Whigs and Democrats
- Democrats: They envisioned a future of steadily expanding economic and political opportunities for expanding economic and political opportunities for white males. the role of government should be limited but include efforts to remove obstacles to opportunity and to avoid creating new ones. This meant defending the Union which Jacksonian's believed was essential to the dynamic economic growth they favored.
- Whigs: Favored expanding the power of the federal government, encouraging industrial and commercial development and knitting the country together into a consolidated economy system. They embraced material progress enthusiastically but were cautious about westward expansion, fearful that rapid territorial growth would produce instability. Their vision for America was a nation embracing the industrial future and rising to world greatness as a commercial and manufacturing power.
- The Whigs were part were strongest among the more substantial merchants and manufactures of the Northeast, the wealthier planters of the South, and the ambitious farmers and rising commercial class of the west.
- The Democrats favored smaller merchants and the working men to the northeast, form southern planters, and from westerners with southern roots.