Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States

Martin Van Buren was not merely chronicling history when he wrote this book - he was writing his own autopsy of the political world he helped create. As the eighth President and architect of the Democratic Party, Van Buren possessed intimate knowledge of how political parties actually functioned, beyond the elegant abstractions of constitutional theory. This 1867 work traces the messy, fractious birth of America's two-party system from the dying breaths of the Federalists through the emergence of the Democratic-Republicans, exploring how ideological disagreements among the Founders metastasized into the organized factions that would dominate American politics for generations. Van Buren writes with the weariness of a man who spent fifty years in the arena, offering candid assessments of Jefferson, Madison, and the early congressional caucuses that selected nominees long before conventions existed. The book is less a neutral history than a defense of party organization as essential to democratic governance - a argument delivered by someone who understood, perhaps better than any American before or since, exactly how much blood and treasure party loyalty demanded.