[music plays] jackson, you have a new book called american radicals. What years does your book cover . Prof. Jackson the earliest event in the book is 1817. It covers 1823 to 1870s. It covers the period roughly from the 1820s to the 1870s. Susan this is described as the second American Revolution. Why is that . Prof. Jackson the radicals in my book were calling for a second American Revolution based on what the revolution we know, fought by their fathers generation many had grandfathers who fought in the revolution. They described that revolution as merely political. They felt it had accomplished a separation from england. It had accomplished the foundation of a new political system. But the social revolution they had in mind would have to follow that merely Political Revolution in order to really bring into American Life the ideals of the founding that had to do with equality, with justice, that were glaringly not part of lived american experience, even in this new land. That was supposed to be devoted to radical freedom. Susan why was the declaration of independence so important . Prof. Jackson it is kind of a touchstone in the book. A document that is quoted by all of these activists and is rewritten a number of times by the Womens Movement and by antislavery activists, by labor activists, by john brown, by a lot of different figures. In part, i think it reminds people that the very founding of the nation was done with a radical manifesto. It was an act of protest. I think they thought it was a powerful protest technique to hold americans to their own standard. To say, surely these are our values as stated in our founding document. They wanted to be true to it, and they wanted to rewrite it to kind of extend they wanted a rolling revolution where the American Revolution could be modified moving forward. They felt the Founding Fathers had built to in with the amendment system. I think it also brought attention to the fact that the country started as a kind of radical experiment. It was going to be a new kind of community. Upthat the people would make together. It was very recent. We are talking about the beginning of 1820s, this is very recent for the People Living at that time. There was a feeling that it could be done again, may better. Susan i will make the case for people listening to us. Why would someone living today care about this period of time . Why should they . Prof. Jackson the civil war period i am a specialist on the 19th century, so i think it is the most important, crucial moment of our history that you really should know something about to think about america in any subsequent period. But in terms of thinking about as aperiod, reframing it golden age of activism and social justice mobilization, we are living in another such moment where americans are coming out and getting engaged and politics are feeling a little bit less like a spectator sport for people on the left. A lot of the same social issues that the book covers are still relevant today. People in this book were outraged by issues like family separation and like Sexual Assault on women and the devaluation of black lives, etc. This period provides a really crucial precursor to our own moment. Susan a couple of touch points you write about that i wanted to put on the record. First of all, 1824, the first election without a founding father. Why was that significant . Prof. Jackson people think of the 1820s or the jacksonian period as a period of democratization in american politics. Voting requirements were loosening up so you did not have to be a property holder to vote. People were welcoming an era of universal male suffrage, which meant universal for white men. There was a feeling that kind of like a populist politics was taking hold in the 1820s. That election is also significant because the founding generation was passing away. The introduction starts on the fourth of july, 1826, which they called it the jubilee. The 50th anniversary of the signing of the declaration of independence. On that day, both john adams and Thomas Jefferson died, famously, which people took to be some sort of a message, a divine message. It also suggested a passing of the guard moment. People felt a great deal of anxiety. The founders had been there and seen the revolution, had engineered this new political system, then had shepherded the country through, for a period of time. This was a moment where a new generation was going to have to if the nation was to survive, a new generation was going to have to take on the challenge of that perpetuity. It was a moment when increasingly the crisis over slavery was heating up after 1820. The obstacles to that continuity were felt very acutely. Susan it was during that time, marquis de lafayette made a triumphal tour of america. How widely was that covered in the american press, and what did it mean to people . Prof. Jackson it was the event. He was called the nations guest. Everywhere he went, the entire town closed down business and turned out. There were massive parades. He was welcomed in all the states. People were weeping openly. They were throwing flowers from every window. They were pulling him in six white horses and beautiful carriages. He was welcomed by the president and all the living president s, the washington elite, the cultural elite everywhere. What is interesting about that is that he is a link, a personal link to that revolutionary history. When he came to the United States in 1824 to start this triumphant victory lap tour around the nations 50th anniversary, he had as his secret guest, Frances Wright, who ended up being the most notorious activist and leftist figure of her moment. In all likelihood she was his young mistress. She was accompanying him in a secret way. They exchanged very intimate letters. In a way, that relationship provides at the beginning of the book, that link between the revolutionary moment in the history there, and she is kind of a starting point for certain genealogy of activism that looks forward from that point. Susan we are going to talk about wright later on. Staying with this period of time another frenchman made a tour of , the United States. Alexis de tocqueville, his view for europe of what was happening in the United States. How did americans view his work and his observations of our society at that point . Was it impactful . Prof. Jackson it is interesting. I guess he was here the same moment, and his work has been more lasting. If you look at tocqueville, you get the same view of america you get from there was a frenchman also traveling with fanny Wrights Party who was describing the tour of lafayette around the country, and his journal was a major source in trying to piece together where lafayette and fanny wright went. It is interesting to see a european view of slavery, how that looks to tocqueville. With that and fanny wrights letters, it was the best way to understand how it must have looked to an outsider, as well as systems like voting and not exactly town halls, but Community Discussions around voting. You get description of the practice of democracy from tocqueville. If anything, that is it remains the kind of move, st perhaps the most important , political document because it is so interesting to have that outsider perspective, which certainly Frances Wright was bringing to the table. Susan you write that the quest for democratic reforms in france provided a cautionary tale for americans. How so . Prof. Jackson americans were concerned about the threat that a continuation that any mention of a continuation of the revolution would lead to a longer period of instability and also violence and potential regime change that france saw after their revolution. There was a feeling that the United States had established a working system and social peace after the revolutionary period. There is a conservative period that was focused on state making that also really saw the desecularization of america. Americans were becoming more religious during this period. There was a conservative turn. Part of that was to say what the founders did is final, this is not a social system that can be remade with every generation, and that we need to freeze in amber what we have. The violence of france continued to be a cautionary tale. Even throughout the century. You have the Paris Commune in 1871, where you had this scare around the idea of communism that really shaped the Labor Movement in the american context in the late century as well. Also the mainstream response to those movements. Susan to understand the changes in america, lets start with a snapshot of america is your story opens in the 1820s. How many states at that point . Prof. Jackson there were only 24 states. It was not the United States that we know today. The 1820s was a period where we were seeing rapid westward expansion. What was causing the heightened sectional crisis around slavery, there were 2 million enslaved people when the book opened. That is a number that would double by the civil war. Starting in 1820 we started to have this heated battle as new states like missouri came up for admission to the union. They had been territories, and as settlers moved west and the country expanded, there was always the question whether these New Territories would be admitted as areas that would allow enslaved people to be owned as property and laborers or whether they would be free states. With each one of these, it gets just triggered massive political disputes and the threat always secession and of civil war. The government and congress brokered a series of compromises that managed to kick that can down the road for decades, but it felt like a very incendiary, explosive kind of moment, even though there was this insistence on social peace, even punctuated by moments where it felt like it could have come apart at any time. Susan if slavery existed in the south and they were fighting over it in the expansion areas, what was the state of africanamericans in the northern part of america at that time . Prof. Jackson i started with i point to the free communities in cities like philadelphia and boston and new york city, as really the beginning of activist communities that the rest of the book traces. They were they were robust, healthy populations of free people in all of these urban centers, but to call them free is misleading because their lives were very constrained. They were not enslaved. There is a figure in the book, james forten, a major figure early on, his children and grandchildren stay relevant to the end of the book. He served in the revolutionary war. His father and his grandfather had lived in philadelphia, had not been enslaved. He himself was a wealthy businessman. He owned multiple properties. Even for someone like james forten, who had the most privileged life imaginable for an africanamerican in the 1820s, his life was constrained. His opportunities for education were constrained. In philadelphia, the quakers were such a presence he could get a good education. He had the opportunity to train for a trade. These were not opportunities that were open to all free africanamericans. There is also the constant threat of kidnapping. One had to carry papers. These papers had to be produced on demand at any time. There was a threat that even though you were free and your family had been free for generations, people were concerned about their children and their childrens safety. I have tried to show how in that context of circumspection and threat, these communities flower and created Community Institutions like churches and mutual aid societies and also reading groups and literacy groups and they were building a community by which they could sustain one another in a context where the country was not doing much. Susan in regards to women, what rights did women have in the 1820s and 1830s . Prof. Jackson at that time not that many. Women did not have the right to certainly did not have the right to vote. There was no way they could go to college. Women lost their legal identity in marriage, or it was subsumed under that of their husband. Handling their own wealth, even if it was inherited wealth. All of these things were subsumed under their husband. There were not opportunities for lives other than a strict march from being a girl in your Fathers House to being a wife in your husbands house, whose identity was secondary to men all the way through. And in this period, we see really striking change in that. Frances wright is an early figure who defies that. By the end of the century we have a robust Womens Movement that has turned into a Suffrage Movement by the end of the book. Susan you write using a phrase called the womens sphere. What does that mean, actually . Prof. Jackson in 19th century history, we think of the 19th century as a moment where an idea about gender and the organization of work and life emerge that people called the separate spheres. It is just the idea that womens sphere was the home and the family and domesticity. All these things in the 19th century are becoming increasingly sentimentalized. So this is womens sphere. Mens sphere with the rise of capitalism and the end of purely Agrarian Society where families were a unit of production once you have men working outside the home, the idea is that the public is the realm for men, for politics, for wage labor, etc. The idea of the separate spheres was of course always to some degree because myth because there are always working million. This did not apply to africanamerican women. It is the standard gender Economic Organization that one associates with the time. Susan you write that activism was in three areas of american society. What were they . Prof. Jackson the ones i focused on in the book were activism around slavery and race, around gender and sex, and around labor, economic issues, wealth, property, that sort of thing. Susan they seem like they have overlap. Prof. Jackson absolutely. Part of what i tried to contribute is to focus on points of overlap rather than to do a deep history of any particular movement. Rather to focus on unexpected confluence is between these movements. Also, this was a moment for multiissue activism. The personnel who would be the leaders of one movement they would be very involved with other movements as well. Usually one issue was an entry into many others. Once one had been radicalized or politicized around slavery, that might lead you to question things that are seemingly unrelated like religious observance or it might cause you to change your diet and stop eating animal products. This is the trajectory of many activists in this book. Through this process, nothing was off the table. There was just a broader interrogation. Susan what would be the percentage of the population that were in this activist group . Were there any demographics consistent among them . Were they all urban, country folk, whatever . Prof. Jackson that is difficult to say. Part of the story i want to tell in the book is how regular people came to feel this need to do something. As we push for the civil war on , the issue of slavery, the number grows. The timeline is complex, because before 1830, even in the south and other places, there is a feeling that it was an unfortunate inheritance and that many people thought, this is really not right, but we have a tiger by the tail, and there is no clear way out of it. After 1830, in part because there was the rise of a radicalized Antislavery Movements, they start to dig in and say, we will not grant that this is immoral, we will not grant that this is sinful. They were willing to defend it not only as an economic arrangement, but as a culture and worldview. So the question after that point is, once the issue is really polarized, how does persuasion work . How does antislavery spread a message so that it goes from a really fringe position in the north to something that is mainstreamed. Its not to say that all northerners were abolitionists, but enough of the tide turned the country was willing to fight a civil war and to celebrate the end of slavery. Even other movements, in terms of how many people were involved, the book talks about two waves of utopian socialism. Even the wave of socialism under charles, the leading historian estimates at least 100,000 participants. Antislavery was much bigger than that. Even by 1840, there were 200,000 members of the Biggest National antislavery group. We are talking about many many people. All of these issues were, when they started, considered really out there, fringe movements, but their success is in part that we see these numbers creeping up and that now, many ideas in the book still seem out there like the abolition of marriage, but many of the ideas now seem like common sense. Susan it is really the trajectory from a group of activists to a movement thatll to millie becomes mainstreamed movement that ultimately becomes mainstreamed over a long period of time. Prof. Jackson they are able to convince people they are able to convince people to change their minds, but also they are able to put a narrative out there that it may be time not just to hold private views you discuss with your family, that you hold privately and agree with what you read in the newspaper, but actually to act in the world. That has been an interesting question. What were those moments people became outraged enough . Susan you tell stories about real characters. I want to get a few of them on the record to entice people to the book. Some are wellknown. I want to start there. John brown. What inspired john browns radicalism . Prof. Jackson john browns father had been an abolitionist. He was a singular, very Orthodox Christian who believe that slavery was a terrible sin in the eyes of god. He was motivated by religion in his antislavery views. He felt that he would be gods instrument. He felt that everyone was called againstent inter slavery. He had grown up in an antislavery family. He read publications like the liberator, and he had relationships with africanam