Vi. Political parties

Although political parties existed in the eighteenth century, they were generally held in poor esteem. The framers of the Constitution tried by the device of an electoral college to avoid having political parties control the election of the President. The state legislatures were to choose the members of this col­lege.

But the uproar caused by the 1796 election when Adams won because two electors from Jefferson States voted for him; led to the formation of political parties. The parties formed so that they could choose electors pledged to support party candi­dates in national elections. Thus two lists of party candidates for electors were created in the 1800 election.

In 1800 the Adams men and the Jefferson men held mee­tings of members of Congress to plan, the respective cam­paigns. These meetings were known as Congressional caucuses.

Later the Congressional caucus as a means of nominating Presidential candidates had become unpopular, particularly in Jackson's day. He knew he could not control members of Congress. He therefore organized a convention in which dele­gates chosen directly by the citizenry could participate. Jackson contended that the people should choose delegates to nominate Presidential candidates, who would thus be the nominees of the public instead of the choice of congressmen. Ever since 1832, all Presidents have been nominated in this method.

The Federalists, under the leadership of Alexander Hamil­ton, were identified with policies calling for nationalistic leg­islation and a liberal construction of the Constitution; the Op­position party, under Thomas Jefferson, was known indiscrimi­nately as Republicans or Democrats, and stood for a strict con­struction of the Constitution and States' rights.

The Federalist party practically disappeared after the War of 1812 and was succeeded by the National Republicans and Whigs.

The Whig party in turn disintegrated after 1852 and the (present) Republican party took form in 1854, its first Presi­dential candidate being John C. Fremont in 1856.

The original Jeffersonian Republican party gradually came to represent not so much a cohesive party as a collection of fac­tions. Under Andrew Jackson, these groups amalgamated under the name of Democratic Republicans, which was soon shortened to Democratic (the present party designation).

As these parties'" evolved historically, they were each com­posed of heterogeneous conflicting class and sectional interests which, in the course of intra-party strife, cancelled themselves out and thus made big business control easier. In fact, the parties were little more than unprincipled electoral combina­tions held together to win elections and not in fact bound by any platform or program. However, with the Roosevelt New Deal a shift began to take place in the mass base of each party. The Democratic Party nationally became identified in the public mind as the party more responsive to mass pressure, especially from the workers, Negro people and lower income groups. The Re­publican Party became identified in the public mind with the vested interests.

Both national parties remained in fact the parties supported and controlled by big business. The national Democratic Party tended to get more big business support when a course of compro­mise was deemed advisable or unavoidable. The national Repub­lican Party was the greater recipient of this support when a policy of concessions was opposed, or when it was feared that the pressure for reform would get out of hand. Monopoly groupings and individual capitalists have leaned in one direction or the other, depending also upon the nature of their investments, their market problems, and the struggle with in the ranks of finance capital for the lion's share of the yearly 100 billion dollars of federal spending.