Title: Democratic-Republican Party - Ohio History Central
Headings: Democratic-Republican Party
Democratic-Republican Party
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Content: Having just overthrown the King of England during the American Revolution, Democratic-Republicans feared a strong national government. They believed that the Constitution was a "strict" document that clearly limited the powers of the federal government. Unlike the opposition Federalist Party, the Democratic-Republican Party contended that government did not have the right to adopt additional powers to fulfill its duties under the Constitution. Democratic-Republicans favored keeping the U.S. economy based on agriculture and said that the U.S. should serve as the agricultural provider for the rest of the world. If the United States produced a surplus, they could sell the extra crops overseas and use the money from these sales to buy manufactured goods from Europe's industrialized nations. The Democratic-Republicans were somewhat more egalitarian than the Federalists were. Jefferson said that all adult white men should have the right to vote and serve in elected office as long as they owned a minimal amount of property. The Democratic-Republicans wanted all U.S. families to own their own farm. Jefferson also believed that working-class people would put aside their own personal gain for the public good if they owned enough property to feed and house their families. The Democratic-Republican Party often aligned itself politically with France, whose citizens followed the example of the United States in the late 1780s with a revolution of its own.