The Democratic-Republican Party was a classical liberal and agrarian political party in the United States which was active from 1792 to 1825. The party was formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to oppose the centralizing policies of the rival Federalist Party under Alexander Hamilton, and the party demanded states' rights and stood for the primacy of the yeoman farmers. The party was committed to republicanism and opposed the monarchist tendencies of the Federalist Party, favoring a weak central government and strong state governments. The party was vehemently opposed to Hamilton's economic reforms, including the government assumption of states' debts (which credit-positive states like Georgia felt were unfair, benefiting only debt-stacked New England), Hamilton's plan to establish a national bank (which would take economic power away from the states and hand it over to big business), and his plan to tax whiskey, among other centralizing measures. In 1794-1795, the party established itself as a pro-France party, supporting military assistance to the French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, and opposing the Federalists' pro-British "Jay Treaty" and their declaration of neutrality. In 1801, the party came to power when Jefferson was elected President, and the elitist Federalists faded away. The Democratic-Republicans soon became the dominant party in the country, and many of its members supported American expansion through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812, moves opposed by the Federalists, who were concerned about the expansion of slavery. In the aftermath of the American victory in the War of 1812, the "Era of Good Feelings" set in, and the Democratic-Republicans enjoyed widespread popularity as partisanship withered. However, by 1824, the party split in four ways and lacked a center, and the party soon split between Andrew Jackson's populist Jacksonian Democrats, Henry Clay's National Republican Party, and John Quincy Adams' Anti-Masonic Party, ushering in the Second Party System.
The Democratic-Republican Party was strongest among the farmers of the American South and the frontier, as well as among members of the Northern middle-class who did not benefit from Alexander Hamilton's economic policies. The Republicans were mostly farmers who opposed a strong central government, religious minorities in Puritan-dominated New England, and those who believed in the participation of the common man in politics.
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