The rise of the Democracy and Jackson’s tumultuous presidency sparked the creation in the mid-1830s of a second national party: the Whigs. For the next two decades, Whigs and Democrats competed fiercely for votes and appealed to different cultural groups. Many evangelical Protestants became Whigs, while most Catholic immigrants and traditional Protestants joined the Democrats. By debating issues of economic policy, class power, and moral reform, party politicians offered Americans a choice between competing programs and political leaders. “Of the two great parties,” remarked philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, “[the Democracy] has the best cause … for free trade, for wide suffrage, [but the Whig Party] has the best men.”