[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "Hate to get involved in a rather abstruse discussion, but I think you’re falling prey to a rather common mistake."

I'll show you where we disagree.

Sherman Logan: "So IMO the Whigs were every bit as much a continuation of the original Democratic-Republican Party as the faction that kept the Democratic name.
And so were the Republicans who eventually succeeded the Whigs in the role of opposition party to the Democratic machine."

Nice try, but that doesn't work.
The simple fact, with very few exceptions is: from the first real election in 1796, Southern states voted solidly for Jefferson Democratic-Republicans or Jackson Democrats.
At the same time, New England states voted consistently for Federalists, Republican Unionists, Whigs and then Republicans.

So your suggestion that both modern parties came from the same Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican root is just not right.
The better explanation is to apotheosize John Quincy Adams for his heroic efforts -- the last and futile attempt -- to reestablish the Founding generation's vision of a nation without political "factions" -- as parties were called then.

Adams, like his father was a close personal friend of Jefferson, joined Jefferson's party and tried to unite the country with a single-party leadership.
It didn't work, and party alignments soon returned, just as they had been in, for example, the 1800 presidential election.

If you doubt my explanation, then I'd invite you to do this:
Start here, with the 1796 election.

Note the map where South is green (Jefferson) and North orange (Adams).
Now, click on the link (upper right) for the 1800 election.
Note most states have the same colors.
Now if you'll click through each following election, you'll see that with very few exceptions, the South consistently voted for Jeffersonian/Jackson Democrats, the North for whatever party was in opposition -- Federalists, Republican Unionists, Whigs or Republicans.

[x]

So your suggestion that both modern parties came from the same Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican root is just not right.

Of course there was much continuity in New England from the Federalists to the Whigs to the Republicans. And much continuity in the South from the Democratic Republicans to the Democrats, from Jefferson through Jackson, Cleveland, Wilson, and Roosevelt.

But some people want to argue for a massive, monolithic, eternal conflict of Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians or Adamses and Jacksonians that leaves out most of the details in political history. So many people beat it into our heads "Good Jefferson, Bad Hamilton" or "Good Hamilton, Bad Jefferson" that it's not a bad thing to remember how porous party lines could be in the "Era of Good Feelings."

One has to make room somewhere for someone like Henry Clay, who started out as a Jeffersonian Democrat and became a Whig, or James Buchanan, who began as a Federalist and ended up a Democrat, or DeWitt Clinton, a stalwart Democratic-Republican who somehow became a Federalist nominee for president.

Obviously there were established Whig-Federalist and Jeffersonian-Jacksonian families and circles that continued down through the years, but the fact that the Opposition or Anti-Democrat forces picked the early name of Jefferson's own party for their own -- the Republicans -- suggests that the lines of descent were more complicated than some people believe.