Compare and Contrast the Whigs and the Democrats

In the early to mid 1800’s there were two major political parties. Different political and economic aspects began developing when Andrew Jackson became president in 1828. Competing factions within the Old Republican Party split into two new opposing parties during his presidency. Jackson’s faction was known as the Democrats, while his opponents were known as the Whigs. These two parties shared little in common, and were practically the epitome of being opposites. The Whigs and the Democrats both played vital roles in the early to mid 1800’s, but differed in how they were created, what they stood for, who were their followers, and who led them.

In the 1824 presidential election, none of the candidates were able to secure a majority of the electoral votes. So because of the Twelfth Amendment in the United States Constitution#, John Quincy Adams won. When he was elected president, he threw his support behind Henry Clay’s American System. His efforts to promote this system backfired as Jackson campaigned to get rid of the corruptionists and restore purity and economy in government. Because of this, Jackson gained hundreds of followers and major constituencies became loyal to him, such as John C. Calhoun, the Crawfordites, Martin Van Buren, and Thomas Hart Benton. Angering Adams, he called Jackson a “grasping and bloodthirsty character, and a budding tyrant in the model of Caesar or Napoleon, whose election would spell the death of the republic”.# Firing back, Jacksonians showed Adams as a corruptionist, an aristocrat, and a libertine. Because of this, Jackson easily won in 1828 with 56 percent of the vote and 178 electoral votes compared to Adams's 83.

Social reformers objected to Jackson’s support of slavery and relocation of native tribes to territories west of the Mississippi River, and industrialists and business leaders objected to Jackson’s opposition to the banking system. So Jackson’s election angered many New Englanders and North Westerners, the areas most...