Transcripts For CSPAN2 Heather Cox Richardson How The South Won The Civil War 20240712

How the south won the civil war oligarchy, democracy, and the continuing fight for the soul of amerca. I am joanne freeman, a professor of history and american studies at yale university, and this afternoon i have the pleasure of being in conversation with heather about her book and other matters political. This program is being produced by the brooklyn Historic Society which is been a cultural hub for civic dialogue and command outreach for over 150 years. Thats some real history. Her book has gotten a lot of critical praise, for example, the Washington Post writes, Heather Cox Richardson a professor of history at Boston College explains goldwater crusade and the trajectory of modern conservatism in her masterful book. I kind of book that sheds light and was perhaps the most important Political Coalition of the 20th century. And Publishers Weekly says richardson and emphasizes the prevalence province of racism and sexism and inequality in other parts of the country during and following the civil war, she marshals above of evidence to support the books provocative title. Conservatives will cry foul but liberal readers would be persuaded by this lucid jeremiah. Im really, really excited to dig in your but first i want to invite those of you out there in a were listening to share your questions for heather, and you can do that by typing into the q a box i think you all see at the bottom of your screen. We will take as many as again in the second part of the program of these as whole of last about an hour. Now its my great pleasure to introduce Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, author of six books about american politics and writer of the very popular newsletter, letters from americans. Welcome, heather. Thank you, joanne. I was trying to and meet myself. I want to start by thanking first brooklyn Historic Society for doing this, but also to say to people watching, im incredibly excited about this because this is the first time weve been able to do our own history thing together. I have asked her to open this way up beyond my book and now to talk about her new book as well, the field of blood but to talk about how the past speaks to the current moment and to talk at whats going on in american politics today. We will talk about my book and we will talk about her book but will also talk about the first moment. The fact we limited to an hour thank you for giving it a shot. Im excited to be here. Its will be fun. Let me start with innocence was an obvious question but is probably want a lot of people are wondering about now. Even in just the two little bit ive read about responses to your book, they use words like provocative, timely. I want to stop asking, how is at you came to write this book . What brought you to it given how timely it is . Of course you never know its going to be timely and you start writing but one of the things i study is i used to call the zeitgeist. Id be politics all the time nsa how i people thinking about things . Ill explain later how, where i came to end up on that, but what happened was when i was writing my last book, the history of the Republican Party, when i read goldwater, i was cops make because its so similar to james Henry Hammons mosul speechmaking 50 in which he talks about how really government is best if its run by a few good people and the government cant get involved in things because that will be unconstitutional and going to destroy certain peoples liberty. They use that word a lot and they were very, very, very similar. I had never seen the comparison. One owe five netbook i was also teaching and is teaching betrayal of tears, the 1830 movement, the pushing out of the native americans out of the southeast into oklahoma. I was in steeped that particular week in the congressional conversations about why it was a good thing for the indians to lose their land and the force understand the march in which some of them died and why this happened to be, why congress had to do this the white to good thing for the indians. That happen to be the same weight as some Football Player, i dont remember which one, but some Football Player was caught on a video writing his girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair. I dont member any of the characters involved what hit me about those things was the language was the exact same. The same excuse for this man dragging his girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair, she wasnt listening to him. It was for the good. All those things. The same thing as reading in congress about why the indians deserve to be pushed into oklahoma. This all said to me there was something about the day, now, that echoed all the power struggles in the past, and what i wanted to get you was what created those power struggles and had into any moment today that sounded so much like the confederates had sounded, like delete confederates sound in 1850s . That reinforces to my mind what i decide was it has a lot to do with language. With this book is about is how language creates power structures and societies permits certain people to take power. That to me one of the reasons im so excited about this is that to me speaks the much to what you did in the field of blood talk about the field of emotion have the coming of the civil war which you focus more in the early part than i did really had to do with emotion. How did you end up writing that book . Well, youre right that in the sense although the book is about physical violence in the u. S. Congress and the logic of it and the impact of it, what struck me when i begin that book was i knew it would be about congress. And it would be about violence. I didnt know how much violence there was but the language that people were throwing around and the response to the language even just in the historical record, you could see how in the case of my book, they were really strategically and deliberately using language to intimidate or silence or manipulate people who disagreed with them, and light of work. It really relied on emotion. Intimidation is something that often works. Fear or humiliation are things that if youre in congress and performing before national audience, if you want you can manipulate that and reshape what someone is able to do. Along the same lines of what youre talking about but i was really interested in doing in my book was looking at the real dynamics was going on in congress and how that was shaping politics overall. Use the word bullying again and again and again. It is bowling behavior. What an argument is the way rolling take shape, police that he initially, the way bullying take shape is through language. The way you put things, we say things. Nowadays we talk about gas lighting but really what youre doing is youre shaping a worldview that the use of language to establish dominance over somebody else, to bully them. It is astonishing to me the parallels between the past, the 1850s, not all the past because we dont always do it but the 1850s and where we are now. For sure. I think about that all the time. Even just the realm of bullying, because what bullying is about and the reason why its particularly effective in politics is because you dont have to exert force. You have to make clear that you could exert force if you want to. Its about the threat. If youre a bully you are suggesting you could do really ugly things. If you wanted to it you have to do them. You just have to be sure that the person being bullied understands that and will respond to that. Its a brilliant way to manipulate people, and when it works it really works. I need you to do me a favor now. [laughing] the threat that, ill do that but a need you to do me a favor though. Exactly. I could do this to you, or i could do something to you, or we could get along. Yes, as long as you do what i want you to do. Yes. Now, what an example in your book, one of the things i think we both share in her book is this fascination with language and the power of language and the ways in which we take it for granted but its such a force of shaping politics. What is an instance in your book of a moment when it really struck you that language in and of itself was having a shaping influence . There are two places it really shows up. Its kind of everywhere if you think about it. One of the reason more people dont study it is its very hard to say this matters. Because you cant quantify. We all know it matters. Someone said to me once, when my earlier books, you never quantified how this talk was aboard. I said understand i didnt do that, but can you stand the right now, this wouldve been in the 80s i guess maybe the 90s, can you stand the right now, Rush Limbaugh doesnt matter . Of course the matters we can measure it. Does that mean we shouldnt study at . The places that jumped out at me were in 1954 i really, cracks me up your the 19 fate for professor because so much happened in 1954. In 1954 right after joe mccarthy goes, crashes and burns in the Army Mccarthy hearings because people once and for all actually see him. They dont just kidding. Its not just the language but they actually see him, and rather than saying hes a crusader for anticommunism and look at him and say hes a thug, a bully and we dont want any part of the. After that short after that, William Buckley junior and his brother come out with a book mccarthy and his enemy. In that they say mccarthy might even run around edges but he was right. We conservatives, Movement Conservatism was not ever really traditional conservatism. It was about a commitment to undo new deal and we are seeing a play out right now. They write this book and they say we conservatives have to stand against what the call liberalism. By liberalism they made everybody else. Payment all the democrats, all the eisenhower republicans this is a time 1954 when eisenhower republicanism looks terrific. Were getting the interstate highways, the g. I. Bill putting everybody into middleclass jobs. That everybody thats an exaggeration of people of color especially didnt do as much for people of color but a lot of people i grew up with who wouldve been probably not even skilled workers because of the g. I. Bill vaulted into middleclass as engineers auris printers or any number of things they could do without education which is not attainable for them during the depression. In this moment william f. Buckley and his brother fight this book and they say we conservatives are stand against all you. Thats basically nobody else. They do Something Interesting in that but because thats for the first time when they capitalize conservatism and liberal. People just talked to john about we are all liberals. A literary critic says you cant talk about liberalism because they thought what is a liberal. They met in this general we believe government has multiply rightly business in providing a social statement and for voting infrastructure. Republicans and democrats are driven a gizmo which parts of the more important. Everybody thought of themselves as liberal. They capitalize it and they say these guys are essentially like the communist party in china. They are a party, a curveball that is take over america and that powerful construction and at the time it was this, the book itself was not terribly well received. People are like really, mccarthy is a good guy . It does get a lot of attention but by now the idea of being a liberal, remember in the 80s people started to call it the l word. Now dont call them the l word. Now its this epithet and you can see that being constructive. That was one moment, and other moment was in the 1990s, Newt Gingrich Political Action committee literally, they were in charge of, they were kind of, they were the coaches for the new republicans, the newly elected republicans that kind of socialism into the Republican Party. What they do is they circulate a document with all the words they should use when you talk about democrats. Those are words like trader and lazy and special interest and angry and all these really negative words. Republicans, traditional republicans that they then are labeled rinos, republicans in name only. Again, very powerful language. You could literally see them using language to divide the country in two and to label half of it as negative and half of it as positive. So it really, those were the two touchstones for me. But im trying to remember, you talked about a similar touchstone, i think, in feel the blood, didnt you . Well, certainly what youre describing is a what i talk about too, and the she scenariou just described with language is a group of people creating a new we by creating a them. Yeah. So its fascinating, just capitalizing those words helps to suggest that theres an it there, right in that conservatives and liberalism are not just words, theyre capitalized. And the power of that is, you know, in a way, doesnt even necessarily have awareness. It becomes it just by looking at it. That really gets back to power of language in politics because if youre really effective at that skill, then youre basically finding a way not just to create an us and a them, but to plug people into assumptions and emotions that are going to play well for you, right . Because words are like a direct drill, they can be, right into emotions, responses, right into things that you arent necessarily going to process, right . And so one example actually in my first book, and its, you know which is called affairs of honor, by the way. I loved it. Oh, thank you. Affairs of honor in the new republic. Whats interesting in part, you know, one of the factors of democracy and the vulnerabilities of democracy is how important language is because democracy is about negotiating powers which is about persuasion. So by definition its more formidable and flexibility, and that can be used for good and bad. But so all the way back to the beginning of the republic theyre playing these kinds of games with words. And even in the government theres a Federalist Party in the 1790s is, in a sense, more elitist and more big money driven and discomfited by democracy, and theres a letter from the federalist that talks about if you go out and give a speech in front of the public and anyone uses the word aristocrat, youre done. So many other things, thats why theres privilege and elitism and the moral of rights. Theres a cascade of things from that one word that ten years earlier didnt are that baggage attached to it. In a sense the same thing which is the intense power that Something Like a word can have and the ways in which that shapes power in politics. Well, in late 20th and early 21st century the word was taxes. Another great moment where polls said people were not actually that concerned about taxes by the 1980s, but if you talk about taxes, it conjured up this idea that somehow the taxes of hard working white people were going to go into the pockets of lazy people of color and feminists. And you and we even have a conversation by one of the political operatives, lee atwater, who talks about it. And he says, you know, in by 1968 you cant use racial epithets, although he uses it in this quotation, says you cant really go out and say vote for me or youre going to have to deal with this. He says so we generalized it. We started talking about busing. People knew what you were talking about. Then he said you could take one more step back and you Start Talking about taxes, and people are like, oh, yeah. Like, i care about taxes. When you talk about taxes, it is not, you know, you write it down on the paper, you study it in congress. It is not carrying the baggage of, you know, this long history of American Fear of an underclass redistributing wealth. But the reality is by 980 when 1980 when americans hear republican politicians swearing they will never raise taxes and that democrats want to take money from the makers and give it to the takers, it is absolutely copedded racial coded racial language. So all you have to do is so to make sure we dont have have social welfare regulations is to say do you want your taxes raised . And there you go. 150 years of American History is right on the table is that threeletter word. And deploying it is the key to a certain kind of politics. And its so deceptive because its so seedy, right . And we see that all the time now. Someone will phrase something, and youll see on social media people will say dog whistle, thats a dog whistle. And other people are say, no, its not, its probably x, y or z,. [laughter] and no, it isnt. It shows the power of that kind of attack. And it also is a diversion because you can say thats not what i meant. I remember when people started using what we knew as the okay symbol as a white power symbol. Right. And i remember the first time i read that thinking, no, ive been doing that my whole life. And by the time you start seeing it in all these places, youre like, my god, youre right. That is a dog whistle. But theres a period of am by ambiguity where if you said it was the a white power symbol, especially older people, you people are social justice warriors. And that was deployed in such a way that it was doubly powerful. Not only were you calling your people to you, but anybody who called you out on it then had uninvolved people saying, no, youre being paranoid. Which, again, is one of the ways language works. These days we talk about gaslighting. Thats exactly how gaslighting works. Right. Just as youre saying, this ambiguity that this mean okay or something else, in that early period if you say, oh, no, it means more, by some logic to some people youve declared your loyalty to them. Just by asking a question which buys right into the us and them creation thats shaping politics. And when i was working on my book, the degree to which people at the time understood the kind of power. In the late 1850s when, you know, were moving up to purge the civil war, i found a lot of members of congress and actually others outside of congress saying it to each other over and over again, we have to control our words. Which is a striking thing to hear if youre talking about people in intense crisis and worried about if the union is going the collapse, and theyre saying watch your words. Thats a testimony to what power and an emotional power they can have on a high level and on a popular level as well. Theres one southerner in that late period who refers to words being spoken as missiles. He says a to a northerner, dont send missiles at us. Certain kind of words were going to have bloodshed, so hold off on the missiles. So their rights plug into this, but i think the power of that is its to easy to not acknowledge it. Well, in the 19th century they studied rhetoric. There were people like joshua chamberlain, professor of rhetoric. They literally studied how to use words to mobilize populations, and we kind of let that go in the early 20th century. Ive actually got on the back of these shelves a whole series of books on famous to rations in history from the 19th to rations. From the 19th century. And the fact that we have permitted that to be, the study of it to be forgotten but also for it to be deployed by people who are acting in such a way that most americans are not aware of it is really deeply problematic. I saw today there is a new ad out from the Trump Campaign that is really, really misleading and and chopped all kinds of stuff up. Stuff that is not historically accurate, and it makes people sound like theyre saying things that they are not saying, you know . Give a great example from a book that you and i both know where somebody used a quotation, and it was entirely accurate except he took out the word not. Hes like its true, but except for that little word not which kind of mattered. But one of the things that i really focus on is the difference between image and reality. And how people can tell if somebody is being, is being manipulated. Because one of the things i lay out is so once you get this us versus them, and my work is all based in this period, largely theoretically based on eric hoffer, and he was interested in how you take a body of people you know, everybodys all worried about the rise of hitler and mussolini and how they managed to rise. He said who cares how they rose . Every generation has had hitlers and mussolinis. What you care is why certain people will listen to them. How do they rise at certain times, because theyre always there. Once youve done the us and them thing were talking about and that its absolutely done by language, then you have to kind of weaponize it. And so i went from that and came up with in the 1850s these four stages of how you go from its in my interests to crypt an us and them create an us and them to how that purpose turns into a societal view of, well, yeah. Us is better than the others through religion, through society, through all those things, and then those themes, well, they thems, well, they probably shouldnt vote. And once they cant vote, they really shouldnt have any power. And pretty soon at a point where if the people who are defined as the others are still trying to have a say in society, you actually start killing them. And thats a leap that you dont obviously always get to, but its a fourstage process. And that question of how do you know when youre being manipulated right. And how do you, how do you stop the process, i think, is one that speaks directly to this moment. And i wonder, you know, i know you have ideas about that, and i think thats probably an important place to go. How do people know that theyre being manipulated . I mean, its a really good question. Its probably the most consistent question that my students ask me when were studying political history, right . And in my classes im mostly looking at the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so were even looking at who are supposedly great men who say reliable things. But inevitably if youre talking about politics and youre talking about words, theres a point where they get confused and they basically say what you just said, which is how do i know what to believe . When do these people mean what theyre saying, and when are they saying things just to have an impact in so how can i judge when theyre being politicians or when theyre being sincere . Now, the fact that you have to ask that question tells you a lot about politics. [laughter] its that fuzziness that is the engine of it, so to speak. But in part my answer to that question always has to do withing a being aware of details surrounding contests, not letting yourself respond in a way youre expected to respond. Its something where you can get swept up and you have a response. But, rather, if you are able to step back and think about whos speaking, what outcomes might they want or not want, we need to focus on the details which in a sense is what i teach as a historian teaching the history majors, right . Its all about thinking about evidence, being able to think about evidence, what it is, what it means and what the circumstances are that might shape its meaning. I mean, its a tricky question. I cant say i sit here all the time and think to myself, well, thats totally, you know, he really believes that. Sometimes you can tell and sometimes you cant. But you have to think about it before assuming something. And i think the particularly now when technology, you know, technology always shapes democracy in unpredictable ways, and right now one of the things its doing is making it even harder than normal to decide what facts are. So even as im sitting here saying we need to step back and consider circumstances, sometimes its hard nowadays to even know what the circumstances are. Its confusing. I guess what i would say is the book stretches over time, the right . The confusion of truth and reality is ultimately apartment of what crypts a particular kind of moment in politics. So i say, i tell my students kind of certainly we always do the who, what, why, when, where and all that, but i always talk about two things, and one is step back for a second. Like, do you really think that your neighbors are, you know, keeping babies in the basement . You know, step back for a second, do you really think that this would have happened . Because so much of what we hear is and this was in the 1850s, of course, but certainly in the present moment so much of what you hear, oh, my god, theyre going to do and then you say, really . I know a lot of people like that. Ive met a lot of people in my life, and to my knowledge, you know. Right. Keep people in barrel in the basement. Thats not normal behavior. So thats the first stage. But the other thing i always talk about, and its actually funny that im telling you that. Because of this pap demick, i pandemic, i am actually sitting on property that belonged once upon a intime to the woman who told me this. She was born in 1896 although if anybody checked, you would see she lied about her age. When i was young and very into ideology, i cared a lot about how people think about stuff, and id come to her house and say, oh, the republicans believe this and they did this, and shed say, heather, who was getting the money and who was giving the money . [laughter] and i was like, no, no, they cared about these issues. Heather, who was gettingif the money . Getting the money . And thats the other thing that we see all the time is people will send stuff to you and say, is this real . Is this the real . You know, this is terrifying, is this real . Think about whos making the money from this. And you can see the thing of us versus them. E get this all the time, i dont know about you, but i get emails you always say the things you do because, you know, youre so highly paid. [laughter] seriously . Like i have no complaints, i make a very good living, but the idea that somehow sean hannity is telling the truth to them and i am not because im so well paid . His worth on the internet. I promise you, as a College Professor i am not giving sean hannity a run for his money, you know . So you might want to sit there and say, plus i still do my day job. You might want to sit there and say whos making money from this particular video, and whos going the stand to gain not only from the propaganda, but also from the legislation thats being put in place. You know, i could sit here and tell you that im doing fabulous things for, you know, for the farmers in iowa, but you might want to look at what im doing and not what im saying. Because what im say i could say anything, and i could tell you its snowing outside. That doesnt make it snowing outside. Thats one of the really important things that both the 1850s and the present bring to, really to the table is if youre not going to be swept up in this emotional language, how do you step out of it . And thats, thats, i think both of those eras talk about really examining whos talking and why, what emotions its triggering and does it make you feel angry and afraid and misrabble, or does it make you miserable, or does it make you feel, hey, im e empowered. Thats an important it really going to be sharia law in oklahoma . I was a waitress in oklahoma. I dont think i ever heard anybody talk about sharia law in oklahoma. So that was one of those ones that made the rounds, and you thought, the really . Really . Sharia law in oklahoma . If it happened, id go see it. [laughter] right. Right. And so often its in one way or another a way to plug into the reality is to ask that kind of question, right . Is to ask, well, just recently someone on twitter was proclaiming about all xs, right . All people who are like this are all like that. Theyre evil, and theyre out for no good, and theyre only out for money and blah, blah, blah. And my response was, so am iville . I mean, if everyones like that, like, we engage all the time. No, youre not. Ah, okay. So who are you talking about . Who fits into that . And why are you saying that . But whats interesting about what you just said is on the one hand its a way to decode and process something, but you can also see how it might feed into conspiracy theories, right . And thats one of the big sort of detracting problems of this kind of moment that were in now, that the 1850s were, that actually the late 1790s were when there was a real us and them component and people feel that something fundamentally american is going to be decided. They want to understand how and why things are working the way they do, and theyre almost more prone to come up with a conspiracy to explain it. Yeah. Ive never quite understood that because, you know, i am not a conspiracy person. Im a very kind of lets just keep asking questions until we get to the base of things. And one of the things thats always astonished me is if you want to understand conspiracies and you want to understand how things really work, theyre everywhere around you. Like, if you want to really get into something, go ahead and look at the history of the post office this is this entangled, complicated, fascinating human story. Why are you manufacturing something when theres so much real stuff thats to fascinating. And thats so fascinating. And i was talking just yesterday about the leadup to the iran war and the group of neocons [inaudible] and i remember hearing about that in the 1990s and thinking, oh, thats [inaudible] its on the internet signed by them, you know, by bill kristol and Donald Rumsfeld and all the people who went on to get us involved in the war in iraq. And i thought why on earth are people inventing conspiracy theories about what happened when you literally can sit there and say heres a group of people who launched this argument that after the cold war america needed to reassert its world power, and it needed to do so beginning in iraq. And then i also heard about Donald Rumsfeld after 9 11 saying did we get enough to hit saddam hussein. Oh, thats a conspiracy theory. He couldnt possibly is have said that. [laughter] and then, of course, once i did the research, he did. He absolutely said it. It was never contested everywhere you look. So i always wonder about conspiracy theorists because, like, if you want to get really involved in stuff and look at the levers of power and look at how things change, its all right there. You dont have to invent something happening in the basement of a pizza parlor or the idea that somehow, you know, somebody planted a birth certificate in hawaii or that Anthony Fauci is somehow started something on aids that has been up covered by a medical researcher. Theres plenty right there that you can get into. I think theres actually an element that goes beyond simply wanting to feel like you know something nobody else does. I i think its a sign of people feeling empowered. They want to say they know more than the experts, that somehow the experts are cheating and they somehow know more just by their own gut sense. And thats really deeply problematic because as i said to somebody yesterday, you know, experts can be really prickly. We tend to be i think you and i are fairly approachable, but certainly i anyway and im sure you have had ec experiences asking what seem like a Pretty Simple question to an expert, and they treated you like you were the stupidest, dumbest, like you werent even really in lieu of. And its always mortifying. So some of them can be difficult, but i dont think ive ever met a real expert who wasnt deeply and profoundly in love with their topic and in love with the truth. So you dont have to be their friend, but the idea that somehow some researcher, some real researcher who is pulling down 30,000, 40,000 a year tops, is working 80hour weeks because somehow shes on the payroll of big pharma is just nuts, you know . If you want to look at whos on the payroll of big pharma, you can actually see that. But the idea that i somehow this poor researcher at, you know, university of nebraska is part of some conspiracy is just, again, a divorce from reality. Right. Its a sad divorce from reality, right . Because its plugging right into what [inaudible] validate your assumptions, plugs right into your emotions, it creates a neat story. Very often conspiracies crypt a very clear story and just as youre saying, you have to find the facts, you have to figure them out, you have to understand how they fit together or dont fit together which is sometimes not that difficult to do. But its not as satisfying, and also, you know, your the people who you talk about between us, you know, who are experts in their topic and passionate about it and want to talk to people about it and want to engage about it, what they are doing as experts is something that conspiracy theories dont plug into. And that is history isnt about clear stories. Its the struggles that create whats happening, right . And the struggles are always more interesting than the storylines that we create because theyre neat and tidy and wrap things up in a bow. The struggle and the fight and the complexity and the ambiguities, thats a part of the fascinating part about history, is finding them and trying to look through the eyes of someone at that time to see how theyre making sense of that. I mean, thats some of what i lo to do about love to do about history is, you know, i did it when i studied dueling, right . How does that make sense . Two guys are mad at each other, and they go to a field, and one shoots at the other, and then everything is solved. Really . [laughter] people thought that was logical. So, okay, let me dig around and figure out the logic of it because its really logical because theyre risking their lives for that logic e. So then you figure it out and, of course, its mixed up with things like reputation and political power, and all thiepg these things get mixed in and it makes perfect sense. But its far more interesting than, boy, they hated these people, and is so they killed each other and what a time that was. That doesnt tell you about the time period. And this also fascinates me because one of the things we do in history is people say east everything in the past is great or bad, yet human beings are mixed, and i think our history is mixed. One of the things about the polarizing language were talking about, and i want to emphasize polar arizing language that is designed to create and sustain a power structure, one of the problems with that very clear narrative language is it takes away the ambiguity of what human beings really are. And when thats got a negative side to it, one of the things that always, that i find so powerful about American History is that your heroes come from nowhere. I mean, they really i say to my students nobody wakes up one morning and says im going to be a real jerk today. I need to go out and kill a bunch of people. [laughter] they put their feet on the floor and they say im going to two out and protect my family, you know . They dont nobody ever sees themselves as a villain, you know . Unless they are, i guess theres always a caveat. But for the most part, the kind of regular people you talk about in fields of blood who, you know, like your french guy who goes into washington, and hes just a regular nice guy, and by the end of the book hes carrying a gun. You know, he didnt walk up and say im going to be a warrior today. He woke up and said im going to go about my day and gradually he got radicalized. And one of the things that fascinates me about that is the opposite is also true. You know, people put their effete on the ground and they dont say im going to go out and be a hero today, they say im going to go fishing today because aye got to put ive got to put food on the table. Or as you and i know so well, im going to go to work today because its my job to go to work. Or my favorite, theres a great book by Teresa Comiskey that i really love because its about four women during world warm ii who ran the underground world war ii who ran the understood ground in the philippines. I hate to give away a spoiler here, but one of them becomes a hero because she goes to get end rolled by the japanese which is going to lead to everybody else being in camp, incarcerated. They say thats not going to happen, but it is. Like everybody else, she goes to be signed up, and at where theyre supposed to be sign up, just before the japanese she has a panic attack and she cant be there. And her friends are like, no, no, just stay the ten minutes, write your name. No, no i cant, i cant, ive got to go home. So because she has a panic attack, she gets put in such a position that she is the only person whos has not been rounded up, and shes staying shes terrified, you know, hes in an apartment for weeks without being discovered. To she watches the movements of the occupiers the whole time, and when she emerges, she has information that nobody else does. But she did not flake out and say im going to be a hero, im going to refuse to be end roll, im going to spy on the japanese. She went yeah, im going to go along with everybody else, but she had a panic attack. So people are like where are heroes . Im like, theyre us, you know . You might be putting your feet on the ground today thinking that youre just going to, you know, go downtown, and when the push comes to shove and you have to make a decision between doing whats right and doing whats wrong, if you choose whats right, thats the first step to being a hero. And thats the piece that i feel like its kind of gotten lost in these sweeping narratives where youre either good or youre bad. No, youre both. The trick is to keep choosing to be good. Right. Well, right. Thats, you know, when you look over the broad sweep of americans, there is a tendency often among some people to try and find the golden period, right in the good period. The period when it was all good and smiley and happy and then it got bad after that point. And, of course, there is no golden moment. August 13, 1897. [laughter] for ten minutes in the morning [laughter] thats right. But that moment doesnt exist, right . There are always compromises being made. There are always people making good choices and bad choices. And the struggle of any country but certainly the american story is about some people having ideals and ambitions and hoping to make the right choice, other people being motivated by Different Things, some people unable to perceive possibilities, other people able to, and they bang up against each other and and choices are made and the story moves on. There is no moment in American History when you dont have the struggle and the ugliness and the ideals all wound up together in one big, messy blob. And part of the challenge of being a historian is acknowledging that, allowing yourself to believe in the things that feel believable without a painting something as perfect or golden or better. When you do that, you rerace the human erase the human struggle from history, and that is what history is. People making choices about where we go from here. Its also the future. Right. And how we move past the moments that were, that were currently in. Right. Now,ing i see im glancing at the corner of my screen, i see that a lot of people have been asking a question in a general kind of a way which is and, of course, this makes sense because we keep talking about history and the links to the present, but how the civil war itself laid foundation for rhetorical shifts and ideological shifts that we see today. So lets begin there, you know . How do we see and particularly this applies to your book. [inaudible] thats right. This conversation is so good. In your book because youre making that a pattern clear over time, how does the first period in your book a lay patterns for what comes later and in particular comes today . Okay. So thats a great question, and i will be as brief as i can, but i do think its a fascinating pa pattern. And what i would point to is less the civil wan than it is reconstruction. What happens in the civil war i argue but i also believe is that there are two really important things that come out of the civil war under what has been the Republican Party, the brand new Republican Party. And that is, on the one hand, you get a push for the inclusion of africanamerican men in the declaration of independence, in the idea that they too should have equality of opportunity. Not equality of outcome, but equality of opportunity. And you get that pushes obviously, during the civil war. You also get that during the civil war with the Republican Party you get a rejection of the idea that if that a few wealthy men should run the gun. The the country. The government should be by the people, of the people and from the people, and thats something we tend to forget today. It plays out, obviously, in the inclusion of africanamerican men in this definition of the body politic, but, you know, its the homestead act which offers free land its actually, of course, American Indian land. But the land to farmers to grow crops and to make money and to be upwardly mobile. We get the establishment of our public universities. We get the establishment of the department of agriculture which is designed to get really good seeds into the hands of regular farmers, we get the group upon Union Pacific railroad act and the Northern Pacific which is designed to get people out into the western plains, into the Western Mines so they can join this upwardly mobile society. We get our First National money to that people can do business over state lines which, by the way, joanne has a great piece on in field of blood when your guy is trying to get across the country and his money doesnt work . And you also get for the first time in American History national taxes, national taxation. So you get the idea that people are investing in the government and that government in turn is doing something for the people. The people own the government, the government then takes care of the people who are investing in it. And thats everybody. Its not just people buying bonds, its anybody paying what is essentially a sales tack and income sales tax and income taxes, inevented during the invented during the civil war. These things all cluster together. And in the summer of 1866, what happens is southern democrats who loathe the idea of black participation in society mind you, they dont want slavery back with. Slavery has pleatly disintegrated during the war, and its really not they might want it back, but its clear that its long gone, that you could never really untangle everything that happened during the civil war. But they dont want black rights. And what they what happens is during the summer of 65 as africanamericans try to enter the free Labor Society and work for their survival, they get cheated. Their former employers cheat them, they rape the women, they attack the men, they kill some of the men. And because of the black codes that the southern constitutional conventions right in the summer of 65, they cant testify in court. They cant sue, they have no rights at all. So under those circumstances, africanamericans go to Army Officers who are empowered under the department established in the army called the bureau of refugees and abandoned lands, they go to them and say help us out here. We worked hard and after three months of work, they say we didnt earn anything. And the Freedmens Bureau officers who are Army Officers because thats the area of the government that congress chose to put it in, the officers of the bureau of refugees, freed and abandoned lands in the summer of 65s it becomes known as the Freedmens Bureau. They decide in favor of africanamericans about 70 president of the time, 68 of the time. At that point southern democrats start to say we dont care about slavery after all. What we really care about is this giant federal government thats telling us how to treat our people. Well, this is going to change over the next three to four years as republicans in congress try to guarantee e that africanamerican men have the ability to protect their own right through new civil rights legislation and by establishing federal courts where they can testify turned the Freedmens Bureau. Andrew johnson steps in and he says, no, you cant do that. Because what youre doing is youre, first of all, giving africanamerican men rights that no other american man has because White American men are not labeled by name in legislation because it was all written for them. But he says youre giving rights to black men that youre not giving to white men. So then he says something huge, and he says what you are doing is youre creating this giant federal government, giant federal government that is designed to give rights to black people that white people hes using the word men that white men dont have. And the only way to pay for their rights is by tax levies, through tax dollars. So what you are doing, you are redistributing wealth from hard working white people to lazy, impoverish ared africanamericans. That language right there is in his see toes of two bills in vetoes of two bills in 1866. And by 1871 southern democrats who want to get rid are of black rights based on racial issues suddenly say it wasnt race we were worried about, its the fact that youre having poor people are now suddenly saying how our tax dollars are supposed to be spent. And its right there we get the use of the word socialism. They, all the a paupers talk all the time about socialism in the south, about how socialism has taken over america because state the legislatures and the federal government are creating bureaus and programs that have to be paid for by tax levies, and those things will benefit africanamericans. And because africanamericans are impoverished after the war, thats going to come from tax on white people. And even today you hear people screaming constantly on the massachusetts, for the massachusetts statehouse two days ago there was somebody saying that the whole idea of closing down society is so we didnt have to die from a pandemic was because democrats want to turn it into the socialist statements of america. And what states of america. And what theyre saying is that any legislation that helps achieve equality of opportunity across society is a redistribution of wealth because its going to take tax dollars. It has nothing to do with 20th century socialism and the state ownership of production, it is just here, right from this era of rereduction, and it reconstruction, and it comes right out of the civil war. I have various articles about whether its reconstruction, but you could make a really good case for the fact of reconstruction still the hasnt ended because were having the exact same conversation that they had in the 870s. So civil war, by definition, shuffles the relationship between government and the people and in doing so scrambles the we. Thats right. Youre describing it as an ongoing battle for who the we is, whos included in it, whos excluded from it, and those are, obviously, highly significant questions that, you know, at some periods theyre more pressing and immediate than they are in others. Were in one right now where people know that thats part of the battle thats going on here, and thats part of why its so personal. People are so engaged in that kind of a way. Well, its so cool because, like, this is exactly what happened after world war ii. It was really clear who the we was, it was the g. I. S from all walks of life from, you know, from the mexicanamericans who were some of the first to say, hey, wait a minute, we should have a vote here under dr. Garcia, and africanamericans, of course, and women, you know . My mother was a wac, its our government. We should literally save democracy, its our government. And somehow that has, you know, the use of language weve gotten to this moment where the we is a very small group of people who believe that they should control the wealth and the power in society for the good of the rest of us. And that, to me, sounds very much like what slave holders were saying, and im not comfortable with that. Right. Precisely. Now im going the switch a little bit because we were asked a question which talks, in a sense, more about us as historians than it does about periods, and i think its ap important point to talk about. So the question is basically given what we are doing right here in speaking to each other and speaking with this great group of people in the public, why are historians at the current moment so eager to be, quoteunquote, public intellectuals . What is it at this current moment that is inspiring some historians to ten more aggressively to step more aggressively forward to the public than moments when they might have done that in the past . Well, im not sure i can answer that because it has not been my experience that there are many people, certainly of our generation, doing it. There are the twitter historians, but literally you could count this on a maximum of two hands. I think younger historians have always been involved in the public sphere because there really arent any jobs in the academy. But i actually sound like eric hoffer here. Joanne and i have both been public intellectuals for most of our careers. Its just that nobody paid any anticipation. Any attention. [laughter] the letters from the american, i did not wake up one day and put my feet on the ground and say im going to write these letters. I was painting my house and i got stung by a yellow jacket, and im allergic to them. [laughter] so i had and i didnt have my epipen, so i had to observe the reaction, and i just started writing about politics, and the next thing i knew everybody was asking questions. And so that was born. It was very funny, real quick, i wrote an article i had enough time to write articles for a newspaper any longer, but i wrote in the guard ya where i love to write, someone said, oh, my god, its great they discovered you. [laughter] i was around. But i think its were in a moment where we recognize that we have for too long paid attention to a narrative that was not rooted in reality. And what historians have is and many of our children and family members would probably say have too much of, it is reality. Its saying, now wait a minute, thats not what happened in 1954, or thats not who Grover Cleveland was. And i think people love to actually hear our real story. How did we get here and how can we get out of of it. Right. And i think thats a theme that historians bring to that kind of conversation that other kinds of commentators dont necessarily. And it, youtube, i often you know, i often joke that i have a double brain at this particular moment. So part of my brain is looking at a what is happening and thinking broad pattern, right . Yeah. And thinking about what has happened and thinking about why it happened and, you know, being a historian. So some part me making machinations. The other part is basically going, ah [laughter] so i have a sense of urgency, and im thinking like a historian. I do think theres a different sense of you are generality to this moment urgency to this moment. And youre right, both of us have been engaged in talking to the public forever. But theres an urgency that feels different, to me, so that, you know, thursday mornings i do an online kind of webinar where i talk about looking at the past, and then i talk about how you can use those tools to figure out the present. That was born because i was driving myself crazy trying to think of something i could write or do that would get people to ask Smart Questions ab the present about the present. And that was the only thing i could think of. Hey, you know, i can do it on my computer in a webinar. This is one of those moments that have taught us things about technology. So i do think the moment has added urgency to the equation of things that helps structure how historians think generally and then how more publicminded historian think. I also think its really come to the fore for me lately how shallow so much reporting is. And, of course, reporters are doing Something Different than you and i are are, but i always find it enormously frustrating when you get an article and it says, you know, joe smith, director of the office of something youve never heard of, a document that or pertains to something youve never heard of, and, you know, some congress person, some important congressperson said, you know, im going to cut his mother off at the knees. And youre like, what on earth just happened here . So a lot of what i do is literally saying here are the players, heres the larger story of why this play matters, and heres how it might come out. And, you know, people complain sometimes that i dont go into a lot of stuff, and its like if you actually literally took the column, you know, the posts i write and you took out my if explanations of who each person is, i bet theres probably 5020words in every one of those posts 50200 posts on just who a the players are. And then if you took out what the play is, the actual analysis comes down to being probably less than half of what i write every night. But theres this whistleblower thing now with rick wright. The first time i saw that last night p im like i remember this, i remember this, i remember that name, i remember there was a whistleblower complaint, and i remember that he was somebody important. But, you know, so many of the articles just sort of said, oh, and he did this wait a minute, there was a back story. I know there was a back story. I wrote about the back story. And i think thats a lot of why were important right now is because we can say heres the context and heres why it matters. And really theres not room with most newspapers to do that. Some of the Washington Post is doing very well, but their articles are too long because they do it for every single story, and youre like ive got a job, you know . [inaudible] stories every day, right . They do a great job with it but like, really . Nobody can read that much stuff on each particular thing. And history, the study of history is about context. Yes. So were primed to do that sort of thing right at this moment. And we have the story. Its not just, you know, people are sending me wonderful, wonderful stuff about mathematical molds, and theyre really, really interesting. But its hard to make a mathematical mold come alive. Right. And weve got the stories to make it come alive. Well, right. Weve got, in a sense, the humanity, and, you know, thats what can touch you more at a moment of change that feels unsettling than people who can connect with the humanity of the past and the humanity of the present and try and make sense of it in a way thats sincere and comes from your own attempt to figure it out. All of that stuff makes perfect sense to them im going to flip things. This is a really good question, and its a turning things on its head kind of question which i think we should address. So weve talked about it, and in particular youve talked about conservatives, capital c conservatives doing things with language to shape capital l, what people think of capital l liberals. So is there some kind of liberal counterlanguage . Is this happening on both sides . And if it is, are there similarities . Differences . How is the reverse working . Okay, so this is, obviously, a huge question, but its a fabulous question. And ive i mean, theres a whole book to be written here. [laughter] this is a great question because i think joanne said something earlier that is really important, and thats just and this is absolutely what the new book is about. One of the things that has a really been powerful since, in america really especially since the 1980s is the degree to which the movement of conservative language has dominated everything. Even the democrats got swept up, new democrats got swept up into the idea of, you know, of Market Forces controlling things, and we got we ended up with a nation that was in such a place that it really was shaped along a certain kind of ideological view. So even if you were speaking up against that, even if you were saying, no, there arent weapons of mass destruction in iraq, even if you were doing those things, you were still reinforcing the base that that rhetoric had caused. And one of the big projects that im engaged in and people are saying to me what can i do, one of the things that im really engaged on and really from my study of history is the different language to say, us versus them, and mys includes mys includes people who want equality of opportunity. People who want to use the government not to put money at the top, but to put money at the bottom and make sure it rises. Make sure people can work a job and actually make enough money for a family. Thats my us. It looks very much like the us of the 19 60s, of eisenhower years, except that i would hope it is a great deal more inclusive. I think you could get into an argument about what eisenhower was really up to, but the 1950s were not exactly a ducky time for people of color or women or whomever. [laughter] but that, if i am right that language controls politics and power and if joanne is right that it can control it by tapping into deeper Human Emotion and american values, the way that you change history is by changing our language. And to be able to when you use the word patriot and you dont mean somebody screaming in someones face at a statehouse but you mean the guy who, you know, gets in his truck and goes off to work to support his family, that change of association of words and the change in our National Narrative is what changes history. And thats why i would say to people, speak up. You know, say that you believe in. What you believe in. Because thats what is going to change history and change the moment were in, make people feel good about being an american and not feeling like it means hating and killing and destroying and dominating. But, rather, building up and working together and creating a society where everybody has equality of opportunity. So is there another narrative . There has not been really since fdr, and i would argue its really important but its not for today because it, too, was really malecentered, heteronormative and really kind of not kind of, really racist. But we have the space to build our own new narrative. And this is, to me, the great excitement of this moment, you know . We get to were in a crisis, and we get to decide what comes next. We get to put our feet on the floor in the morning and say im going to make the next right choice. And while im [inaudible] its a really exciting time. Its a really exciting time because its the future. And its also a moment when we are being called upon to think about processes, right . To appreciate processes of government. To appreciate how the constitution got a basic, basic level structure. You know, what does it mean to have different branches of government, what are checks and balances, what are the Different Things being a citizen has meant over time. How does our politics work. What is the process itself. You know, i think some of what were experiencing right now is people who arent plugged into that. And as an historian, some of what im experiencing is the need to step forward and say, no, no, no, the process matters. The how matters. If you cant, for example, trust elections, just the simple process, you dont have to say theyll always be 100 honest or itll happen smoothly, but if generally americans cant step back and say, you know, we believe in the process of elections, we believe in oversight, we believe if something goes wrong theres a way to fix it, well, then what process comes in its place, right . This is weve talked about this before, but when i talk about the founding and its very tempting when you talk about the founding to talk about, you know, capitol i ideology and, you know, great thoughts, etc. , etc. And thats one conversation. But if you ask what the most valuable contribution was, some of them said e outright, they would tell you the process they created. Madison says that, jefferson says that, that there are going to be all kinds of crises. We cant even imagine what theyre going to be in the future, but were setting in motion a process here with the constitution actually, with the convention itself which is people in a room debating. Not only debating in a way that we wish, there are things that i might hope they say differently but still. Were putting a process in motion that during times of crisis you can at least refer back to that and have a platform so that you can find a way out that is part of a shared agreement on how this nation works. And i feel like we sort of lost the process, and weve lost were so used to things being up precedented unprecedented i suppose in many ways, right now were losing that touchstone, and its a really important one. Well,ing and thats exactly what happens inside 1860s and now in the past three years, that we are destroying the process. Once youve destroyed the process, the pieces are there for anyone to pick up. And this is, this is the ultimate outcome in the 1850s, of course, was that when the people who didnt like the process didnt get their way in it, they simply said were done, were taking our martialingings marbles and going home. Watching the processing destroyed around us today, again, what is the outcome of that . I talk about this all the time, if you dont have that group of bureaucrats, the people that are loyal to the government or to the state not to an individual, then you become a group of, at best, of oligarchs. You are beholden to whomever holds the reins of power, and you have no means of reclaiming that because at the very at least even if you replace that person with your person, you still dont have a disinterested process in place. And thats the other thing we desperately need to do is protect elections but also protect nonpartisan civil servants, the ones who are terrific at what a they do and loyal to the state. Theyre dedicated to the state and the process. Yeah. Well, i think on that note weve sort of pulled ourselves around to pathways that certainly lead to progress. You know, i think along the lines of what youre saying its tempting to experience this moment and think either everythings going to be fine or were done, and i think part of the spirit of what youre saying is we still matter as the public. This is a moment of extreme contingency, so what we do matters. So its a moment of possibility, its a moment of contingency, is and thats the positive and encouraging message to pull out of this moment. Amen. And thats the way to look at it. But its also the moment to realize that democracy not a spectator sport. Its been so exciting to see so many people get involved in the process. You and i have looked in our own private ways for many decades. Its also, its also a moment to recognize really that democracy is about us, and we need to step up to the plate and decide what we want to do with it, what were okay with and what were not okay with. So for all the terror of this moment, it is also one of extraordinary possibility. Absolutely. And i think maybe it makes sense to end there. I want to thank everyone out there who has been watching and engaging in this conversation for coming. Obviously, look to the Historical Society for more programs now that were in the virtual universe. [laughter] who knows what will happen in this virtual but at any rate, thank you all for coming. Ive had great fun today. Thank you, joanne, this has been great, and i hope we do many of these in the future. And thanks to the brooklyn Historical Society, and thanks to everybody to come and have patience with what was not probably what you expected but seemed to me to be a much more fun thing to do. If you want to follow along with the actual book, you know, i do do my own facebook series on it. Im on the sixth week, and that will be archived on youtube. As soon as i get the time to label the videos. So, you know, its not like you can get enough here on that particular thing, it is available elsewhere as well. So thank you very much, joanne, it was totally fun. Ill also add my commercial advertisement along with yours. Those of you or interested in my conversations about looking at history and applying it to the present, every thursday morning at 10 00 and they are live at and archived at nche nche. Net conversations. Cant believe you remembered that. Ing. [laughter] thank you, guys. Thanks, everyone. Youre watching booktv on cspan2, nonfiction authors and books every weekend. Television for serious readers. Heres some programs to watch out for this weekend. The book publisher random house asked several of their authors such as david brooks, wes moore and Martha Stewart to give virtual commencement addresses to the graduating class of 2020. Espn National Senior writer Scoop Jackson provides his thoughts on the role sports play in american society. Cultural writer katie reports on how women experience and manage power. And evolutionary biologist neil shubin looks at dna from prehistoric fossils. Find a complete schedule on your Program Guide or visit booktv. Org