"How a Raucous Democratic System in Which the Vast Majority of the Electorate Voted Gave Way to a More Sedate and Exclusionary Political Culture"

"Wolfe's four lost men may have lacked charisma and accomplished almost nothing while in office, but, Grinspan argues, Americans were far more passionately invested in national politics then than they are today. And if you think our current moment of hyperpartisanship, political polarization, abusive language, widespread efforts to suppress the right to vote, and violent clashes over electoral outcomes is unprecedented, think again. As far back as the 1790s, opponents called George Washington a British agent and Thomas Jefferson a lackey of revolutionary France. In the decades before the Civil War, not a session of Congress passed without punches being exchanged between lawmakers and knives and pistols being drawn in the Capitol. But the high point of this kind of acrimonious politics came in the Gilded Age."

Eric Foner at The Nation reviews Jon Grinspan's The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865–1915.