Excerpt from Political Parties in the United States: 1846 1861 This book may be described as a study of the American party system. The references to the party systems in other States are for the purpose of making clear, in the first place, the relation of the political party to despotic governments, and, in the second place, to show that in each State where Democracy is far enough advanced to give rise to political parties the form of organization is determined by its political institutions. The peculiar American system arises from peculiar American institutions. The old Federal party died because it was un-American in the form of its organization. Under the party names of Whig and Democrat the system reached a high degree of perfection; but there was a maladjustment between the party machinery and public opinion, the parties went to pieces, and the Civil War was the result. This volume treats especially of the great Whig failure and its consequences. Since the disruption of the Union there have been two rather distinct periods of party history, equally deserving of special study. The first ends with the withdrawal of the troops from the last of the Confederate States in 1877. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.