{"id":150,"date":"2018-09-07T19:41:41","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T19:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/primary-sources\/?page_id=150"},"modified":"2018-10-30T23:35:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T23:35:06","slug":"evolution_political_parties","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.wp.odu.edu\/primary-sources\/sources-and-more\/evolution_political_parties\/","title":{"rendered":"Geography’s Impact on the Evolution of U.S. Political Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"James Madison faced with opposition to the newly created Constitution argued eloquently in The Federalist Papers that the saving grace of our new country could be found in our huge expanse of territory.\u00a0 Once seen as a roadblock to governance, Madison argued just the opposite.\u00a0 He claimed that our vast size would protect us from ourselves.\u00a0 He stated that no one particular faction would be able to dominate such a large land mass.\u00a0 No fan of democracy, Madison stated that pure democracies have been \u201cas short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths\u201d in Federalist 10.\u00a0 What Madison couldn\u2019t have anticipated was that the body politic of the newly created United States would quickly coalesce in a two-party system.\u00a0 This evolution relates directly back to the huge expanse of land that Madison was so confident in.\u00a0\u00a0 Political parties and their relationship to the geography of the United States has played a huge role in how the nation defines itself.<\/p>\n

Prior to independence, the question of representation was dictated by geographical conditions.\u00a0 The first settlement at Jamestown in 1607 quickly evolved into a plantation economy.\u00a0 This was predicated on river systems that probed deep within the colony.\u00a0 This allowed for expansion into the western fringes of the colony far from the seat of government.\u00a0 Because of this geographical condition, settlers couldn\u2019t be expected to travel hundreds of miles to vote on every single issue.\u00a0 This gave birth to representative democracy as manifested by the House of Burgesses established in 1619.\u00a0 Conversely, New England colonies, without the benefit of these river systems, were forced to establish closely knit towns where people could take part in town meetings.\u00a0 This gave birth to the notion of direct democracy.\u00a0 Both forms of representation were a result of geographical conditions.<\/p>\n

\"\"Early on in the republic\u2019s history, geographic distinctions led to our first political parties.\u00a0 The mercantile, trade oriented northern states were insistent on strengthening the hand of the federal government to protect their investments.\u00a0 The crisis over the creation of a National Bank brought into focus our first two party system.\u00a0 The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and the Democratic-Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson.\u00a0 Both men were emblematic of their respective geographic regions.\u00a0 The Virginian Jefferson calling for an economy based on yeoman farmers while New Yorker Hamilton insisting on a mercantile, industrial focus.<\/p>\n

As the United States\u2019 geography began to expand westward so did the evolution of political parties.\u00a0 The Federalists party, fearing a lack of control, argued against the Louisiana Purchase putting them at odds with the prevailing mood of the country.\u00a0 Embracing western settlement, the Republicans enjoyed what has been referred to fondly as \u201cThe Era of Good Feelings\u201d.\u00a0 The pressures that geography played out by the Missouri Compromise (Jefferson called it \u201cA fire bell in the night!), eventually proved to be too much for the Democratic-Republican Party to bear.\u00a0 Into the breach came Andrew Jackson.\u00a0 Our first president from the \u201cwest\u201d, Jackson embodied the frontier spirit that was capturing the nation. With him was born the modern Democratic Party.\u00a0 As the country pushed further westward, the strains began to show.\u00a0 The question of whether slavery should be allowed to take root in the west was first debated with Missouri.\u00a0 After the Mexican-American War, the issue became explosive.\u00a0 Neither the Compromise of 1850 nor the Kansas-Nebraska Act were able to curtail the coming sectional crisis.\u00a0 A political party would emerge reflective of this geographical tension.\u00a0 The modern Republican Party.<\/p>\n

At no point in United States history has geography played more of a role than in the Civil War.\u00a0 Southern slave holding states, reflective of their geographical location, decided that the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was the final straw.\u00a0 The latter half of the 19th<\/sup> century was dominated (on the national level) by the Republican Party.\u00a0 Their harsh role in subjugating the south during Reconstruction cemented what was then referred to as \u201cthe solid south\u201d, meaning solidly Democratic.\"\"<\/p>\n

As the nation headed into the early years of the 20th<\/sup> century, geography played a vital role.\u00a0 The dynamics that were most prevalent were those between urban and rural areas.\u00a0 Rural regions, dominated by the Democratic Party, pushed back unceasingly against what they pejoratively referred to as \u201cmodernism\u201d.\u00a0 Republicans on the other hand dominated industrial regions and embraced the era of the big city.\u00a0 This tension was played out with the Scopes Trial in Tennessee and eventual adoption of the 18th<\/sup> Amendment prohibiting the sale, manufacturing, transportation, or the use of alcohol in the country.<\/p>\n

Rising from the ashes of the Great Depression, the Democratic Party emerged triumphant with the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.\u00a0 His \u201cNew Deal Coalition\u201d was heavily focused on geography as he was able to keep a tenuous hold on western farmers, southern planters and eastern industrialists.\u00a0 What\u2019s most fascinating about this dynamic is the role that southern blacks played.\u00a0 Traditionally loyal to the Republican Party (the party of Lincoln), southern blacks began a massive shift to the Democratic Party during the 1930s.\u00a0 Geography played a major role in this evolution.<\/p>\n

\"\"The sea-change of the Civil Rights Movement and its roots in the geography of the United States, largely define the evolution of the political parties in post-WWII America.\u00a0 The embracing of northern and western Democrats of early civil rights legislation radically transformed the political landscape of the nation.\u00a0 This coupled with the abandonment of civil rights as a priority amongst northern Republicans brings into focus a clear distinction within our contemporary political party structure.\u00a0 When President Lyndon Johnson said, after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that \u201cwe have lost the South for a generation\u201d, he was prophetic.<\/p>\n

If there is one reason I\u2019m excited about pursuing this story map it\u2019s that I am constantly being asked by my students how the Democratic Party is looked to as sympathetic to civil rights while the Republican Party is not.\u00a0 What happened to the party of Lincoln?\u00a0 The party of Reconstruction and early Amendments guaranteeing freedoms for blacks?\u00a0 How could the Democrats, so long associated with Jim Crow and racial violence throughout the south, now be looked on so differently?To paraphrase a former advisor to Bill Clinton, \u201cit\u2019s the geography stupid\u201d<\/p>\n

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