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And we return to our American stories.

Up next, another installment of our series about us, the Story of America series with

Hillsdale College Professor and author of the terrific book, Land of Hope. We're talking about

Professor Bill McClay. Much like today, after America's founding, and much to the chagrin of

people like George Washington, two political parties waged war against one another,

the Democrat Republican Party and the Federalist Party.

After the War of 1812, though, one of those parties would pass into oblivion,

and that would set up another political revolution.

Let's get into this story. Take it away, Bill.

It seems hard to imagine this today, but after only five presidential elections, one of the two

major parties simply vanished. It was the Federalist Party. The Federalist Party was gone,

and the Republican Party was ascended.

President James Monroe running essentially unopposed in his second term in 1820.

Can you imagine anything like that today? And this made for relatively peaceful times. And when you have running unopposed,

that's a reason to call it the era of good feelings, which is a phrase that probably didn't

apply to many old federalists. They weren't feeling too good. So there's a kind of settledness, a kind of predictability,

stability when it came to presidential elections. The election of 1800 had been all full of tension and a sense that the world might be coming to an end,

or at least the constitutional republic might be coming to an end.

But those days were far behind.

And actually, when you look back at it, except for John Adams,

...