Why did the Federalists favor Britain and Democratic-Republicans favor France?

[darklordoftech]

It seems to me that the Federalists were pro-Britain and anti-France while the Democratic-Republicans were pro-France and anti-Britain. Why was this?

[Orser67]

The polarization happened in the context of the French Revolution, which at least nominally stood for the sort of equality that Democratic-Republicans championed. The Federalists favored a hierarchical society that's actually hard to explain given how fully Jeffersonian democracy had triumphed by the 1820s, but it's worth keeping in mind that most states had property requirements for voting in the 1790s. The Federalists were reasonably accepting of the French Revolution early on, but after the execution of King Louis in 1793 they started to view revolutionary ideology as a threat to public order in the United States. At the same time, the Democratic-Republicans accused the Federalists of idolizing the British and wanting to establish a monarchy.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The Whig Party was basically, the moderate Republican party and Queen Victoria was close to the Lincolns.  The Democrats, not the Labor Party movement was closer to the French.  But, it was Napolean who freed its slaves first.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

According to Jeffersonian theology (which in spite of an ongoing reevaluation of Jefferson himself remains the dominant lens through which American history is viewed and interpreted even today), the French Revolution was fundamentally a struggle between "the many" and "the few." Jefferson and his acolytes in the Republican party ascribed to a philosophy that was —for its time and in its purest decantation —radically egalitarian, and their sympathies lay with "the few," i.e. the revolutionaries. They despised the English class system and mercantilism, which summed up the Republican idea of tyranny, and therefore cast their lot with France in their war against the British Empire. This position became increasingly self-rationalizing after 1793, and especially in light of the fallout from the "X,Y,Z" Affair, as the Republican press searched frantically for a reason why the obvious excesses of the Terror were, at least, a lesser evil when compared to the British.

The Hamiltonians, by contrast, were fundamentally elitists: many (though not all) admired the English class system and constitution as models to be aspired to, and saw an industrial economy supplemented by robust trade with England as the ground on which a strong, independent American Union would be built. Most were not, as their Jeffersonian rivals alleged, monarchists; a better comparison would be the Optimates of the last century of the Roman Republic, and their view of "the many" resembled to a great degree that put forward by learned men of Antiquity. They believed government should serve the interests of the whole people, but they also believed the masses were an essentially violent, ignorant rabble and that politics should remain the business of the landed and commercial elite —they were the first to use "Democrat" as an epithet to describe Jefferson's followers. The Reign of Terror confirmed all their worst fears about popular government. Their support for England over Revolutionary France was therefore rooted in commercial and ideological motives, as well as a genuine fear the terrors of Jacobin rule would be repeated in America were Jefferson to ascend to the chief magistracy.

It is worthwhile to note as an addendum that in Jeffersonian terms, "the many" includes but is not limited to the working class (what Marx called the proletariat). The Ancien Régime divided French society into three classes, with the peasantry embracing all who were neither clergy nor nobility: thus not only poor farmers and laborers, but skilled craftsmen and wealthy gentry as Jefferson himself were part of the demokratia struggling against the forces of aristocracy. Jefferson may have been a democrat and an egalitarian, but he was not a "proto-Marxist" and he did not believe in the democratization of all elements of society. Jeffersonian liberalism still held that an educated elite would rule the masses: but whereas Hamilton held the state should govern in spite of the democracy, Jefferson held it should rule on their behalf.

[RINO Tom]

The French Revolution was everything conservatives (in this case on this set of issues, the Federalists) had warned unchecked left-wing chaos would lead to.  So, at least the favoring of Britain by the Federalists seems to make a lot of sense.