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Just one train at a time.

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One train journey at a time can help create a greener future.

So when will you take your next trip?

Find out more at nationalrail.co.uk for what's last greener.

History is in just a bunch of names and dates and facts.

It's the collection of all the stories throughout human history that explain how and why we got here.

Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast, where we look at the forgotten, neglected, strange, and even counterfactual stories that made our world what it is.

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

In the 1800 presidential election when President John Adams faces own vice president Thomas Jefferson,

it was perhaps the nastiest election the United States had ever seen.

It was very similar to 2020 where there was partisan ranker, there were personal insults between the candidates and a really politicized media way more than what you would have seen in the mid-20th century.

John Adams was described by Thomas Jefferson's hatchet men as a repulsive petent and a gross hypocrite who behaved like a man or like a woman, but possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.

Jefferson was the hatchet man and critics of him so that he was of Indian stock and was a mean spirit of low-lived fellow who had created nation where murder robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.

Today's guest is Jeffrey Sikenga, the astronaut institute, and he argues that 2020, although it's a very intense election, it was nothing compared to 1800.

So America has been through rough election seasons before and we can look to the past to understand what's going to happen to us in the future.

Part of the fear of 1800 was that America would not be able to outlast this election.

Sikenga says that only 24 years after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that Americans were one people, it looked like America could be torn apart.

The Constitution was only 12 years old and the unifying figure of George Washington, who was an unanimously elected twice, had died the year before in 1799.

Washington warned about the dangers of parties in his farewell address, but despite this two competing parties had formed, the Federalist of Adams and the Democratic Republicans in Jefferson.

Power had rarely been transferred peacefully between two rival parties in any nation, and that's still the case today, and there had never been a peaceful transfer of power for one party to another in the new country.

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