Democratic-Republican Party (Federalist America)

The term "Democratic-Republican Party", is the name used primarily by modern political scientists for the first "Republican Party" (as it called itself at the time), also known as the "Jeffersonian Republicans." Historians usually use "Republican Party." It was the second political party in the United States, and was organized by then United States Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson and his friend and compatriot James Madison, (then serving in the House of Representatives) in 1791-93, to oppose the Federalist Party run by Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. The new party controlled the Presidency and Congress, and most states, from 1813 to 1817, during the First Party System. Starting about 1791 one faction in Congress, many of whom had been opposed to the new Constitution, began calling themselves Republicans in the Second United States Congress. People at the time used the name Republican in mentioning the Republican Party of this period and the first two decades of the 19th Century. The Republican Party was destroyed after the 1820 presidential election, when they lost the Presidency to the Federalist Party.