“When the war of independence was terminated,” remarks DeTocqueville, in his famous study of “Democracy in America,” “and the foundations of the new government were to be laid down, the nation was divided between two opinions--two opinions which are as old as the world, and which are perpetually to be met with under different forms and various names, in all free communities--the one tending to limit, the other to extend, indefinitely, the power of the people. The conflict between these two opinions never assumed that degree of violence in America which it has frequently displayed elsewhere. Both parties were agreed on the most essential points, and neither of them had to destroy an old constitution, or to overthrow the structure of society, in order to triumph. In neither of them, consequently, were a great number of private interests affected by success or defeat; but moral principles of a high order, such as the love of equality and of independence, were concerned in the struggle, and these sufficed to kindle violent passions.” The party that sought to limit the power of the people was that of the Federalists; its opponents took the name of Republican, which afterwards became Democratic-Republican, and finally, under Andrew Jackson, Democratic. In view of the fixed bent of the American national character, it is not difficult to discern the inevitable result of the conflict between them. The Federalists were certain to be ultimately overcome. America is the land of democracy, and the anti-democratic partisans were always in a minority. Thus for the brief period succeeding the Civil War, while the wounds of the conflict were still fresh upon the body politic, the party of the aristocracy--for such had the Republican party become--utilizing the soreness still existing as the result of the conflict, succeeded, by the clamor of sectionalism, in diverting the attention of the masses from the tendency towards social superiority and “caste,” which the continuance of the Republican party in power was creating. This brief ascendency during the first twelve years of the republic was due to several temporary causes. Most of the great leaders of the war for independence believed in a strong, centralized government, and therefore ranked themselves with the Federalists. The failure of the first attempt at federal control--the Continental Congress--and the local disorders that arose after the war, had inspired the people with a dread of anarchy. They were willing to accept, for a time, restrictive political theories, which it soon became safe to throw off. The Federalist leaders were more than suspected of aristocratic tendencies. Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, declared in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, that “the ills of the country come from an excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue,” he added, as if in apology, “but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”