THE FACTION FACTOR

 

Through the administrations of the first two presidents, George Washington and John Adams, the republic attempted to stay true to a very (some might think extreme) federalist bias.  That being that a federalist polity of any size can exist without the development of political parties.  As a matter of fact, that belief was influenced by a calculation that James Madison explains in the The Federalist Papers.

Madison’s famous “Federalist Number 10” attempts to logically contradict Charles-Louis Montesquieu’s admonition that republics should be geographically small.  Presumably, small territories hold small populations that can consequently encourage and maintain high levels of interaction among all members of the republic.  As such, they, the population, can more readily see beyond self-interest and be more disposed to favor policy that promotes the common good.

This commonness leads to the levels of familiarity and trust the Frenchman saw as necessary to provide the shared interests that a people-run governance needs to have.  Afterall, such a polity can only operate with its populations sufficiently agreeing with what its government should be striving to accomplish.  Or stated simply, fewer people mean fewer conflicting interests.

Madison, in No. 10, analyzes what it takes to reconcile individual concerns and interests which tend to conflict with that of others in the normal life of a society, no matter how big or small it happens to be.  All smallness assures is that one or a few will become dominant and, in turn, will use that dominance to abuse the rights of others – which naturally occurs as economic and other interests seek their advantages. 

The result is that these dominate entities become the enemy, or at least an adversary, of the common good.  Madison uses the term, faction, to designate each of these entities and if one wants real life examples of this principle at work one need only look at small Latin American countries’ attempts to establish republican governance.  This blogger – whose father was Cuban – sees today’s images out of Havana with their capitol in the background, as such a case.

At the time of Madison’s essay, he and the other founders had experienced a series of developments:  the conditions leading up to the Revolutionary War, the war, political life under the Articles of Confederation, and the uprising of Shay’s Rebellion.  During those years certain problems seemed to reoccur.  At its base, and until 1787, the various state legislatures had inordinate power in determining what collectively would be national policy or, better stated, non-policy. 

From the need to tax to the need to address national – in many cases, statewide – problems, those governments could not produce the necessary actions that only government could provide.  Why this inaction?  Madison saw it as the ability of the limited number of factions being able to stymie any threatening policy that counteracted its interests. 

If in a given state there were one or two dominant factions, they controlled what their respective legislatures would consider or issue as policy.  If a proposal threatened their interests, they would simply squelch it.  But if the governing landscape grew to a national one, then the number of factions would greatly increase.  Then, because of the larger number, no one or small group of factions could control a national legislature.  With such variety, the factions would not even be able to organize sufficiently to form political parties. 

At least, that was the idea.  Under such a rationale, political parties were seen as facilitating purely self-interest at the expensive, most likely, of the common good and of undermining the competitive position of the lesser sized or otherwise weaker entities be they small businesses or individuals.  In turn, such politics would (or was) undermining the espoused federalist values of the nation in general, but of the founding fathers in particular. 

Yes, the limitation of state-level power can be described as federalist and goes to explain, to a degree, that the initial party that promoted a stronger central government was the Federalist Party.  But that skips some developments in this story.  As was described above, therefore, initially much effort was expended to delegitimize the formation of parties and the hope was that factions, unavoidable political entities, would be held in check in terms of national policy. 

That would result in Congressional members approaching each policy question independently – each judged on its own merits to advance the common good.  That would avoid congressmen from allying their votes over the various issues they were called upon to consider.  Each proposal would be evaluated on its own terms and not be the subject of trading votes or forming ideological connections among their various considerations. 

An ally on one vote, therefore, might be on the other side in another vote.  But this sort of thinking lasted for about ten years and was abandoned as the election of 1800 approached.  As Adams’ term of office came to an end, his vice-president, who found himself at odds with Adams’ national-strengthening policies, actively sought to replace Adams. 

That would be Thomas Jefferson and this turn would prove to undo a close friendship between him and Adams – one that took years to repair (Abigail Adams, the President’s wife, never forgave Jefferson).  By the time of the election, two parties vied for power.  Adams’ party, the Federalists, as alluded to above, favored a strong central government.  Jefferson’s party, the Democratic-Republicans, fought to maintain the balance of power in favor of the states. 

Ironically, Jefferson’s fellow Virginian, Madison also aligned with the Democratic-Republicans – a sort of one-hundred and eighty degree turn around from the time he argued for a viable national polity.  So, in effect, the 1800 election with Jefferson’s win marks the first real transition of power in the US.  And in terms of the fate of federalism, this blog wishes to look at the effect the resulting competition for power generated, especially in light of the rise of political parties. 

The role of the Federalist Party was short-lived.  With Adams’ defeat, that party mostly disappeared.  In its place a newer one arose.  This blog will highlight that party as a reflection of what the state of federalist values was in the eyes of Americans in the early years of the 1800s after a short reign of “unnatural” unanimity in the American political arena. 

That short-lived level of unity was the product of a short war – the War of 1812.  Historically, that time is known as the “Era of Good Feelings.”  But such a term gives short shrift to underlying vying regional interests.  They would prove to undermine the legitimacy of the central government and its power to institute policies that within various regions would be seen as detrimental to their interests. 

As such, even with the demise of the Federalist Party and the unifying influence of the War of 1812, the nation found that the forces of competing interests too powerful to shun the political forces that led to the formation of newer political parties.  That development culminated in the formation of the Whig Party.  The next posting will pick up the story there and comment on how one region of the country – not the South – saw the central government as oppressive to its interests.  That led to the first serious talk of succession from the union.