Was the 1850s Democratic Party conservative/right-wing by 1850s standards?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

This is a much more interesting question than most will give it credit for, not the least because the present "small vs. big government" dichotomy is so ingrained into the national psyche as to prohibit meaningful analysis of American political history prior to 1896/1932.

Let's start by establishing that the Democratic Party as it existed throughout the 1830s and early 1840s was certainly not a conservative party. Setting aside the matter of racism (which was far more complicated and bipartisan during this period than commonly acknowledged), the Democrats of the Age of Jackson clearly prescribed to the tenants of liberalism as they were then understood: namely, the equality of all (white) men before God, the corrupting influence of money and markets, and the natural enmity of the financial interests to the people. Jacksonian opposition to centralization, protectionism, and internal improvements was born, not from a conservative opposition to state action, but from a Jeffersonian distrust for the what Marx would call the
"bourgeoise" and what contemporary liberals and social democrats refer to as the "1%." The fact of the matter is that, prior to the Gilded Age and the rise of the likes of Bryan and LaFollette, the state was seen by most liberals as an obstacle to true equality and the interests of the common man. (The reason for this distrust dates back to Shay's Rebellion and the clash of Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian philosophy following the ratification of the Constitution, but that's a topic for another day).

The question, then, is whether Jeffersonian and Jacksonian liberalism remained the raison d'etre of the Democratic Party in the decade before the Civil War. On the one hand, the Democrats retained much of their liberal rhetoric: they continued to oppose protectionism and other pro-business policies, and strongly criticized the nativist policies of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings throughout the 1850s. On the other, it is abundantly clear that by 1854, the Democrats were fully in the pocket of the slave power. With the failure of the Compromise of 1850 and the subsequent passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Democrats abandoned much of their actual commitment to liberalism and instead raised the expansion of slavery as the party's unifying principle. This transformation was aided by the defection of the Barnburner and Anti-Nebraska factions to the Republican Party, allowing Southern slaveholders and Northern doughfaces to take control of the party. By 1860, slavery had become the beginning, middle, and end of the Democratic Party; both the Northern and Southern Democratic platforms from that year dealt exclusively with the slavery question, leaving the Republicans to take up responsibility for the Homestead Act, the Transcontinental Railroad, and other originally-Democratic initiatives.

In short, by the mid-1850s the Democrats had ceased to be a truly liberal party (in the sense that advocating for liberal policies was no longer their primary objective). I don't think that makes them a "conservative" party, however; conservatism implies support for a wide array of conservative policies, and by the late 1850s, the Democrats only really cared about one issue: slavery. That might make them right-wing, depending on how you define that position, but it doesn't make them conservative.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The question, then, is whether Jeffersonian and Jacksonian liberalism remained the raison d'etre of the Democratic Party in the decade before the Civil War. On the one hand, the Democrats retained much of their liberal rhetoric: they continued to oppose protectionism and other pro-business policies, and strongly criticized the nativist policies of the Whigs and the Know-Nothings throughout the 1850s. On the other, it is abundantly clear that by 1854, the Democrats were fully in the pocket of the slave power. With the failure of the Compromise of 1850 and the subsequent passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Democrats abandoned much of their actual commitment to liberalism and instead raised the expansion of slavery as the party's unifying principle. This transformation was aided by the defection of the Barnburner and Anti-Nebraska factions to the Republican Party, allowing Southern slaveholders and Northern doughfaces to take control of the party. By 1860, slavery had become the beginning, middle, and end of the Democratic Party; both the Northern and Southern Democratic platforms from that year dealt exclusively with the slavery question, leaving the Republicans to take up responsibility for the Homestead Act, the Transcontinental Railroad, and other originally-Democratic initiatives.

I think you have a flaw not in the general thought but in the general description. Jackson's general personality and his public economical thoughts were far more in line with Alexander Hamilton and Patrick Henry than the likes of James Madison and his friend Thomas Jefferson. Madison's personality was small, unimposing, somewhat anti-social, and brilliant. Jackson's personality was large, imposing, friendly, sociable, and populist nearly to the extent of ignorance. Their personalities nor ideologies align.

To the contrary, Jackson was perhaps the least Hamiltonian president of any chief executive to serve before the Civil War. He built his political coalition around opposition to the last vestiges of Hamiltonian financial policy - the tariff and the central bank - and it was standard practice within the Democratic party to cast the National Republicans / Whigs / Know-Nothings as Federalists by another name. Personal style has nothing to do with it, because political ideology is not a matter of putting on a show (even if electoral politics sometimes is). The overwhelming consensus within the professional historical community is that Jackson was the heir to Jeffersonian liberalism, as exemplified by his platform, the rhetoric of his surrogates, and the policies pursued by himself and his successors while in office.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Certainly, there are noteworthy differences between Madison and Jackson; the fact remains that they belong to the same ideological tradition. The distinction you draw between Madisonian constitutional liberalism and Jacksonian democratic liberalism is a commentary on the dramatic revolutions in American society that accompanied the Industrial Revolution and the Era of Good Feeling. Those changes created a new historical reality, forcing political ideas - like organisms in a changing environment - to evolve or die. Jackson's view of the presidency was different from Madison's because the context in which they governed was different, not because of some unbridgeable ideological gap between the two. For that matter, Jefferson and Madison also took an expansive view of presidential power when it served their purposes (the Louisiana Purchase being the most obvious example of this).

I'm rambling, but my essential point is that Jacksonianism and Jeffersonianism/Madisonianism are branches of the same tree, shaped by the times in which they emerged but fundamentally alike in principle.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

We're going to have to agree to disagree here, Kingpoleon. I will concede that Madison and Jackson were two very different men, governing in different times, and with different philosophies. I do not agree that this makes Jackson the heir to the Hamiltonian tradition, nor do most historians. I also disagree that intellectualism vs. populism is the most important measure of political ideology.

Madisonianism and Jeffersonianism are not quite the same, but the modern Democratic Party has far more to do with Jacksonianism and Wilsonianism than with Madisonianism.

On this, we agree.