A report on Democratic-Republican Party, Whig Party (United States), National Republican Party, Democratic Party (United States) and Political parties in the United States

The Democratic-Republican Party, also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party and known at the time as the Republican Party and occasional other names, was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 1790s that championed republicanism, agrarianism, political equality, and expansionism.

The National Republican Party, also known as the Anti-Jacksonian Party or simply Republicans, was a political party in the United States that evolved from a faction of the Democratic-Republican Party that supported John Quincy Adams in the 1824 presidential election.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States.

Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System.

The majority faction of the Democratic-Republicans eventually coalesced into the modern Democratic Party, while the minority faction ultimately formed the core of what became the Whig Party.

The Whigs emerged in the 1830s in opposition to President Andrew Jackson, pulling together former members of the National Republican Party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and disaffected Democrats.

The historical predecessor of the Democratic Party is considered to be the Democratic-Republican party.

The Whigs had some weak links to the defunct Federalist Party, but the Whig Party was not a direct successor to that party and many Whig leaders, including Henry Clay, had aligned with the rival Democratic-Republican Party.

Before 1860, the Democratic Party supported powerful and active executive governance, the slave power, agrarianism, expansionism, and Manifest Destiny while opposing the establishment of a national bank, protectionism, and the conservative views of their National Republican and Whig rivals.

After the 1832 election, opponents of Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party.

Adams politicians, including most ex-Federalists (such as Daniel Webster and Adams himself), would gradually become members of the National Republican Party; and those politicians that supported Jackson would later help form the modern Democratic Party.

Jackson's faction eventually coalesced into the Democratic Party, while supporters of Adams became known as the National Republican Party, which itself later merged into the Whig Party.

The first two-party system consisted of the Federalist Party, which supported the ratification of the Constitution, and the Democratic-Republican Party or the Anti-Administration party (Anti-Federalists), which opposed the powerful central government that the Constitution established when it took effect in 1789.

Two major parties dominated the political landscape: the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay, that grew from the National Republican Party; and the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson.

Some argue that the party is not to be confused with the present-day Democratic Party, however, a direct historical political lineage between them is often affirmed by some historians, political scientists, commentators, and by modern Democrats, reinforcing both names' continued and occasionally interchangeable use.