# Democratic-Republican Party The Democratic-Republican Party (the "Jeffersonian Republicans") was the party of [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[James Madison]], the agrarian-republican pole of the **[[First Party System]]** against the [[Federalist Party]]. It championed states' rights, strict construction of the Constitution, an agrarian economy of yeoman farmers, suspicion of concentrated financial power and a national bank, and sympathy with revolutionary France against Britain. Jefferson's election in 1800 began a quarter-century of Democratic-Republican dominance. After the Federalists collapsed, the party became so dominant that it absorbed nearly all national politics in the "Era of Good Feelings" — and then split along personal and factional lines in the four-way election of 1824. The Andrew Jackson wing became the modern **[[Democratic Party]]** (which still dates its founding to this lineage, 1828), while the John Quincy Adams–Henry Clay wing became the **[[National Republican Party]]** and then the [[Whig Party]]. The Democratic-Republicans are therefore the **common ancestor of the Second Party System**: both of its major parties trace their descent here, making this page the genealogical root for the [[Democratic Party]]'s claim to be the oldest continuously active party in the world. ## See Also - [[Federalist Party]] — the rival pole of the First Party System - [[Democratic Party]] · [[National Republican Party]] — the two successor branches - [[First Party System]] · [[Second Party System]]