I'd say the past seems less divisive because we didn't have the internet; The "good old days" couldn't stream Kent State on LiveLeak and there wasn't twitter to make it easy for everybody to voice their dissent. It's not strictly romanticism, I think it's an ease of access issue. We are a country of 300 Million Americans, and yet we acted like the South was rising again when a few hundred racists marched in Charleston (despite the fact that there were even more counter-protesters there).

Now that said, today's 50-48 vote was the most contested nomination since 1881. I won't idealize the social justice side of the 20th century (especially the first half), but we're not picking the Learned Hands to lead us. We're picking partisan lightning rods who divide & conquer rather than unify.