Jacksonian Politics in Missouri: A Comment on the McCormick Thesis

JACKSONIAN POLITICS IN MISSOURI: A Comment on the McCormíck Thesis Robert E. Shalhope American historians have become increasingly interested in the development of political parties in the United States. This involvement has produced the scholarship of Noble Cunningham, Joseph Charles, David H. Fischer, and others relating to the formation of our original party system.1 Intensive scrutiny has also been focused upon the Jacksonian period and has resulted in a number of excellent works.2 Certainly the most provocative of these studies is Richard P. McCormick's The Second American Party System.3 McCormick maintains that the second American party system resulted neither from cleavages in Congress—as did the first party system —nor from polarization of attitudes on specific issues of the period.4 The second party system, evolving at a different pace in the various regions of the nation between 1824 and 1840, did not represent the revival in new form of pre-existing party alignments. Rather, this new party system was distinctive, differing in circumstances of its origins and in many general characteristics from earlier and later party systems. McCormick concludes that the "dominant impetus to party formation was supplied by the contest for the presidency, and the circumstances that most affected the sequence of party formation was the sectional identification of the presidential candidates."5 Thus the re-emergence of the contest for the presidency is the key to party formation and between 1824 and 1840 "the 'presidential question,' rather than doctrinal disputes , was the axis around which politics revolved."6 Expressing the belief that historical investigations of American pol1 Noble Cunningham, The Jeffersonian Republicans: The Formation of Party Organization , 1789-1801 (Chapel Hill, 1957) and The Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, Party Operations, (Chapel Hill, 1963); Joseph Charles, The Origins of the American Party System (Williamsburg, 1956); David H. Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York, 1965). 2 A recent survey of Jacksonian literature may be found in Alfred A. Cave, Jacksonian Democracy and the Historians (Gainesville, 1964). 3 Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, 1966). 4 The most succinct statement of McCormick's thesis may be found in his introduction . Refinements of the central thesis are located throughout the book as the occasion arises. McCormick, Second American Party System, pp. 3-16. 5 Ibid., p. 329. 6 Ibid., p. 353. 210 itical parties have been too concerned with doctrines, ideologies, and programs espoused by the parties as well as with their composition, McCormick declares it his intention to study not the formation of a single party but the formation of the two-party system. Thus he is more interested in the common attributes of the parties than in their unique qualities. As those familiar with his earlier essays dealing with the Jacksonian period would expect, McCormick has made a significant contribution to our understanding of Jacksonian politics.7 This is especially true of his careful attention to the structure, function, and organization of parties . He has skillfully noted the interrelationship between the legal and constitutional environment within which political parties must operate and the form that they assume. Due to changes in the "rules of the game" between 1800 and 1840 one must expect a different organizational structure to result. Thus the homogeneity of the Jacksonian party system results from the fact that by 1840 the rules had become relatively uniform from state to state. McCormick also notes the dramatic quality of Jacksonian politics and the tremendous effect two-party politics exerts upon voter participation in the political process. The Second American Party System thus provides valuable insight into the institutional nature of Jacksonian party politics. Whüe there can be little doubt that McCormick has aided historians in their study of Jacksonian politics, there is the strong possibility that he has also done them a disservice. While claiming that ideology and doctrinal issues are irrelevant to his study, McCormick's very approach and thesis strongly imply that these matters are indeed largely irrelevant to any study of Jacksonian politics. A scholar of McCormick's stature and a work of the obvious worth of The Second American Party System may well exert a...