It was a period of bitter personal and political feuds and animosities.

The ancient Federal party was _in articulo mortis_.

The death-bed of a great political organization proves oftentimes the graveyard of lifelong friendships.

For it is a scene of crimination and recrimination.

And so it happened that the partisans of John Adams, and the partisans of John Adams's old Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, were in 1824 doing a thriving business in this particular line.