>> John Haskell:
And good morning. Welcome to the 19th annual
National Book Festival, which is officially and
indisputably the best free event in Washington and
it's furthermore -- [ Applause ] And guess what, it's
better than most of the ones you have to pay for. The Kluge Center --
as Michael mentioned, I work at the Kluge
Center, and we are proud to be sponsoring
three of the events on the history stage,
including this one. The Center's mission at the
Library is to bridge the gap between scholarship and policy
makers and the interested public by bringing leading
thinkers in the humanities and social sciences to
the Library for periods of residence, during which they
use the Library collections, and by showcasing the
work of those scholars and other prominent writers in public events
and in other forums. I want to highlight
a few of the events that we will be hosting
this fall that will be open to the public, including A
Conversation on the Dynamics on the Presidential Primaries, featuring Amy Walter
and other scholars. Complicity and Accountability
in the Great Recession, and Leadership Lessons from
Presidents Lincoln and Grant, with historian Ron White. Also, in conjunction with the
Shall Not Be Denied exhibit, the Center will host an event
on 100 Years of Women Voting, featuring Christina
Wolbrecht and Jane Junn. Today, the Library's honored
to have Joanne Freeman at the National Book
Festival for a conversation on her latest book, The Field
of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War. Freeman is Professor of History
and American Studies at Yale. She comments on history and
politics in many major media. She's the co-host of a popular
history podcast, BackStory, and she appears frequently
in documentaries on PBS and The History Channel. Her online course, The American
Revolution, has been viewed by hundreds of thousands
of people in homes and classrooms around the world. Please join me in
welcoming Joanne. [ Applause ] >> Joanne B. Freeman: Thank you. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> John Haskell: Joanne, how
did you come up with the idea to write a book about fighting
and dueling on the floor of the House and
Senate in the 1800's? >> Joanne B. Freeman: It's not because I'm a naturally
violent person, I will say. I guess I faced the problem
that a lot of authors do, which is I actually didn't know
what my next book was going to be about. My first book was
about, essentially -- it's Affairs of Honor. It was about what it felt like
to be a national politician on the national stage in the first 10 years
of the government. So, I knew my next book was
going to have something to do with politics and probably at
least outrage, if not violence. And I knew that, in 1838, one congressman killed
another congressman in a duel. So, not knowing what
I was doing, I actually had a wonderful
fellowship at the Library of Congress for three
months, so that -- thank you, Library of Congress for allowing me to
write this book. And I went to the papers
of the congressman who was from the same state as
the fellow who was killed, and I just started reading. And as luck would have it,
he wrote almost every day to his wife, sometimes,
twice a day, to his wife. And there was a lot of violence. He kept describing people
rolling up their sleeves to throw a punch or actually
punching, and I thought, "Well, I had this vague
sense that Congress -- there was violence there, but
there's sure a lot more here than I thought I'd seen." So, in the three months that I
was at the Library of Congress, I don't think I ever opened
the papers of a congressman without finding at least
one violent incident. And so, then, obviously, my job
became, what does this mean? You know, why haven't we
seen it before in this way and what does it mean, that there was all
this violence there? >> John Haskell: So, you
know, it's interesting, that you told the story
from the perspective -- at least, part of the story,
from the perspective of someone who is not a congressman,
Benjamin Brown French. Who was he, and why was he
a key figure in this period? >> Joanne B. Freeman: When
I was writing the book, I kind of thought that people
would assume I made him up, because he's such a
wonderful character. So, yeah, he's not in Congress. He's a clerk, and he's
[inaudible] for two years, but generally speaking,
he's just a clerk, so a minor clerk in the House. What's wonderful about him is he
left behind an 11-volume diary, and it's not the kind
of diary that says, "Had lunch with Mr. Smith. Walked home at 3:00." He puts everything in there. And among those things
that he put in there was some
of the fighting. But in addition, he talks a lot
in his diary about his feelings about what was going on. What became important
to me in this book is that the book tells
the story of violence, but what I really wanted to get to was what was the
emotional logic of that. How did Americans learn to turn on each other in
this time period? And by looking through
his eyes and his diary, he kind of enabled
me to do that. He also happens to be like
the Forrest Gump of -- >> John Haskell: Exactly, yeah. >> Joanne B. Freeman: -- of
the 1830's, '40s and '50s. If something important
happened, somehow or other, Benjamin Brown French was there. And so, he's footnoted all over
the place, because I thought, no one's going to
believe that he was there. >> John Haskell: Wasn't
he next to Lincoln in some important historical -- >> Joanne B. Freeman:
He was at the bedside after the assassination. He was holding John
Quincy Adam's hand not long after he had a stroke in the
House of Representatives. Someone tries to
assassinate Andrew Jackson. Who's there watching? Benjamin Brown French. The Gettysburg Address? Who's up on the stage,
right near Lincoln? Benjamin Brown French. I even found a picture
of that one, so. >> John Haskell: Yeah. She's got -- that
picture is in the book. >> Joanne B. Freeman:
Yeah, yeah. So, he's amazing. Amazing because of where he
was, but even better, for me, amazing because he put so many of his feelings down
in his diary. >> John Haskell: So, you
know, the story is -- the stories are told
vividly in the book. But in the realm of
understatement, you wrote, quote, "Everyday business in Congress had rough
edges," end quote. There was less a
veneer of civility in the antebellum Congress. You know, go there a little bit, like how was it different
than we see today? We don't think of Congress as being overwhelmingly
civil today, but -- >> Joanne B. Freeman: No,
but this is another scale. Yeah, this is true. And I should say, in part, it reflects what the
United States was like in this time period. Right? Because the United
States was a violent place. There was constant rioting. There were election riots. People died routinely
during elections. There was all kinds of
violence, just the institution of slavery all by itself, how the United States
treated Native Americans. So, there was rampant
violence in this period. But -- and so in Congress,
in some way, you could say that Congress was
being representative, when it was being violent. But more than that, part of what
I found early on in the process of writing the book, that I found really interesting
was Southerners were more likely to be armed, were more willing
to engage in man-to-man combat, and used that advantage
in Congress to get what they wanted, often to protect the
institution of slavery. And what that meant was there
was a lot of intimidation and violence that was
Southerners aimed at Northerners and by violence, that
means real violence. That means pulling knives,
bowie knives, pulling guns on each other, engaging in
fist fights, flipping desks, mass brawls, canings
and everything else that you could imagine,
was going on -- more often in the
floor of the House -- the Senate tended toward
duel challenges more than anything else. But still, a lot of
physical violence going on. >> John Haskell: So,
you found all this in the Congressional
Record, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
I did not find this in the Congressional Record. >> John Haskell: So, what was
in the Congressional Record that corresponded to when some
of the fun stuff was happening? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Yeah. So, this was one of the big
challenges, and actually, it helps answer the question why
hasn't this story really been told in this way before. The Congressional
Record, for the most part, unless there was a huge brawl,
didn't tend to talk about this. The Congressional
Record says things like, "The debate became unpleasantly
personal at one point." And in one case, someone
pulled a gun on someone else, and that is "unpleasantly
personal." In another case, it
said something like, "There was a sudden
sensation in the corner." And in that case,
two congressmen got into a fist fight, and they
flipped over their desk in the course of
having a fist fight. So, initially, I didn't -- it took me researching in
private letters and diaries to find a lot of the violence. Then, when I went to the record,
I discovered, "Oh, it's there, it's just kind of buried beneath
these cryptic statements." >> John Haskell: Yeah. That's -- so, you talked about
the difference in the approach of Northerners and Southerners
in the ethic, with respect to violence and Northerners
and Southerners. Go into that a little bit more
detail, if you would, and also, whether that gave one
side or another -- or the other an advantage,
politically. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Sure. Now, one of the really
interesting things that I discovered early on, is not only did the
Southerners have this advantage of being more willing to
engage in man-to-man combat, and more likely to be armed,
but that was notorious, and they had, at the time,
in Congress, and actually, probably wider than Congress,
phrases that they used to describe the kinds of people
who are more likely to fight, and the kinds of people who
were less likely to fight. They actually broke
their ranks down into -- this is their phrases: "fighting
men" and "noncombatants," which tells you something
about this topic, that it was pretty
immediate for them. So, they were fighting men who
were notorious for being ready and willing to engage in
combat and non-combatants, who were notorious for
not wanting to do that. That line broke down,
as I'm suggesting, into Southern and Northern. And what that meant,
when it came to slavery, is that not only were
Southerners represented to an extra degree, because
of the Three-Fifths Compromise that gave at least
some enslaved people -- they were counted in the
representation calculations, but in addition to that, there
was kind of a cultural clout that Southerners used to
their advantage, again, to protect the institution
of slavery, by threatening and intimidating
non-combatants and people who were less willing to fight. >> John Haskell: So, I found
very interesting in the book, that you covered John
Quincy Adams a lot, and he's distinctive
for a lot of reasons that probably most folks
know, but he was an old guy, so he wasn't going
to be fighting. But he still was pretty good. I mean, you know, he
still was effective. So, how did he pull that? Because the non-combatant -- you're suggesting
the non-combatants in the North were the ones maybe who were steamrolled
politically. But not Adams. >> Joanne B. Freeman: No. Adams -- so, what's
wonderful about Adams -- So, John Quincy Adams,
he goes to the House after his presidency -- which
all by itself, is fascinating -- but by the time he does that
-- so, he's an ex-President, he's the son of an
ex-President and a founder, and he's elderly by that point. So, there was a sort
of triple whammy. You were not going to
slug John Quincy Adams. And John Quincy Adams knew that, and he totally used
it to his advantage. So, he knew that he
could step forward and really challenge
the Southerners. I think, at one point,
he says, you know, "If you think the shoe
pinches now, just wait." So, he basically went in his
seat in the House and did this. Right? Just bring it. And people -- there's a --
his most persistent attackers, a fellow named Henry Wise
of Virginia, and Henry Wise at one point says -- and in
fact, it is in the Record, "If you weren't who you are, you
would feel more than my words." And Adams, in his diary
that night, writes, "Henry Wise threatened me today. He said he was going to
kill me if he could." You know, so he was quite
aware of what he was doing. But because of that, he knew
that he could step forward and really advocate for
the anti-slavery cause. So, he had a power. Add that to the fact
that he was brilliant at parliamentary maneuvering, and he was a real force
to be reckoned with. >> John Haskell:
What was a doe face? >> Joanne B. Freeman: So, a
doe face was a Northerner, usually a Northern
Democrat, who, essentially, was willing to do anything
to appease Southerners, partly for the sake of their
party, partly for the sake of the Union, on the
issue of slavery. So, doe face -- it
sounds like an insult, and it was meant
to be an insult. Essentially, it's someone who's,
you know, wimpy and willing to appease, rather than to
confront this difficult issue of slavery, and Benjamin
Brown French was a doe face. >> John Haskell: Yeah,
New Hampshire guy. Your coverage of
the controversies around the Gag Rule was --
it struck me as important, because in that case,
am I right? I mean, the tactics of
the Southerners to try to use intimidation to get their
way backfired a little bit. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Right. >> John Haskell: If you could
go into that a little bit, explain what the Gag Rule is
and so, how that ended up -- some of their intimidation
tactics maybe didn't work in this case. >> Joanne B. Freeman: It's true,
for a very particular reason. So, in the 1830s, the American
Anti-Slavery Society began really pushing a petition, an
anti-slavery petition campaign, and hundreds and thousands of petitions were
being sent to Congress. So, it really made
-- had an impact. And because of that,
particularly the House, which had to come up with rules
every time there was a new House, had to figure out what
to do about these petitions. One person at the time
actually said, you know, "What's the right thing
to do for these petitions that people are sending?" Basically, saying
Southerners are barbarians, Southerners are horrific
human beings. Well, you can do two things. You can silence them, or
you can knock them down. And so, they opted, in this
case, for the silencing mode of operating, and they
essentially tabled anti-slavery petitions, meaning that they
-- just what it suggests -- sort of put them off to the
side, and decided not to act on them, in the case
of these petitions. Now, the idea behind that was
to stifle that discussion, and I think they probably
thought, to silence them of the debate and the angst
and the anger and the anxiety in Congress over the
issue of slavery. But it actually, in the end,
did the precise opposite, partly because of people
like John Quincy Adams, who knew Americans might
not in the North -- and it's Northerners obviously
whose petitions are being stifled, that Northerners
might not be really upset about the issue of slavery,
but they would be darned upset if their right of petition
was being really cut back. So, Adams, after a time,
really focused on that angle. And he essentially said over
and over and over again, "Northerners, your right to petition the government
is being compromised here," knowing that that would
feel like self-interest to Northerners, and
they would respond that way, which they did. And so, in the end, rather
than silencing this issue down, it actually really
roused the North and created more of a fuss. The two most violent
incidents of -- I'm sorry -- the two most violent moments in
Congress are not surprisingly -- the [inaudible] was years
before the Civil War, and the Gag Rule years. So, it did the opposite of
whatever it was intended to do. >> John Haskell: So, let's get to the UFC part of
the program, now. Let's think about
some of the fights. The first one that I thought
would be interesting for people to hear about is the duel between Representatives
Cilley and Graves. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Right. So, that's a duel. It takes place in 1838. That's actually the only thing
I knew when I started the book, was, oh, there was
that duel in 1838, where one congressman
kills another. So, Jonathan Cilley
is from Maine. Williams Graves is
from Kentucky. The interesting thing about the
duel and the reason I focused on it is, they actually had
no real issue with each other. What happens is that Henry
Wise, who's just a troublemaker, basically -- comes into
the House with a newspaper and stands up and says, "I have
evidence here that Democrats, and in particular, one
Democrat, is corrupt. That Democratic party
is a corrupt party." And Cilley, who's a
Democrat, stands up and says, "I resent that." Now, Henry Wise is
a Southerner -- and this is a great example
of what fighting men did to silence Northerners -- he very slowly and dramatically
turns around to look at Cilley and say, "Are you
saying I'm lying?" And that's a dueling
prequel, right? Which Cilley knows,
and Cilley says, "No, I'm not saying you're lying,
but that's really not true, that the Democrats are corrupt,"
hem, haw, hem, haw, right? It's kind of an awkward moment. Wise pushes it for
a little while, and then says something nasty
about Cilley to humiliate him, and that moment passes. But in the course
of that debate, Cilley insults a
newspaper editor, and the newspaper
editor comes riding down to Washington
to defend his name. What was interesting about this,
to me, was that, in the end, Cilley ends up fighting the
friend of the newspaper editor, who was just transmitting
letters back and forth. They liked each other fine. They had no problem
with each other. The fight really was between
Cilley and this editor, but the pull of violence
and the pull of dueling and the importance of
defending your reputation kind of sucks both of
these unfortunate men into being involved in a
duel against each other, which ends up being
a fatal duel. And it's -- one of the
remarkable things about it is, because one congressmen
killed another, there's a congressional
investigation. There's a big, long report in which they really
interrogated every single person that had anything
to do with the duel or its arrangements
or its aftermath. And so, as a historian, what
was amazing about that was, you have eyewitness
testimony from everyone who had anything to
do with that duel. And so, unlike most duels,
which happen and sometimes, you'll get a really cursory
account of what went on, in this case, you
get every detail. >> John Haskell:
Since somebody died. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Well,
since someone died, and then, since there was this
committee, and people testified. Yeah. >> John Haskell: And so, when
I was reading it, I was like, the duel didn't look the
way I thought it would look. >> Joanne B. Freeman: How
did you think it would look? >> John Haskell:
Well, I thought -- you imagine what's done on stage
in Burr and, you know, Hamilton, where they take 10 steps,
and they turn around and miss or hit or whatever. It's not really like
that, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman: No, no. In a way, it's worse, right? Because the two parties
are positioned. They agree in advance
how far apart they'll be. In this case, they
were very far apart. Nobody thought anyone was
going to get killed in this, because they were so far apart. But they're -- they stand facing
each other, with their weapons, and predetermined, one of
the two seconds, or were sort of assistants in the duel,
says one, two, three, present. And then, they have
three seconds to fire. And in this particular case, neither man was very
good with a gun. And, again, they didn't like --
they had liked each other fine. They didn't have any
issue with each other. Right? So, they're bad shots. Cilley needed glasses. The whole thing -- Graves'
friends came with blankets because they thought
they were going to have to carry his body
back from the ground, because there was no way they
assumed he could hit anybody with a gun. So, the first time,
Cilley misfires, and they have another round
of firing, and this time, Graves misfires, and he does so,
so embarrassingly that he says, "Well, I need another shot." So, there's a third exchange of
fire, and that's, unfortunately, when Graves kills Cilley,
who's shot and immediately, basically, dies on the ground. And what you get when you look at this Congressional
Report is all the ways in which they were -- you know,
I think in addition to thinking that duelists sort of stalk
away from each other, and then, turn around and very
dramatically fire, you assume that everyone knows
exactly what they're doing, and they don't. >> John Haskell: And then,
they negotiate between rounds. >> Joanne B. Freeman:
They negotiate. [multiple voices]. >> John Haskell: They
have all these -- the corner men, so to speak. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Exactly. Sort of come in and try to
figure out, can we end it now? And there's a farmer's kid
who's like talking to Graves in between shots, saying, "Is this over something
you guys said in Congress?" Like, "Why are you
guys dueling?" You know. So, you get
every level of detail, but you really see the degree to which no one really
wanted this to happen. And yet, it did, with
such a fatal outcome. So, that, to me, was a great
example of the many ways in which it was sometimes hard
to avoid this level of violence. >> John Haskell: What
was the deal between -- because you said Senators
aren't necessarily as -- well, they're more
likely to duel, but they weren't
having as many fights. But there was an important fight between Senators
Benton and Foote. What was important about that? >> Joanne B. Freeman: So, yeah. So, this is in 1850, and Thomas
Hart Benton and Henry Foote -- that was what ends up being
the Compromise of the 1850's, being debated at that moment. By that point, the
issue of slavery, partly because of the
ongoing Western expansion of the United States, is
really becoming heated. In this case, the
Compromise in 1850, people really weren't
quite sure how that was going to
get hashed out. Benton and Foote are on
opposite sides of this debate. They had a different sense of how the Compromise
should be made. Foote was, I think,
just an irritable and irritating human being. There's a lot --
it's not very hard to find people saying nasty
things about Henry Foote. Basically, as a historian. So, Foote wanted to humiliate
and discredit Benton. Benton was willing to compromise
in some ways on slavery. Foote was not. So, Foote, again and again and
again, kept trying to find ways to publicly, on the floor of
the Senate, humiliate Benton. And then, finally, one
day, Benton just snaps, and throws back his chair,
sort of throws the table back. You get someone in the gallery
says they heard glass smashing. You know, the pitcher
came off the table. And he ran at Foote. Now, Foote knew that
sooner or later, bad things were going to happen. So, he had armed himself. And so, what happens
in this instance is that Benton runs towards
Foote, and Foote pulls a gun-- this is on the floor of the
Senate -- and aims it at Benton. So, this causes chaos. Right? And people, they
were running towards Foote, and they're running
towards Benton. And there's a cartoon of it,
that shows people running from the galleries and women
throwing their parasols, and it's a moment. But it's a moment that really
shows you how fraught things were, even in this
case, between two people who are not Northerners, between
two people who are Southerners on the issue of slavery. What's interesting about that
moment is, among other things, it happens, nothing happens. Someone grabs the gun from
Foote, puts it in his desk. They sit down. Someone actually says,
"Well, now that that's done, let's get back to work." And someone stands up, actually
a New Hampshire senator stands up and says, "Before we get back
to work, I hope you all realize in this room that because of the
telegraph, within 45 minutes, the nation is going
to be hearing that we're slaughtering each
other here in the Senate, and there's nothing
we can do about it." The telegraph was a new form
of technology at this moment, and there, you can see Congress
grappling with a new form of technology that
sped up the way that political communication
happens. The telegraph moment in the
early 1850s is the equivalent of our social media moment
now, in which there's a form of technology that complicates
the conversation of democracy between people and politicians,
and there you can see, the politicians basically trying
to grapple with that fact. >> John Haskell: But the public
is expressing its interest in reasoned debate, and so, it's
much more exciting for them, somebody calling the
people a name, you know? Or is it, let's talk seriously about transportation
or something? >> Joanne B. Freeman: You mean,
is the public being all civil, while the congressmen
are being -- >> John Haskell:
Yeah, that's it. Yeah. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Yeah, no. >> John Haskell:
There's interplay there. So, they're being
responsive, representative? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
Well, exactly. So, there's kind of a vicious
circle of angst, you know, of anxiety and hostility. You have members of
Congress saying things to rouse their constituents. You have the press reporting
that, with increasing speed and efficiency because
of new technologies. You have the public
responding by basically saying to their members of Congress,
"Fight for our rights." And then, congressmen
responding to that. So, you end up really --
you can see how this anger and anxiety kind of
builds on itself. That's part of what I was trying
to do in the book, was to say, it's not just a bunch of guys
in two rooms in the Capitol, that what we're talking about here is a national
conversation that's partly facilitated by the press. >> John Haskell: You know,
the famous fight that a lot of people know about is Preston
Brooks versus Charles Sumner, not resulting in a
death, but coming close. And that was in the
1850s, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
That was in 1856, yeah. So, that's the one
that everyone knows. You know, it took me 17
years to write this book. And in the 17 years that it
took me to write the book, if I said to people,
"I'm writing a book about physical violence
in Congress," inevitably, they would say, "There
was that guy." This guy, Charles Sumner, they
didn't always know the name, but they knew about
the caning of Sumner. So, that is the one
instance people know about. I think many people
assume that's the only violent incident. I found about 70, over
the course of my research in the House and Senate. What's distinctive about
this one is partly, it comes about after
a series of incidents in which Southerners are
attacking Northerners, and partly because both men,
in a sense, violate the rules of combat, which I know
sounds rather insane, to think that there
are rules of fighting. But there were. So, for example, Preston Brooks
-- you know, you're not supposed to stage a deliberate caning
of that sort in the House. You're supposed to do
that on the street. So, I know. How civil of them, I can hear
you thinking to yourself. Brooks, for two days, waited
outside the Capitol building, trying to catch Sumner
on his way in, so that he would
stage this in a way that it was supposed
to take place. It was only when he
couldn't, that he said, "Oh, the heck with it. I'm just going to go in
and cane him on the floor." What happens afterwards
shows you why that was something
to be avoided. The power of that, of a Southerner caning a
Northern anti-slavery senator to the ground, in
the Senate Chamber, that had a huge power, so -- >> John Haskell: Yeah, I was
going to say, and Sumner was -- he was in people's face, as an
abolitionist [multiple voices] in a way that a lot
of them weren't. Right? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Precisely. And so, a Southerner
said afterwards, "Well, the way he spoke about us,"
he was basically asking for -- I think it's Stephen Douglas who
said, "Some damn idiot is going to attack that damn
idiot," and he's kind of asking for it, you know? That if you speak in that
aggressive a manner, that, to some Southerners,
that was basically asking for some form of retribution. >> John Haskell: And then, there
was the -- around that time, I'd say a little
bit later, right? There was Congressman
Keitt versus Grow. I mean, that was the Civil
War, right there, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
Well, right. That's a really -- >> John Haskell: A real
precursor to the Civil War. >> Joanne B. Freeman:
And that's in 1858. That was a fascinating
fight to uncover. It takes place in 1858. It's during an evening session. Evening sessions
are notoriously bad. There's almost always a
fight, because congressmen go out to dinner, and
they drink, and then, they come back into Congress. So, bad things happen
in evening sessions. And in this case, Galusha Grow,
which I just love that name, because it's such a
wonderful 19th century name. Galusha Grow from
Pennsylvania is standing amid some Southerners. Someone objects to something,
and Grow says, you know, just let's keep going
with what's going on here. He says something to
object to what's being -- going on in the room, but he's
standing amidst Southerners. So, Keitt, Laurence Keitt,
who's a South Carolinian and had had apparently
something to drink with dinner, is not happy that there's
a Northerner standing amid Southerners objecting, and he
says, "Go back to your own side of the House and object." And Grow, who was a fighting
man, said, "I'm not going to listen to the words of
some slave-driving Southerner. This is a free House. I can do whatever I want." At which, Keitt stands up,
apparently muttering to himself, "We'll see about that,"
and comes right up to Grow, grabs his collar
to throw a punch, but Grow responds first,
and he floors Keitt. He punches him, and
he knocks him flat. At that moment, Southerners,
who saw what happened, begin to stream across
the House, partly to break up the fight, partly
to join into the fight. Northern Republicans who see
what's going on begin jumping over tables and chairs in their
haste to get to what's going on -- again, partly to save
their comrade in arms -- or not in arms, but almost. And you end up with
a huge brawl, with dozens of congressmen in the space before the
speaker's platform just engaged in a mass brawl. Huge, you know, punching
each other and throwing things
at each other. I mean, it's massive. In some ways, it's comical,
because it's a bunch of middle-aged congressmen, like
sort of running at each other and like, you know, pulling
on each other's vests. But, you know, people
at the time -- there's a reporter at the
time who says, you know, "That was a group of armed
men from two different sides, North and South, running
at each other in the House of Representatives and fighting. That was a battle." And that, that just
sort of sends a chill. Right? If reporters said
something was different about that fight -- it was a
fight of North against South. It was an armed battle of North
against South on the floor of the House -- we're
going in an ugly direction. >> John Haskell: So, the last
topic I want to get into, and people can, if
you're interested in asking a question,
can cue up. But the last question I wanted
to ask, Joanne, is just kind of a, you know, your general
thoughts about the relevance, the patterns you saw
there, is there -- did you see parallels
at other times? I mean, as a historian,
parallels in other times in U.S. history or even possibly
today, that some of the things that were happening then? >> Joanne B. Freeman: I can
hear you laughing, I know. So, at a certain point. So, I mean, it took me a really
long time to write the book. When I started writing
the book, 17 years ago, we were in a very
different place politically. Over the years, you
know, it became clear. You know, I'm writing a book
about extreme polarization, splintering political
parties, growing distrust in national institutions
of all kinds, conspiracy theories
in the press. You could check off a list and
say that there are many ways in which what we're experiencing
now has some similarities to what I'm talking
about in the book. But I think when you take -- I'll be very historian-esque
now. I think when you take a
big step back, and you look over the long haul of American
history, what you see is -- I think there are
moments, key moments, and history doesn't repeat,
but it certainly echoes and definitely teaches. There are moment when I think
a key issue is under debate, that people recognize as being a
key issue about what America is, and those kinds of debates
become super-polarizing, hyper-polarizing, and you end
up with that sort of checklist of things that I just mentioned. So, in the 1790s, in the
late 1790s, that's a period of dirty, nasty politics. They're violent. There are conspiracy
theories, and the debate at that moment was
how democratic or republic was this
republic going to be. In the 1850s, the issue at
stake obviously is slavery and what its place will or
won't be in the American nation. I would say the 1960s is
another one of those moments, and Civil Rights are
really what's up for debate. And I think now, we're having
another one of those moments, and what's up for
debate is citizenship. And so, it makes
sense that those kinds of moments are polarizing. Of course, they're all
different, so what you can't do, is look back at these other
moments and say, "Ah, well, this happened that time, so, here's what we should
do this time." But what you can see is -- at least, you can gain
an understanding of why, to some degree, why the moment
that we're in is so fraught, and people are so
engaged with it. Because I think people
understand as they did with these other debates, that there's something really
fundamental that's at stake. >> John Haskell: And in
all of those periods, there were media innovations
that were either brand new or close to it, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Precisely. >> John Haskell: That
may have, you know, fed the fire a bit, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
Absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, newspapers
certainly weren't new in the 1790s, but they
were really taking off, with the real power
in the partisan press. The telegraph in the 1850s, TV in the Civil Rights era
really brought home to people in their living room,
literally, what was going on. And now, social media. And it makes perfect sense
that that's the case, because a democratic mode of
politics is about politicians and the public engaging in
some kind of a dialogue. It makes perfect sense that a
form of technology that shapes or alters that dialogue is going to scramble a democratic
[inaudible]. >> John Haskell: And then,
getting back to Forrest Gump, Mr. French, you know, he always
tried to find a middle ground. But in that period, it became
increasingly difficult, right? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Right. And what's fascinating
about him is, so he starts out in his diary,
literally, "I will do anything to appease the South,
anything to appease the South, whatever I have to do," and
over the course of the book, you watch him almost get dragged
into a place where he can't say that anymore, where he's
feeling more and more like, "What are these Southerners
doing? What do they want? Why won't they compromise?" And ultimately, he begins
to feel betrayed, and then, he begins to feel angry. So, like, even someone
who's as moderate as he is for such a long amount of
time, ultimately, in the 1850s, he can't be that
moderate person anymore. He's offended, he's defensive. And even he, then, at that
point, turns on Southerners as being betrayers
who are un-American. And again, that's
something that you see in these polarized moments,
people go to that space. And once you've othered the
other side, to the point that they're un-American,
that's a danger. >> John Haskell: Yeah, and
the consequences were huge. It was a matter of Union or not. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Right. >> John Haskell:
And that's where -- that's why he tried
to find anything, to keep the Union together,
and then, it became, in his view, impossible. >> Joanne B. Freeman:
Well, right. And what kind of Union? At a certain point, is someone
going to allow for this kind of Union, or am I going
to just, you know, will I allow this
Union to happen? And French ultimately
gets to a point -- so, here's an example
of how French was so wonderful, to me, right? At a point in the
book, late in the book, his diary gets a little bit
less juicy in his later years. And I was trying to write about
what he feels about disunion, and I'm shuffling through
the diary, and I'm looking through -- he had
a newspaper column, and he had an extensive
correspondence. And I'm looking,
and I'm looking, and I can't find anything. I'm like, "French, give
me something on disunion." He wrote a poem about disunion, so I got to understand what he
felt about disunion by citing -- who writes a poem
about disunion? Right? Benjamin Brown French
wrote a poem about disunion. >> John Haskell: So, if you
have a question, the mic -- there's mics along -- in both
of the aisles, if you could -- so, we'll start with the
gentleman to my right. >> Audience Member 1:
Thank you very much. It's easy to read 19th century
American history as a period of extraordinary violence. My question really goes
to -- oh, I don't know -- social manners and cultural
manners and etiquette. Is it possible that
violence in that time and place was less
lethal, was rarely lethal? Indeed, most duels,
no one was hurt. It was perhaps a matter of
honor to engage in the duel, but the combination of
technology and perhaps, cooperation between the duelists
often didn't result in a death. >> Joanne B. Freeman:
That's a wonderful -- >> John Haskell: Thank
you for that question. >> Audience Member 1: And so,
is it the nature of violence? Violence was less violent? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Yes, I mean that's a wonderful
question. >> John Haskell: Thank you. >> Joanne B. Freeman: If
you're in a violent culture, or if you're in a place where
there's likely to be violence, you actually are more likely
to have rules of violence, to keep it in certain channels. And so, they actually -- even
as they were doing this behavior that I'm describing
in Congress -- there were rules about how you
should or shouldn't behave. So, for example, if you're
going to insult a man, you should do it
while he's present, and not when he's absent, so
that he can defend himself in whatever way he chooses. And when someone stood
up and insulted someone who wasn't there,
he got reprimanded. So, you're absolutely
right, that a large part of the violence and
the intimidation was for impact more than blood. They weren't out for blood. I mean, if you think about it, these Southerners weren't
trying to dissolve Congress. They were trying to
get what they wanted. And so, the question was,
what did they need to do to get what they wanted. So, yeah, they're not -- they
don't want to draw blood, except for, I suppose, a few
crazy individuals perhaps who did, but generally speaking, they're trying to
have an impact. So, yeah, I think if you're -- if the violence is
open in that way, it's going to be more
rule-bound, because that's going to be the way that you're going
to be able to play with it and deploy it to
get what you want. >> John Haskell: Sir? >> Audience Member 2: I'd
like to follow up on that. So, was that impact a personal
impact, based on personal honor, or was there any sense of, "I'll
look great to my constituents if I take on this
Northern rascal?" >> John Haskell:
That's a great question. >> Joanne B. Freeman: It's
an excellent question. >> John Haskell: Thank you. >> Joanne B. Freeman: And
that's particularly part of what interested me
about this project. It's both. So, on the one hand, very much, these people are performing
before a national audience. They're performing before
their colleagues and peers. They're performing before
their families and friends. So, they certainly -- a
congressman engaged in some kind of fights, worried about
his personal reputation. But very much, he's worried about what his constituents
are going to think, as well. So, for example, Jonathan
Cilley of Maine, he, you know, in my book, I call it the
Northern Congressman's Dilemma. He's stuck, because on the one
hand, he says, "I don't want to get involved in a duel. You know, I don't
want to fight a duel. I don't want to have
anything to do with it. My constituents think dueling is
some barbaric Southern custom. On the other hand, if I
don't, if I back down, I'm going to look
cowardly, and I'm going to humiliate my constituents,
and I'm going to make them look bad,
because my reputation is bound up with theirs, so I have to" --
in the end, he decides to engage with this, because he's worried
about the impact of his actions on his constituents and
what they'll think of him. So, that's part of what's really
interesting about what's going on in Congress in this period. It's part of what intrigued me,
is that nothing that happens in that room is only
happening in that room, right? I mean, some things are
happening behind the scenes, but if it's happening on the
floor and receiving any kind of coverage, it's getting a
national impact in some way. Congress was really,
to a greater degree than now, covered in the press. The majority of column
[inaudible] in newspapers were about Congress in this
period, not the President. So, both of those
things were true, and that makes politics
really fraught and tricky in this time period. >> Audience Member 2: Thank you. >> John Haskell: Sir? >> Audience Member 3: The
periods that you talked about, and the changes that came
about because of technology and all that, and
you've used the word about congressmen performing, how does a performing
President change the venue? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Well,
let me put it this way. Let's talk about Andrew Jackson. And I say that because
Andrew Jackson, you know, was a first President of a
type, you know, sort of fellow who saw himself as a man of the
people in a very aggressive kind of a way and who was a
very aggressive, sort of, definitely a fighting
man individual who tended to goad his fellow
congressmen who supported him to attack congressmen
who didn't support him. So, you know, in his case --
and he was, in some cases, putting on a performance. You know, in some
cases, his sort of wild, angry Andrew Jackson was,
"Now it's time for me to be wild, angry
Andrew Jackson. And now, everyone's left
the room, and I can sit down and stop being wild,
angry Andrew Jackson." But there's a case, for
example, there are two -- actually, Henry Wise
is one of them. There are two congressmen
who end up being very much anti-Jackson. And Jackson, in a room full of
people -- a few years before, one of his supporters, actually
Sam Houston, the Sam Houston, had violently caned a
congressman who opposed Jackson to the ground in the street. So, now, a couple years later, Jackson's in a room
full of people. He's talking about Henry
Wise and another fellow who he really hates, and he
says to this roomful of people, "Someone needs to
Houstonize them." Now, right. I love the mix of
laughter and ohhh. Right? On the one hand, you
know, he made up a word. All by itself, that
was like, "Really? He just coined that phrase?" On the other hand, he literally
was asking someone in that room to attack these two congressmen,
who immediately went and armed themselves,
because they knew exactly what that meant. So, you know, the presidency --
in this period, the presidency in the 19th century, it's
in a different place, institutionally, than it is now. But it's certainly part of the
mix, and when, at the time, you had a President like
Jackson, who sort of put himself in the fray in that
way, it had an impact. >> John Haskell: Sir? >> Audience Member 4: I'm
curious when all this stopped, when it became, you
know, out of bounds for this sort of
violence to go on. Obviously, this wasn't the
last time there were really fundamental questions
before Congress, about what the country is. >> John Haskell:
Yeah, Joanne addressed that in the book, you know. >> Joanne B. Freeman: As to
when it stopped, the question is when is it no longer
really the case that this violence
is acceptable? >> Audience Member 4: Right. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Well,
yeah, so what's interesting about that -- I do talk
about that in the Epilogue, because that's a question,
when I was working on the book, that everybody asked,
which is, you know, so then what happens
after the war. And interestingly, you know, the
first state or two that tries to get back into the Union,
they send people to Washington. These men are very sort
of proud and high strung and very resentful
about the sort of tone of the conversation. So, there's two, I believe,
Louisiana congressmen who end up attacking Northerners
in the Capitol Building. One of them actually canes
someone not in the Senate, but within the Capitol Building. What's fascinating about
that is the response. And this helps -- this is part
of the answer to your question. Northerners who hear of this
in the House and Senate, basically say, "Do we want to
let them back into the Union? Do you all remember what it
was like here in the 1850s, because that's what
we're seeing again." The power dynamic had
shifted so fundamentally that what [inaudible] really
have clout did not have clout in that way anymore, and you
can see that in the response to those little outbursts
of violence. And after that point,
in a sense, violence shifts to local areas. Violence of Southerners
turns on itself, right? Then, you get Reconstruction
violence. You have violence and
control being asserted on a different battlefield
of sorts. >> John Haskell: Yes? >> Audience Member 5: Hi. I have a historian
process question. I was interested
in, when you said, the official record
was less help on this topic than
private diaries. So, how did you find them? Especially for non-famous
people? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Yeah. >> Audience Member 5: We
have a family tradition of some Civil War
correspondence, which, boy, I'd love to get my
hands on that. Where are they? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Yeah, no. And you're absolutely right. First off, non-famous people
are sometimes the best people to find. In the case of this
book, I had three months at the Library of Congress. So, I just literally
marched my way through -- I had lists of congressmen, and
I just marched my way through. What was key in the
end was triangulating. Right? So, it was a
matter of, first of all, seeing who had diaries. Diaries were sometimes the best. Letters to wives were also
among the best evidence. Because men would admit all
kinds of fears and thoughts and feelings to their wives that they wouldn't
admit anywhere else. But it was a little
-- in the beginning, needle in a haystack-ish
kind of research, really. And it was that kind of
research in combination with really rummaging
through databases. I couldn't have done
this project without huge newspaper
databases and the fact that the whole Congressional -- the equivalent of the
Congressional Record in the period also
was all online. So, I mean, it's remarkable. I had to do a lot of
archival research and digging to find one little incident
here and there, but I could sit at my desk, read the
equivalent of the Record, go to a newspaper database
to see the newspaper coverage of what I just seen, go
to Google Books and look for the memoir or autobiography
of someone who was there at the time, to see what
he said -- all at my desk. And that was not the case of
my first book, by a long shot. So, it was a combination of really strategic database
deployment and being willing to rummage around
with the, you know -- I mean, there's a reason
why it took me 17 years to write this book. Right? Is that there
was a lot of rummaging. The fact of the matter is, I
adore that kind of research. Right? That's my nirvana as a
scholar, is to be with the stuff and dig around and
see what I can find, because you really never know
what you're going to find. So, that part of
it made me happy. >> Audience Member 6: Hi. A question in general. [inaudible]. Congressmen Abraham Lincoln,
in his one term in Congress, did he witness, or was he
involved in any of these things, one, and two, before he
was famous, James Shields, the judge -- he almost got
into a duel with James Shields, a judge who later was a senator
for three different states, on an island that
no longer exists in the Mississippi River called
Bloody Island, and [inaudible], etc. Can you give insights
into either of those aspects of our greatest American
yet to live life? >> Joanne B. Freeman: I
can, and they're going to be frustratingly
brief insights. >> Audience Member 6: Okay. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Lincoln
certainly saw some of this, but he didn't take
part in any of it. And I only -- I had to
restrict what I was looking at, to things that took
place in Washington when Congress was in session. Because if I let
myself go beyond that, I would still be
working on this book. There's just too much violence. So, I pretty much had
to stay focused -- I had to reign myself in,
still, to a vast topic. But I couldn't go beyond the
bounds of [multiple voices]. >> Audience Member 6: Was
the President present in any of the incidents that was in
your book, Field of Blood? >> Joanne B. Freeman:
With Lincoln? >> Audience Member
6: Yeah, Lincoln, that he witnessed
anything in person? >> Joanne B. Freeman: For sure. I mean, there was not
a session of Congress where there wasn't violence. So, he certainly would have. >> John Haskell: Let's
get to this next question. Sir? >> Audience Member 7: Yes, yes. I have been shown a
hole, a bullet hole, in a desk in the House
of Representatives. I wonder if you know the
story behind that bullet hole, and is it in your book? >> Joanne B. Freeman: Wow. I only know in the
period that I wrote about, so the 1830s, '40s, and '50s. I only know of one gun going off
in the House, and in that case, it went through the
door of the House and hit a Capitol Police Officer
in the leg who, of course, was a close friend of
Benjamin Brown French. And I'm not even joking. But I don't know the story of
that desk, so I don't know. >> John Haskell: Thank you. I think we have time for
one or two more questions, if they're super quick. >> Audience Member 8:
Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for speaking. I came in a few minutes late,
so you'll have to forgive me, if you've already touched
on this, my question relates to the topic of gender. More specifically, how is the
increase in the number of women in Congress impacted topics
of violence and disagreement from the period of the
Civil War and more recently, from the Civil Rights era? >> John Haskell:
That's a great question. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Well,
certainly, in this period, there was a -- kind
of a mixed response to the presence or
absence of women. So, sometimes, when some
bad moment was happening on the floor, sometimes,
the people engaged in it would actually pause
and look up at the galleries, to see how many women
were present and sometimes, tone it down. On the other hand, really nasty
congressmen would sometimes look up in the gallery to
be sure that the wife of the person they were
about to attack was there, so that then they could
humiliate him even more. So, sometimes, having a
woman present was, you know, it's almost a cliche,
a taming influence. Sometimes, it wasn't, and
the fact of the matter is, not everything was
happening in Congress. Boarding houses, there
was stuff going on. Women were there in the
boarding houses, as well. So, they were part of this
debate, and their presence or absence had something
to do with what went on. As a matter of fact,
interestingly, Preston Brooks, when he went to cane Sumner,
he goes into the Senate, and there was a woman
in the room. And he sat down and
waited for her to leave before he caned
her -- caned Sumner. And he apparently sat there, and
a friend came in and saw him, like in a chair, just kind
of gazing at this woman, and walked over to him and said, "She's rather attractive,
isn't she?" And Brooks said something
along the lines of, "Yes, I wish she would leave." You know. So, he wasn't
going to do what he did in front of another woman. Obviously, over time,
that changes dramatically. One of the things that's
happening in this period is that you're getting women
reporters, to a greater degree. Actually, the first woman in
the official press gallery, she's there the day that
Foote pulls a gun on Benton, by chance, and writes an
account of it, which is not any, you know, dramatically different
from anyone else's account, but of course, she's
attacked for being hysterical and emotional and all of the
things that would be said of a woman doing
anything publicly, yeah. So, obviously, that changes
tremendously over time. In this period, it's
kind of equivocal. >> John Haskell: So, I think
we need to wrap it up now. And I just want to
thank you so much. This was a fascinating
presentation. >> Joanne B. Freeman: Thank you. [ Applause ] Thank you.
