In 1787, Americans adopted a constitution designed to check the evils of political factions. Half a century later, organized mass political parties were a basic fact of national political life. Historians have long debated the meaning and significance of this transformation. Did the rise of the two-party system indicate a widespread acceptance of pluralism and liberal, interest group politics? This essay argues that changing concepts of public opinion played a vital yet often neglected role in legitimating parties. I first show how the anti-partyism of the founding generation rested upon classical humanist ideas of popular opinion as unstable and easily counterfeited. As these ideas fell into disuse, a new generation of politicians reconfigured the relation between party and public opinion. Democrats advanced a “constitutionalist” rationale for party government. They equated public opinion with the popular will, and saw parties as necessary means for implementing that will. Whigs developed a weaker “sociological” defense of party organization. They defined public opinion as a product of civilization and economic “improvement,” and argued that it would contain the violence of partisan conflict.

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The Newberry Library Seminar on Technology, Politics, and Culture is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, Roosevelt University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Northwestern University's School of Communications