Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War 1850s Political Crisis 20240714

I am not specifically a civil war historian, but i moonlight in the field. Thatnk it is appropriate we open our discussion of the political crisis of the 1850s as the prelude to what follows in this next five days. History is fundamentally about people and events in a temporal setting. You do not have the civil war without the increasingly fractious and antagonistic sectional process during posturing. Weaks compounded by two president s bad decisionmaking. The political crisis of the 1850s is a term, as best i can tell, that was invented by ofhael holt, professor history for many years at the university of virginia. His first phd students, and rachel maybe his final one. That is quite the bookend. Thepolitical crisis of 1850s was a piece that ran through michaels lectures at yale, and when he joined the faculty at the university of virginia in the mid1970s. ,t became the basis for a book a very in tool influential book, that he wrote, and it has had staying power in the conversation amongst scholars ever sense. It is pretty easy to understand why that is so. You just have to think about what happens after the gold rush in the california as the whole fight over the admission of california into the union and the famous crisis of 1850, the series of shocks that david potter talked about in his great book the pending crisis. Going to make reference in the next hour to a number of them. Nicole actions in has written a it. Ut michael has also written on this at length. We have the repeal of the missouri compromise, which accelerates the fracturing, and the caning of sumner, the dred scott case, harpers ferry, and so forth. These are iconic for anybody who studies the 1850s, and it all culminates with lincolns election, which the south refuses to abide. We will be talking about, if not so much a rehearsal of the major a new of the 1850s, but way of thinking about the 1850s so that the stuff that you already know can be framed from perhaps a different vocabulary and some different ideas. You have three young, smart scholars who have written a lot on this 1850s period, and that is why we are all here. Since you have in your programs fairly substantial biographies of each of our panelists, i will simply say that each of them has written what i would call distinguished work on aspects of the 1850s political culture. I will identify them each by their connection with their institutions to my immediate left, we have the professor of history at Ball State University in muncie, indiana. Next to nicole is michael woods, an associate professor of history in huntington, west virginia. Further to the west further to the left is rachel sherman, recently named director of the george in and Richards Civil War Center at penn state university. We will welcome rachel back to our neighborhood. Lets get on with it. Byant to open the discussion saying that from my perspective perception, the buzzwords that deal with the 1850s that were in the conversation when i was going to school seem to be of less interest today to scholars than they once were. What i mean by that is words like republicanism or civil war inevitability and issues that have to do with individual events. It seems that reading the books, things like mentalities words like honor, concepts like emotions seem to be more in the currency. I am curious to start this panel by asking if our panelists would pick up on what is in their ears in terms of the concepts and the ideals that are most interesting about the 1850s . I will throw it out to you. Do we have to go in order . Michael b. no, anybody can jump in. I am delighted to be included as a young scholar. [laughter] michael b. anybody younger than me. Rachel ok. [laughter] i have been at brown a little longer than you guys. I do a little more traditional political history. Michael is the one who has been on the cutting edge of the emotions, and rachel talking about the dynamics in congress. Have beenst say as i thinking about the 1850s recently, i keep coming back to a question that bill freeling was the first to propose, which thehy is the United States one new world slave country that has to have a bloody civil war to get rid of slavery . We all of the things that think of, and Michael Holts the political crisis, the compromise of 1850, dred scott that rachel will talk about tomorrow, harpers ferry. Products ofse were our political process. They were Things Congress did. The dred scott decision was something the Supreme Court did. So, was there, is there a flaw in the system of government that for thisossible terrible civil war to take place . I will throw that out. Maybe michael can talk about the emotional nature of all of that, all that political events are wrapped in. Certainly rachel and i have not abandoned the standard milestones on the road to the war. I look for new ways to answer old questions. To pick up on the emotion issue, things like indignation are really important for responding to the repeal of the missouri compromise or the caning of Charles Sumner. Storys new texture to a that we think we already know, but what i am trying to get at is how did people experience it then and how did they make sense of it and . Certainly they are starting to think there are flaws in the system, but they think the system would work better if they got their way every time, and that the system, if it works properly, would give them the answer they want, which may seem similar to the 21st century. To go back to the original question, it is a matter of new angles on pretty familiar story. Rachel i tend to agree with that. One of the things that is interesting about the way the scholarship developed after is thatholts book people started to get more interested in politics on the ground, thinking about politics from the ground up, spending less time with congress, less time with president s. The effect was to understand the role of the average person in thinking about why the war came when it did. A lot of the scholarship, especially for the folks on this stage, is reimagining how congress operated in the context of that, thinking about how if the average person was much more engaged in the political process and thinking about their role in that United States, how can we understand questions of inevitability . How can we understand contingency . I am sure he is going to talk about that. How do we think about congress as a place that does not have all the control . The does not have all of key influence and understanding why secession happens . My work in the past has been about how do you understand congress if congress is not running the show . If they are not the ones who make the ultimate decisions about secession, how do you reimagine what congress did understand . And why were they so slow to understand what was going on on the ground . I think there has been a rejuvenation of interest in federal politics, and federal politics both in terms of how did congress operate but also in terms of how did it relate to what was going on on the ground . It is just with this new context in mind of average people. Michael b. i want to follow up on that. Nicole i wanted to followup on what michael said about indignation, because since a lot of the work i do is on the midwest, one of the strong sentiments i see among midwesterners is they feel like they have been bullied and they dont want to be bullied anymore. And i suspect that the southerners feel the same way. As the events go along, each side is keeping score of i won this one, they won that one. And by 1860, there is this strong sense of, i am not going to let them push my region around anymore. Michael b. i wanted to build on what you just said, because in her new book field of blood, freeman writes something connected to your point. She suggests that 1855 is a turning point in this regard, that you have a new contingent, a large contingent, over 100 new congresspeople coming in who are mostly antislavery in some form. As you said, they are not going to be bullied anymore. And she sees this as a hench moment. Done a lot ofas work on congress, i am curious, what was your reaction when you read this notion of 1855 as a hinge moment in congress . Rachel i think 1855 is a moment that has a lot to it because there is a lot of shifting and Political Parties that happens at this time. When you are thinking about why congress reflects what is going on in the rest of the country, you have to understand that the priority is disintegrating at this point. It is a turning point in those kinds of ways, and congress reflects that. I am not sure it totally breaks down what goes down in congress. Certainly there were other examples of new influxes of new the period in before. But it does reflect a change going on in the country in the way that the twoparty system that had existed to that point twoit was not entirely party, but it was more focused it hasnd democrats started to disintegrate in a more tangible way in terms of people being elected to congress. Michael b. where did the emotions fit in we went through the 1850s . What is the take away we should have from that . Nicole one michael w. one of the emotions i focused on was thatnation as an emotion rallies a lot of northerners, and a pretty diverse set of northerners from Political Parties, from all different backgrounds on thinking about slavery and its relation to the United States. But they all feel this increasing outrage, this increasing indignation, which is heightened and channeled through a staple of political culture at the time, which they called the indignation meeting. People in a certain town would gather at a church or Public Square or some other public space to collectively express indignation and then decide to take action. One of the things many of them dead is they decided to start voting republican in the mid1850s. It is notsee that as just what an individual is feeling as what it makes them do and what it makes them think of other people. I 1855 is a turning point, think these meetings have a lot to do with it as a way of mobilizing people. It is one thing to feel something, and it is another thing to build a more lasting political movement, or in this case, a Political Party around it. I would also add on the issue of a turning point, i think the 1850s are a decade with a series of turning points in them. Every year had its own milestones, and i think that is because people keep thinking they have reached, in the classical sense, the crisis, the decisive moment, and they havent. It just keeps building even more. Nicole if i could add to that, i think one of the most important and least talked about turning points is the lecompte and constitution. Anyone hear from kansas . No kansans . The reason we dont talk much about the lecompte and constitution, a proslavery constitution that came out of kansas is is is to come the gated to explain. You cannot do it in a survey class. I think we just skip it because we cannot come up with a one or two sentence way to explain, they had this election, then they had another election with did something different. Then they came up with a constitution that you could not vote for or against it. You could vote for one version or a different version, but both it is way too complicated. North, andriated the it was a breaking point for a lot of northern democrats, to come back to what michael said about emotions. One of my favorite stories is there is a democratic congressman from indiana by the name of john davis, and he is a democrat and he has supported the Democratic Party policy on kansas territory, and he cannot llow imposing a slave making kansas come in a slave state when Everybody Knows the majority of kansans do not want slavery. But it is democratic policy. Is sayingbuchanan they have to admit kansas as a slave state. When congressman davis stands up and says, im not going to do it, southern democrats get up and call him a traitor. They say, that is the language of treason. John davis says, that is the language of a free man. As i said, that is the north saying, no, you are not going to shove this on us anymore. We are not going to take it. Rachel i completely agree with that, because lecompton has all kinds of implications going forward. One of them is there are quite a few former whigs who are appalled by what happens in lecompton. They think it is completely antidemocratic, and there is this possibility that they would join with another group of politicians from the north to try to create a new party. They put out feelers the republicans to say, perhaps we can come together and create a new crosssectional party in opposition to this antidemocratic behavior, and if we can do that, maybe we can win the 1860 election. They start putting these ideas together, and it is already a little tricky because democrats and republicans and whigs, maybe if you had voted whig your entire life, you are not excited about working with democrats. But this is a possibility, then we get john browns raid, and it all disintegrates because it is that important to people to think about protecting slavery. You get this moment from lecompton that is maybe a moment of potential compromise that actually disintegrates later as a result of john browns raid. Nicole michael w. it is also the debate that convinces northerners that Stephen Douglas was an abolitionist, which is absurd. Michael b. douglas was a pivotal figure in the 1950s 1850s. To pick up on lecompton, as michael indicates, douglas breaks with buchanan on the lecompton issue. He becomes a more heroic figure, and get he got us into the mess in the first place, as each of these scholars has written about in their own work. Could we just take a minute and have each of you give me and the audience a quick take on douglas . To what degree do you view douglas and what degree do you like or dislike him . Ichael b. i am nicole am totally ambivalent about Stephen Douglas. He fundamentally believed in democracy, and he was completely racist and blind on the issue. He could not understand what michael said. The idea of Stephen Douglas as an abolitionist, this was his moral blind spots. I will tell this one story. Years ago when the movie Abraham Lincoln vampire heter came out, my son was probably middle school, and he was like, we had to go see this. I said, i dont want to see this. This is going to be trash. He is like, mom, it is a movie about Abraham Lincoln. You have to go see it. [laughter] nicole so i agreed to go, but before we went, i got cold feet and i said, you have to tell me i dont want Stephen Douglas to be a vampire. I cannot take that. He cannot be a vampire. That is too much for me. My son said, dont worry, mom. Stephen douglas is not a vampire. He is merely the vampires useful idiot. [laughter] nicole and i think that was perfect. He was the slave powers useful idiot. Michael w. i spent seven weeks reading douglas mail, which in history is not creepy. If you was live, it if he was alive, it would be. [laughter] michael w. i dont want to peddle my own wares, but look for it in early 2020 about Stephen Douglas and Jefferson Davis and their rivalry over the Democratic Party. Want to go onont record as loving or hating douglas, because i think he is a complicated figure. I think he was really out of place in the time in which he lived. I think he would have made an excellent gilded age politician. What he wanted to talk about was railroads and building railroads, and making harbor improvements in chicago and dispossessing americans. He saw all the crisis we are talking about right now as a distraction from what Congress Really ought to be doing and what voters ought to be thinking about. Was he his great flaw could not understand why other people might care about those things so much. Rachel i think of douglas as a wannabe. Tohink he desperately wanted have the kind of great impact on the country that he had maybe in a negative way, but to have it in a positive way. I think he really wanted to fit in in washington. It took him a long time to get his footing. It was really his wife that got him there, his second wife, who got him into this Washington Society experience. But for years, he floundered in washington. He did not know how to handle the experience of being there. Whoink of him as someone was very insecure and self focused, trying to have that great impact and not really knowing how to do it until others showed him the way. Nicole can i add to what michael said . I totally agree with michael that douglas viewed slavery as a distraction. Have do think he may been good in the gilded age, but i think douglas is very much a manifest destiny democrat. He wanted to open the west, antislavery was just and slavery was just not a big deal. He saw it as a distraction, and he could not understand really did not believe the people who said they had a moral objection to slavery. He thought they were basically making that up to get attention. But he had the whole thing with the railroads. He wanted to open the west. The greatness of the United States came from expanding westward. Nicole the one thing i would michael b. the one thing i would add to the discussion about douglas, whether he was a wannabe or better off in the gilded age, almost everybody who has written about the coming of the civil war would say Stephen Douglas had a powerful mind and he was a very smart politician, and he could have been a very formidable president. I am going to bounce off of that by saying we, of course, do not have douglas as president. We have fillmore pierce and buchanan. Everyone in this audience has some opinion about these president s, i would like to have our panelists tell us whether there is something we need to know about fillmore pierce or buchanan that is not part of the mainstream conventional wisdom. Pierce is a very tragic nineyearold his son is killed when he is president elect in a railroad accident. The train car derails, and a piece of steel takes off the top of the boys head. This is just horrible. Wifep of that, pierces then spends the whole four years in the white house in mourning. And she decides that god had removed their son so as not to distract franklin from his important responsibilities as president. Talk about a guilt trip. God has taken our son because you got elected president. Pierce then proceeds to be a very bad president , but that was something when i think about stupid things that Franklin Pierce is agreeing to, like the kansasnebraska act, you have to think about the terrible emotional burden he was under. Inhael w. i think this is no way meant as a dissent of pierce or buchanan, but i think a lot of the stupid things they did, kansasnebraska, buchanan trying to push through lecompton , were in parts because they are democratic president s in a time when their party is starting to fall apart. I think they could convince themselves that a lot of what they were doing would reunite the party. Think that is especially true for both of them in their relations with douglas, too, because they are both trying to maintain their control over the direction of the party. And especially buchanan, to keep it away from douglas. Both were party guys and trying to hold together a party that could not stay united for much longer. Rachel i think all three of them were party guys. Fillmore, nobody has any love for fillmore, or even knows much about him, but he was an incredibly skilled politician. His work on the compromise of 1850 was really important to making sure that passed. If he had a party after 1850, he might have been a more effective person in politics at that time, but there was no party for him. He did not really have a place. I think all of these guys are good examples for how intricate the party system was in the 19th century, how many moving pieces there were. There was so much happening on the ground in local politics, in state politics, that had an influence on what was going on with these president s. I am not sure that anything they would have done would have saved the union, because so much of it relied on what was happening on the state level. Michael b. perhaps one more question from me before i open this up to the audience. I want to ask rachel about as iting she has written relates to a book i have been reading, and perhaps some of you have been reading, the field of blood book, which has gotten a lot of tension, especially given the current complexion of washington politics today. One of the things that is worth asking about is the intersection or the divergence of the themes in the two books. Rachels book looks at a political culture that involves a lot going on underneath the surface of lawmaking, involving the social world of washington, and how it impacted the world of lawmaking, and it emphasized the crosssectional synergy as congressmen you would not think would like each other or work with each other did so. The suggestion one gets, or the implication one gets from a quick read of rachels book, is there is more here than meets the eye in terms of the conflict of the 1850s. One more quickie, you at several points say congressmen who say the most people things about their colleagues on floor would then go drinking with them afterwards, which is something that happened in the 1950s as well as the 1850s. By contrast, you have an mayhem inn what is the congress from the 1840s to 1860, as described by joanne freeman, in which she discovers 70 separate incidents of physical violence perpetrated by usually a southerner against a northerner, but often it is a melee with both involved. Astalked earlier about 1855 a time when northerners began to fight back more, but i wanted to give rachel an opportunity to comment, since i am sure you are familiar with freemans book, how do you make the two connect . Rachel i think they are perfect examples of how you can have something going on in public that is different from what is going on in private. Joanne freemans book talks a lot about these violent incidents, and i think she would agree that there was a lot of theater behind that. Much of the violence that occurred happened as a result of peoples interest in demonstrating to their constituents just how passionate they were about defending their interests. Manhood to prove their and also to prove their willingness to defend their section or their party or their home state or locality, they often engaged in this kind of violence as a performance. I think we agree on that level. My book talks a lot about congress as a fraternity, and i think of it like a fraternity. You get a fraternity, you get a getp of men together who along, but not always. Not everybody likes each other. You get some real friendships, and you get people who dislike each other, but they think about washington as a very particular place. They think of it as their fraternity house. Understanding through the underlying culture of that fraternity really gets you a sense of how people are able to navigate that crosssectional experience. You do have republicans and democrats, people from the north, people from the south, whigs and democrats, really engaging with one another. Not always because they like each other, but often because they like each other. My book makes the argument that secession was a Grassroots Movement and congress was just unaware of a lot of what was going on on the ground, even as they are creating this performance for their constituents home. Back home. I think there is a lot of overlap there in terms of thinking about what joanne does and my book. She emphasizes the violence, but i would say the violence is primarily performative, even if it is not very serious at the time. That is tohing, remember that the United States in the 1850s was an incredibly violent place. It was not just happening in washington, it was happening everywhere in every state legislature, in every local gathering, at the voting booth. Every single place in public where you were engaging with politics was incredibly violent. We have to step back and remember that when we are understanding this period. The context is this underlying violence. Trying to see the connections among politicians from different sections, that is the interesting thing, as opposed to the underlying difficulties that exist within every single political space, if that answers your question. Nicole sort of michael b. sort of. She provides example after example of journalists being on the floor or outside congress being beat up by southerners who do not like them. You have people threatening even John Quincy Adams to within an inch of his life. The only reason they do not beat him up is he is an expresident and an old man. There are numerous examples where people are punching each other in the face, threatening each other with knives. Performative is relevant, but not definitive in terms of these relationships. Rachel it is not definitive in the sense that certainly there was an impact if you were beaten up. He would not be very pleased with me to say it was just for performance. But there was a performative aspect to it. The problem of thinking it from perspective of, how likely was this to happen elsewhere . It was very likely to happen elsewhere. People had been in state legislature in kentucky, they might have had the same kind of violent arguments. Often, the people in congress talked about these incidents as performances. Freemans book talks quite a lot about bullying and the kinds of showing you might engage in an incident like this, and i think she would agree with me that a aboutof that was showing you would support your constituents with your life. That is the performative aspect that crosses the period. It is a lot about the manhood of the period. Getle i would like to rachels reaction to this, because one of the things, and michael as well, looking at what happened in kansas territory in elections there where there was a lot of violence, i think there were two additional issues. One is alcohol. The testimony to the Congressional Committee about the kansas elections, there is a lot of talk about, the missourians came to the pole and they were well corned, meaning they had their jugs of corn whiskey. They were drunk. A lot of the violence you do see in politics all over the United States, it is heavily alcohol fueled, i think. And secondly, at least from what i have seen, its also very regional. I am not studying this in depth, but my impression is that new englanders are genuinely shocked by the amount of brawling at the polls in people coming to the polls drunk and with their bowie knives in their guns and intimidating each other. There seems to be that northeastern elections are relatively tame, midwestern and southern elections are a lot because agains, in kansas territory, the missourians will say, yeah, i came with my bowie knife to the polls. That is what you do. It is what we did when we lived in kentucky. What is the big deal . Rachel some of you may have been here a couple years ago and heard me talk about my book, but the caning of Charles Sumner is a story that is largely about alcohol. When you think about what Preston Brooks was doing before he went to cane Charles Sumner, is he was getting drunk. He was getting egged on. If he had he had not intended to be as violent as he was. He was a pretty amenable guy. People liked him and congress. If you think about the caning of Charles Sumner as this experience of someone getting drunker and drunker and deciding to amp things up to that degree, maybe you can see it much more as a contingent event rather than an obvious clash between north and south. Say that it depended on where you were when you went to the polls, because cities tended to be incredibly violence, even in new england. New york city was an incredibly violent place. Going to the polls there, it you were taking your life into your hands. Nicole do you want michael b. do you want to say anything . Michael w. everything Stephen Douglas did was certainly fueled by alcohol. He had a number of brawls in illinois that he lost. He had a tendency to provoke them and then lose. The other thing i would say is if you went further west, politics looks very violent on the Pacific Coast and in places like that, too. There is certainly not a shortage of violence. I do think one of the things a lot of the violence in congress did is it did promote the kind of regional or sectional stereotyping that plays a really big role. Even if there is a lot of violence throughout the country, it mattered that a lot of northerners thought southerners were bringing violence to congress, regardless of whether that was true or not or regardless of whether there was that much regional difference. Certainly in the sumner case, it is a good example of this, where he becomes the slave power embodied. We need to think as historians about what is really going on, but what did they think was going on . Both of those would be important. Nicole can i just quickly add what we are talking about with the polls, why they could not conceive of women being involved in politics because this is a truly male environment. If you are Something Like Elizabeth Cady stanton and you are saying women should vote, a lot of people would say, if women came to the polls it would not be so drunken and violence, but most people are like, you would not let your wife or daughter, no decent woman would go into this environment. Michael b. lets turn it over to our audience. If you have questions for our panel, come on up, go to your microphone, and you can fire away. Fromvid perella massachusetts. His books talks about rowdyism in american life, and how that was a precursor to the violence of the civil war. You touched on that in terms of the drunkenness and the carrying on at the polls. Sees there was this underlying rowdy behavior, and suddenly it got a political cause and lit the fuse. How would you react to that . Whole david potter, michael mentioned at the outset, think of the 1860 election as a time when there were these great issues and decisions being made, but we do not realize what kind of a hoorah election it was. You have the republicans dressing in military gear and marching. Had, a lot of elections that kind of element to it. Rowdyism, militarism, to these events that we go back and intellectualize. Mel burger, boston, mass. The runaway bestseller, to what degree do you think it served as a lightning rod the political crisis of the 1850s . Rachel that is a great question. I think it was really important in the north in terms of thinking about the average woman becoming interested in at the issues of slavery and actually having an attention to it they may not have had before. I think it is a really good example of how we cannot always look to congress to explain what was going on in this period. There were a lot of things happening on the ground that changed the way people understood it. Once i spent some time looking at the congressional globe and seeing whether Uncle Toms Cabin was mentioned, five times in the entire 1850s. That is it. That was something affecting people on the ground, but did not make its way up into congress in the same kind of way. From richmond, virginia. Undergraduate students in that the civil war leadership course frequently comment after their reading on the frequency with which the word honor appears editorials, in letters, in diaries, on the part of southern men. Since most of our students at the university of richmond come from connecticut, new jersey, or new york, they say, what is this deal about honor . Why is that such a big deal for these southerners . Michael w. i think the book more than honor remains to be written. I think you should encourage the students to work on that. We tend to identify honor with the south, but if you look back to the sumner caning, if you look back to what people were saying in the aftermath in massachusetts, they say that it has assailed the honor of our state, our senator, the senate itself. I think it is hugely important, but i also think it is maybe more nationally important than it is often given credit for. Rachel that is a really good question also in thinking about how language is different today from how it was in the 19th century. Honor was a much bigger term. There is a book about someone that talks about this. In questionsluded of ethic in ways that we would not put those two things together. People in the 19th century used that word to mean something slightly different, in some cases. If you spend a lot of time in the documents of the time, you can see that they have these different ways of using the word honor. I think it had something to do with that as well. Seems to be the panel has glossed over the 1854 kansasnebraska act. It was talked about a couple times, but not gone into deeply. Arguably without that, you do not get the resentment, you do john brown remains unknown. Abraham lincoln remains a retired politician. The 1854 Panel Discuss act in a little more detail . Michael b. we thought you knew all about it. [laughter] nicole absolutely. It is an incredibly it is incredibly important and i incredibly ironic because Stephen Douglas is a big role in bringing about the compromise of 1850, and in 1854 he undoes it. 1850say the compromise of is going to last forever, and it lasts four years. And the very person, Stephen Douglas, who made the compromise of 1850, or at least got it through congress, undoes it. It is, again, rachel talked about language. Northerners will say the compromise was sacred. It was a sacred pact between north and south about what we will do with the territories. Pact has beencred violated, and they dont just say that Stephen Douglas is a conniving, hypocritical congressman. They she is judas say he is judas, who has sold his own section, the north, and the 30 pieces of silver he expects to collect is southern support for an eventual president ial run. And it does an enormous amount to him better the north two o embitter the north. It breaks up the Democratic Party. Say,t gives, i would southerners unreasonable expectations. They did not expect because the territory of kansas and nebraska, that was offlimits to slavery under the missouri compromise, and now all of a sudden it might become slave territory. That is how you get things like lecompton. I would say you are absolutely right that kansasnebraska is incredibly important in worsening the situation. But i would just quickly add, going back to the question about Uncle Toms Cabin, that doesnt mean that if there had been no kansasnebraska things would not have gone badly in the 1850s as well, because for all that the politicians say, 1850, we settled everything. Is 1852. s cabin the abolitionists are not going away, and they are not saying, Congress Passed this compromise. Slavery isnt morally wrong. No, they are saying, we dont care what congress says. Slavery is a sin. Rachel to add onto that, it did not mean southerners were going to stop looking for more territory for slavery expansion either. There were some who were interested in expanding into cuba and some into mexico. That would have been more political difficulty because it would mean more senators and representatives slaveholding states. It was incredibly important, and i agree with nicole that we have to think about the kansasnebraska act as a critical turning point in this period. But absolutely, it is not going to be if it does not happen, it does not mean it is all going to be just fine. Michael b. we have another question over here. Thought your bit about the performative aspect of violence in this time to be fascinating, and i wondered how you would talk about that in terms of john brown, one of the most violent gears of the time. I think john brown would have done these violent things and stood by them in any time that he had lived. But i was just curious for what you would think about that. Rachel john brown was not performative. [laughter] i was curious if there was an aspect of that. If he was in tempting was attempting to galvanize the violence. Rachel sure. I think he had an interest in sparking other peoples behavior. You could draw the true line there. One of the things that happens in congress is there are a lot of threats of violence without followthrough. Joanne freeman shows i think she had 70 incidents, and i talk about quite a few of them in my book, too but there were all kinds of incidents about folks getting this close to Serious Violence engagement and backing off. Just the ability to show that you could get engaged was a big deal. Many of the people who fought and joanne talks about this, too, in her book did not want to. They felt like they had to because of the circumstances in duels, but also engagements in congress. They had to get into it, they had to mix it up. John brown definitely felt that pull, but i think he wanted to spur that kind of violence by actually engaging in the violence. He was not trying to avoid any violent confrontation. Nicole i think the performative aspect of john brown comes after he is captured. That is when he does the performance, because he flat out he is beinghen interrogated after he is captured. I was going to liberate the slaves in virginia and no one was going to be killed. Just the way we went into missouri. A man got killed into missouri. Is this going to be peaceful . I think we will hear tomorrow about the pikes. Does the whole performance up until his execution, and he is performing the role of jesus christ. Michael b. question here . Appears that during the 1850s, congress kept egging on the population of the United States, always having them one upping each other to increase the distance between them, without really realizing the effect it would have on the normal people. Maybe they met up afterwards and could still be friends, but normal people in the south and north did not meet up afterwards and never did get to see the other side of each other. Would you say that was a flaw of the people in congress at the time, of the political culture of the time, or a bigger flaw in how congress relates to the population . Michael b. that is a great question. You cannot answer it without and understanding the communication levels in the United States and what people are reading in newspapers, what they are getting from their congresspeople in terms of speeches delivered in washington, and the degree to which people are not really connected or are connected to networks that tell them certain stories, the same way that people who are watching fox news or msnbc develop narratives about politics today. Some of that is going on as well. But i will let my fellow panelists weigh in on this. Rachel i love talking about this, because there was a word for this in the 19th century that we do not seem to use anymore. It is called buncombe speechmaking. They would get up in the house while no one was paying attention to what they were saying and deliver this fiery speech that seemed like it influenced people, and it would go in their newspapers and they would frame copies of it for their constituents and send them home, and the constituents would get riled up. But nobody listened to a single word. Sometimes it was almost empty when things were going on. Sometimes they did not even get up and give them, they just gave them to the newspapers and said, this is what i would have said if i had gone in front of congress. I think you are right to point this out. And there is a version of this today. If you spend a lot of time watching cspan, you can see people get up at the front of the house and give speeches and nobody is in the house, but they are giving these important speeches. For a wild, up until the late night for a while, up until the late 1990s, you did not know nobody was in the house because the cameras would be just on the person giving the speech, then there was legislation that would make the cameras pullback. But there is a version of this today. Congressmen want to be reelected, so they are going to get up and speak to their constituents in a way they think will get them reelected. I am not sure what the alternative would be. I also think it is important that congressmen represent the people. But what is the impact it has on congress at south . I dont know that i have answered your question in a good way. Michael b. we are running out of time. I am liam moffat from north carolina. We have been talking about through the 1950s congress was separating and splitting bipartisan separation. Could there have been a compromise that pulled congress together and saved the union . Maybe. The old i dont know. Thethen, david potter made point that all of the compromises are for the purpose of preserving a union that has slavery. Think this is the most important point. We can say that congress is dysfunctional in some ways, or they were not able to get a compromise that would save the union, but the civil war was necessary to end slavery. If we do not acknowledge that, we are missing the point of what all this conflict was about. Michael b. i have gotten the sign from our director that we are at our terminus. But i hope that you have learned something here, and i want to ask you to say thank you to our wonderful panel. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer learn more about the people and events that shaped the civil war and reconstruction every saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern only on American History tv here on cspan3. American history tv is on social media. Follow us cspanhistory. Each week, American History tvs reel america brings you archival films that bring context to todays political issues. From an island, a jungle patrol sits out for manus island, accompanied by two enlisted men. Starting from cavalry headquarters on the south coast, they wade ashore. The combat cameramen are as heavily armed as the rest of the patrol. Junglesch through heavy and swamp. Two hours outcome of the point man killed five jap, caught by surprise in the middle o. The troops close in on a jap hut. Deadside, they find nine japs, killed the previous day by another patrol. On one of the bodies is found in american fountain pen and a cigarette case. They return to spend the night. The next day, they hiked to the river on a threeday patrol. Brought canoes manned by friendly natives who take them up to the mouth of the river. The men stand or kneel in a circle on the platform, guns facing in all directions. Four japs washing clothes were fired at, but it was impossible to verify the results. The patrol pushes on through a tropical downpour. They wade ashore through mud and press on through the jungle. It is estimated there were about 250 japs on this part of the island. The patrol camps. The men try to dry their clothing and equipment. Machine guns cover all approaches to the camp, and men not on guard duty relax. The next morning, the patrol continues in the rain. A large concentration is discovered. A single survivor is captured. He is the only prisoner taken during this patrol. Were killed. Crossing the river on the way out of the jungle, the men hold their weapons high. Two snipers who fired on the patrol were killed at this point. The prisoner, beginning to weaken, stumbles in the current. Rations,xt stop for the prisoner collapses and has to be carried on an improvised litter for the rest of the journey. This is difficult through jap invested jungle. It is important to give him frequent doses of ada preen through the night. It is sufficient he would survive the trip. The structure is loaded on and outrigger to be taken down stream where the patrol will transfer to an lcm. These are some trophies of a successful patrol. The prisoner responding to treatment is able to set up in the lcm as the patrol heads for home. At red beach, the japanese Sergeant Major is turned over to the Intelligence Officer for intelligence for interrogation. Furnished with clean clothing, the prisoner is placed in a regular stockade. Announcer you can watch archival films on Public Affairs in their entirety on our weekly series reel america. Next, historian david stradling. He joined us from along the Cuyahoga River in cleveland, where 50 years ago a fire helped galvanize the clean water and environmental movement. Mr. Stradling is coauthor of where the river burned carl stokes and the struggle to save cleveland. This is a coproduction with cspans washington journal. The Cuyahoga River, as most think of it, the brown stream that meets lake erie, an industrial waterway if banks populated by steel mills and factories, its channel filled with ships and tugs. The Cuyahoga River as it reaches lake erie after a the Cuyahoga River as it reaches lake erie after a 100 mile twisting and turning journey from its headwaters is an exhaustive stream, abused and misused by man and his machines