My understanding is that factionalism was the term they used for partisanship at the time. Washington used his farewell address to warn against factions gaining power across multiple branches of government and thus bypassing the separation of powers. Was there any discussion of ways to try and bake in protections against this happening?
In Federalist No. 10, James Madison directly addresses the idea of "factions". Madison, along with Jay and Hamilton, recognized the form of government proposed under the Constitution could lead to a "tyranny by majority" if one faction was sufficiently large enough to drown out the rest. The proposal laid out by Mr. Madison in Federalist No. 10 was that numerous small factions should be encouraged. By dividing large factions into numerous small ones, no one faction could grow too large.
Translated to late 20th century America, after the election of Reagan up to 1997, for 20-year rule considerations, we see small factions as special interest groups. What you see is a conglomeration of some special interest groups working together to form the Democratic and Republican parties. While membership has changed of which special interests align with each party, this is the result of factions as outlined by the authors of The Federalist Papers.
EDIT: Caught a small grammar mistake.
A side question. Was there any discussion of one of the most powerful anti-faction mechanisms, use of a lottery as used in Ancient Greece, the Republic of Venice, etc?