stance. Republican Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts experienced this danger firsthand. In May 1856, he delivered a passionate anti-slavery speech in which he made critical remarks about several pro-slavery senators, including Andrew F. Butler of South Carolina. Sumner infuriated Rep. Preston S. Brooks, the son of one of Butler's cousins, who felt his family honor had been insulted. Two days later, Brooks walked into the Senate and beat Sumner unconscious with a cane. This incident electrified the nation and helped to galvanize Northern opinion against the South; Southern opinion hailed Brooks as a hero. But Sumner stood by his principles, and after a three-year, painful convalescence, he returned to the Senate to continue his struggle against slavery.

In 1860, their candidate, Lincoln, was elected to the presidency; the southern states reacting by seceding from the Union, and the country was plunged into a civil war. The Civil War and the Reconstruction period following the war gave the Republican Party a solid core of strength and permanence. Because of connections of the Democrats to the south, fully exploited and created by the Republican Party’s propaganda, Republicans controlled most elective offices in the northern states during the war, and for a generation afterward the used this patriotic fervor to denounce Democrats as traitors. This was an effective campaign tactic; in "waving the bloody shirt" against the South and the Democrats, Republicans were united being the crusade of the Civil War.

Although this was true, the Republican party was also troubled by internal dissension. In the 1860s, moderate and radical Republicans debated bitterly over war aims, and the aims of the Reconstruction period. The moderates agreed with the radicals on the abolition of slavery, but rejected the attempt to reshape the South’s social and economic structure and imposing racial equality. President Lincoln was able to play one faction against another, and after his death the party continued until the radicals’ failure to oust President Johnson from office. Then, the party began to nominate increasingly moderate candidates.

Republicans tried to appeal to the South by appealing to Whig groups there to join with newly enfranchised blacks; arguing that they had a common belief in the need for a strong government action in society. Their efforts were ineffective due to massive racist campaigns by the southern Democrats, intimidating all voters in the South. The Republican support for black rights waned when those in the party percieved that this issue was costing the party the needed votes, but this did not help gain support in the South.

Meanwhile, Republicans continued being elected to the White House. In 1868, Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency easily and was re-elected in 1872. Although he seemed a bit bewildered by the transition from the military life of a general to being president, under Grant the Republican commitment to sound money policies continued, and the Department of Justice and the Weather Bureau were established.

But, embracing a tradition established by George Washington, which had gone on record opposing a third term for any president, and being plagued by scandals in his administration, President Grant did not run for re-election in 1876. Factionalism continued to divide the party. Prohibitionists and those who wished to exclude foreigners, demanded heavy emphasis on their concerns and were not enthusiastic about the party’s other commitments. At the same time, another group, the Liberal Republicans, disgusted by corruption in the Grant administration, fought against the party’s unwillingness to do anything about it. The party bosses, needing money to run the campaigns, resisted the reformers.

Instead, in one of the most bitterly disputed elections in American history, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency by the margin of one electoral vote. After the election, cooperation between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, Hayes managed to keep his campaign promises. He cautiously withdrew federal troops from the South to allow them to shake off the psychological yoke of being a conquered land, took measures to reverse the myriad inequalities suffered by women in that period and adopted the merit system within the civil service.

The Republicans won five of seven elections between 1868 and 1892, but had popular majorities in only three of them. The Republicans’ ability to draw on rural, small-town, and western voters was counterbalanced by the Democrats’ solid core in the South and among urban immigrants. The defection of the mugwumps, a reform faction that refused to back James G. Blaine, the presidential candidate in 1884, helped the Democrats win the presidency for the first time in thirty years. At the 1880 convention, an intense political battle split Republicans into three hostile camps, which included administration supporters, Conkling's "Stalwarts" and the "Half-breeds" which stood between them.

The party’s platform, despite resistance from some Republican leaders, increasingly emphasized the promotion of industrial values, and Republican policy aided the emerging, highly sophisticated economy. At the same time, Republicans were often openly hostile to the new waves of eastern European and Irish immigrants that were transforming the nation’s cities. Republican state platforms advocated government intervention to prohibit or limit liquor consumption and to shape school curricula in order to promote certain Protestant and American values posed by the immigrants who were tied to the Democratic party.

During the 1890s, both major parties were hurt by the rise of agrarian protest, but infighting proved most divisive among the Democrats, their collapse at the polls following in 1896. Increased voter strength made the Republicans a majority party in the country for a generation. However, party factionalism continued, and beginning in the 1890s, a group of Republicans known as the progressives sought to balance the party’s commitment to the industrial elite with the use of federal power to correct some of the worst excesses of the monopolies and rusts that dominated the Republican Party.

Theodore Roosevelt, who had promoted progressive measures when in office, later became the presidential candidate of the Progressive Party. Roosevelt selected Taft as his successor, who, once elected, angered both liberals and conservatives within his party.

The entry into World War I raised some new issues that once again led to divide the Republican Party. Though most Republicans in Congress supported the ongoing war measures, they eventually split over plans for signing the charter of the League of Nations, incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. Many Republicans were also upset because President Wilson excluded Republicans from negotiating the treaty and said that only Democrats in the Congress would allow victory in war. As progressivism and war waned, Republicans were able to reunite and thus once again become a majority party. The 1920 platform pledged the party to serve as the guardian of prosperity by such measures as raising tariffs, restricting immigration, and aiding farmers. The presidential nomination went to Warren G. Harding, and he swept every region outside the South. The Harding administration was swept by corruption, and his successor was Calvin Coolidge, pledged to Puritanical ideals.

The Great Depression, which began during the administration of Herbert Hoover, led to destroy America’s belief in the dream of unlimited prosperity, and thus lost its faith in the Republican Party, who had led them into the depression. The disastrous economic collapse and extraordinary high employment following the crash made a mockery of Republican claims. The Hoover administration had a slow and limited response to the problems, making it ineffective and seemed to be indifferent to the people.

At the loss of the Republicans next election, one faction of the Republican party was behind Hoover, who issued blanket indictments of the New Deal, supported by Eastern businessmen, Recognizing the New Deal’s popularity, Republicans in Congress sought new leaders and principles, nominating Landon for President. The new Republican platform endorsed New Deal objectives but condemned some of its methods, including deficit spending. At the next election, they nominated Wendell Willkie, an internationalist who was even closer to the values expressed by the New Deal; in fact, the C.I.O supported him and Lewis said that if Willkie did not win, he would resign as head.

In response to their losses, the Republicans sought a way to build their national following, first turning to condemning deficit spending techniques and New Deal policy. Republicans, isolationist, now began to take a stricter anti-Communist line in their rhetoric. Party leaders argued that they represented a family oriented America, and this played a part in the popularity of Republican senator Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against Communist subversion in the 1850s. In 1950, Senator McCarthy charged that the State department was infested with Communists, and this gave the Republicans their best issue since the Depression. However, when he attacked the Army, this issue died down and be became disgraced.

A split still remained between conservative and moderate republicans; the former led by Taft continued to oppose the New Deal, while the others did not play on the issue. The moderates looked towards General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had helped win the passing war, to carry their standard in the 1952 elections. Eisenhower won twice with smashing victories; his popularity intensified when he attended a conference in Geneva. Disliking political management, Eisenhower did little to build the party, and continued Democratic policies.

Yet another split between conservatives and liberals weakened the Republican party during the course of the next decade. Nelson A. Rockefeller, governor of New York, emerged as a spokesman for the party liberals. Senator Barry Goldwater, on the other hand, was a representative of the conservatives. The conservatives thereafter controlled the party machinery and increasingly impressed their stamp on the party’s principles and actions, working hard to recruit influence in the South and among urban, ethnic groups.

When new leaders failed to bridge the gulf between conservatives and liberals in the GOP, Richard Nixon helped lead a unified party to a narrow victory in the 1968 race against Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace. Nixon was the first President since 1848 to take office with both houses of Congress controlled by the opposition; he later won re-election. His administration, which started out as a strong reaction against radicalism, became identified after 1972 with the Watergate scandal, which eventually led Nixon to his resignation under the threat of impeachment, leaving Gerald Ford in power.

A temporary Democratic resurgence followed with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, but the conservative tide returned when the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan won an overwhelming victory in the next elections. The Republicans regained control of the Senate but did not achieve to gain a majority in the House. In the midterm elections of 1986, Republicans lost control of the Senate and more ground in the House as well; this pattern repeated in 1986. As president, Reagan wasa backed by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress, and embarked on a program which sought to increase the nation’s military strength and curtail many of the social welfare programs in the previous administration.

Although Vice president Bush won the presidential election for the Republicans, the party lost ground in both houses of Congress. President Bush laid a solid groundwork for U.S. policy in such critical areas as nuclear disarmament, free trade, the Middle East peace process and the future of NATO. Relying on his illustrious military experience, he brought together an unprecedented coalition to maintain the forces of law in the Persian Gulf region. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, President Bush's popularity soared to record levels. As a result of his leadership after the war, a delegation from Israel sat face to face with Palestinians for the first time in thousands of years.

The gradual erosion in Republican party strength in Congress was matched by a loss at the head of the ticket, and for the first time in 12 years, Democrats controlled both branches of government. The Republicans retained the same number of seats in the Senate and gained nine seats in the House. However, the 1994 election brought a dramatic reversal as the Republican Party gained control over both houses of Congress for the first time since 1954. The Republicans stormed in, in what was termed as the "Republican Revolution," as Representative Newt Gingrich laid forth their new "Contract with America", a list of conservative proposals which helped shape the agenda.

However, 1996 marked defeat again as Senator Bob Dole embarked on a failed Presidential campaign. The Democrats painted the Republican party as maligned, trying to destroy social security and other entitlement programs, often referring to the enemy as "Dole-Gingrich." After the election, Republicans in the party began to split, disappointed at a turn in Gingrich’s leadership to one which held more appeasement to Democratic proposals.

Timeframe: 1901 - 1901

The industrial conditions in the United States, the constantly changing frontier, and the lack of class stratification had prevented the development of a strong socialist movement in the United States. However, in the late 1860’s and early 1790s, a number of branches of the First International were formed in the East, and on July 4, 1874, a Social Democratic Workingmen’s Party of North America was organized with a rather indefinite Socialist platform, becoming in 1877 the Socialist Labor Party.

The Socialist Labor Party showed much activity during the next two decades, but the attempt of its leader, Daniel De Leon, to impose too rigid a discipline upon its membership and his bitter opposition to leaders of organized labor led to a split in the party. The dissident group, under Morris Hillquit and others, joined in 1900 with the midwestern Socialists in nominating Eugene Victor Debs for president.

This was followed by a Unity Conference in 1901 at a convention in Indianapolis in 1901. The two merging groups were the Social Democratic Party of Eugene Victor Debs and the "Kangaroo" wing of the older Socialist Labor Party. The Socialist Democratic had been organized in 1898 by veterans of the Pullman strike of the American Railway Union, led by Debs, and was largely composed of American-born workers.

From the beginning the Socialist Party was the ecumenical organization for American radicals, including Marxists of various kinds, Christian socialists, Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish socialists, foreign-language speaking sections, single-taxers and virtually every variety of American radical. On the divisive issue of "reform vs. revolution" the Socialist Party from the beginning adopted a compromise formula, producing platforms calling for revolutionary change but also making "immediate demands" of a reformist nature. A perennially unresolved issue was whether revolutionary change could come about without violence; there were always pacifists and evolutionists in the Party as well as those opposed to both those views. The Socialist Party historically stressed cooperatives as much as labor unions, and included the concepts of revolution by education and of "building the new society within the shell of the old."

The Socialist Party aimed to become a major party; in the years prior to World War I it elected two Members of Congress, over 70 mayors, innumerable state legislators and city councilors. Its membership topped 100,000, and its Presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, received close to a million votes in 1912 and again in 1920. But as with any ideologically mixed organization, it was forever in internal disputes.

An early disagreement was over the Industrial Workers of the World, which Debs and De Leon had helped create as a competitor to the American Federation of Labor. Some Socialists supported the IWW, while others considered "dual unionism" to be fatal to the solidarity of the labor movement and supported the Socialist faction in the AFL led by Max Hayes. In 1916, Eugene Debs refused to run again for a candidacy, so by referendum, Allan L. Benson was chosen as the Socialist nominee for presidency.

During the First World War the American Socialist Party was one of the very few parties in the international socialist movement to maintain its opposition to the war, and many Socialists were imprisoned, including Debs himself. In 1919 there was a major split in the Party, when those who accepted Lenin's demand for unconditional allegiance to the Third International left, to form the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party. However, the two parties later merged.

The Socialist Party did not run a Presidential candidate in 1924, but joined the American Federation of Labor in support of the independent campaign of the progressive Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, hoping to build a permanent Farmer-Labor Party. In 1928 the Socialist Party revived as an independent electoral entity under the leadership of Norman Thomas, an opponent of World War I and a founder of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In 1932 the impact of the Great Depression resulted in revived support for the Socialist Party, and 896,000 votes were cast for the Party's Presidential candidate, Norman Thomas. But by 1936 the left-liberal policies of the New Deal took a severe toll. In that year David Dubinsky and other socialist union leaders in New York called on their membership to vote for Roosevelt, and formed the Social Democratic Federation to promote socialism within the ranks of the liberal/labor wing of the Democratic Party. The Socialist Party's vote in 1936 dropped to 185,000, little more than 20% of that of 1932. The outbreak of the war against Fascism and the wartime prosperity further weakened all parties on the left.

The Socialist Party was down to about 2,000 members after the war, and had more or less withdrawn from electoral action in the face of the increasingly restrictive ballot-access laws passed by state legislatures around the country. In 1956 the Socialist Party and the Social Democratic Federation reunited, under pressure from the Socialist International. A right-wing group in the SDF opposed the merger, and established the Democratic Socialist Federation.

As of 1957 the SP-SDF was pervaded by a strong sense that the time had arrived to start over and rebuild a major radical party in America. The Independent Socialist League was a Trotskyite splinter group founded and led by Max Shachtman, with about 400 members. In 1958 the ISL dissolved, and its members joined the SP-SDF. This ended any hope of further mergers, since Shachtman's intention was to attain control of the Socialist Party. Almost at once a faction fight erupted over the concept of "realignment." Shachtman and his lieutenant, Michael Harrington, argued that what America needed wasn't a third party, but a meaningful second party.

The realignment supporters said that in sixty years the Socialist Party had failed to bring labor into the Party, and in fact kept losing their labor sympathizers (such as the Reuther brothers) because they saw they could do more within the Democratic Party. It was also argued that in view of restricted ballot access the Democratic primaries were a better forum for electoral activity than Socialist candidacies. But the basic argument was an appeal to traditional Marxism: Labor is the motor for social change, labor will not come to the Socialist Party, therefore the Socialist Party must go to labor - which means going into the Democratic Party.

There is no doubt that the realignment strategy was successful within its own terms. Former SP labor people like A. Philip Randolph rejoined the Party, and many new people of this type were recruited during this period. But to many Socialists, realignment in practice turned out to be something they could not stomach. The realignment strategy focused on getting hold of power, and Socialist politics is concerned not only with winning power within the status quo but also with redistributing it to build a new society. Furthermore, the result of the strategy was often to tone down everything that distinguished Socialists from liberals, and "where labor is" turned out to be not at the left of the Democratic Party but at the center, in alliance with the big city machines.

At the 1968 Socialist Party Convention the Shachtman-Harrington Caucus held a clear majority, though a slim one, and voted down resolutions demanding American withdrawal from Vietnam and urging independent political action. They passed a resolution endorsing Hubert Humphrey - a resolution which Norman Thomas, who had less than six months to live, opposed as best he could from his hospital bed, pleading in vain with the membership to reject it. They elected a clear majority of the Party's National Committee, and installed their own supporters as National Secretary and Editor of the Party paper.

At the riotous Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in 1968, Realignment Socialists were present as delegates, and Bayard Rustin, having lost his old pacifist and radical orientation, served in effect as a black floor manager for Humphrey. At the same time, many Debs Caucus members were in the streets with the demonstrators.

By 1970, with Michael Harrington as National Chairman under Max Shachtman's leadership, the Socialist Party was showing a growing tendency toward democratic centralism in practice. Nevertheless, Harrington maintained contacts with the liberal wing of the peace movement and he and his personal followers formed yet a third caucus, the Coalition Caucus, to pursue the realignment strategy within the more liberal sectors of the Democratic Party and the labor leadership.

In March of 1972 a Unity Convention was held, to finalize the merger of the Socialist Party with the Democratic Socialist Federation. The tightly disciplined Unity Caucus, as the Shachtmanite wing now styled themselves, were by now suspicious of Harrington, and succeeded in pushing through the Convention a constitutional amendment providing for a "troika" in the Chairmanship. The "troika" was made up of Harrington, Charles Zimmerman of the DSF, and the aging former civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. A resolution opposing the Vietnam war, which was supported by six Party Locals and by both the Debs Caucus and the Coalition Caucus, failed.

At the end of 1972 the Socialist Party, now completely under control of the right wing, changed its name to Social Democrats USA. This lit the fuse for the disaffiliation of many of the states and locals within the Debs Caucus, and for many resignations. Early in 1973 the Socialist Party of Wisconsin, with the support of the California and Illinois Parties, called a "National Convention of the Socialist Party," to be held Memorial Day weekend in Milwaukee The Debs Caucus had recently organized a Union for Democratic Socialism, as an "umbrella" organization of both members and non-members of the Socialist Party, and the UDS now made plans for a major conference on "The Future of Democratic Socialism in America" to be held at the same time. The resulting body voted to reconstitute the Socialist

Timeframe: 1836 - 1852

The Whig Party formed in the opposition of President Andrew Jackson and constituencies in the Democratic Party, united only by this opposition. The anti-Jackson groups drew upon the political history of two revolutions, the American and 17th century English, for their name. In both cases, the opposition had called themselves Whigs; this time they united against "King Andrew."

The National Republican party was the precursor to the Whigs, and Jackson’s inauguration in 1829 began the period of opposition and prepared the ground for a coalition of political forces which formed the Whig Party. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts because the party’s leading figures. The different leaders of the party clashed in their views; Webster was more of a nationalist than Clay. However, both men encouraged a program of tariff protection, federally sponsored communication projects and other internal improvements, continuation of the national bank, and a conservative public land sales policy. This was fully described in Clay’s "American System." The program had strong appeal to merchants and manufacturers practicing interstate commerce. Clay made the President’s veto of a bank recharter a key issue, but Jackson handily won reelection.

John C. Calhoun broke his alliance with Jackson and joined the Whigs when he realized that he would not be the next Democratic president. Calhoun’s supporters, widened with the nullification crisis, were lead to the Whig party. Another source of recruits was the Anti-Masonic party, strong in New York and Pennsylvania, leading many influencing politicians as William Seward and Thaddeus Stevens into the party.

In 1840, The Whig ticket consisted of William H. Harrison for president and John Tyler for vice-president. They ran a "Log Cabin" campaign which was the first to use major political propaganda and electioneering. The Whigs won, but Harrison died one month in office, and with him the future of the Whig cohesion. John Tyler, who had been a Jacksonian Democrat, acceded to the presidency, and embittered the Whigs by vetoing the bills which they had meant to restore the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. Most of Tyler’s cabinet resigned in protest, and his membership in the party was withdrawn.

In 1844, the Whig Party nominated Clay for president. Clay refused to take a definite stand on the Texas annexation issue, provoking northern abolitionists, who opposed its admission as a slave state, to support the Liberty party candidate. The Whig split ensured a victory for the Democrat Polk. Once the Mexican War had been declared, controversy over admitting or excluding slavery from territory gained in the war further splintered the party. Antislavery Whigs, known as Conscience Whigs opposed the Cotton Whigs in the pro-slavery states.

Despite this dissension, the Whigs won the presidency in 1848 under Zachary Taylor. With disunion threatening, Clay and Webster tried to compromise the main points of sectional friciton. President Taylor blocked their moves, and his death on July 9 made Millard Fillmore the president. Webster, now Fillmore’s secretary of state, wanted to capture the presidency in 1852 on the Union movement. However, both major paries accepted the Compromise of 1850 and the Whigs reverted to nominate Winfield Scott. Later that year, Clay and Webster died. The Whig Party never recovered from the death of their two great figures.

Its call for moderation and Union became more ineffective as the Civil war neared. Southern Whigs thought the Democrats more receptive to their interests, concerned with slaveholding rights. Northern Whigs had already moved to the Free Soil Party, which had been formed earlier. The rise of the Republican and the American parties furthered the Whig downfall, as they defected to those parties. The former Whig president, Fillmore, accepted the American nomination, and the Whigs endorsed him.