[fieldmarshaldj]

"We need an “Era of bad feelings” to grind the enemy into dust."

I'd say we're there about now.

[BillyBoy]

I'd probably nominate the post civil war reconstruction era (1866-1876) as the "Era of bad feelings", where the two parties were pretty much at each other's throats all the time. It ended after the bitterly contested 1876 election where Rutherford Hayes agreed to withdraw federal troops from the south. Impy told me once that if was president, he would have reneged on that pledge and told the RATs to screw themselves...which mostly likely would have resulted in them drawing up articles of impeachment. Ironically, for all the "hyper-partisanship" of the late 1800s, I don't think the two parties differed much ideologically except for opposite views on tariffs. They pretty much aligned to where they are today during the elections of 1896 and 1900.