History of conservatism in the United States

There has never been a national political party in the United States called the Conservative Party. All major American political parties support republicanism and the basic classical liberal ideals on which the country was founded in 1776, emphasizing liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, the consent of the governed, opposition to aristocracy and fear of corruption, coupled with equal rights before the law. Political divisions inside the United States often seemed minor or trivial to Europeans, where the divide between the Left and the Right led to violent political polarization, starting with the French Revolution.

No American party has advocated European ideals of conservatism such as a monarchy, an established church, or a hereditary aristocracy. American conservatism is best characterized as opposition to utopian ideas of progress. Historian Patrick Allitt expresses the difference between conservative and liberal in terms not of policy but of attitude.

Unlike Canada and the United Kingdom, there has never been a major national political party named the Conservative Party in the United States. The Conservative Party of Virginia, founded in 1867, elected members to the House of Representatives from two other states (Maryland and North Carolina). Since 1962, there has been a small Conservative Party of New York State. During Reconstruction in the late 1860s, the former Whigs formed a Conservative Party in several Southern states, but they soon merged into the state Democratic parties.

Founding

Colonial era

The conservatism that prevailed in the Thirteen Colonies before 1776 was of a very different character than the conservatism that emerged based on revolutionary principles. This old conservatism centered on a landed elite and on an urban merchant class that was Loyalist during the Revolution. In the largest and richest and most influential of the American colonies, Virginia, conservatives held full control of the colonial and local governments. At the local level, Church of England parishes handled many local affairs, and they in turn were controlled not by the minister, but rather by a closed circle of rich landowners who comprised the parish vestry. Ronald L. Heinemann emphasizes the ideological conservatism of Virginia, while noting there were also religious dissenters who were gaining strength by the 1760s:

The tobacco planters and farmers of Virginia adhered to the concept of a hierarchical society that they or their ancestors had brought with them from England. Most held to the general idea of a Great Chain of Being: at the top were God and his heavenly host; next came kings...who were divinely sanctioned to rule, then a hereditary aristocracy who were followed in descending order by wealthy landed gentry, small, independent farmers, tenant farmers, servants....Aspirations to rise above one's station in life were considered a sin.

In actual practice, colonial Virginia never had a bishop to represent God nor a hereditary aristocracy with titles like "duke" or "baron". However it did have a royal governor appointed by the British Crown, as well as a powerful landed gentry. The ''status quo'' was strongly reinforced by what Jefferson called "feudal and unnatural distinctions" that were vital to the maintenance of aristocracy in Virginia. He targeted laws such as entail and primogeniture by which the oldest son inherited all the land. The entail laws made land-ownership perpetual: the one who inherited the land could not sell it, but had to bequeath it to his oldest son. As a result, increasingly large plantations, worked by white tenant farmers and by black slaves, gained in size and wealth and political power in the eastern ("Tidewater") tobacco areas. Maryland and South Carolina had similar hierarchical systems, as did New York and Pennsylvania. During the Revolutionary era, the new states repealed all such laws. The most fervent Loyalists left for Canada or Britain or other parts of the Empire. They introduced primogeniture in Upper Canada (southern Ontario) in 1792, and it lasted until 1851. Such laws lasted in England until 1926.

American Revolution

Russell Kirk saw the American Revolution itself as "a conservative reaction, in the English political tradition, against royal innovation".Russell Kirk, ''The Conservative Mind'' (1950), pp. 6, 63. David Lefer has emphasized the central role of conservative Founding Fathers in shaping the key documents such as the United States Constitution.

American conservatives since the 1770s have honored the American Revolution for its successes in maintaining traditional values, such as local self-rule, that seemed under threat from London. Robert Nisbet, a leading conservative intellectual stressed the conservative nature of the American Revolution in contrast to the extreme passions and much greater violence of other revolutions, especially the French Revolution. He attributed the Patriots' restraint to the localization of power, religiosity, the absence of anticlericalism, and the relatively open class system made possible by the absence of hereditary aristocrats.

After 1776, the new American conservatism, unlike European conservatism, was not based on inherited rank, landed estates or loyalty to the Crown or the established Church. Donald T. Critchlow and Nancy MacLean point out its resemblance to European liberalism.

At the time of the American Revolution, the colonists under British rule lived under the freest government in the European world, but in their fierce determination to protect and preserve their historic rights, the founding fathers sought independence from the British Empire despite their relatively low level of taxation.

However, wealthy merchants involved in international trade, royal officials, and patronage holders typically enjoyed close ties across the British Empire. Most of these proud "Loyalists" opposed the American Revolution and remained loyal to the Crown throughout the war. In a sense, the Loyalists represented a trans-Atlantic loyalty to a society that was far more hierarchical. Their leaders loved order, respected their betters, looked down on their inferiors, and feared "mobocracy" at home more than rule by a distant monarch. When it came to a choice between protecting their historic rights as Americans or remaining loyal to the King, they chose King and Empire. About one in five Loyalists (70,000 or so) left the new United States by 1783. Most went to Canada where they are still known as United Empire Loyalists. However, four out of five Loyalists remained in America and were loyal conservatives in the new republic. For the most part, they avoided politics; certainly they never tried to form a revanchist movement seeking a return to the Empire. Loyalist Samuel Seabury, for example, abandoned politics but became the first Episcopalian bishop in the United States, rebuilding a church that appealed to families that still admired hierarchy, tradition, and historic liturgy, but had given up their allegiance to the king.

The patriots who fought in the Revolution did so in the name of preserving traditional rights of Englishmen—especially the right of "no taxation without representation"; they increasingly opposed attempts by the Parliament of Great Britain to tax and control the fast-growing colonies. In 1773, when the British imposed heavy sanctions on the Massachusetts Bay Province in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, self described patriots organized colony-by-colony resistance through organizations such as the Sons of Liberty. Fighting broke out in the spring of 1775, and all Thirteen Colonies entered into open rebellion against the crown. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence from the United Kingdom and became the de facto national government espousing the principles of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The patriots formed a consensus around the ideas of republicanism, whereby popular sovereignty was invested in a national legislature instead of a King.

Historian Leonard Labaree identified the main characteristics of the Loyalists that contributed to their conservative opposition to independence. Loyalists were generally older than Patriots, better established in society, resisted innovation, believed resistance to the Crown—the legitimate government—was morally wrong, and were further alienated from the Patriot cause when it resorted to violent means of opposition, such as burning houses and tarring and feathering royal officials. Loyalists wanted to take a middle-of-the road position and were angry when forced by the Patriots to declare their opposition. They had a long-standing sentimental attachment to Britain (often with business and family ties) and were procrastinators who realized that while independence might be inevitable, they would rather postpone it for as long as possible. Many loyalists were also highly cautious and afraid of the potential anarchy or tyranny that could arise out of mob rule. Finally, Loyalists were pessimists who lacked the Patriots' confidence in the future of an independent United States.

The Patriots' victory established their revolutionary principles as core American political values adhered to by all parties in the newly formed United States. Modern American Conservatives often identify with the Patriots of the 1770s, a fact exemplified in 2009 by the Tea Party movement, named after the Tea Party of 1773. Its members often dress in costumes characteristic of the Founding Fathers.

The American Revolution proved highly disruptive to the old networks of conservative elites in the colonies. The departure of so many royal officials, rich merchants, and landed gentry destroyed the hierarchical networks that previously dominated politics and power in many of the colonies. In New York, for example, the departure of key members of the DeLancy, DePester Walton, and Cruger families undercut the interlocking families that largely owned and controlled the Hudson Valley. Likewise in Pennsylvania, the departure of the powerful Penn, Allen, Chew, and Shippen families destroyed the cohesion of the old upper class. New men became rich merchants, but they retained a spirit of republican equality that replaced the old elitism; the revolution prevented the rise of a truly powerful upper class in American society. Most Loyalists remained in the new nation and became loyal citizens, although they seldom held leadership positions of the sort they were entitled to before the Revolution.

Federalists

In the wake of the Revolution, the newly formed Federalist Party, dominated by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, used the presidency of George Washington to promote a strong nation capable of holding its own in world affairs, with a strong army and navy able to suppress internal revolts (such as the Whiskey Rebellion), and a national bank to support financial and business interests. Intellectually, Federalists, while devoted to liberty, held profoundly conservative views attuned to the American character. As Samuel Eliot Morison explained, they believed that liberty is inseparable from union, that men are essentially unequal, that vox populi oice of the peopleis seldom if ever vox Dei he voice of God and that sinister outside influences were busy undermining American integrity. Historian Patrick Allitt concludes that Federalists promoted many conservative positions, including the rule of law under the Constitution, republican government, peaceful change through elections, judicial supremacy, stable national finances, credible and active diplomacy, and protection of wealth.

The Federalists were dominated by businessmen and merchants in the major cities and were supportive of the modernizing, urbanizing, financial policies of Hamilton. These policies included the funding of the national debt and also assumption of state debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War (thus allowing the states to lower their own taxes and still pay their debts), the incorporation of a national Bank of the United States, the support of manufactures and industrial development, and the use of a tariff to fund the Treasury. In foreign affairs the Federalists opposed the French Revolution. Under John Adams they fought the "Quasi War" (an undeclared naval war) with France in 1798–99 and built a strong army and navy. Ideologically, the controversy between Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists stemmed from a difference of principle and style. In terms of style the Federalists distrusted the public, thought the elite should be in charge, and favored national power over state power. Republicans distrusted Britain, bankers, merchants, and did not want a powerful national government. The Federalists—notably Hamilton, were distrustful of "the people", the French, and the Republicans.

John Adams

Since the 1790s, conservatives have emphasized an identification with the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Historians of conservative political thought "generally label John Adams as the intellectual father of ''American'' conservatism." Russell Kirk points to Adams as the key Founding Father for conservatives, noting that "some writers regard him as America's most important conservative public man." Historian Clinton Rossiter writes:

Here was no lover of government by plutocracy, no dreamer of an America filled with factions and hard-packed cities. Here was a man who loved America as it was and had been, one whose life was a doughty testament to the trials and glories of ordered liberty. Here ... was the model of the American conservative.

Historian A. Owen Aldridge places Adams, "At the head of the conservative ranks in the early years of the Republic and Jefferson as the leader of the contrary liberal current." It was a fundamental doctrine for Adams that all men are subject to equal laws of morality. He held that in society all men have a right to equal laws and equal treatment from the government. However, he added, "no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue." Peter Viereckbased on property, education, family status, and sense of ethical responsibility....Their motive was liberty itself.

Democratic-Republicans

In the 1790s, Jeffersonian democracy arose in opposition to the Federalist Party, primarily as a response to the fear that Federalists' favoritism toward British monarchism threatened the new republic. The opposition party chose the name "Republican Party". Some historians refer to them as "Jeffersonian Republicans" while political scientists usually use the "Democratic-Republican Party," in order to distinguish them from the modern Republican Party. While "Jeffersonian Democracy" persisted as an element of the Democratic Party into the early 20th century, as exemplified by William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925), and its themes continue to echo in the 21st century. Jeffersonians opposed the further strengthening federal government and the rise of an interventionist judiciary, a concern later shared by conservatives of the 20th century. The next four presidents were Democratic-Republicans.

Whigs

During the 1800s and 1810s, the "Old Republicans" (not to be confused with the Republican Party, which did not yet exist) were led by John Randolph of Roanoke. They refused to form a coalition with the Federalists. Instead they set up a separate opposition led by James Madison, Albert Gallatin, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay. They nevertheless adopted Federalist principles by chartering the Second Bank of the United States, promoting internal improvements for transportation, raising tariffs to protect factories, and promoting a strong army and navy after the failures of the War of 1812.

By the 1830s, the Whig Party emerged as the national conservative party. Whigs supported the national bank, private business interests, and the modernization of the economy in opposition to Jacksonian democracy, which represented the interests of poor farmers and the urban working class, represented by the newly formed Democratic Party. They chose the name "Whig" because it had been used by patriots in the Revolution. Daniel Webster and other Whig leaders referred to their new political party as the "conservative party", and they called for a return to tradition, restraint, hierarchy, and moderation.

In the end, the nation synthesized the two positions, Federalist and Whig, adopting representative democracy and a strong nation state. By the end of the 1820s, American politics had generally adapted to a two-party system whereby rival parties stake their claims before the electorate, and the winner takes control of the government. As time went on, the Federalists lost appeal with the average voter and were generally not equal to the tasks of party organization; hence, they grew steadily weaker. After 1816, the Federalists had no national influence apart from the Marshall Court. They retained some local support into the 1820s, but important leaders left their fading cause, including future presidents John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan, and future Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

John C. Calhoun

John C. Calhoun of South Carolina (1782-1850), at various times a Jeffersonian Republican, a Whig and a Jacksonian Democrat, was always an independent thinker. He moved from a strong nationalist position in the 1810s and 1820s, to a states' rights position emphasizing the rights of minorities (by which he meant white South), and rejecting a powerful central government. Jefferson and Madison in 1798 had developed a theory of nullification that would enable states to reject unconstitutional federal actions. Calhoun picked up the idea and further developed it as a defense against federal attacks on slavery. His ideas were enormously influential among southern politicians and intellectuals in the decade after his death in 1850; his ideas were often used to promote secession in 1860 as a legal, constitutional escape valve for the South. Brian Farmer says, "Perhaps no figure better exemplifies the attitudes of Southern conservatism in the antebellum period than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina." His ideas were revived by hard-core Southern conservatives in the 20th century. According to Peter Viereck

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