Search results
The first new party, the small and politically weak Liberty Party founded in 1840, was a single-issue party, as were many of those that followed it. Its members were abolitionists who fervently believed slavery was evil and should be ended, and that this was best accomplished by political means.
THE 1840 ELECTION. The presidential election contest of 1840 marked the culmination of the democratic revolution that swept the United States. By this time, the second party system had taken hold, a system whereby the older Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties had been replaced by the new Democratic and Whig Parties.
The Constitution created a system of government that was political from the top to the bottom; for the first time in world history the governed were closely identified with their government. "No political conception was more important to Americans in the Revolutionary era than representa-tion." Through the process of election, Americans
In 1840, voter participation surged to nearly 80 percent. The differences between the parties were largely about economic policies. Whigs advocated accelerated economic growth, often endorsing federal government projects to achieve that goal.
Arguably the first major event of the decade was the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in the United Tribes (modern-day New Zealand) between Māori rangatira and representatives of the British Crown, which began in February 1840.
The tussle for power between Disraeli and Gladstone, the two great politicians of the age, saw the appearance of modern two-party politics in a recognisable form, and their regular jousts at the dispatch box continued until Disraeli’s defeat in 1880. By then, parliamentary government was at the height of its prestige.
1840: Liberty Party: James G. Birney The Liberty Party was the political outgrowth of the growing anti-slavery movement. It had been born in 1839, when the movement factionalized into...
