A Chapter in the History of American Party Ideology: The Nineteenth-Century Democratic Party (1828-1892)

Abstract

American political parties have been studied primarily as electoral organizations and as aggregations of particular constituencies. The subject of party ideology is commonly ignored or treated as a product of the aggregated views of the party-in-the-electorate. Consequently, we have a conception of American parties as vote-getting machines and an understanding of American political culture as the product of a hegemonic liberal tradition. This article, which focuses on the Democratic Party in the nineteenth century, challenges these views. Using party platforms and presidential election speeches, it reconstructs that party's core ideology from 1828 to 1892 and finds it remarkably consistent in its basic values.