Second Party System

The Second Party System was the period of highly competitive political organization in the United States dominated by the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. Historians generally date its formation to the realignment surrounding the election of 1828 and its collapse to the sectional crisis produced by the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854. The boundaries are approximate: the Whigs did not become a fully organized national party until the mid-1830s, and the transition to the Third Party System continued through the election of 1860. The Democrats grew from the coalition assembled by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. They generally presented themselves as defenders of majority rule, equal political rights among white men, limited federal involvement in economic development, and resistance to monopolies and government-granted privilege. Their opponents first appeared as supporters of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and the National Republicans, together with Anti-Masons and other anti-Jackson groups. These elements gradually formed the Whig Party, which favored congressional leadership, the rule of law, economic development through the American System, and restraints on what Whigs considered Jackson's misuse of executive power. Both parties became broad national coalitions with organizations in nearly every state. They relied on partisan newspapers, local committees, nominating conventions, rallies, parades, printed tickets, patronage, and disciplined legislative blocs. Election turnout among eligible voters rose markedly, and party allegiance became an important social identity. The system was nevertheless neither fully democratic nor socially uniform. Most women, enslaved people, Native Americans, and many free Black men could not vote, while state laws continued to regulate citizenship, residence, taxation, and registration. Differences between the parties varied by state, religion, ethnicity, class, and local economic conditions. The principal disputes concerned the nature of popular government, presidential authority, the national bank, tariffs, federal support for internal improvements, public land, territorial expansion, relations with...