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Deferential-Participant Politics: The Early Republic's Political Culture, 1789–1840*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Ronald P. Formisano
Ronald P. Formisano*
Affiliation:
Clark University
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Abstract

The concepts of “party” and “party system” may be obscuring the nature of early national political culture. The presence of a modern party ethos before the 1830s seems to be taken for granted, as are assumptions regarding the alleged benefits of party. Historians have not yet demonstrated, however, the many dimensions of institutionalized party behavior. Focus is recommended on three observable elements of party (after Sorauf): as organization, in office, in the electorate. Studies of party self-consciousness developing over the entire 1789–1840 period are necessary in various political units. Evidence is inconclusive, but weighs on balance against a first party system of Federalists and Republicans (1790s–1820s). While relatively stable elite coalitions and even mass cleavage patterns perhaps developed at staggered intervals in different arenas, especially during the war crisis period of 1809–1816, the norms of party did not take root and pervade the polity. The era to the 1820s was transitional, a deferential-participant phase of mixed political culture roughly comparable to England's after 1832. Theories relating party to democratization, national integration, and political development, should be reconsidered.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 473 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank David H. Fischer, William G. Shade, Walter Dean Burnham, and Joel Silbey for their generous criticism, and the National Endowment for the Humanities for financial support.

References

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4 This point is made by: Ershkowitz, Herbert and Shade, William G., “Consensus or Conflict? Political Behavior in the State Legislatures During the Jacksonian Era,” Journal of American History, 58 (12, 1971), 591–621 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Sorauf, , “Political Parties and Political Analysis,” pp. 37–38 Google Scholar. Chambers recently defined party in the modern sense “as a relatively durable social formation which seeks offices or power in government, exhibits a structure of organization which links leaders at the center of government to a significant popular following in the political arena and its local enclaves, and generates in-group perspectives or at least symbols of identification or loyalty.” “Party Development and the American Mainstream,” in Chambers and Burnham, American Party Systems, p. 5.

8 The last sentences are paraphrases from William G. Shade, personal communication.

9 The passages which follow will argue in effect that the first parties do not meet the criteria of party set forth by one of their leading historians, as, e.g., in Chambers, William N., Political Parties in a New Nation: The American Experience, 1776–1809 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 44–48 Google Scholar. Since then, however, Chambers has proposed a very useful taxonomy of political parties; see W. N. Chambers, review of Political Parties Before the Constitution, by Main, Jackson Turner, Reviews in American History, 1 (12, 1973), 499–503 Google Scholar.

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16 Tinkcom, pp. 179–80.

17 Tinkcom, p. 191. Bache's death in 1798 interfered with Tinkcom's observation of parties because, as Tinkcom said, no other Philadelphia publisher emulated his advanced evaluation of parties.

18 Pro-party thinking, Tinkcom, pp. 192–93, 236–37; regarding Ross, pp. 229, 309; McKean, pp. 253, 262; 1799 election, pp. 237–38. The partisan vocabulary used on a patronage list by William Duane in 1801 is quite revealing, p. 267.

19 Higginbotham, Sanford W., The Keystone in the Democratic Arch: Pennsylvania Politics, 1800–1816 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1952), p. 19 Google Scholar.

20 Higginbotham, pp. 329–30.

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23 Ryan, Mary P., “Party Formation in the United States Congress, 1789 to 1796: A Quantitative Analysis,” William and Mary Quarterly, 28 (10, 1971), 541 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a detailed critique of Ryan, Henderson accepts the first system framework, yet suggests strategies which potentially transcend it, H. James Henderson, “Quantitative Approaches to Party Formation in the United States Congress: A Comment,” With a Reply by Ryan, Mary P., William and Mary Quarterly, 30 (04, 1973), 307–24, especially pp. 319–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 A developing rebuttal is mostly unpublished at the moment, e.g., Fritz, Harry William, “The Collapse of Party: President, Congress, and the Decline of Party Action, 1807–1817.” (Doctoral dissertation, Washington University, 1971)Google Scholar; and Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L., “Foreign Policy Voting in the United States Congress, 1808–1812.” (Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 1972)Google Scholar. Hatzenbuehler has published an article, discussed below. Fritz showed that formal partisanship hardly existed in 1809, but from 1812 to 1815 found a high degree of voting cohesion, especially on war related issues. The return of peace, however, “demolished the party system.” Fritz directly challenged Young's revisionism, but seemed to replace it at several key points only with assertions, ignoring particularly the problem of party label and self-consciousness, p. 241, n. 51, and ff.

25 Extensive projects of congressional roll call analysis are underway, descriptions of which appear frequently in the Historical Methods Newsletter, e.g. 5 (06, 1972), 139 Google Scholar.

26 The modern party, in Paul Goodman's words, was outside the range of consciousness of that generation. Goodman, , “The First American Party System,” in American Party Systems, ed. Chambers, and Burnham, , p. 57 Google Scholar.

27 Dahl, Robert A., ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Hofstadter, Richard, The Idea of a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Levy, Leonard W., Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 42–69 Google Scholar.

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30 A provocative essay which attempts to put the professionals' rise in perspective is Marshall, Lynn W., “The Strange Stillbirth of the Whig Party,” American Historical Review, 72 (01, 1967), 445–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; note Marshall's disagreement with Chambers, p. 462, n. 47. The approach recommended here might emulate: Wilson, James Q., The Amateur Democrat: Club Politics in Three Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

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32 In an article on Jefferson's patronage policies, 1801–03, Prince showed that of 316 strategic second level offices Jefferson removed 146 (46 per cent), 118 of whom Prince identified as “hardcore Federalist party cadre,” “The Passing of the Aristocracy: Jefferson's Removal of the Federalists, 1801–1805,” Journal of American History, 57 (12, 1970), 565 Google Scholar. But activists may be dismissed or rewarded for electioneering, chairing meetings, etc., without there necessarily being a party system. Though Jefferson's removals may not have differed much from Jackson's (p. 566), one must still wonder why Jackson's patronage actions had much greater impact on what men thought about politics and spoils. That political folklore regarded Jackson's administration as a turning point was not solely a creation of Mugwump historians; see White, Leonard D., The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861 (New York: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 301, 308–11Google Scholar.

33 Prince, , New Jersey's Jeffersonian Republicans, pp. 223, 245 Google Scholar.

34 For comment on persisting “traditional local structures” within centralized, “modern” polities, see Rokkan, Stein, “The Comparative Study of Political Participation: Notes Toward a Perspective on Current Research,” in Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics, ed. Ranney, Austin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962), p. 70 Google Scholar.

35 Prince, , Jeffersonian Republicans, pp. 240–42Google Scholar; Aronson, Sidney H., Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service: Standards of Selection in the Administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Alex Weingrod's discussion of such a change in a Sardinian village, 1870-1950, is highly suggestive. Rather than the landlord, it is “the party functionary who provides information regarding loan programs, who can contact the government's tax collector on the villager's behalf, or who can send his son on to high school. The new men of influence are thus likely to be political men, and it is their ability to deal effectively with the wider system that gives them power. Patron-client relationships may continue … but it is more likely that political-party directed patronage becomes increasingly significant: the party boss and his workers—the professionals—control even wider resources and they are likely better to provide for their ‘constituents’ than the patron can for his ‘clients.’” “Patrons, Patronage, and Political Parties,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10 (07, 1969), 384 Google Scholar.

37 Link, Eugene Perry, Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1942)Google Scholar, made a beginning. The Society of Cincinnati was very important to the “Federalist interest” in the South in the 1790s ( Rose, , Prologue to Democracy, pp. 19–45)Google Scholar.

38 Kutolowski, Kathleen Smith, “The Social Composition of Political Leadership: Genesee County, New York, 1821–1860” (Doctoral dissertation. University of Rochester, 1973)Google Scholar.

39 Luetscher, George D., Early Political Machinery in the United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1903)Google Scholar, and Fischer, David H., The Revolution in American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jefferson (New York: Harper 1965)Google Scholar, are valuable on the early period. For the 1820s, Remini, Robert V., The Election of Andrew Jackson (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963)Google Scholar.

40 This hypothesis is based on my reading of such conflicting sources as Young, Washington Community; Brown, Roger H., The Republic in Peril: 1812, 2nd ed. (1964; New York: Norton, 1971)Google Scholar; and particularly Hatzenbuehler, Ronald L., “Party Unity and the Decision for War in the House of Representatives, 1812,” William and Mary Quarterly, 29 (07, 1972), 367–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Particularly suggestive are Hatzenbuehler's charts showing Republican and Federalist legislators' indices of cohesion values for nonunanimous Foreign Policy Roll Calls, Twelfth Congress, First Session, House, 387, 388. Congressional parties' strength in the 1840s is demonstrated in Silbey, Joel H., The Shrine of Party (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

41 Pertinent bibliographies appear in: Swierenga, Robert P., ed., Quantification in American History: Theory and Research (New York: Atheneum, 1970), pp. 127–30Google Scholar; and Dollar, Charles M. and Jensen, Richard J., Historian's Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1971), pp. 277–81Google Scholar.

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43 Ershkowitz, and Shade, , “Consensus or Conflict?,” Journal of American History, LVIII, 597, 599, 603, 613, 594–613 Google Scholar passim. Other work is underway in this area: Peter Levine; “Party Behavior in the New Jersey Legislature: 1829–1844,” and Rodney O. Davis, “The Influence of Party on Political Leadership in Illinois in the Jacksonian Era,” Papers presented at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting, Chicago, April 13, 1973.

44 Janda, Kenneth, A Conceptual Framework for the Comparative Analysis of Political Parties (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1970) pp. 77, 83 Google Scholar. “The project will cover some 150 political parties in 50 countries, consulting a random sample of party systems stratified equally according to 10 cultural-geographic areas of the world [for 1950–1970],” p. 77.

45 Regarding New York in the 1790s, Young, Democratic-Republicans; even some ultra-Federalists after 1800, Fischer, Revolution in Conservatism; New York in the 1820s, Kass, Alvin, Politics in New York State, 1800–1830 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. George R. Nielsen (“The Indispensable Institution: The Congressional Party During the Era of Good Feelings” (Doctoral dissertation, University of Iowa, 1968) found party labels “not available” until the late 1820s, p. 3.

46 Wallace, Michael, “Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York, 1815–1828,” American Historical Review, 74 (12, 1968), 453–91Google Scholar; Formisano, Ronald P., “Political Character, Antipartyism, and the Second Party System,” American Quarterly, 21 (Winter, 1970), 683–709 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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48 For detailed study of social bases of political cleavage in a pre-party situation, Hall, Van Beck, Politics Without Parties: Massachusetts, 1780–1791 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1972)Google Scholar.

49 A recent summary of the literature on elites and voters is in Buel, Richard Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 72–90, 319–24Google Scholar. Buel's conclusions are subject to the same criticism as Fischer's. Notable strength is indicated by Buel's comment that “during the formative stage of the first party system, the disposition of the regional leadership was often more critical than anything else in determining the political complexion of an area.” p. 75.

50 Fischer, , Revolution in Conservatism, pp. 202–03Google Scholar.

51 Interyear correlations for gubernatorial elections in New York from 1792 show that stable electoral cleavage developed only from 1809 to 1816 and not again until the 1830s ( Benson, Lee, Silbey, Joel, and Field, Phyllis, “Toward a Theory of Stability and Change in American Voting Patterns: New York State, 1792–1972,” Paper presented at the Mathematics Social Science Board Conference on Quantitative Studies in Popular Voting Behavior, Cornell University, 06, 1973 Google Scholar). A strong argument, however, for stable partisan cleavages in Maryland's electorate for two decades after 1798 has recently been made by David A. Bohmer, and John M. Rozette, “Toward the Study of Individual Level Historical Voting Data: Some Theoretical and Practical Considerations,” unpublished manuscript. Bohmer and Rozette discuss a number of studies now underway using invaluable poll book data for individual voters, which should go a long way toward resolving some of the issues raised above.

52 Janda, , Conceptual Framework, p. 88 Google Scholar.

53 For general discussion of the 1830s “new politics” and of relevant literature see Pessen, Edward, Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics (Home-wood, Ill.: Dorsey, 1969), pp. 154–307, 375–83Google Scholar; pertinent studies include: Benson, Lee, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, and Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827–1861 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

54 For a case of ticket voting without party, see Tinkcom, pp. 170–71, 239–40, 256.

55 Fischer, p. xv, summarizing works by Pole and McCormick.

56 Fischer, p. xi.

57 McCormick, , “Political Development and the Second Party System,” ed. Chambers, and Burnham, , p. 107 Google Scholar. Prince, , Jeffersonian Republicans, p. 249 Google Scholar. Prince's discussion of these issues is excellent, and it is somewhat arbitrary to classify him in this way. Edward Pessen maintains that party's advent did not affect existing policy preferences in administration of city governments: “Who Governed the Nation's Cities in the ‘Era of the Common Man’?,” Political Science Quarterly, 87 (12, 1972), 591–614 Google Scholar. See also, Dawson, Richard B., “Social Development, Party Competition, and Policy,” ed. Chambers, and Burnham, , pp. 203–37Google Scholar.

58 Exaggerating organization: Banner, , To the Hartford Convention, pp. 268–93Google Scholar; McCormick, Richard P., “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics,” American Historical Review, 65 (01, 1960), 288–301 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fischer suggested that party competition, organization and turnout went together, cf. pp. xi–xx, 182–99, and especially 187–92.

59 Compare, e.g., voting data from St. Mary's County (low) from 1790 to 1812 with those for Prince George's (and other counties with high turnouts) in Maryland; see Pole, J. R., “Constitutional Reform and Election Statistics in Maryland, 1790–1812,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 55 (12, 1960), 285–92Google Scholar.

60 Modern studies disagree about party organization's impact on turnout, but few political scientists claim that organization raises turnout by, much more than 5 per cent; see Crotty, William J., “Party Effort and Its Impact on the Vote,” American Political Science Review, 65 (06, 1971), 439–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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63 Inconsistencies appeared in what is on the whole a stimulating essay: Paul Goodman, “The First American Party System,” in Chambers and Burnham, pp. 59, 61, 69, 85, 87.

64 Tinkcom, p. 233; Fox, Dixon Ryan, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, 1801–1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kass, , Politics in New York, pp. 16–19 Google Scholar; several essays by Pole stress persisting deference, including “Representation and Authority in Virginia from the Revolution to Reform,” Journal of Southern History, 24 (02, 1958), 16–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The quotation is from Nesvold, Bette A., “Studies in Political Development,” in Macro-Quantitative Analysis: Conflict, Development, and Democratization, ed. Gillespie, John V. and Nesvold, (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1971), pp. 283–84Google Scholar.

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66 For a discussion of techniques: Jensen, Richard, “Quantitative Collective Biography: An Application to Metropolitan Elites,” in Quantification in American History, ed. Swierenga, , pp. 389–405 Google Scholar; a bibliography is in Dollar and Jensen, , Historian's Guide to Statistics, pp. 281–83Google Scholar.

67 For an illuminating discussion of persisting traditional forms of deferential politics mixing with primitive partisan modes, Beeman, Richard R., The Old Dominion in the New Nation, 1788–1801 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972)Google Scholar. Beeman's study shows the strength of deferential voting in Virginia in 1800, and maintains that Jefferson's victory ended emergent party politics and brought the return of “nonpartisan, gentlemanly style” habits (pp. 233, 234, 237–38). On the inability of the national Republicans to function as a party from 1800 to 1805, see Ellis, Richard E., The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 3–107 Google Scholar.

68 The phrase “deferential-participant” is borrowed from Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, who gave it a slightly different meaning: The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, rev. ed. (1963; Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), p. 455 Google Scholar. On the durability of deference and influence in England, see Hanham, H. J., Elections and Electoral Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (London: Longmans, 1959), pp. ix, xi, xiv–xv, 200–03Google Scholar, and passim; and Cornford, James, “The Adoption of Mass Organization by the British Conservative Party,” in Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems: Contributions to Comparative Political Sociology, ed. Allardt, Erik and Littunen, Yrjö (Turku: Pubis, of the Westermark Society, 1964), pp. 401–11Google Scholar.

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70 Brown, , Republic in Peril, pp. 182–83Google Scholar; Howe, John R., “Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790's,” American Quarterly, 19 (Summer, 1967), 147–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smelser, Marshall, “The Federalist Period as an Age of Passion,” American Quarterly, 10 (Winter, 1958), 391–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shallope, Robert E., “Toward a Republican Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography,” William and Mary Quarterly, 29 (01, 1972), 49–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buel, , Securing the Revolution, p. 91 Google Scholar.

71 “Strong ideological fools” prevails when political conflict concentrates “on a single, stable issue domain which presents an ordered dimension that is perceived in common terms by leaders and followers.” Stokes, Donald E., “Spatial Models of Party Competition,” in Elections and the Political Order, ed. Campbell, Angus, Converse, Phillip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E. (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 176 Google Scholar.

72 Land office patronage and party in the North-western and Southern states are treated briefly in Rohrbough, Malcolm J., The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 271–76Google Scholar.

73 Burnham, “Party Systems and the Political Process,” in Chambers, and Burnham, , American Party Systems, p. 289 Google Scholar; Pole, , “Constitutional Reform in Maryland, p. 281 Google Scholar. “Relatively stable coalitions” as pre-party phenomena are discussed in Richard Pride, A., Origins of Democracy: A Cross-National Study of Mobilization, Party Systems, and Democratic Stability (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publishers, 1970), pp. 692–94Google Scholar.

74 Bumham's discussion of realignments is relevant here (Critical Elections, pp. 1–10, 13, 27–28).

75 It is easier to assert such patterns than to show them. Political scientists typically explain increased voter participation by inferences which are in effect deductive theories of mass mobilization. Thus: economic development causes changes in society, which lead to new experiences for more citizens, and hence to the growth of certain political attitudes, and thus to more participation. This hypothesis is adapted from Nie, Norman H., Powell, G. Bingham, and Prewitt, Kenneth, “Social Structure and Political Participation: Developmental Relationships, Part I,” American Political Science Review, 63 (06, 1969), 372 Google Scholar. Though they frequently make similar claims, historians have yet to demonstrate any of this.

76 Nettl, J. P., Political Mobilization: A Sociological Analysis of Methods and Concepts (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 42–43 Google Scholar. Nettl's description of the necessary role of catchwords in social science, and of political culture as “the main catchment area of modern politics” is must reading, pp. 43–53. See also Pye, Lucian W., “Culture and Political Science: Problems in the Evaluation of the Concept of Political Culture,” Social Science Quarterly, 53 (09, 1972), 285–96Google Scholar.

77 Devine, Donald J., The Political Culture of the United States: The Influence of Member Values on Regime Maintenance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp. 14–18 Google Scholar.

78 Eckstein, Harry, “A Perspective on Comparative Politics, Past and Present,” in Comparative Politics: A Reader, ed. Eckstein, and Apter, David (New York: Free Press, 1963), p. 26 Google Scholar.

79 Jennings, M. Kent and Zeigler, Harmon, “The Salience of American State Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64 (06, 1970), 523–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Czudnowski, Moshe M., “A Salience Dimension for the Study of Political Culture,” American Political Science Review, 62 (09, 1968), 878–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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