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Though the torchlight parade has long since passed, American parties still stand in the shadow of the nineteenth-century Party Period. This course seeks to untangle the ideologies and practices of party politics from the Founding to the Progressive Era. Topics include the rise of mass parties, political violence, the coming of the Republican Party, the party politics of Reconstruction and westward expansion, corruption and the political machine, Populism, and movements for reform. We pay particular attention to comparisons between past and present, and to opportunities taken and foregone.