Thread by @_waleedshahid

Lots of people say: "American parties haven't been this polarized since the Civil War."

What happened then? Eric Foner faults a political system and democratic institutions designed by the Founding Fathers to compromise with slavery over multiracial democracy.

"As North and South increasingly took different paths...antagonistic value systems and ideologies could not be defused by the normal processes of political compromise, nor could they be contained."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

"Once parties began to reorient themselves on sectional lines, a fundamental necessity of democratic politics -- that each party look upon the other as a legitimate alternative government -- was destroyed."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

"The notion of a black Republican conspiracy to overthrow slavery and southern society had taken hold in the South...the fact that the nation was every day growing apart and into two societies whose ultimate interests were diametrically opposed."

"The South's fear of black Republicans, despite its exaggerated rhetoric, was based on the realistic assessment that at the heart of Republican aspirations for the nation's future was the...eradication of slavery."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

"The South had become a permanent and shrinking minority within the nation. And in the majority section, anti-slavery sentiment had expanded at a phenomenal rate."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

"The very diversity of interests in the nation, [James Madison] argued in the Federalist papers, was the security for the rights of minorities, for it ensured that no one interest would ever gain control of the government."

"In the 1830s, John C. Calhoun recognized the danger which abolitionists posed to the South -- it threatened to rally the North in the way Madison had said would not happen -- in terms of one commitment hostile to the interests of the minority South."

"Only the principle of the concurrent majority -- a veto which each major interest could exercise over policies directly affecting it -- could reestablish this constitutional balance."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

"In a sense, the Constitution and national political system had failed in the difficult task of creating a nation -- only the Civil War itself would accomplish it."

[Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in The Age of the Civil War]

Not looking great!