What Was The Federalist Party?

The Federalist Party was the first official political party to emerge within the United States, and even in the years which preceded its existence, the ideology of Federalism was the most dominant in American political thought, at least among those directly engaged in politics, and this distinction is quite important as it would ultimately be through the rallying of mass popular opposition during the 1800 Election that Federalism would begin to crumble, and ultimately become extinct as a party only some years later. But what precisely was Federalism? What was it that the Federalists believed? And how did their policy impact the history and future of the United States?

Federalism, as we can assess merely from its name, promoted the idea of an American Federation, a proper Union of the states, rather than a series of independent entities, or a loose alliance. It was this shared desire between the representatives of the states, along with a shared desire for independence from Britain, that ultimately allowed the War for Independence to prove successful, rather than remain a localized and disorganized affair. It was during the Albany Congress of 1754 that serious efforts were first made by the states to pursue a higher degree of cooperation with one another primarily to establish a common defense and shared policy in regard to American-Indian relations as a response to the outbreak of the French-Indian War. This early Albany Plan, as it came to be known, was proposed by Ben Franklin, and would have entailed the union of 11 colonies into a entity still under…