History of the United States Democratic Party in the context of "Third Party System"

The Second Party System was the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to early 1854, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest, beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by Election Day turnouts, rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.

Two major parties dominated the political landscape: the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, assembled by Henry Clay from the National Republicans and from other opponents of Jackson. Minor parties included the Anti-Masonic Party, an important innovator from 1827 to 1834; the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840; and the anti-slavery expansion Free Soil Party in 1848 and 1852. The Second Party System reflected and shaped the political, social, economic and cultural currents of the Jacksonian Era, until succeeded by the Third Party System.

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. He rose to fame as a U.S. Army general and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. His political philosophy, which dominated his presidency, became the basis for the rise of Jacksonian democracy. His legacy is controversial: he has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and criticized for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans. He was also the founder of, and first president from, the Democratic Party, which dominates American politics to this day along with the Republican Party.

Jackson was born in the colonial Carolinas before the American Revolutionary War. He became a frontier lawyer and married Rachel Donelson Robards. He briefly served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, representing Tennessee. After resigning, he served as a justice on the Tennessee Superior Court from 1798 to 1804. He purchased a plantation later known as the Hermitage, becoming a wealthy planter who profited off the forced labor of hundreds of enslaved African Americans during his lifetime. In 1801, he was appointed colonel of the Tennessee militia and was elected its commander. He led troops during the Creek War of 1813–1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and negotiating the Treaty of Fort Jackson that required the indigenous Creek population to surrender vast tracts of the present-day U.S. states of Alabama and Georgia. In the concurrent war against the British, Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero. He later commanded United States forces during the First Seminole War against the Seminoles and other allied Native groups. This campaign was one of the factors that prompted Spain to negotiate the cession of Florida to the United States, which was finalized in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, in exchange for United States renunciation of territorial claims. He briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate. He ran for president in 1824. He won a plurality of the popular and electoral vote, but no candidate won the electoral majority. With the help of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's supporters alleged that there was a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Clay (who joined Adams' cabinet) and began creating a new political coalition that became the Democratic Party in the 1830s.

The Radical Republicans were a political faction within the Republican Party originating from the party's founding in 1854—some six years before the Civil War—until the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction. They called themselves "Radicals" because of their goal of immediate, complete, and permanent eradication of slavery in the United States. The Radical faction also included strong currents of nativism, anti-Catholicism, and support for the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. These policy goals and the rhetoric in their favor often made it extremely difficult for the Republican Party as a whole to avoid alienating large numbers of American voters of Irish Catholic, German, and other White ethnic backgrounds. In fact, even German-American Freethinkers and Forty-Eighters who, like Hermann Raster, otherwise sympathized with the Radical Republicans' aims, fought them tooth and nail over prohibition. They later became known as "Stalwarts".

The Radicals were opposed during the war by the Moderate Republicans (led by President Abraham Lincoln), and by the Democratic Party. Radicals led efforts after the war to establish civil rights for former slaves and fully implement emancipation. After unsuccessful measures in 1866 resulted in violence against former slaves in the former rebel states, Radicals pushed the Fourteenth Amendment for statutory protections through Congress. They opposed allowing ex-Confederate politicians and military veterans to retake political power in the Southern U.S., and emphasized equality, civil rights and voting rights for the "freedmen", i.e., former slaves who had been freed during or after the Civil War by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Fourth Party System was the political party system in the United States from about 1896 to 1932 that was dominated by the Republican Party, except the 1912 split in which Democrats captured the White House and held it for eight years.

American history texts usually call the period the Progressive Era. The concept was introduced under the name "System of 1896" by E. E. Schattschneider in 1960, and the numbering scheme was added by political scientists in the mid-1960s.

In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.

Republicans started labeling anti-war Democrats "Copperheads" after the eastern copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), a species of venomous snake. Those Democrats embraced the moniker, reinterpreting the copper "head" as the likeness of Liberty, which they cut from Liberty Head large cent coins and proudly wore as badges. By contrast, Democratic supporters of the war were called War Democrats. Notable Copperheads included two Democratic Congressmen from Ohio: Reps. Clement L. Vallandigham and Alexander Long. Republican prosecutors accused some prominent Copperheads of treason in a series of trials in 1864.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1912. The Democratic ticket of governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey and governor Thomas Marshall of Indiana defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent President William Howard Taft and university president Nicholas Butler while also defeating the Progressive/"Bull Moose" ticket of former president Theodore Roosevelt and governor Hiram Johnson of California and the Socialist Party ticket of former Indiana state representative Eugene V. Debs and Milwaukee mayor Emil Seidel.

Roosevelt served as president from 1901 to 1909 as a Republican, and Taft succeeded him with his support. Taft's conservatism angered Roosevelt, so he challenged Taft for the party nomination at the 1912 Republican National Convention. When Taft and his conservative allies narrowly prevailed, Roosevelt rallied his progressive supporters and launched a third-party bid. At the Democratic Convention, Wilson won the presidential nomination on the 46th ballot, defeating Speaker of the House Champ Clark and several other candidates with the support of William Jennings Bryan and other progressive Democrats. The Socialist Party renominated its perennial standard-bearer, Eugene V. Debs.

Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was an American political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It became the main local political machine of the Democratic Party and played a major role in controlling New York City and New York state politics. Though initially an independent social organization, at its peak, Tammany Hall became synonymous with the New York County Democratic Party.

At its founding, the Society of St. Tammany was a social fraternal organization and one branch of a network of Tammany societies throughout the new United States of America. Politically, its members were Jeffersonian republicans opposed to the Manhattan aristocracy. As the immigrant population of New York grew, Tammany Hall became an important social and political organization, for Irish Catholic immigrants in particular. Following the 1854 mayoral election and the resulting mayoralty of Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over a century through its organized network of loyal, well-rewarded, and largely Irish Catholic district and precinct leaders. It also gained support from the New York City business community for its efficient, if corrupt, solutions to problems.