Captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 thats such a powerful turn in the book when you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duels actually decreased the violence and you quote from that remarkably moving letter which you said moved you to tears when representatives wade, chandler and cameron all pledged to challenge future duellers to fight. You write when it became known that some northern senators were ready to fight, for sufficient cause, the tone softened and the abuse went on. We have this really wonderful new exhibit on the civil war and reconstruction, Thaddeus Stevens cane, when i show the cane and tell the story i quote your book how some would run for congress during that period on the grounds that my left hook is better than the other guy. Im going to beat him up because im tougher and you bring that to life. Incredibly powerfully. Norm ornstein, its often said or been said by norbert mccarthy, a scholar at princeton, we are more polarized today than any time since the civil war. Youre an expert of party systems. Can you explain what it was about the Political Parties right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then . So, you know, you go back through history and you see echos of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. If you look at the period leading up to the civil war, the party system, it was very much in flux. We had a wig party that ultimately became or transformed into the modern Republican Party. Along the way we had a no Nothing Party that was antiimmigration. The ire and focus was on catholics and some elements of northern europeans in part. They had a president elected on the no nothing ticket, and ultimately it became the two parties that we know today or at least that we think we know today, democrats and republicans, and of course we had that overarching issue of race and slavery and the parties stood with that. For a while the Democratic Party had a pretty strong antislavery meaning. We had others who were in the party, copperheads, who viewed it in a different way it shook down into a republican with Abraham Lincoln as the president who became the force and the Republican Party the force against slavery. Ed will talk a lot about how things changed in the aftermath of the assassination of lincoln and what changed with the reconstruction period. All of those things which were life and death issues for so many, really created a level of po particularization in the society and broke down obviously along regional lines and those regional divisions continued to persist but not necessarily in the way the parties changed and the Democratic Party, which became a more dominant party, many decades later, had a merger of southern and northern democrats. Those deep divisions that were there, the polarization and the society, the polarization of the parties, Nolan Mccarthy is right that what were seeing now is something far more distinct than what weve seen since any period in 150 years. Thats fascinating. Youre teaching that party system during the civil war period mirrored the polarization in society nicely reinforces joannes point that violence in congress mirrored the violence in society. Yes. Ed, your book the thin line of freedom argues powerfully at every step those who would advance freedom found themselves challenged and sometimes defeated as this history shows, however, black freedom advanced faster and further than its champions dreamed possible precisely because the opponents of freedom proved powerful and aggressive. Tell us about how it was with each victory of the armies of the south that provokes northern support for abolitionism and as norm invite, its a really important story, if you could take us from the post civil war period through reconstruction and how the party system realigned and the country became less polarized as support for reconstruct was ultimately abandoned. As norm was saying the polarization inside the north between the democrats and republicans during the civil war its a fundamental fact that people often tend to forget, you know, people would say well the democrats lost, they only had 47 of the vote. Well, i think weve seen in our own time that half the electorate doesnt go away when they lose, right. So in 1864, 10,000 votes in different districts, see if that number sounds familiar, would have given the election to the democrats in 1864 after all the suffering of the civil war. We forget that had a combatles gone differently, Abraham Lincoln might not have been reelected. That northern difference there is. The northern democrats were as racist as white southerners and they hated everything the republicans were doing. The war ends and the white south says well, okay, weve lost. In the meantime lincolns election, Andrew Johnson becomes president , he seems to cut some slack for the white south and they go great, okay, push for everything that we can get. Lets put those black coats in there to reinstitute as much slavery as possible before the republicans come back into congress. Right now theres kind of a quiet the president is running everything. This sounds familiar too, right. Lets do what we can with this president. So when the republicans come back in after riots in new orleans and memphis and widespread violence against black people across the south, republicans say we cannot have lost 350,000 men for this. We must restore the purpose of the war and because the white south was just running roughshod, so the white south keeps pushing and pushing, the northern republicans say okay, its going to take an amendment to the constitution that you have to support and youre going to have to allow black men to vote and be delegates for those conventions to rewrite the constitutions before you can come back in because youve shown us that youre not sorry at all. You admit that you were defeated but you dont admit that you were wrong. You have congressional commissions that go out and talk to people across the safeouth a say what were looking for is rebelism. The spirit, even though they lost, they are still the rebels. The patterns we see playing out today were there. Im not giving up my heritage. Im holding on to this identity. As a result, you wouldnt have had the 14th amendment if the republicans hadnt felt if they didnt revise the fundamental law of the land the democrats of the north will join with the white southerners and take away what was won in such loss in the civil war. Thats what i mean. And then the 15th amendment because to really make sure we meant it, you cant take away the vote. Reconstruction begins ending almost as soon as it begins. In virginia its over by 1870. The textbooks put the number 1877 in our head, but reconstruction starts ending in 71 and 72 drenched in violence. The white south brings on the fundamental change in law of recognizing that if youre a native born american you have fundamental rights. Thats a result of white southern recall sa trans. After reconstruction comes to an end the United States settles into a pattern that will follow for a very long time, very closely contested elections with the south, largely democratic, especially after disenfranchisement around the century and the republicans, those are the most closely contested and finally calibrated elections in American History all during the period when people think nothing is happening, that its boring. In fact, votes of a few thousand here or there could change the outcome. Its a fundamental restructuring, but the xhanalty from what joanne and norm and i are saying, polarization seems to find a way to happen. Whatever the situation. Winner take all, two parties, us and them, us and them are shifting, but there seems to be a polarizing impulse in american political culture. So interesting. What an important point that it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led the supporters of the 14th amendment to want to embody in the constitution and we told the story in the civil war exhibit of the debate between Thaddeus Stevens and john bingham, stevens saying dont worry we have the majority for ever and bingham saying no, we might lose it and put it in the constitution and that was the pattern for so many of the gains of reconstruction and that warning that losers may not go away gracefully is also very sobering for today. Joanne, we have a bunch of questions from our friends to you, howard green says when northerners are willing to fight back and southerners stop challenging is that like facing up to a bully . We also have a question about whether any members of congress were trying to reach across the aisle during this time. A question about whether in the prewar era were brawls most often over slavery . Respond to any of those that strike you as provocative. Sure. Well, the first question about the northerners and southerners, i would say that southerners dont stop fighting. Theyre just sort of thrown off their feet in a sense because the northerners who have been caving in all along suddenly ther fighting back. The word bully asked in the question is on target. Thats the word people used at the time for the people who were provoking these fights. Full bully brooks. Preston brooks who attacks charles, that was his nickname and a word applied to people throughout this period. So there was a sense that these people before the second half of the 1850s, that southerners were picking on people who could be bullied because they couldnt fight back in the same way. What then happens is that these northerners come and they the northern congressmen, they were campaigning on the idea that they were going to fight the slave power. Theres a reality to that in congress, that they meant it and some of them came with weapons and literally made it clear and the document that you mentioned, that i will confess did make me kind of teary, the three northerners explained why they will agree to duel from now on and the part that really captured me is at the end, after describing this with all of this emotion, they say, were putting this down on paper so future generations will understand how hard it was to fight slavery on the floor of congress. So they make clear precisely what im trying to describe in the book and it is bullying but what happens when youre being bullied, i suppose a sort of, you know, simple answer, but if you stand up to a bully sometimes thats a useful thing to do. I will also mention briefly the question, whether or not people reaching across the aisle. There were. After a certain amount of time that became very hard to do, and you can see the mere hint at a certain point in the 1850s someone would reach across the aisle to someone else is sometimes met by mockery or even theyll joke, but the joke will be, yeah, you do that. I think theres one congressman that says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their sunday best on because theyre never going to see you again. There were some people trying. Strikingly to me in the handful of years before the civil war, people were reaching across the aisle off the floor, right. They couldnt do it on the floor in the public eye with the press watching and so they removed themselves from congress and tried to do it in a space space but by that point those are not issues that could be compromised. That reminder that compromise is only possible sometimes in private during the constitutional convention, which was secret, you were able to forge those compromises but when everything is tweeted in real time or the press was watching in the civil war that is more difficult. Completely fascinating. Norm, a series of questions, Everyone Wants to you can ta about present and friends, we will, but we have to learn about our history at the same time. Many of them are our friends are asking why isnt Congress Standing up to the president today . Bill asks, how could congress tolerate the refusal of president trumps personnel who received subpoenas to testify before committees . Should this behavior been punished with fines or imprisonment. We have a question from how ralph hendrickson, how can congress regain its oversight of the executive branch and sara cunningham, very first question asked, why is congress, especially the senate, so willing to bow to the executive . Any precedent for this combined partisanship. Do gives us some historical context, during the civil war it seemed, congress was more willing to stand up to the president , for goodness sakes, the Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 over the republican president johnsons veto and, indeed, impeached him because of its distaste for his policies. Compare congress willingness to stand up to the president then and now and why . Im going to digress because i want to bring in a little more history too. One thing to set that context theres a book by the historian called the First Congress and the First Congress did not consist of a lot of wonderful towering figures, other than a James Madison here or there. There were a lot of pretty mediocre people. But they all saw that they better establish this as an institution that meant something, that had respect, and they did some quite remarkable things including the bill of rights, of course, because they had institutional loyalty in the sense if the constitution was going to work they better get it going. To step back a little bit, the constitution was set up through those compromises to give an inordinate amount of power to the side. They knew it. It wasnt just the way they set up apportionment, the socalled compromise. The Electoral College, the nature of the house of representatives gave them a lot of clout and because of this determination to maintain slavery and in the aftermath reconstruction to make sure they could recapture their power through Voter Suppression and the use of race and i would remind people of one other thing or something that mo peopst peo dont realize the house started with 65 members and it was capped in 1929 at 435. It actually didnt change in size after the 1910 census. That was because the southerners saw that if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to dilute their power and give more power actually to africanamericans who were emerging. So they figured it out, how to keep the size at 435 and use their power of redistricting and apportionment, use their ability to maintain control, to basically keep black from having any role or significant role in the south and to keep the laws such that there wouldnt be significant civil rights which, of course, we didnt get until the 1960s. There was a lot of history here we have to keep in mind and we have to keep in mind that it was those southern democrats who from the 1930s all the way through really a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power in the house of representatives for democrats, where they could build a compromised coalition with northern democrats that maintained Voter Suppression and their role in the south while giving democrats power. In the aftermath of that the south changed and as our regions began to change it was the republicans who moved in and took over from southern democrats and began to court voters in a way that also was focused around race and suppressing the power of race. I want to get all of that on the table. Now, what i would say about the questions that were asked directly is, we have moved from polarization to tribalism. That began, i would say, much more with Newt Gingrich and his arrival in congress in 1978 and a change in our politics and in particular a change in the Republican Party that i would believe and i would say bluntly has it more a cult now than a traditional political party. What the framers built in from the beginning a recognition that you could end up with a president who would not behave in a fashion that put the entire country first, who might look out for his own economic interests or his familys economic interests or subboard nate the interest of the country to foreign powers sometimes for economic gain and they built in safeguards. The Electoral College was one, but prime among them was the first branch because it was elected end elected independently, because it was not beholden to a president because of the belief that the members would have what political scientists in decades have called institutional patriotism would provide those checks and balances. If you have a party that subordinates its own institutional interests to that of a corrupt president or a cult, then youre going to lose that fundamental check. If another one of those checks, the independent judiciary is cast to the side with a desire to fill it with people who also will have loyalties that dont match what we believe should be an independent judiciary, you lose many of those checks and balances. Weve lost a large number of them now and the right role of the senate, for example, to use the power of confirmation of judges and executive officials, of congress to use the power of the purse to put some boundaries around the presidency or bad behavior by members of the executive branch, when those begin to shred, you lose control over the system and i believe, frankly, that thats what weve had in the last several years and its not something that i think the framers would have viewed in a positive light. Very interesting. Some powerful statements following up on what you said eileen says, define the difference between polarization and tribalism and i heard norm saying its the difference between a clash of ideas which we saw at the time of the civil war and just a clash of partisanship where people are unwilling to buck their party in a way they werent back in the civil war when the Congress Took its institutional role more seriously even when that meant disagreeing with a president from the same party. Just very quickly, jeff. Please. If you view the other party as worthy people who were all trying to solve problems, they just have misguided ideas, you can agree on what the problems are and then work through compromi compromises and the political process where you can achieve some accompli