Peter Caldwell, age 14, of Shreveport, La., for his question:
WHEN DID THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ORIGINATE?
The Democratic Party is the nation's oldest existing party. It has played a vital role in the history and politics of the United states for more than 150 years. From 1828 through 1976, Democrats won 19 of the 43 presidential elections.
The Democratic Party dominated United States politics from 1828 through 1856, winning six of the eight presidential elections. Yet from 1860 through 1928, they won only four of the 18 presidential elections.
Origin of the Democratic Party is uncertain. Some historians trace its beginnings to the Democratic Republican Party that Thomas Jefferson created during the 1790s. Most historians, however, regard Andrew Jackson's presidential campaign organization, formed in 1828, as the beginning of today's Democratic Party.
Jefferson served as President from 1801 to 1809 and other Democratic Republican held the presidency from 1809 to 1825. After 1816, the Democratic Republican Party began to split into several groups and fell apart as a national organization.
Jackson became the favorite of one of these groups and gained tremendous popularity. He lost a bid for the presidency in 1824. But he won easily in 1828 and swept to re election in 1832. By about 1830, Jackson and his followers were called Democrats.
By the late 1830s, top Jacksonian Democrats had turned Jackson's loose organization into an effective national political party. One of the these men, Martin Van Buren, became President in 1837.
Jacksonian policies appealed to a wide variety of voters. Small farmers, large plantation owners, city laborers and state bankers joined in their support of the Democratic Party. They had in common a strong belief in states' rights and a firm faith in limiting government.
The slavery issue, more than any other, divided the Democrats in 1860.
In 1860 and 1861, 11 Southern states took the idea of states' rights as far as it could go when they seceded from the Union. In April 1861, the Civil War began.
Republicans condemned the Democrats as disloyal to the Union during the Civil War. Unable to win the presidency or to gain control of Congress, the Democratic Party reached its lowest point.
During the 1880s and 1890s, the Democratic and Republican parties received almost equal popular support. There seemed to be little differences between the two, except that Democrats wanted lower tariffs and demanded reforms in the civil service.
In 1884, Grover Cleveland became the first Democrat to be elected President since 1856. Cleveland narrowly lost the presidency to Benjamin Harrison in a close race in 1888, but regained it in another close race in 1892.
Woodrow Wilson won the first of two presidential elections in 1912 and the following Democrats bring us up to date:Franklin D. Roosevelt with the first of four election victories in 1932,Harry Truman in 1948, John F. Kennedy in 1960, Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.