The concepts of “party” and “party system” may be obscuring the nature of early national political culture. The presence of a modern party ethos before the 1830s seems to be taken for granted, as are assumptions regarding the alleged benefits of party. Historians have not yet demonstrated, however, the many dimensions of institutionalized party behavior. Focus is recommended on three observable elements of party (after Sorauf): as organization, in office, in the electorate. Studies of party self-consciousness developing over the entire 1789–1840 period are necessary in various political units. Evidence is inconclusive, but weighs on balance against a first party system of Federalists and Republicans (1790s–1820s). While relatively stable elite coalitions and even mass cleavage patterns perhaps developed at staggered intervals in different arenas, especially during the war crisis period of 1809–1816, the norms of party did not take root and pervade the polity. The era to the 1820s was transitional, a deferential-participant phase of mixed political culture roughly comparable to England's after 1832. Theories relating party to democratization, national integration, and political development, should be reconsidered.