John Adams was the first president of the U. S. to belong to a political party. Parties arose during the presidency of George Washington and were sharply divided on the issue of

The early party, much like they are today, were heavily split between on how exactly the US Government should be run. The federalist party wanted a strong centralized government; basically they wanted to form a more democratic version of a King. Now the second party was the aptly named anti-federalists who wanted a weak centralized government with high amounts of personal freedom and states rights over federal power. A little fun fact is that in 1787 the federalist put a new constitution up for vote in Congress that essentially made the federal government be able to make all decisions how they saw fit and it was the opposition of the anti-federalists who prevented this and saw to it that our original constitution was kept. Also John Adams was a very staunch federalist.