American Political Culture- HIST316 Assignment

The article that we had to read was entitled “The Early Republic’s Political Culture 1789-1840” and it was written by Robert P. Formisato.  The beginning of the article starts out talking about how political parties were formed by daring men who wanted to create a new system. When the republic started out most of the founding fathers were opposed to the idea of political parties, although they formed their own out of necessity. For a brief time during the Era of Good Feelings Americans were united under one political party. This all changed after James Monroe’s presidency. Martin Van Buren was a huge proponent of political parties and wrote papers convincing people of their necessity. Martin Van Buren believed political parties were a positive good uniting people of diverse backgrounds under a common goal.  The article explains how the party system started out with the “Federalists” and “Democratic Republicans” and goes into a brief history on how these parties evolved, and how certain core principles remained the same. Martin Van Buren even pointed out how two forces drive political parties throughout US History- those who want centralization of power like the monarchists during the American Revolution, and those who want decentralization of power. Over time these two ideas compete with each other and do compete till this day.  This article also mentions how parties have different parts- you have the party leaders, activists, voters and they all play an important part in the party’s creation and functions as it interacts with the citizens of these United States.  The article by Formisato also critiques the use of party language. “Republican” and “Federalist” meant different things during the American Revolution, but when they evolved into parties they because the party titles and rhetoric.

                This article offers a very interesting analysis of our American political party system and how it changes, and stays the same throughout the years. It is very interesting to observe that our own political system is actually not very different at all from the early 1800s. We have people who hate parties, some people who promote parties as a positive good. The citizens today of the United States are arguing over states’ rights, federalism and a centralized government almost the same way they did in the early 1800s.  There is not any real “biblical” stance on the issues of states rights. Personally I favor states rights because I believe man is sinful by nature, and therefore we must have decentralized government to check the other branches, and states to check the federal government. This issue of political parties however, is in the “Christian liberty” zone.

This was a very well-written article on political parties.