America has a two-party political system.

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American History – Q4A114                By David Weinberg 4020504

Today it is widely considered that America has a two-party political system, i.e. two major political parties which regularly obtain over 40% of the popular vote in each major election. Today these are the Republicans and the Democrats, however in the time of Jefferson and Hamilton the distinctions which would serve to become the history of the present system were much more blurred and indistinct.

With this in mind, my essay will discuss the reasons why a party system developed at all in America, and specifically the involvement of the two key players and the end of the 18th Century, namely Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.

Firstly I believe it is important to mention that the founding fathers did at no point envisage a party system breaking out. It was their intention, it is believed, to have had a system by which a plethora of different individuals would voice their views through Congress and the partisanship which had characterised the corruption of the British Parliament throughout the 1700’s would not be emulated in the New Land. Thus when partisanship began to develop, it was to the disappointment of the first president George Washington, who, in his Farewell Address, urged his countrymen to ‘forswear excessive party spirit’.

We thus have established is that the party system was not planned in the sense that no provision was made for it in the constitution. It can therefore be described as spontaneous, in the sense that it came about off its own accord, or specifically to this essay, through the differing philosophies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

What therefore created the ‘spontaneous’ party political system we see in the nowadays United States? There are a variety of factors which both include and do not include the individuals in the title of this essay. There are also certain factors which, without them, the actions of those same individuals would not have taken place and thus provide a key basis for the development of the system.

With this in mind, I will firstly examine Hamilton’s Financial program, which first came to Congress in 1791 as part of the first wave of legislation designed to bring the Union closer together, however historians disagree over the true purpose of the legislation; was it what Hamilton said it was, or was it directed at preserving an aristocracy.

Hamilton was a firm believer in the paternalism that central government should exercise of the immature state and is described as a Federalist. His ideal of government was the rule of gentlemen. He had a deep felt mistrust of the public, and admired the British Parliamentary system which was cultured towards his “reverence for tradition”. He believed it was impracticable to have a system by which the aristocracy did not rule over the masses and believed that democracy could only lead to anarchy. This ideology is reflected in his first four major pieces of legislation; his financial program.

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His financial program was intended to allow the new nation state to develop and unite by removing the economic obstacles, mainly the debts it had incurred throughout the war of independence, and to unite the states politically by establishing federal economic success. However some historians see the move as trying to reward wealthy merchants by the clever usage of tariffs and taxes.

His first proposal was to pay off the war debt; he planned to do this by taking on the debt of the states collectively and paying them off, i.e. consolidating the existing debt and taking the liability ...

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