The Rise of a Two-Party System

By James P. Walsh

Before 1818 Connecticut had a unique political history; by the 1840s, Connecticut shared a common political history with the rest of the United States. We may describe this process as the nationalization of Connecticut politics, and in this process the development of a two-party system was crucial.

The party system came later to Connecticut than to the nation. The followers of Andrew Jackson had already organized the Democratic party in several states in the 1820s before a group of young men, led by Gideon Welles, did the same thing in Connecticut. These young men were attracted by Jackson's personal charisma, by the promise of the Democratic party to support the "common man" in his struggle against "aristocracy," and by the need to shake up the political system in order to further their own careers. The Connecticut Democrats had little success at first in their own state, but when Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 he gave them control of Federal jobs in Connecticut. The party then began to grow, and by 1836 was strong enough to deliver the state's electoral votes to Martin Van Buren, the Democratic candidate for president. As the Democrats gained in strength, those who opposed them also organized and sought aid from the Whig party, which had arisen in opposition to the

Jacksonians. By 1840, Connecticut, like the other states, had two major parties, Whigs and Democrats, roughly equal in strength.

Historians still debate why people became Democrats or Whigs. Speaking very generally, the Democratic party attracted non-Congregationalists, Irish immigrants, urban inhabitants, industrial workers, and those who felt themselves to be unconventional and/or a bit disreputable. The Whigs attracted Congregationalists, businessmen, reformers, farmers, and those who considered themselves to be respectable, established, and genteel.

The two-party system was important because it introduced national issues into local politics. The Democrats, for example, attacked the Bank of the United States in 1832, an issue that had little interest for the average man in Connecticut. But once the national party leaders made the bank an issue, Connecticut Democrats joined the attack. Of course, what Connecticut Democrats attacked, Connecticut Whigs defended. In this way, such controversies as the Tariff of 1828, Nullification, and Indian removal became topics of discussion in Connecticut.

In the 1850s, the two parties collapsed because they could not take a stand on the issue of the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. Northerners demanded that such expansion be stopped; Southerners resented any limitation on their right to hold slaves. Connecticut Democrats and Whigs would have liked to have taken a stand against the expansion of slavery, but the national leaders had to try to appease both North and South. They therefore waffled on the issue, to the irritation of the average voter. The Whig party finally collapsed altogether when a Whig president signed the Compromise of 1850, which allowed slavery to expand into the Southwest. The Democratic party suffered massive defections when it sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed slavery in those territories.

The collapse of the two major parties allowed minor parties, like the Know-Nothing party, to achieve spectacular but temporary victories. The people of Connecticut, however, had learned that a two-party system was somehow necessary for democracy and very quickly returned to such a system. The Republican party inherited most of the former Whigs, and the Democratic party made a remarkable recovery after the Civil War. In 1876, Republicans and Democrats were as evenly matched as Whigs and Democrats had been in 1840.

For Further Reading

The best political history of Connecticut from 1818 to 1850 is Jarvis Means Morse, A Neglected Period of Connecticut's History, 1818-1850 (New Haven, Connecticut, 1933).

* Entry under revision.