# Federalist Party The Federalist Party was the first American political party and one of the two poles of the **[[First Party System]]** (c. 1789–1824). Organized around [[Alexander Hamilton]]'s vision and supported by [[John Adams]], it favored a strong national government, a national bank and Hamilton's financial system, a loose ("broad") construction of the Constitution, commercial and manufacturing interests over agrarian ones, and friendly relations with Britain against revolutionary France. The party produced the first president identified with it (Adams, 1797–1801) but never recovered from Jefferson's victory in the "Revolution of 1800." Its base was concentrated in New England and the commercial Northeast. The party's fatal blow was self-inflicted: its opposition to the [[War of 1812]], culminating in the [[Hartford Convention]] (1814–15) where some delegates flirted with secession, branded it disloyal just as the war ended in a wave of nationalism. The Federalists faded into irrelevance by the 1820s. For this KB the Federalists are the headwater of the American **strong-central-government, pro-finance, pro-industry tradition** — a lineage that flows through the [[National Republican Party]], the [[Whig Party]], and ultimately into elements of the early [[Republican Party]] and its [[American System]] economics. ## See Also - [[Democratic-Republican Party]] — the Jeffersonian rival - [[National Republican Party]] · [[Whig Party]] — heirs to its developmental economics - [[First Party System]] · [[Hartford Convention]]