Democratic-Republican Party

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The Democratic-Republican Party, known at the time as the Republican Party (also referred to by historians as the Jeffersonian Republican Party), was an American political party founded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the early 1790s. It championed liberalism, republicanism, individual liberty, equal rights (for White men, as common at the time), separation of church and state, freedom of religion, anti-clericalism, emancipation of religious minorities, decentralization, free markets, free trade, and agrarianism. In foreign policy, it was hostile to Great Britain and sympathetic to the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. The party became increasingly dominant after the 1800 elections as the opposing Federalist Party collapsed. Increasing dominance over American politics also led to increasing factional splits within the party. Old Republicans, led by John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of Roanoke, believed that the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe—and...

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