Just like today, some politicians in the early 1800s believed their cause too crucial to negotiate. "What you have at the time is a very bitter partisan divide between Federalists and Republicans that was, if anything, more bitter than the divide between the tea party and Democrats today," said historian J.C.A. Stagg, editor of President James Madison's papers at the University of Virginia. "The Federalists thought (Thomas) Jefferson and Madison had ruined the country and had to be stopped," Stagg said.