Episode 144: Partisanship in the Revolutionary era

[00:00:00] Ben Wright: This is 15 Minute History, a podcast for educators, students, and anyone interested in history, featuring the minds and voices of the University of Texas at Austin.

Political partisanship, and the vitriol that accompanies it, is one of the hallmark features of American democracy today. But while there is a broad consensus that politics is getting seedier, there is also a long history of dysfunction and division that goes back centuries. I’m joined today by UT professor H.

W. Brands, whose new book, Founding Partisans, is a revelatory history of political division from the revolutionary era. Then, as now, wannabe demagogues and political parties were seen as the main culprits. To the framers of the constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues.

Exhibit A. The founders wanted nothing similar for America. And yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firm root in the following decades. Professor Brands walks us through the partisan political history of America’s first few decades, including a look at the parties of Hamilton and Jefferson, the Federalists and the Anti Federalists.

It’s an ugly story, with some great zingers thrown in to boot, but ultimately, The age was united by the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another. Professor Brands, welcome to 15 Minute History. Sure. So the phrase that really struck me in the, in the book title here was brawling birth.

Could you sort of talk us through a little bit about what made it such a brawling birth?

[00:01:42] H. W. Brands: Well first I want to say that I used the term brawling birth because I wanted to disabuse readers of any notions that do kind of linger around the founding fathers, that they were a genteel bunch, and they had their Their wigs and, you know, their coats on and they did everything in a proper way.

In fact, politics in those days was at least as much a brawl as it is today with the added attraction, if you want to call that, of duels in which people died. We haven’t seen any of those lately. No, no, you

[00:02:10] Ben Wright: know, we’ll see how the rest of the year pans out. That’s right. One always has to say yet. I mean, you, you talk a lot.

in the book about ugly elections. And I’m curious, you know, how, what are the mechanics of that ugliness? Uh, what are some of the best insults is, is sort of violence, a part of elections. So violent rhetoric

[00:02:29] H. W. Brands: became a part of elections fairly quickly. Now, not during the first two, because George Washington won by essentially by consensus.

And this was Probably a real blessing to the new American Republic that it got eight years of presidential performance and the elections that produced it without this new partisanship surfacing, because Washington, in terms of his reputation, Uh, stood head and shoulders above everybody else, and it that really mattered because that was still an age where deference counted.

People were willing to look up to their leaders, and they were willing to say, in essence, George Washington is a better man than I. Okay, so he should be president. Now, it mattered tremendously that for Washington, This was a victory lap for having won the Revolutionary Wars, commanding general of the Continental Army, and everybody knew that.

So, so John Adams could defer to George Washington knowing that Washington would be retiring, stepping out of the way relatively soon. If Washington had been as young as Adams, if Washington had been as young as Alexander Hamilton, and it looked like America might be saddled with Washington fur. decades more, then the punches at Washington wouldn’t have been pulled so much as they were.

But even then, even then it was the fact that by the end of his second term, Washington was being criticized by, well, what amounted to the opposition press. I say, I have to say what amounted to, because Washington did not consider himself a member of either of the two political parties that were emerging.

He considered himself above both parties. Party. Mm-Hmm. . But it was really clear that his philosophy, his inclinations lay with the Federalists. And so Jefferson’s party, the Republicans, they were taking shots at Washington and he finally just got fed up with politics, got fed up with a job and said, AF at the end of his second term, I’m, I’m outta here, I’m leaving.

[00:04:23] Ben Wright: So is it a sort of personal decision for Washington? Was he just ready to retire?

[00:04:27] H. W. Brands: Yes, he would have retired at the end of his first term, except that the leaders of the two emerging political parties, Alexander Hamilton for the Federalists, Jefferson for the Republicans, who were both members of his cabinet said, General Washington, Mr.

President, you cannot retire. And basically, and turn the country over to those bad people on the other side. And so Washington felt to keep the brawl from breaking out. In its full violence, he would stick around for another term, but after midway through his second term said, okay, enough of this and you can’t talk me into a third term.

Now, by then, Hamilton and Jefferson both had left the administration. So there was nobody left to really try to shame him into

[00:05:07] Ben Wright: a third term. So while, you know, Washington sort of incubating the nation through his presidency to a certain extent, but you’ve got these two growing factions, you’ve got the Federalists, you’ve got the Anti Federalists.

What are the

[00:05:17] H. W. Brands: differences? The fundamental difference between the two parties, the Federalists and the Republicans, was the same fundamental difference we have today. And that is, People who are comfortable with greater government power, who would like to see the government get bigger, more active, more energetic, they’re on one side.

In that day, those were the Federalists. That was Alexander Hamilton, which is a bit striking because Hamilton for a long time has been embraced by American conservatives, and modern American conservatives profess to want smaller government. But Hamilton wanted a much bigger government than had existed before the Constitution under the Articles of Confederation.

And even under this new Constitution, he kept wanting more and more power, especially for the presidency at the expense of Congress. Jefferson and the Republicans, on the other hand, wanted less government, which, again, strikingly, although Jefferson would become The patron saint of the modern democratic party that there’s a name change in there.

And the modern Democrats are the ones who these days want more government. Um, nonetheless, he really is the philosophical grandfather of modern conservatism. He wanted less government and if government there had to be, he wanted the states to have power and not the central government.

[00:06:34] Ben Wright: Now, when it comes to the purpose of government, though, you know, what, what are they wanting more or less government?

[00:06:40] H. W. Brands: So, the first thing that gave rise to a demand to change, to basically change out the Articles of Confederation for a new government was to facilitate trade, trade and foreign policy. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were sovereign and they could and did erect trade barriers to commerce from other states.

So New Jersey vegetable farmers learned that they couldn’t sell their crops in New York City across the Hudson without paying a tariff or. Dealing with other regulations. So they’re the trade barriers. And so to some extent, the constitution of 1787, the one we still have now was almost a trade pact. So a free trade region was created.

That was a big part of it. A second concern was foreign policy. So, again, because the states were sovereign, each one was a country unto itself. In fact, in those days, what we now call governors of states were often called presidents because they were the chief executive of, in effect, a sovereign state.

And there was a fear that foreign nations, Britain perhaps, maybe France, maybe Spain, would try to pick off the American states one by one. It was pretty clear that New England, strikingly, despite being the seedbed of the American Revolution, the most hostile to Britain in the days leading up to the Declaration of Independence, it had ties of trade and affinity with Old England.

And so New England tended to sort of gravitate back in the direction of Old England. And there was a concern on the part of Southern states that, New England, part of America, would ally with Britain, or that the British would pick off New England and pick this American Union apart. And so the idea was to create this more coherent national government, would conduct all foreign policy itself, the central government would conduct foreign policy, rather than allow the states to engage in that.

[00:08:33] Ben Wright: So we’ve got these two groups, these two parties, but it seems that nobody wants parties. The framers didn’t want parties. It’s obvious that the vociferous nature of the political culture isn’t particularly beneficial to anyone. How does America end up with parties? So one of the reasons I wrote this

[00:08:47] H. W. Brands: book is I was trying to solve what seemed to me a puzzle.

And that is that At the beginning of America’s national existence, at the end of the Revolutionary War, all sorts of people were saying that this American experiment in self government, this American republic, can survive only if there is a sufficient degree of civic virtue, that people have to be good.

This was a republic, and a republic is a political entity that’s based on the people, and if the people weren’t good, if they weren’t virtuous people, at least in their public lives, then it couldn’t survive. But they also said and they, they said that they hope they believed that the United States would not be vexed with the partisanship with the parties that they had experienced both in their own existence as colonies under Britain and that they had observed in British life.

And so I thought, well, okay, so why do they think that America might be spared political parties? Because political parties are simply the manifestation of differences of opinion. And strong minded people have different, different views. And they’re going to organize to find people who believe roughly the same thing.

And so you will get these groupings of people. And so it took me a while kind of to puzzle this out. But I think I’ve Transcribed I think I know why it happened at first. And that is that during the American Revolutionary War, the Americans themselves were deeply split. In fact, I wrote a book on the subject called Our First Civil War, and it was about the American Revolution pointing out that there was as deep a split, a deeper split between Americans and Americans during the Revolutionary War than there was between Americans and the British.

And the American split was between the patriots, the one who wanted independence, and the loyalists, the ones who didn’t. And so this book Became murderously violent, the nastiest battles of the American Revolution were fought between Americans and Americans. And so during the Revolutionary War, Americans were fully aware that they had deep divisions of opinion.

But then at the end of the war, the losing side, the loyalists, they all sailed away. I mean, effectively they all sailed away, the, the prominent ones all did, they got on board ships and went away. And so there was this moment right then where there was only one phil philosophy that was left in America, the winning side.

So we’re the ones who won independence. And so it was possible for those people to think in the, in the, Basking in the glow of victory that, oh, we all think alike here, and therefore we can proceed in this atmosphere of philosophical unanimity. But it is a fact of life. It’s a fact of political life that if you have a two party system, let’s say, and one party simply disappears, that the remaining party doesn’t remain just one party for long because differences emerge within that one party.

And then you Two parties or more parties and that’s exactly what happened in the United States

[00:11:35] Ben Wright: This may be a stretch But it sounds a little bit like the 1990s sort of full of Berlin wall and everyone agrees as one system and then here we are Yeah So I actually

[00:11:44] H. W. Brands: I think this is a reflection of kind of a deeper a deeper human Capacity for dealing with problems and we deal with the greatest problems the most threatening the most obvious problems first and if By some way, we should solve that problem, the biggest problem.

Then there’s a brief moment of, okay, we don’t have any problems. The next biggest problem rises to the top. And then we deal with that. So that’s exactly what happened after the end of the Cold War. Briefly, people thought, okay, the world is at peace. Some people talked about the end of history. There’s nothing more to argue about.

But it didn’t take long for Europe, what had formerly been Yugoslavia, to fall to pieces. And for, well, what the world discovered was that the United States and the Soviet Union had each sort of policed half of the world during the Cold War. And one cop, Fell asleep or one cop retired soviets. And so much of that half the world is sort of exploded.

And then and then Americans at that point, they had to decide, well, do we still have to police the world if there’s no other major power to worry us? And turns out, well, listen, This other stuff, these other troubles rise to the top, most spectacularly at 9 11. So just a group of terrorists can turn America’s world on its head.

[00:13:02] Ben Wright: I mean, that idea of, you know, does America have to be involved in what’s going on around the world? That’s part of this Federalist Republican argument as well, right? Yes and

[00:13:11] H. W. Brands: no. The emergence of the political parties actually occurs during the debate over whether this new constitution written in Philadelphia in 1787 should be ratified.

And most of the people who took part in the convention thought it should, and so they formed the Federalist Party. But some of the ones who stayed home and a few who had walked out in the middle of the convention said it shouldn’t. And one of the reasons we get two parties. is that most political decisions come down to ultimately a yes or no decision.

This is very clear in the case of the Constitution. Yes, you’ll ratify the Constitution or no, you won’t. And so this is why we get the two first, they’re not yet full blown parties yet, but they’re philosophical groupings. The Federalists, they want the Constitution. The other side, they just by default get to be called the Anti Federalists.

They don’t want the new Constitution. They want to stick with the old Articles of Confederation, which is a much looser. collection of states. And then that debate is resolved. The constitution is passed. And then things kind of fall into quiescence for a moment. But that same philosophical difference of opinion, the Federalists, the ones in favor of the constitution, they want strong government and the Anti Federalists want a weaker government.

They want more liberty, less order. The Federalists want more order, less liberty. And this Continues going forward, but it doesn’t really sharpen until about the end of Washington’s first term in office when Europe goes to war, when Britain and France go to war is a consequence of the French Revolution, and at that point, foreign affairs creep into this difference of views because it turns out that the The Federalists, the ones who want a stronger central government, they sort of map on to the folks who, in the contest between Britain and France, are favoring the kind toward Britain.

So they’re called Anglophiles by their opponents. And the ones who want less government, the Jeffersonians, the Republicans, they’re more sympathetic to France. And they’re called Jacobins after the radical wing. the French Revolution. And so this is when the insults start flying. And when you bring foreign policy into a domestic debate, it takes on an edge it hasn’t had before.

And this persists throughout American history, but our histories as well, because the people who disagree with you now are not simply wrongheaded, but they’re potentially treasonous because they will sell out America’s national interest to this wrong country overseas. Yes,

[00:15:36] Ben Wright: this is all sounds rather familiar.

Yeah. So this culminates in the election of 1800. I’m thinking of other sort of tumultuous elections, 1824, 1912. Well, I will confess

[00:15:48] H. W. Brands: that when I was writing, I always write the first part of the book last. Because I want to know what the setup piece is and sort of how to do it. How to get the reader into this.

And you were talking about tumultuous elections. Well, I was writing about the election of 1800, the first really tumultuous, divisive, contested election in the wake of the 2020 election, which was contested. And the question came down to this, would The losing incumbents leave peacefully. This is the test of any new political system.

I would say it’s the test of any political system, but it’s a real test of a new political system. The test isn’t the first election. Okay. You have her selection. One side wins. The other side loses. It’s not necessarily even the second election. It’s the first election where the incumbents lose because the incumbents potentially holding the levers of power have power.

The option of trying to stay in office, rigging the system, calling out the police, the army, whatever, to resist being evicted. And this was a question, serious question for months after the vote counting in the election of 1800 because of a really an oversight by the people who wrote the constitution into how the elector electors cast their votes and how they were counted.

The federal, excuse me, the Republican party clearly won, but the two, Republican candidates, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, they tied in the number of electoral votes. In those days, the elector’s ballots did not distinguish between president and vice president, as they do now, after this snafu in 1800 was rectified.

And so it lay within the capacity of the Federalists, who the lame duck Federalist House of Representatives, they would decide. Whether basically to prevent Thomas Jefferson from becoming president, as it was clear the country intended him to become. And Burr was interested in an entry. Burr was accused of this.

There’s no evidence that’s really been adduced of that. But a lot of people sort of thought Burr was a shady character. And I should add that Federalists were floating these rumors as well to sort of make, make Jefferson think that Burr was trying to undermine him. But anyway, so the, so I was writing this question and I, my prologue basically sets this up.

Here’s the contested election and I don’t resolve this election in the prologue. I leave it hanging and then, okay, now here’s the backstory. And then at the end of the book, I come and resolve the question because at the end. The incumbent president, John Adams, refused to go along with any shenanigans that would defy the will of the electorate.

And he left office quietly. And I was writing this as Donald Trump, although he did eventually leave office, was contesting still to this day, continues to contest the outcome of the election of 2020. And so. It was a test of America’s political system, of America’s devotion to the rule of law under a public in 1800, the country passed the test then, and it is a characteristic of any situation of self, any system of self government that You have to pass the test every time, every time there’s an election, you know, if all you do is break the chain once and the experiment falls to pieces and I think, well, I was talking about the election of 2020 and, you know, we You The election of 2020 has not entirely been resolved yet in the following sense that the loser Donald Trump has not acknowledged his loss.

If he wins in 2024, assuming that he is the candidate, the Republican Party, you can be sure that he will say, I’m vindicated. See, I was right. And so this this election of 2020 we’re now in early 2024 holds the record for the longest contested election in history. There was indeed a change of. Holders of the office, Donald Trump and now most Republicans still contend that he, he legitimately won the election of 2020 if that had been, if that had been the case in 1800, we wouldn’t be here talking about how this constitution immersion is now past its 200th year.

It wouldn’t have lasted that long.

[00:20:04] Ben Wright: That’s fairly, I mean, intriguing and in a disturbing way, because. Yeah, it’s always hard to divvy up history into periods, but it may be that we’re at the other end with the other bookend here of a certain experiment in history. Exactly.

[00:20:18] H. W. Brands: And so, and I think there’s a, there’s a basic difference between the appreciation of Adams, Hamilton.

Madison Jefferson, that group, the ones that I write about, and of Americans today, because they understood that this experiment could go wrong at any moment. They had already made one experiment, the Article of Confederation, and they just threw that over after five years. And so this one was now ten years old, but there was no guarantee it was going to last forever.

Now, it passed that test in 1800. It passed every subsequent test. There was a grueling test in the Civil War, and it passed that test only by major force of arms. Um, I think it’s tempting to take for granted that something that has existed for a long time, in this case, America’s democratic system, it’s been around for 200 years.

If it’s been around that long, it’s tempting to think it’s going to last forever. Things in human history don’t last forever. And it’s not out of the question at all, that, as you suggested, the election of 1800 was one bookend, the election of 2024 might be another bookend. Thank you so much

[00:21:23] Ben Wright: for joining us today, this was fascinating, and I hope we can have you on again soon.

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