DelawarePolitics.net

Oct 17th, 2009 by David Anderson

A new book the End of Money and the Future of Civilization is worth considering this weekend. These guys make me feel like an optimist.

Posted in Economics

One Response to “Warnings about the future”

on 19 Oct 2009 at 09:051DEConservative(Evan Q)

“This early drift toward elitist rule was opposed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others who figured in the creation of what later became the Democratic Party.”

Yanno….this is typical…It’s time to stop trying to lump the Founding Fathers in with either of the political monstrosities we have today…Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Monroe and even Hamilton (who by the way was pretty much the ONLY Federalist who really wanted a national bank…he was also the one who wanted a Feudal system of government) would be not just apalled but physically sick to see what BOTH parties have done to their life’s work….Both the Federalists and the “Democratic – Republicans” split into factions that later became both the Democrat AND Republican Parties…

William H. Crawford was the party’s last presidential nominee in 1824 as the party broke up into several factions. One faction, led by Andrew Jackson, would become the modern Democratic Party. Another faction, led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, was known as the National Republicans. This group evolved into the Whig Party. This name was chosen to echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because “Whig” was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who saw themselves as opposing autocratic rule. The Whig Party counted among its members such national political luminaries as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and their preeminent leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also counted four war heroes among its ranks, including Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. Abraham Lincoln was a Whig leader in frontier Illinois. The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction successfully prevented the nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott, who was soundly defeated. Its leaders quit politics (as Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties.

The voter base defected to the Republican Party, various coalition parties in some states, and to the Democratic Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party had lost its ability to maintain a national coalition of effective state parties and endorsed Millard Fillmore, now of the American Party, at its last national convention. It would later split into the Free Soil Party, the Know-Nothing Party, and the Republican Party.

The Free Soil Party was a short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections, and in some state elections. It was a third party that largely appealed to and drew its greatest strength from New York State. The party leadership consisted of former anti-slavery members of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. Its main purpose was opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories, arguing that free men on free soil comprised a morally and economically superior system to slavery. They opposed slavery in the new territories and worked to remove existing laws discriminating against freed blacks in states such as Ohio. The party membership was largely absorbed by the Republican Party in 1854.

The Know Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to U.S. values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts were met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle-class and entirely Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery. Most ended up joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election.

The Democratic Party evolved from Anti-Federalist factions that opposed the fiscal policies of Alexander Hamilton in the early 1790s. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison organized these factions into the Democratic-Republican Party. The party favored states’ rights and strict adherence to the Constitution; it opposed a national bank and wealthy, moneyed interests. The Democratic-Republican Party ascended to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812, the party’s chief rival, the Federalist Party disbanded. Democratic-Republicans split over the choice of a successor to President James Monroe, and the party faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the Democratic Party. Along with the Whig Party, the Democratic Party was the chief party in the United States until the Civil War. The Whigs were a commercial party, and usually less popular, if better financed. The Whigs divided over the slavery issue after the Mexican–American War and faded away. In the 1850s, under the stress of the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, anti-slavery Democrats left the party. Joining with former members of existing or dwindling parties, the Republican Party emerged.

Warnings about the future

One Response to “Warnings about the future”

What You’re Saying…

Breaking News

Activism

Local Blogs

National Sites

News

Resources

Archives

Topics

Archives