Democratic Party's Main Opposition example essay topic

1. Alexander Hamilton - He was one of the earliest and most active nationalists, believing that the continental congress needed to be strengthened or overthrown in favor a new, more imposing federal government that could legislate within the states, which the continental congress could not do. Hamilton was the spokesman for an active government, stressing the principle of government 'Responsibility', against the Jeffersonian / Madisonian principle of public vigilance and suspicion of government power. Recent scholars have argued that these two philosophies form the thesis-antithesis of the post-revolutionary era-Alexander Hamilton being the figurehead of responsible government.

2. Thomas Jefferson - Jefferson's idea for the United States was that of an agricultural nation of yeoman farmers, in contrast to the vision of Alexander Hamilton, who envisioned a nation of commerce and manufacturing. Jefferson was a great believer in the uniqueness and the potential of the United States and is often classified a forefather of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom.

3. Henry Clay - Henry Clay was known as "Mr. Whig" because he was one of the founders of the party. He was a 3 time presidential loser. In 1824, he advocated high duties to relieve the prevailing economic distress, which he pictured in a brilliant and effective speech.

Although they were caused by the reactionary effect of a disordered currency and the inflated prices of the War of 1812, he ascribed the problems to the country's dependence on foreign suppliers and markets. He said that the United Kingdom was a shining example of the wisdom of a high tariff; and no nation ever flourished without one. He closed his principal speech on the subject in the House of Representatives with a glowing appeal in behalf of what he called the 'American System. ' Henry Clay's American System was a plan to strengthen the nation's economy by tying the North, South, and West together. It called for: Federal funding of infrastructure improvements (such as the Erie Canal and a series of highways) funded by a raised tariff on imported goods.

Using protective tariffs to encourage development of domestic industry, and Reliance on domestic financial resources. Henry Clay was only twenty-two, when, as an opponent of slavery, he vainly urged an emancipation clause for the new constitution of Kentucky. 4. American System - Henry Clay's American System was a plan to strengthen the nation's economy by tying the North, South, and West together. 5.

Whig Party - The Liberal Party (the term was first used officially in 1868, but it had been used colloquially for decades beforehand) arose out of a coalition between Whigs, free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel, and free trade Radicals which was first created, tenuously under the Peelite Lord Aberdeen in 1852, and put together more permanently under the former Canning ite Tory Lord Palmerston in 1859. Although the Whigs at first formed the most important part of the coalition, the Whiggish elements of the new party progressively lost influence during the long leadership of the Peelite William Ewart Gladstone, and many of the old Whig aristocrats broke from the party over the issue of Irish home rule in 1886 to help form the Liberal Unionist Party. The Unionist turn to protection in the early twentieth century, however, (inspired by the Liberal Unionists' own leader, Joseph Chamberlain, probably the least Whiggish character in the party) further alienated the more orthodox Whigs, however, and by the early twentieth century whiggery was largely irrelevant and without a natural political home. 6. Democratic Party - The Democratic Party's origins lie in the original Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1794. In the 1850's, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Democratic Party became increasingly divided, with its Southern wing staunchly advocating the expansion of slavery into new territories, in opposition to the newly-founded Republican Party, which sought to prohibit such expansion.

Democrats in the Northern states opposed this new trend, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down in defeat - part of the chain of events leading up to the Civil War. During the war, Northern Democrats fractured into two factions, War Democrats, who supported the military policies of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, and Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. From 1856 onward, Democratic Party's main opposition has come from the modern Republican Party.

The Democrats were shattered by the war but nevertheless benefited from white Southerners' resentment of Reconstruction and consequent hostility to the Republican Party. Once Reconstruction ended, and the disenfranchisement of blacks was re-established, the region was known as the 'Solid South' for nearly a century because it reliably voted Democratic. Though Republicans continued to control the White House until 1885, the Democrats remained competitive, especially in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest, and controlled the House of Representatives for most of that period. 7. Wilmot Proviso - It was assumed that Texas would be the last slave state to enter the Union, leaving California and New Mexico for free labor. The proviso was named for Congressman David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania.

The Free Soil Party formed in support of the Wilmot Proviso, and their platform of Free Soil was later adopted by the Republican Party. The proviso pushed the country closer to civil war; it raised questions about slaves that had not been asked previously. Southerners saw slaves as property, and since their rights to property were protected under the Constitution, they believed that they could take slaves where ever they wished. This led to strong opposition to any attempts to bar slavery while the country was expanding.

This was one main reason the proviso was never passed. 8. Abolitionism - Abolitionism as a principle was far more than just the wish to limit the extent of slavery. Most Northerners recognized that slavery existed in the South and did not push to change that fact.

Most Northerners favored a policy of gradual and compensated emancipation. Abolitionists wanted it ended immediately and everywhere. A few were willing to use insurrection, as exemplified by the activities of John Brown, but most tried to get legal reform to immediately emancipate slaves, or worked to rescue slaves. The abolitionist movement was begun by the activities of African-Americans, especially in the black church, who argued that the old Biblical justifications for slavery contradicted the New Testament. African-American activists and their writings were rarely heard outside the black community; however, they were tremendously influential to some sympathetic whites, most prominently the first white activist to reach prominence, William Lloyd Garrison, who was its most effective propagandist. Garrison's efforts to recruit eloquent spokesmen led to the discovery of ex-slave Frederick Douglass, who eventually became a prominent activist in his own right.

Eventually, Douglass would publish his own, widely distributed abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. 9. Mexican War - The war grew out of unresolved conflicts between Mexico and Texas. After having won its independence from Mexico in 1836, the Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845; however, the southern and western borders of Texas remained disputed during the Republic's lifetime. That same year tensions between the two countries over territory were raised when the United States government offered to pay off the Mexican debt to American settlers if Mexico allowed the U.S. to purchase the territories of Alta California and Nuevo M'exico from Mexico. The U.S. government claimed that the southern border of Texas was the Rio Grande; Mexico maintained it to be the Nueces River.

President James K. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to place troops between the two rivers. Taylor crossed the Nueces, ignoring Mexican demands that he withdraw, and marched south to the Rio Grande where he began to build Fort Brown. Fighting began on April 24, 1846 when Mexican cavalry captured one of the American detachments near the Rio Grande. After the border clash and battles at Palo Alto and Resa ca de la Palma, Polk requested a declaration of war, announcing to Congress that the Mexicans had 'invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil'. The U.S. Congress declared war on May 13, 1846.

Northerners and Whigs generally opposed the war while Southerners and Democrats tended to support it. Mexico declared war on May 23.10. Zachary Taylor - He received the Whig nomination for President in 1848, although he had never even bothered to vote before. His homespun ways were political assets, his long military record would appeal to northerners, and his ownership of slaves would attract southern votes. He also had not previously committed himself on troublesome issues. He ran against the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, who favored letting the residents of territories decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery.

In protest against Taylor, a slaveholder, and Cass, an advocate of 'squatter sovereignty,' northerners who opposed extension of slavery into territories, formed the Free Soil Party and nominated Martin Van Buren. In a close election, the Free Soilers pulled enough votes away from Cass to elect Taylor. 11. Winfield Scott - In the 1852 presidential election, Scott was the unsuccessful Whig Party candidate, losing to Democrat Franklin Pierce. Despite his faltering in the election, Scott was still a wildly popular national hero. And in 1855, by a special act of Congress, Scott was given a brevet promotion to the rank of lieutenant general, making him the second person in American history, after George Washington, to ever hold that rank.

As general-in-chief at the beginning of the American Civil War, the elderly Scott knew he was unable to go into battle himself. He offered the command of the Federal army to Colonel Robert E. Lee. However, when Virginia left the Union in April 1861, Lee resigned and command of the field forces defending Washington, D.C., passed to Major General Irvin McDowell. Scott did not believe that a quick victory was possible for Federal forces. He devised a long-term plan to defeat the Confederacy by occupying key terrain, such as the Mississippi River and key ports on the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico, then moving on Atlanta. This Anaconda Plan was derided in the press; however, it was the strategy the Union actually used in its broad outlines, particularly in the Western Theater and in the successful naval blockade of Confederate ports.

In 1864 it was continued by General Ulysses S. Grant and executed by General William Tecumseh Sherman. 12. Impact of Mexican War on Politics -The war had been widely supported in the southern states but largely opposed in the northern states. This division largely developed from expectations of how the expansion of the United States would affect the issue of slavery. At the time, Texas recognized the institution of slavery, but Mexico did not. Many Northern abolitionists viewed the war as an attempt by the slave-owners to expand slavery and assure their continued influence in the federal government.

Henry David Thoreau wrote his essay Civil Disobedience and refused to pay taxes because of this war. The main issue which furthered sectionalism was the expansion of slavery into the national territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 banned slavery in national territories north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes (roughly the southern border of Missouri, although that state had been exempted). Also, the Senate was constructed to give equal balance to slave and free states.

The Missouri Compromise, however, left room for more free states than slave states and, if continued, would upset the balance of power within the Senate. Thus, many Southerners supported the war to provide more room for slavery to expand (believing that if slavery were not allowed to continue to expand, it would ultimately die out). There were proposals during this time to split Texas (which was easily the largest state in the Union geographically) into multiple slave states, but this did not come to pass. 13. Popular sovereignty is the doctrine that government is created by and subject to the will of the people, who are the source of all political power.

14. Stephen Douglas - In 1852, and again in 1856, Douglas was a candidate for the presidential nomination in the national Democratic convention, and though on both occasions he was unsuccessful, he received strong support. In 1857 he broke with President Buchanan and the 'administration' Democrats and lost much of his prestige in the South, but partially restored himself to favour in the North, and especially in Illinois, by his vigorous opposition to the method of voting on the Lecompton constitution, which he saw as fraudulent, and (in 1858) to the admission of Kansas into the Union under this constitution. In 1858, when the Supreme Court, after the vote of Kansas against the Lecompton constitution, had decided that Kansas was a 'slave' territory, thus quashing Douglas's theory of 'popular sovereignty', he engaged in Illinois in a close and very exciting contest for the senator ship with Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, whom he met in a series of seven famous debates which became known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

15. Free-Soil Party - The Free Soil Party was a notable third party. More successful than most, it had two Senators and fourteen Representatives sent to the thirty-first Congress. Their presidential nominee in 1848, Martin Van Buren, received 291,616 votes against Zachary Taylor of the Whigs and Lewis Cass of the Democrats, although he received no electoral votes. The Party's 'spoiler' effect in 1848 may have put Zachary Taylor into office, in a narrowly-contested election. The strength of the party, however, was its representation in Congress.

The sixteen elected officials were able to have an influence despite being a small group. It was hard for the party to achieve much success because it competed with the Republicans, who also believed in abolition, and the two eventually merged with the title of Republican. 16. John C. Calhoun - He also became Andrew Jackson's running mate in the election of 1828, and again was Vice President. Calhoun had developed a theory of nullification that states (or minorities) could nullify federal legislation, based on the fact that individual states had ratified the Constitution.

In this he disagreed with Jackson, who opposed the idea of nullification. This opened a rift between Calhoun and Jackson, which was exacerbated by the Eaton Affair. In 1832, the theory of nullification was put to the test when South Carolina passed an ordinance that claimed to nullify federal tariffs. The 'Nullification Crisis' almost degenerated into violence, but coercion by US Navy warships in Charleston averted a secession. During the crisis, Jackson said in a famous toast, 'Our federal Union-it must and shall be preserved. ' In Calhoun's toast, he replied, 'Our Union; next to our liberties most dear.

' The break between Jackson and Calhoun was complete, and Calhoun was not Jackson's running mate in 1832. On December 28, 1832 he became the first Vice President to resign from office, having accepted election to the United States Senate from his native South Carolina. The Force Bill was proposed by Congress prohibiting states from nullifying federal laws. The Compromise of 1833 settled the matter for a number of years. 17.

Compromise of 1850 - The Compromise of 1850, in the history of the United States, was a series of measures whose object was the settlement of five questions in dispute between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States. Three of these questions grew out of the annexation of Texas and the acquisition of western territory as a result of the Mexican-American War (1846-48). California was admitted as a free state, and the slave trade was abolished (only the sale of slaves, not slavery) in the District of Columbia; these were concessions to the North. New Mexico (then including present-day Arizona) and Utah were organized without any prohibition of slavery (each being left free to decide for or against, on admission to statehood), and the Fugitive Slave Act, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves, was enacted; these were concessions to the South.

Texas was compelled to give up much of the western land to which it had a good claim, and received in return $10,000,000. This legislation had several important results. It helped to postpone secession and Civil War for a decade, during which time the Northwest was growing more wealthy and more populous, and was being brought into closer relations with the Northeast. 18.

Kansas-Nebraska Act was an Act of Congress in 1854 organizing the remaining territory within the Louisiana Purchase for settlement before its admission to the Union. It was contrived by and passed by those legislators who favored the political standpoint of the use of popular sovereignty to decide if a territory would be open to slavery. Its passage only exacerbated the rift between the Northern and Southern states over the issue of slavery and added fuel to the fire that became the American Civil War. 19. Dred Scott Decision - The Court ruled that: No Negroes, not even free Negroes, could ever become citizens of the United States. They were 'beings of an inferior order' not included in the phrase 'all men' in the Declaration of Independence nor afforded any rights by the Constitution.

The exclusion of slavery from a U.S. territory in the Missouri Compromise was an unconstitutional deprivation of property (Negro slaves) without due process prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is the first appearance in American constitutional law of the concept of 'substantive due process,' as opposed to procedural due process. Dred Scott was not free, because Missouri law alone applied after he returned there. 20. John Brown - John Brown (May 9, 1800 - December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who played a major part in the history of slavery in the United States leading up to the American Civil War. Brown took part in the violence during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, but his most famous action was his leadership of the raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia).

The killings that followed, Brown's subsequent capture by Robert E. Lee, his trial, and execution by hanging are generally considered an important part of the origins of the Civil War. 21. Know Nothing Party - The growing sentiment against immigrants [1] led to a dissatisfaction with the major parties-the Democrats were seen as too dependent on the votes of immigrants, and the Whigs were seen as ineffectual, and were largely in decline in any case. Thus activists opposed to immigration began splitting off from the major parties and forming secret groups, coordinating their votes and throwing their weight en masse behind candidates sympathetic to their cause (regardless of political party). When asked about these secret organizations, members would reply 'I know nothing,' which led to them popularly being called Know-Nothings as a political epithet by their opponents.

This movement in effect gained control of a large number of local offices, especially in the North, through the early 1850's ('in effect' because the officeholders were still technically either Democrats or Whigs, as the Know-Nothings were not yet an actual party). 22. Maine Law - The 'Maine law' passed in 1851 in Maine was one of the first statutory implementations of the developing temperance movement in the United States. The passage of the law prohibiting the sale of all alcoholic beverages, except for 'medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes,' quickly spread elsewhere, and by 1855 twelve states had joined Maine in total prohibition. These were 'dry's tates; states without prohibition laws were 'wet. ' The act was unpopular with many working class people and immigrants.

Opposition to the law turned violent in Portland, Maine on June 2, 1855 during an incident known as the Maine law riot. 23. Fire Eaters - By radically urging secessionism in the US South, the Fire-Eaters demonstrated the high level of sectionalism existing in the US during the 1850's, and materially contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-1865). As early as 1850 there was a southern minority of proslavery extremists who did much to weaken the fragile unity of the nation.

Led by such men as Edmund Ruffin, Robert Rhett, Louis T. Wig fall, and William Yancey, this group was dubbed "Fire-Eaters" by northerners. At a 1850 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Fire-Eaters urged southern secession, citing irrevocable differences between North and South, and further inflamed passions by using propaganda against the North.