Your efforts to demonize are among the most hilarious anywhere on the internet. Well, that must be an exaggeration, lol. Still, my last post resulted in no less than 7 triggered replies by you! Seven, hahaha… I guess I should apologize to a lot of posters for causing that.
en.wikipedia.org
The
Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the
Republican Party and also referred to as the
Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names,
[a] was an
American political party founded by
Thomas Jefferson and
James Madison in the early 1790s that championed
republicanism,
agrarianism, political equality, and
expansionism. The party became increasingly dominant after the
1800 elections as the opposing
Federalist Party collapsed. The Democratic-Republicans splintered during the
1824 presidential election. The majority faction of the Democratic-Republicans eventually coalesced into the
modern Democratic Party, while the minority faction ultimately formed the core of what became the
Whig Party.
[9][10]
…..From the foundation of the party, slavery divided the Democratic-Republicans. Many Southern Democratic-Republicans, especially from the Deep South, defended the institution. Jefferson and many other Democratic-Republicans from Virginia held an ambivalent view on slavery; Jefferson believed it was an immoral institution, but he opposed the immediate emancipation of all slaves on economic grounds.
[140] Meanwhile, Northern Democratic-Republicans often took stronger anti-slavery positions than their Federalist counterparts, supporting measures like the abolition of slavery in Washington. In 1807, with President Jefferson's support, Congress
outlawed the
international slave trade, doing so at the earliest possible date allowed by the Constitution.
[141]
After the War of 1812, Southerners increasingly came to view slavery as a beneficial institution rather than an unfortunate economic necessity, further polarizing the party over the issue.
[141] Anti-slavery Northern Democratic-Republicans held that slavery was incompatible with the equality and individual rights promised by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They further held that slavery had been permitted under the Constitution only as a local and impermanent exception, and thus, slavery should not be allowed to spread outside of the original thirteen states. The anti-slavery positions developed by Northern Democratic-Republicans would influence later anti-slavery parties, including the
Free Soil Party and the
Republican Party.
[142] Some Democratic-Republicans from the border states, including
Henry Clay, continued to adhere to the Jeffersonian view of slavery as a necessary evil; many of these leaders joined the
American Colonization Society, which proposed the voluntary recolonization of Africa as part of a broader plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves.
[143]