Virginia is now divided: Politics in the Old Dominion, 1820-183

After the War of 1812, the United States underwent a political shift from Jeffersonian Republicanism to Jacksonian Democracy. As Thomas Jefferson's home state, Virginia's transformation from Jeffersonianism to Jacksonianism was more profound and painful than elsewhere. The Commonwealth had given the nation four of the first five presidents, and had been the leader of the South, if not the nation, for much of that time. By 1820, however, Virginia was no longer the leading state in the nation, declining in population and political prestige. Virginia faced difficult decisions in the thirteen years between the Missouri Compromise and the Nullification Crisis. The Commonwealth became caught between states' rights and union, torn between the older notions of Jeffersonian states' rights and Madisonian unionism and the more radical states' rights of South Carolina nullifiers and the newer unionism embodied in Jacksonianism. The election of 1824 not only signalled the decline of Virginia's political power, but also forced Jeffersonian Republicans of the state to choose new sides. Some, like Thomas Ritchie and Andrew Stevenson, became devout Jacksonians, and used Jeffersonian tradition to support their position. Others, like John Floyd, Littleton Waller Tazewell, and John Tyler, followed Jeffersonian tradition into the more radical states' rights camp. Still others, most notably William C. Rives, pursued Madisonian unionism. Where once Virginia was politically united on the national front, it had split.;The strain between old and new political positions raised its head on the state level as well. The Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830 was an effort for reform by westerners inspired by the new wave of democracy sweeping the nation under Andrew Jackson's presidency. The Virginia slave debate of 1831-1832 had its beginnings in Nat Turner's rebellion, as well as in the mood for democracy which swept the West in the 1820s. On the state level, some Jacksonians opposed sweeping democracy, while ardent states' righters pushed for the abolition of slavery, positions somewhat contradictory to each other.