Party Strength in Congress
Many Congressmen were very hard to classify in the first few years, but after 1796 there was less uncertainty.
Election year | |||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
House | 1788 | 1790 | 1792 | 1794 | 1796 | 1798 | 1800 | 1802 | 1804 | 1806 | 1808 | 1810 | 1812 | 1814 | 1816 | 1818 | 1820 |
Federalist | 37 | 39 | 51 | 47 | 57 | 60 | 38 | 39 | 25 | 24 | 50 | 36 | 68 | 64 | 39 | 26 | 32 |
Democratic-Republican | 28 | 30 | 54 | 59 | 49 | 46 | 65 | 103 | 116 | 118 | 92 | 107 | 114 | 119 | 146 | 160 | 155 |
% Democratic-Republican | 43% | 43% | 51% | 56% | 46% | 43% | 63% | 73% | 82% | 83% | 65% | 75% | 63% | 65% | 79% | 86% | 83% |
Senate | 1788 | 1790 | 1792 | 1794 | 1796 | 1798 | 1800 | 1802 | 1804 | 1806 | 1808 | 1810 | 1812 | 1814 | 1816 | 1818 | 1820 |
Federalist | 18 | 16 | 16 | 21 | 22 | 22 | 15 | 9 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 9 | 7 |
Democratic-Republican | 8 | 13 | 14 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 17 | 25 | 27 | 28 | 27 | 30 | 28 | 26 | 30 | 37 | 44 |
% Democratic-Republican | 31% | 45% | 47% | 34% | 31% | 31% | 53% | 74% | 71% | 82% | 79% | 83% | 78% | 68% | 71% | 80% | 92% |
Source: Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989 (1989); the numbers are estimates by historians.
The affiliation of many Congressmen in the earliest years is an assignment by later historians. The parties were slowly coalescing groups; at first there were many independents. Cunningham noted that only about a quarter of the House of Representatives, up until 1794, voted with Madison as much as two-thirds of the time, and another quarter against him two-thirds of the time, leaving almost half as fairly independent.
Read more about this topic: Federalist Party
Famous quotes containing the words party, strength and/or congress:
“It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (18041881)
“So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (18221904)
“What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harpers Ferry engine-house,that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)