Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 35

The Democrats supported states’ rights, the belief that dominant power should be held by the states rather than by the central, or federal, government. The Democrats supported the traditional view that there were limits to federal power. The Whigs believed in progress and modernization, supporting a strong central government and the expansion of federal power to support internal improvements to strengthen the national economy. The Whigs were strongest among prosperous farmers, manufacturers, and city dwellers, both North and South. The Democrats had strong support among frontiersmen and small farmers, many of whom desired America to expand into western lands not yet owned by the United States. Clearly, the Democratic Party favored the South’s vision of what America should be. Up until 1850, the Whigs and the Democrats maintained balanced constituencies in both the North and South. This balance was essential to the political health of the nation. As long as both parties could rely on both Northern and Southern voters, the system of representative government worked. Once the parties could no longer build support across sectional lines, the system was doomed. The sectional political stakes that arose after the Compromise of 1850 created such dissension within these two parties that neither could maintain its Northern and Southern coalitions. Essentially what happened is this: The Democrats became a pure Southern party, and the Whigs, unable to support a purely sectional party, disappeared.