It's depressing to reflect on the extent to which the quality of political debate in the U.S. has declined since then.

I don’t know that I’d agree that political discourse is worse today than (checks notes) during the civil war?

I’d say you may be looking at US politics through some rose colored spectacles. Being involved in politics is relatively much less hazardous to one’s health than at virtually any previous time in the nation’s history.

If you limit yourself to Supreme Court opinions and memoirs, it can be pretty good.

I recently read the takes on the subprime lending financial crisis in Obama's memoir [0] and McCain's memoir [1], and I found they agreed on the facts completely, but had completely different political approaches to what needed to happen next.

Ignoring politics Twitter and cable news is also a big help.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Promised_Land

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Restless_Wave_(book)

Yeah, the era where pro-slavery congressmen would beat their abolitionist peers in the Senate chambers [0] was definitely a high point in American politics.

The 1850s and 1860s were a battleground leading up to the literal battleground of the Civil War and the “quality of political debate” declined severely as the government became more and more polarized on the issue of slavery.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner

And there is a paywall!