Willie J.

Harrington
C121
Task 2

Part A

With a new nation born, two early parties were formed. The first party was led by Alexander

Hamilton and they were known as the Federalist party. They believed the nation should have a

strong central government over the states, they encourage commencing and manufacturing, they

wanted to keep a close tie with Great Britain because they were a major trade partner. This party

favored people who were wealth and educated and the party was supported by the merchants.

The other political party that was formed was the Democratic-Republicans. This party was led by

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They believed in State’s rights over a centralized national

government. They supported the French and the French Revolution, because they were our

wartime Allies. This party favored people who were farmers, they encouraged farming over

manufacturing. They both wanted the same thing and that was a free republic. George

Washington was against having different parties, he felt natural born leaders should decide what

is best for the nation. The newspapers also played a part in the Partisan grouping. “The Gazette

of the United States” linked up as the official paper for the Federalist, and the “New York

Journal” and the “Patriotic Register” aligned with the Democratic-Republicans.

After Washington decline to seek a re-election the elections of 1796 would show which

way the American people would vote. Would they vote for a centralized government or a state-

run government? The Federalist party elected the current vice president at the time John Adams

for their candidate for presidency and they elected Thomas Pinckney for vice president. While

the Democratic-Republicans elected Thomas Jefferson and the candidate for presidency and they
Elected Aaron Burr for vice president. During the elections of 1796 the electoral college didn’t

take in the possibility of party ballots, and the creators of the constitution never foreseen the

emergence of political parties. So, when the electors voted they were simply voting for two

people. And the person with highest votes became President and the second highest became the

vice President. So, you could have a Federalist president with a Democratic-Republican vice

president or vice versa, and in this case John Adams became the 2nd President of the United states

with 71 votes and Thomas Jefferson became vice president with 68 votes. (Norton 2015)

Part B1

Two new political parties emerge as the nation began to grow and expand. These two new parties

were the Democrats and the Whig party. The Democratic party embraced westward expansions

for independent landowners. They wanted a limited government. They think societies are divided

into the “haves” (the wealthy) and they “have nots” (the poor). The Whigs pushed for

commercial development on existing land, were suspicious on westward expansion. They

demanded an activist government. They support corporate charters, a national bank, and paper

currency. The Democrats opposed all three of the Whigs support. They wanted to see harmony

of interest in all classes or an equal society. They also believed that societies should be ruled

from the top down, the Whigs also thought of free labor ideology. (Norton 2015)

Part B2

The Democrats appealed to the Non-Evangelical Protestants, like Irish Catholics, reformed

Dutch and German Catholics. Because the Democrats promised westward expansion in their

platform they also attracted voters like wage earners, frontier slave owners, immigrants, and
yeoman farmers. Martin Van Buren, a career politician and vice president of the Jackson Era

headed the Democratic party in the 1836 election and the 1840 election. Van Buren won the

1836 with the Electoral votes, but only lead the popular votes by 25,000. Protestants and Free

black voters appealed to the Whigs, because of their beliefs of moral reform. The Whigs had the

most diverse groups from black New Englanders to upper south slave owners. In the 1836

election they Whig party was not yet a national party so the selected 3 candidates for their party

William Henry Harrison for the west, Daniel Webster for New England, and Hugh White from

the South. In the 1840 election the Whigs party put all their faith into War Hero, General

William Henry Harrison. They Defeated van Buren 234 to 60 in the Electoral votes and

narrowing winning the popular vote. (Norton 2015)

Part B3

This political system was driven from participation from both the Democrats and the Whigs. The

Whigs would hold rallies and their rallies would look like camp meetings, The Democratic were

the opposite, they trusted their political platforms, by hold meetings and talking about westward

expansions. The newspapers also played a key role in the second party system. They kept the

people inform on what was going on within each party, when a rally or town hall meeting was

held. In the 1836 election everything the Democrats and Van Buren were saying and doing

appealed the voters and they won the election by a landslide. But after Van Buren took office

everything didn’t go as plan and the Democratic party was failing with their political platform.

When 1840 elections came around The Whigs main priority was to maintain loyal supporters and

gain more supporters from the other party, and they would blame the hardship that the democrats
put on this country as fuel to gain more voters, and it worked. They rallied behind General

Harrison and defeated the Democratic party. (Norton 2015)

Part C1

Before the Civil war either you were against slavery or you were for slavery, and most southern

farmers were for slavery. They defended slavery ever since the Revolutionary war. Southerners

justified it as a good thing, they claim slavery was in the bible so what was all the fuss about.

They believed whites were more intelligent, they claim the physicality of the blacks made them

destine for labor. Black had the intelligent of a monkey. Southerners also said slavery was

economical and slaves were property protected by the constitution. Southerners believed having

slaves could help their plantation flourish, and help them expand their empire west of the

Mississippi, and some northerner accepted slavery because it helps their business of export and

banking.

Abolitionists believed slavery was morally wrong, and downright unconstitutional. They

wanted to eliminate slavery, they thought it was sin to own people. Many groups and

organizations preached about antislavery. William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent white

abolitionist who published a newspaper called “the Liberator”, he also founded the American

Antislavery Society, the largest abolitionist group at the time. Their focus was to spread the word

about how morally wrong slavery was. And they used an evangelical approach to spread their

word using ministers to win over slave owners. The group also used women to go door to door to

spread the word about antislavery. African Americans like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner

Truth who were free or former slaves wrote essays and speeches to spread their distaste of

owning slaves. They also had a secret network that help slaves escape to the north known as the
Underground Railroad and the person who was helped these slave escape was Harriet Tubman.

(Norton 2015)

Part C2

Manifest destiny is a doctrine that states it is in our beliefs that the nation must expand and grow

and it was both justified and inevitable. The Missouri compromise also played an important role

in the westward expansion. The Compromise balanced the senate with equal slave states and free

states, and any future states that was below the southern part of Missouri would be a slave state

and any future state above the northern part of the state would be a free state. That is why

Presidents Tyler and Polk made it important to have Texas and Oregon become part of the union.

Texas being a slave state and Oregon most likely a free state. (Norton 2015)

Part C3

Many factors played a key role leading up to the civil war, and one of the factors is of course

slavery, and one case kind of divided the country, and that case was “Dred Scott vs Sanford”

Dred Scott was from Missouri and he sued for his freedom, he claims his former owner to him

for several years from a slave state into a free state and he ended up in the Minnesota territory

where slavery is barred because of the Missouri compromise. At first, he won his case but after

several appeals his decision was overturned, so Dred Scott took his case all the way to the

supreme court. The court was going to determine the following. Was Dred Scott a black man a

citizen of the United states? Was the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional? With a 7 to 2 vote

the supreme court declared that Dred Scott was not a citizen of the United States, and Congress

has no power to bar slavery from any territory. And this decision overturned the Missouri

compromise. This decision made southerners happy and made northerners and black people not
happy. Another factor that led to the start of the civil war was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act

tested the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, southern elites would pay for

people to move to Kansas so they cloud vote for the territory to become a slave state, and

abolitionist would also pay for people to move into the territory as well to make the territory a

free state. Tension became so bad that U.S army had to stepped in and tried to settle the tension,

and the last factor the played a role in the start of the civil war was the debate between Lincoln

and Douglas. The Debates drew massive crowds and the two debated about slavery and how it

would not die down naturally, that if we wanted to expand westward as free white states we

should not consider slavery. Lincoln speech of 1858 called “House Divided” talks about how the

founders recognized slavery, but slavery was taking control of the nation. Westward expansion,

and slavery in my opinion were the key factors in the start of the civil war. (Norton 2015)

Citations

Norton, M.B. (2015).  A people & a nation