BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Profile: The Democratic Party

BBC NEWS World Americas Profile: The Democratic Party The Democratic Party first emerged in the 1790s under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson, organised around the protection of agricultural interests and opposed to concentration of power in the hands of the federal government. At the centre of the party stood a belief in "state's rights", meaning that the federal government should intervene as little as possible, leaving almost all responsibility to individual state governments. The issue became increasingly bound up with slavery dividing the party between northern and southern Democrats. Eventually, with the election in 1860 of Republican Abraham Lincoln as president, the southern Democrats seceded from the Union, plunging the country into civil war. In the years after the war, charges of disloyalty