In colonial politics tended to organize and electioneer in opposition to the policies of royal, mercantile, banking, manufacturing, and shipping interests. Agrarian interests later become a principal source of support for the Democratic Party. Many of the colonies had so-called Country parties opposing the Court parties in the 18th century.

Before the end of the first administration of George Washington in 1793, party alignments of national consequence began to form. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was the master politician of the Federalist Party. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, with help from his fellow Virginian, Representative James Madison, began the first respectable opposition in national affairs. They were called the Democratic-Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonians. Jefferson spoke about the interests of farmers, veterans, and urban immigrants and was in favor of minimum gove

This party was one of the two dominant political parties in the U.S. during the second quarter of the 19th century. It grew out of the National Republican Party and several smaller groups. Created primarily to oppose Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party, it was troubled by disagreement from the beginning and was never able to be a unified, positive party position. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were its great leaders, representing the Northern Whigs and the Southern Cotton Whigs. In 1840 they were able to unify behind a popular military hero, W. H. Harrison, as a presidential candidate. He was elected but died after only a month in office. His successor, John Tyler, quickly alienated the Whig leaders in Congress and was read out of the party. In 1848, the Whigs elected another military hero, Zachary Taylor. He too died in office but his successor, Millard Fillmore, remained a loyal party man. The party was already disintegrating chiefly over the issue of slavery. The Free-Soil Party and its inheritor, the Republican Party, gained most of the Northern Whigs. The Cotton Whigs went into the Democratic party. In 1852 Gen. Winfield Scott was the last Whig presidential candidate.

Until 1795, the Federalists were not a political organization in any modern sense. Federalism was a frame of mind, a set of attitudes that included belief in a strong and activist central government, public credit, the promotion of commerce and industry, and strict neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars. Opposition arose on all these points and became largely organized around James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Federalists began to adopt the tactics of the opposition Democratic-Republicans in response to attacks on Jay's Treaty with Britain (1794). Although parties were widely regarded as inimical to free government, and although Washington, Hamilton, and Adams deplored their rise (together with the tendency toward a North versus South and pro-British versus pro-French polarization of political opinion), parties were an established fact by the presidential election of 1796.

While Adams was president, the Federalists attempted to stifle dissent by the Alien and Sedition Act (1798). These, however, had the effect of stiffening the opposition at the time when the Federalists themselves were splitting into "High" and "Low" wings over the issue of the XYZ Affair and the ensuing Quasi-War with France. By the election of 1800, therefore, the Democratic-Republicans gained control of the federal government. The death of Washington in 1799 and of Hamilton in 1804 left the Federalists without a powerf

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Approximate Word count = 1743
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)