
Contents
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Postwar Policy Questions Postwar Policy Questions
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Mass Politics Mass Politics
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Precipitating Events Precipitating Events
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Launching the Jackson Administration Launching the Jackson Administration
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Nullification and the Bank War Nullification and the Bank War
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The Major Parties Crystalize The Major Parties Crystalize
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Decline of the Second Party System Decline of the Second Party System
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Notes Notes
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Bibliography Bibliography
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4 Democrats and Whigs: The Second American Party System
Get accessHarry L. Watson is the Atlanta Distinguished Professor in Southern Culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (rev. ed., 2006), Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict (1981), and other works on antebellum American politics.
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Published:02 April 2020
Cite
Abstract
The rivalry between the Whig and Democratic Parties, often called the “Second American Party System,” first emerged in Andrew Jackson’s administration (1829–1837). Democrats organized to secure Jackson’s 1828 election, then united behind his program of Indian removal, no federal funding of internal improvements, opposition to the Bank of the United States, defense of slavery, and the “spoils system” that used patronage for party building. Whigs supported Henry Clay’s pro-development American System, sympathized with evangelical reform, and reluctantly accepted Democratic techniques for popular mobilization and party organization. The mature parties competed closely in most states and briefly eased sectional conflict, before splitting in the 1850s over slavery in the territories. Whigs made no presidential nomination in 1856, and the Second Party System disintegrated. As it did, Northern Whigs and antislavery Democrats merged in the Republican Party, southern Whiggery steeply declined, and Democrats survived as the only national party.
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