Reply #6: Jefferson was neither a Democrat nor a Republican

[TechBear_Seattle]

As vice-President, he was an Anti-Federalist (the opposition to the Federalist Party headed by Washington and John Adams.) As president, he headed the Democratic-Republican Party.

The Democratic Party, as such, did not exist until around 1824. The Federalist Party had effectively ceased to exist and the Democratic-Republicans were the only functioning party in the country. A group of populists, led by Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, were disillusioned with the way the D-Rs selected their presidential candidate for 1824 and organized an opposition caucus, which chose Jackson as their candidate. After the 1824 election, these populists left the D-Rs to form the Democratic Party. Jackson's win in 1828 marked the first time that a Democrat was elected to the Presidency.

After the departure of the "Jacksonian" Democrats, the D-Rs reorganized as the National Republican Party and started wooing former Federalists. They latter merged with several regional factions to become the Whig Party by 1833. The Whigs eventually split into pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, which doomed the party. The anti-slavery faction organized into the modern Republican Party in 1958, and elected its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.