Inquiry Into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States. Martin Van Buren
effects of this discordance on so many and such vital points in the political doctrines and feelings of those by whom the Revolution had been achieved, were postponed by the existence of the war; but when that restraint was removed by the recognition of our Independence they broke forth unavoidably, and were soon developed in the formation of political parties.
The Congress of the Confederation, and—from the dependence of the Federal Government upon the coöperation of the States for the performance of its most important duties—the State legislatures, as well as the public press, became the theatres for the display of these conflicting opinions.
The so-called Government of the Confederation was little else than an alliance between the States—a federal league and compact, the terms of which were set forth in the Articles of Confederation. Besides a control over questions of Peace and War, its powers and duties were chiefly advisory, and dependent for their execution upon the coöperation of the States. A federal system so defective was justly held responsible for a large share of the public and private embarrassments that existed at, or arose after, the termination of the Revolutionary contest. It was also, as was natural, charged in some degree with those which were, in truth, unavoidable consequences of a seven years' war, and which would have existed under any system. It is not surprising, therefore, that a party bent upon its overthrow should have arisen as soon as the public mind was by the course of events brought to a proper state to consider the subject. Of this party Alexander Hamilton became the leader, and its immediate objects were, of course, very soon frankly developed. These were in the first instance to divest the State governments of certain powers, and to confer them upon Congress, the possession of which by the Federal head they deemed indispensable to the exigencies of the public service, with the intention of following up this step by an attempt to abrogate the Articles of Confederation, and to substitute for that system an independent and effective Federal Government, composed of executive, legislative, and judicial departments. In respect to the powers to be given to the new Government, and to its construction otherwise, there doubtless existed some differences of opinion among the members of this party; but all agreed that it should be what in the language of the day was called a "strong government." There may not have been entire harmony among them in regard to the expediency and practicability of attempting it, but I do not think there is reasonable ground to doubt that most of them desired a virtual consolidation of the two systems—Federal and State. A few were, from an early period, suspected by those who differed from them, and who became their opponents, of desiring to return to the English system, and this suspicion, doubtless, contributed to make the latter more impracticable than they might otherwise have been.
The political feelings which lay nearest to the hearts of the great body of the people, as well during our colonial condition as in the States after the declaration and establishment of Independence, and of the strength of which I have referred to such striking and oft-repeated illustrations, were those of veneration and affection for their local governments as safeguards of their liberties and adequate to most of their wants; endeared to them as their refuge from the persecutions of arbitrary power, and hallowed by the perils and triumphs of the Revolution. Allied to these feelings, and nearly co-extensive with them in point of duration, was a distrust, at both periods, on the part of the masses, of what they called an overshadowing general government.
When to these sources of opposition to the views of the party which had arrayed itself against the government of the Confederation is added the natural and deeply seated hostility of those who dissented from its views in respect to hereditary government in any form, and the suspicion of a reserved preference for such, or at least for kindred institutions, we cannot be at a loss in accounting for the origin of the first two great parties which sprang up and divided the country so soon after the establishment of our Independence.
But the names by which these parties were distinguished are, it must be admitted, not so intelligible. The name of Anti-Federalists was strangely enough given by their opponents to those who advocated the continuance of the Union upon the principles which prevailed in its establishment, and according to which it was regarded as a Federal League or Alliance of Free States, upon equal terms, founded upon a compact (the Articles of Confederation) by which its conditions were regulated—to be represented by a general Congress, authorized to consider and decide all questions appertaining to the interests of the alliance and committed to its charge, without power either to act upon the people directly or to apply force to the States, or otherwise to compel a compliance with its decrees, and without any guarantee for their execution other than the good faith of the parties to the compact. On the other hand the name of Federalists was assumed, and, what is still more extraordinary, retained by those who desired to reduce the State governments, by the conjunction of which the Federal Union had been formed, to the condition of corporations to be intrusted with the performance of those offices only for the discharge of which a new general government might think them the appropriate functionaries; to convert the States, not perhaps in name, but practically and substantially, into one consolidated body politic, and to establish over it a government which should, at the least, be rendered independent and effective by the possession of ample powers to devise, adopt, and execute such measures as it might deem best adapted to common defense and general welfare.
That this was a signal perversion of the true relation between party names and party objects can scarcely be denied. Yet we who have, in later days, witnessed the caprices in respect to party names to which the public mind has been occasionally subjected, and the facility with which one party has, through its superior address or its greater activity, succeeded in attaching to its adversary an unsuitable and unwelcome name, have not as much reason to be surprised at that perversion as had the men of that day who were subjected to it.
The motive which operated in thus denying to men whose principles were federal the name which indicated them, and in giving it to their opponents, must be looked for in the fact that federal principles were at that time favored by the mass of the people. This was well understood at the time, and was made still more apparent by the circumstance that those who really adhered to them, though compelled by the superior address of their adversaries to act under the name of Anti-Federalists, maintained their ascendancy in the government of the Confederation to its close.
Those who require further proof of the truth of this position beyond what results from a mere statement of the principles contended for by the respective parties, will find it fully sustained by definitions of Gouverneur Morris and James Madison. (2 Madison Papers, pp. 747–8, and 893.) Mr. Morris explained the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government—the former being a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and compulsive operation. Mr. Madison, in the debate on the propositions of Mr. Patterson, which constituted the plan of the Anti-Federalists, and which were rejected by a vote of seven States to three—one (Maryland) divided—said: "Much stress has been laid by some gentlemen on the want of power in the Convention to propose any other than a federal plan. … Neither of the characteristics of a federal plan would support this objection. One characteristic was that in a federal government the power was exercised, not on the people individually, but on the people collectively, on the States. The other characteristic was that a federal government derived its appointments, not immediately from the people, but from the States which they respectively composed."
It cannot be difficult to decide which of these parties was, in truth, federal, and which anti-federal, according to these authentic definitions of a federal government.[3]
Between these parties, thenceforth distinguished by the misnomers of Federalists and Anti-Federalists, there was, from the close of the war to the establishment of the present government, an uninterrupted succession of partisan conflicts, in which the whole country participated. They grew, for the most part, out of propositions to take from the State governments the rights of regulating commerce and of levying and collecting impost duties, and for the call of a Convention to revise the Articles of Confederation. The first two of these propositions were introduced by the Federalists, and for six years vigorously supported by their party, with Hamilton at its head; and, although advocated by Madison whilst he was in Congress, such was the strength of the Anti-Federal party in that