Charting the Flow of Political Power: The 1880 Conspectus of American Politics

The National Museum of American History has an amazing graphic that shows the flow of political power from colonial times to 1880. The museum describes the graphic like this:

Moving from left to right, a timeline of parties, policies, persons, and events courses like a river through graphic space marked in four-year intervals. The analogy between politics and springs and rivulets (that jump and rejoin their banks) is the most conspicuous feature of the timeline. The parties appear in different colors. The ascendance of a party is gauged as its stream rises above the centerline, and above the streams of other parties. The thickness of a stream indicates the party’s strength.

To get control of the graphic, you need to go to the museum link given above, click on the graphic and then you can zoom in and see political parties and their flow over that time period. You can also see key policies the parties advocated over time and how that changed.

1880 Conspectus of American Politics