> The early USA gave rise to a party known as the Democratic-Republicans which had the critical mass of officials and candidates to rival the Federalists
The Democratic-Republicans formed before the Federalists, actually.
> There were actually 4 candidates on the ballot though
Unlike the modern system, there weren't even ballots in a quarter of the states (a popuar election for electors is not a Constitutional mandate, and it wasn't a statutory requirement to have such an election for a states' electoral votes to be considered regularly-given until much more recently.)
And the candidates weren't on the ballots that existed, party electors were (unlike modern ballots, where the Presidential candidate is listed and you get the associated electors if they win, the actual electors -- and not usually the candidate they were pledged to -- were listed on the ballots, where they existed.)
And in most states, there were not electors for all four candidates on the ballot, the four are just the candidates that received electoral votes from somewhere in the country.
> In that case none had enough electoral votes, so Jackson won that one when it was decided by the House.
Jackson won a plurality—but not the required majority to win outright—of the electoral vote, but the House elected John Quincy Adams in the contingent election required to resolve the absence of an electoral vote winner, not Jackson.
> He had a total nationwide popular vote of 151,271, so you have to figure that each vote had so much of a stronger voice back then under a system quite similar to today.
As discussed above, the system was not "quite similar to today".
> Then apparently the party just kind of split up and re-organized into the "two-party" system that has continued to dominate ever since.
The new Whig Party which was its initial main opponent did form in part from dissident offshoots of the Democratic-Republican Party, but a lot of its strength was from bringing in existing regional parties that were never competitive national parties (like the Anti-Masonic Party) as well.
> There was no threat until decades later when the Free Silver parties arose
Kind of leaving out the entire rise of the Republican Party and the displacement of the Whigs...I could go on with responding to the blend of oddly selected facts and complete distortions, but I'll just note that it doesn't get better.