POLITICAL PARTIES 



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POLITICAL PARTIES 



Permanent organization. The permanent or- 

 ganization of the great political parties is ef- 

 fected through committees. There are com- 

 mittees for every political unit, including the 

 nation, state, county, township, city or town, 

 and even the precinct. Each committee is in- 

 dependent in purely local matters, but for gen- 

 eral party purposes is subordinated to the com- 

 mittee of the next larger unit. Thus, the 

 county committee is subordinate to the stutc 

 committee, which in turn is responsible to the 

 national committee. 



The primary purposes of such committees 

 are legitimately to raise and spend money, to 

 add to the strength of the party by getting re- 

 cruits, to manage election campaigns, and gen- 

 erally to conduct all business pertaining to the 

 party. The committees also determine the time 

 and place at which some temporary organiza- 

 tions work in the interests of the party. 



Temporary Organizations. These are the con- 

 ventions and primaries. A convention is a 

 meeting of delegates, who are chosen by dis- 

 tricts for the purpose of nominating candidates 

 for office and adopting a party platform. In 

 fixing the methods by which members of such 

 conventions are chosen and by which they are 

 organized and do business, the various party 

 committees have an important, and sometimes 

 the sole, voice. A primary is nothing more or 

 less than an election, within a party, of a can- 

 didate to oppose the candidate of some other 

 party or parties. Theoretically, all members of 

 a party are entitled to vote at a primary. In 

 the rural districts this is a simple undertaking, 

 for everybody is known to everybody else, but 

 in the cities the party managers often keep 

 lists of voters who are "regular" and are enti- 

 tled to vote at party primaries. The primary 

 is a recent addition to the American political 

 system, and has already proved its worth, not 

 merely in local elections, but also in Presiden- 

 tial contests. When a primary is a meeting of 

 ;ill the voters of a party in a district, it is called 

 a caucus. 



History of Political Parties in the United 

 States. During the colonial period, political 

 parties, as the term is now understood, did not 

 exist. The issues which divided the people 

 were centered about the relations of the colo- 

 nies to the mother country, and upon these 

 there was at first little difference of opinion. 

 About the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 however, after England began to develop a 

 more rigid and' harsher colonial policy, two fac- 

 tions arose in America. One, favored, or at 



least was willing to yield to, the attitude of 

 the home government; the other declined to 

 obey, and demanded a constantly increasing 

 degree of self-government. About 1760 the lat- 

 ter began to call themselves Whigs, because of 

 the gratitude which they felt towards the Eng- 

 lish Whigs; while the former were known as 

 Tories. During the course of the Revolution- 

 ary War large numbers of the Tories left the 

 country, returning either to England or en 

 ing the border into Canada, where, as United 

 Empire Loyalists, they had a conspicuous share 

 in developing that great country. 



Parties Under the Confederation. From the 

 beginning of the Confederation there were dif- 

 ferences of opinion about the new government. 

 One faction, consisting chiefly of those who 

 lived in rural districts, favored a loose confed- 

 eracy, in which the individual state was to re- 

 tain all the powers of sovereignty except the 

 minimum required for the limited cooperation 

 of all the states. Such an experiment in gov- 

 ernment was actually tried under the Articles of 

 Confederation. Another faction, which steadily 

 increased in influence as the weakness and in- 

 efficiency of the Confederation became appar- 

 ent, demanded that the central government be 

 granted all the essential powers of sovereignty 

 and that there should be left to the states only 

 the powers of local self-government. The lat- 

 ter faction, although not organized as a party, 

 gained such strength that a convention was 

 called to adopt a new Constitution. 



Origin of Parties Under the Constitution. In 

 the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Phila- 

 delphia the two parties fought out their dif- 

 ferences, with the result that the Constitution, 

 though wholly satisfactory to neither faction, 

 vested far greater powers in the central gov- 

 ernment than did the old Articles of Confed- 

 eration. The first real party organization de- 

 veloped soon after the inauguration of Wash- 

 ington as President. Washington was elected 

 not as the head of a party, but was the choice 

 of the people as a whole. His Cabinet included 

 men of both factions. Hamilton was the leader 

 of the Nationalists, later called Federalists; 

 Jefferson was spokesman for the Anti-Fed- 

 eralists, who were later known as Republicans, 

 Democratic-Republicans and finally Democrats. 

 For twelve years the Federalists were in power, 

 and the Anti-Federalists had little to do but to 

 criticize. During those twelve years, however, 

 popular distrust of the Federalists became 

 strong, partly owing to the frankly-expressed 

 opinions of Hamilton and John Adams, who 



