Thomas Balcerski is author of "Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King," forthcoming from the Oxford University Press. He tweets @tbalcerski. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN) This Sunday marks two years since the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. Much has changed in American politics since that fateful day in January 2017, especially for the modern Republican Party. Yet to start 2019, President Trump and the Republican Party appear to be entering the political equivalent of the terrible twos.

Thomas Balcerski

In what may be considered a political tantrum on the part of the President and the Republican leadership in Congress, the federal government remains partially closed — the longest shutdown in American history.

Frustration is increasing as the Trump presidency evolves. And critics within the Republican Party continue to rankle the President. Earlier this month, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, sounded off in the most public of forums: an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he declared that the "president has not risen to the mantle of office." In reply, Trump tweeted: "I won big and he didn't," while Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) recently dismissed Romney's critique as a case of "sour grapes."

The presidency of Donald Trump has been unprecedented in many ways. Yet in this respect, in the public disputes with members of his own party, he is not alone in American history. In the years before the Civil War, the Democratic Party, then in power, unraveled from within in ways that are eerily familiar to close observers of the current political moment. At issue was the key question of executive authority versus the power of the Congress and the will of the people.

In 1857, the new territory of Kansas clamored for admission to the Union. But there was a catch. A pro-slavery constitutional convention meeting at Lecompton had approved a governing document that permitted the peculiar institution. Although the Lecompton constitution seemed to represent the will of the people, in fact, it had been fraudulently obtained. In calling the convention, the pro-slavery territorial legislature had refused to offer a provision to exclude slavery from the territory; in turn, the anti-slavery opposition boycotted the convention.

Read More