The Anti-Administration Party was an informal political faction in the United States led by
James Madison
James Madison Jr. (March 16, 1751June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for hi ...
and
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
that opposed policies of then
Secretary of the Treasury
The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757July 12, 1804) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first United States secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795.
Born out of wedlock in Charlest ...
in the first term of US President
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
. It was not an organized
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
but an unorganized faction. Most members had been
Anti-Federalists
Anti-Federalism was a late-18th century political movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the 1787 Constitution. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Con ...
in 1788, who had opposed
ratification
Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent that lacked the authority to bind the principal legally. Ratification defines the international act in which a state indicates its consent to be bound to a treaty if the parties inten ...
of the
US Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the nation ...
. However, the situation was fluid, with members joining and leaving.
Although contemporaries often referred to Hamilton's opponents as "Anti-Federalists", that term is now seen as imprecise since several Anti-Administration leaders supported ratification, including Virginia Representative James Madison. He joined former Anti-Federalists to oppose Hamilton's financial plans in 1790.
William Maclay, a leader of the faction in the Senate, used in his Congressional diary the term "Republican".
After Jefferson took leadership of the opposition to Hamilton in 1792, the faction became a formal party, Jefferson's Republican Party, which is often called the
Democratic-Republican Party
The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party and also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early ...
by historians and political scientists.
History
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and during the ratifying process in 1788, Madison was one of the most prominent advocates of a smaller national government. He wrote ''
The Federalist Papers
''The Federalist Papers'' is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. The co ...
'', together with Hamilton and
John Jay
John Jay (December 12, 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, patriot, diplomat, abolitionist, signatory of the Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served as the second governor of New York and the first ...
. In 1789 and 1790, Madison was a leader in support of a new federal government with limited powers.
At the time, the concept of a
loyal opposition
Loyal opposition in terms of politics, refers to specific political concepts that are related to the opposition parties of a particular political system. In many Westminster-style parliamentary systems of government, the loyal opposition indicat ...
party was novel.
However, Madison joined with
Henry Tazewell
Henry Tazewell (November 27, 1753January 24, 1799) was an American politician who was instrumental in the early government of Virginia, and a US senator from Virginia. He was also a slave owner. Tazewell served as President pro tempore of the Un ...
and others to oppose Hamilton's ''
First Report on the Public Credit
The First Report on the Public Credit was one of four major reports on fiscal and economic policy submitted by Founding Father and first US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton on the request of Congress. The report analyzed the financial standin ...
'' in January 1790. The creation of the coalition marked the emergence of the Anti-Administration party, which was then based almost exclusively
Southern
Southern may refer to:
Businesses
* China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China
* Southern Airways, defunct US airline
* Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US
* Southern Airways Express, M ...
. Madison argued that repaying the debt rewarded
speculators
In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.)
Many s ...
,
[Wood. p. 141.] and his proposal to repay only the original
bondholders
In finance, a bond is a type of security under which the issuer (debtor) owes the holder (creditor) a debt, and is obliged – depending on the terms – to repay the principal (i.e. amount borrowed) of the bond at the maturity date as well as i ...
was defeated by a vote of 36 to 13.
Hamilton's report also provided for the assumption of state debt by the federal government. Since
,
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
and
South Carolina
)''Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no)
, anthem = " Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind"
, Former = Province of South Carolina
, seat = Columbia
, LargestCity = Charleston
, LargestMetro = ...
owed nearly half of this debt, other states resented assumption. The
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
passed the bill without assumption, but the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
included that provision. The deadlock was broken by the
Compromise of 1790
The Compromise of 1790 was a compromise between Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, where Hamilton won the decision for the national government to take over and pay the state debts, and Jefferson and Madison obtained the nati ...
, a deal between Madison and
Secretary of State Jefferson on one hand and Hamilton on the other, which included both assumption and the location of the national capital in the South, which later became the
District of Columbia
)
, image_skyline =
, image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
.
[Wood. p. 141–142.]
In the summer of 1791, Jefferson and Madison brought the journalist
Philip Freneau
Philip Morin Freneau (January 2, 1752 – December 18, 1832) was an American poet, nationalist, polemicist, sea captain and early American newspaper editor, sometimes called the "Poet of the American Revolution". Through his newspaper, th ...
, a fiery editor of a
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
Anti-Federalist paper, to Philadelphia to start an Anti-Administration newspaper, the ''National Gazette''. Jefferson gave the only State Department patronage position that he had to Freneau.
During the
Second Congress, the Anti-Administration elements were more numerous and included about 32 House members out of 72. In 1791, Madison and Hamilton again clashed after the latter proposed the creation of a
national bank
In banking, the term national bank carries several meanings:
* a bank owned by the state
* an ordinary private bank which operates nationally (as opposed to regionally or locally or even internationally)
* in the United States, an ordinary p ...
. Southern planters opposed but urban merchants supported the idea. Madison called the Bank unconstitutional, but Hamilton successfully argued that the
Necessary and Proper Clause
The Necessary and Proper Clause, also known as the Elastic Clause, is a clause in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution:
Since the landmark decision '' McCulloch v. Maryland'', the US Supreme Court has ruled that this clause gr ...
of the Constitution allowed the bank.
[Wood. p. 145.]
The
French Revolutionary Wars
The French Revolutionary Wars (french: Guerres de la Révolution française) were a series of sweeping military conflicts lasting from 1792 until 1802 and resulting from the French Revolution. They pitted French First Republic, France against Ki ...
, which began in April 1792, hardened the differences between the factions. The Pro-Administration party generally supported the British or wished to remain neutral, but the Anti-Administration party supported the French. Jefferson joined the latter party in 1792, and it contested the election that year and was called the Republican Party. Politics now became more stable, with well-defined parties (Hamilton's
Federalist Party
The Federalist Party was a Conservatism in the United States, conservative political party which was the first political party in the United States. As such, under Alexander Hamilton, it dominated the national government from 1789 to 1801.
De ...
and Jefferson's Republican Party). That created the
First Party System
The First Party System is a model of American politics used in history and political science to periodize the political party system that existed in the United States between roughly 1792 and 1824. It featured two national parties competing for ...
, which lasted for two decades.
[Chambers, William Nisbet, ed. (1972). ''The First Party System''.]
References
Further reading
* Banning, Lance. ''The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology'' (1978).
* Bordewich, Fergus M. ''The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government'' (2016).
* Bowling, Kenneth R. and Donald R. Kennon, eds. ''Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1789–1801'' (2000).
* Charles, Joseph. ''The Origins of the American Party System'' (1956); reprints articles in ''William and Mary Quarterly''.
* Cunningham, Noble E., Jr. ''Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization: 1789–1801'' (1957); highly detailed party history.
*
Elkins, Stanley and Eric McKitrick. ''The Age of Federalism''
(1995) online version the standard highly detailed political history of 1790s.
* Hoadley, John F. "The Emergence of Political Parties in Congress, 1789–1803". ''
American Political Science Review
The ''American Political Science Review'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all areas of political science. It is an official journal of the American Political Science Association and is published on their behalf by Cambridg ...
'' (1980). 74(3): 757–779
in JSTOR Looks at the agreement among members of Congress in their roll-call voting records. Multidimensional scaling shows the increased clustering of congressmen into two party blocs from 1789 to 1803, especially after the Jay Treaty debate; shows politics was moving away from sectionalism to organized parties.
* Libby, O. G. "Political Factions in Washington's Administration". ''NDQ: North Dakota Quarterly'' (1913). vol. 3#3 pp. 293–318
full text online looks at votes of each Congressman.
External links
Anti-Administration Party ideology over time
{{authority control
1789 establishments in the United States
1792 disestablishments in the United States
Defunct political parties in the United States
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
Political history of the United States
Political parties disestablished in 1792
Political parties established in 1789