The Era of Good Feelings started in 1815 in the mood of victory that swept the nation at the end of the War of 1812. Exultation replaced the bitter political divisions between Federalists and Republicans, the North and South, and the East Coast cities and settlers on the American frontier. The political hostilities declined because the Federalist Party had largely dissolved after the fiasco of the Hartford Convention in 1814–15. As a party, Federalists "had collapsed as a national political force". The Democratic-Republican Party was nominally dominant, but in practice it was inactive at the national level and in most states.