it's very fancy. the ladies are wearing gowns. good. how about a third thing? what else do you see? go ahead, jimmy? >> it looks like they're all fairly close together. like i can't tell, they might be dancing or i don't know. but they are all very close together. >> exactly. very good. okay. that's good. yeah. i should say about lady washington's reception that lady washington herself is standing literally center stage, an elegant gown. what you might not have noticed was that there is someone else who we sometimes think of as important, sort of receding into the background here. that's good old george. george washington here in the center in black formal republican gown, sort of overshadowed by lady washington. now, the title was lady washington's reception. the word used at the time was that of a levee which is a formal reception which was held and hosted by the first lady, martha washington. any of you notice how she was standing on a platform. that's right. you also noticed the opulent attire. frankly, this is a scene that could have taken place in a european court as much as it might have taken place in america. the next image, however, i think you will find maybe a little more familiar. this is county election from 1851. what do you see here and how does it differ from that last image? got a hand down here. go ahead. >> the drunk guy on the top left of the picture. >> oh, drunk people. very good. yeah. there's actually more than one drunk guy. this guy here, we got someone who had a little too much here. good. yeah. >> stump speaking. >> yeah. we talked about this. good. you remember stump speaking. the whole vote for me for president. excellent. good. anything else you see? there's a hand back there. >> it's primarily working class people. >> yeah. good. that's all good. you're seeing a diversity of people. now, one thing you're also seeing, though, is the white male electorate. this is going to stand in for democracy in this period. the jacksonnian period. the one we're going to look at today to start. but also, even though it is the white male electorate it is a diverse scene. it's the whole town. there are people of all kind. no indeed the african-american to the left of the picture, of course, children as well. although it would be the white male voter for many, many years who would be the voter in america, nevertheless political culture encompasses all people, encompasses men and women, encompasses whites and african-americans alike and it is not so much a question of whether one can participate in the vote, but whether one can participate more broadly in politics. now, when we think back to the first party system, when we think back to the people who stood in as the politicians of the early day, two people come to mind. from the federalist party, alexander hamilton. mr. ten dollar bill, right? and from the democratic republicans, the opposition party to the federalists, we have thomas jefferson. now, these two men could not have been more stark opposites politically. recall that the federalists stood for a strong constitution, a strong federal government, a strong financial and manufacturing base, and as we say, hamilton was their leader. versus those democratic republicans or just republicans for short who were wary of centralized government, who were wary of encroachments upon personal liberties, and who promoted farming and commerce among small villages and towns instead of large cities and manufacturing. and jefferson the enlightened figure of the democratic republicans was their leader. now, that's the first party system. it's so-called because of what follows. indeed, the first party system was an earlier moment. during the first party system, one of the key issues was the embargo and we see from this political cartoon that the embargo is spelled backwards as oh, grab me so using a little bit of creative license, the artist here is representing the embargo as a large turtle biting at the british smuggler who would try to break the embargo. now, the embargo was really a foreign policy measure. it was designed to make it so that britain would have a hard time trading with the united states. it ultimately was one of the policies that doomed the united states to a second war with great britain. again, that's part of the first party system's history. it's about the ways in which the federalists and the republicans clashed, the ways in which hamilton and his legatees and jefferson and his successors came into office, came into power and eventually faded from the scene. who they left the politics of the united states to were these guys. the men of the second party system. so-called because we have totally new names for the parties and although some of the issues changed, once again, these are the new leaders of american politics. on the left, you have andrew jackson, a tennessee democrat who we studied at some length here, and on the right, henry clay, a kentucky whig. between clay and jackson, we get two very different views of what america should look like and i have two political cartoons to show how in the second party system, new issues were emerging. for example, the question of the bank. this is the second bank of the united states and in this image we see andrew jackson on the left holding a cane which he usually walked with, with all his bullet wounds from his duels, trying to battle back the many-headed hydra which is a mythical creature from greek mythology but here it stands in for the bank. on each of the heads of the hydra is an individual who was representing the bank, the most prominent one in the center here was nicholas biddle who was the president of the bank and who became a kind of enemy to jackson in this process. so this is something of a satire in a sense because jackson would so-called kill the bank or slay the bank issue by vetoing its renewal application prior to its usual termination and that whole political story is somewhat well-known at this point and what we know from it is that after the bank war, so to speak, formally then the whig party coalesces. a lot of these cartoons take the whig perspective because indeed it shows that the whigs were actively trying to attack jackson. so as i was doing my research for this lecture, i had a hard time finding pro-jackson cartoons and yet we know he was the man of the people. yet we know he was a symbol of american democracy. so what we have left are these anti-jackson cartoons coming out of the period of the whigs. in this one, the issue under consideration is executive power. at the top of the image we see the phrase "born the command." jackson here is figured as a regal figure holding a scepter. you may not be able to see all the details. in his left hand he has a control which says the word veto. this is a reference to his using the veto more than any other president in american history as a way of claiming executive power. underneath him, under his feet, you will see the constitution of the united states as if he's trampling on it. you will also see various other improvements, so-called internal improvements, things that the whig party stood for like roads, like canals and eventually, railroad. so jackson here is pictured as being against all those improvements and as a whig attack, this was very effective because if there's one thing that american politics feared it was that of a king. remember the american revolution had been fought over this very issue, fighting a monarch to replace it with the democratic system. although jackson himself is thought to be a kind of leader of democratic reform, let's not forget that sometimes, politics is personal. so i want to ask a question and see if we can knock out a few of them. let's name some of the characteristics of the democratic party versus the whig party. let's think about a few things here. okay. yeah. josh. what have you xwot, democrat or whig? >> democrats. they are against government spending and also against tariff. >> what was the tariff again? >> some sort of tax, right? >> yeah. tax on? >> goods. >> goods, right, coming into the united states. that's good. we have a few of them here. let's see what i had. weak government, got that one. yep. i put up they are against action. lets not forget indian removal. that counts as action. it's a little more complicated. more like the action of jackson opposed. spending. i think we heard that one. that was jackson's maysville road veto. that refers to the veto and the image you are seeing jackson holding it as a power. i think you mentioned anti-tariff. you got them all. remember the tariff of abominations. that was a measure passed under the john quincy adams presidency. it was attacked by jackson, so-called tariff of abominations. yeah. what we see then are the democrats, in a lot of ways, they are the legacy party of the democratic republicans. they even have the same name. so there's really a continuation between jefferson and his policies and jackson and his policies. all right. flipping the coin. whigs. what do we know about the whigs? go ahead. >> so the whigs is basically the opposite of the democrats. they are for strong government, they are for government action in general, they are for government spending and they are for the tariff basically. >> that's good, actually. yeah. this is an easy one to remember. the whigs are everything the democrats are not. let's see. yep. strong government, especially federal government. yep, they wanted certain economic and social goals so the whigs are pro-bank. jackson is anti-bank. the whigs are pro-spending, we might say. especially on transportation, particularly the so-called internal improvements like the canal and the roads. and then the tariff. from the whig point of view it was no tariff of abominations. it was a reasonable tariff. it was the kind of economic policy that the united states should enact. and much like jackson, the democrats are the legacy party of jefferson and the democratic republicans, it can be argued that the whigs very much secede the federalist agenda. alexander hamilton. so although they are kind of remixed, the jackson democrats, the henry clay whigs, they are kind of the next generation of politics. and it's this party system, this is the second party system that i want to focus on. now, in order to move us from parties to political culture, i want to introduce you to this concept. it's a concept that i think will be useful for us to think about. parties. i have broken parties into two sets of components. it's people. it's the leaders. it's the issues. it's the organization. people. and it's actions. we are talking about campaigns, platforms, elections. parties are focused on these things. really, a way of talking about political parties is a group of organized people taking action for a certain result. that's the role of the party. the party's role is to gain power through all these things, elections, campaigns. now, political culture is a little different and it can be said to be a more capacious view of politics, because it includes beliefs, these are more abstract things like norms or values or attitudes. and it includes elements of power, things like symbols, meanings and rituals. so between political parties and political culture, then, we have a broad view of politics. and we can think about how different actors or politicians are both partisans or members of political parties and part of a political culture, which may transcend at times those parties, or may be limited to those parties. so that's the idea on the concept i want to introduce. i want to suggest that the study of political culture which today is a growing field in history allows us to get into some new concepts, allows us to sort of go beyond the party mold and look at what i think are some really interesting stuff from the antebellum period. i went to the end. so i have a few questions to consider during the remainder of the lecture and they are as follows. first, how and why did american political culture change from the days of the early republic to the antebellum? in other words, from the days of hamilton and jefferson to the days of jackson and clay? so we want to try to trace that change. that's the first goal of the lecture today. and then the second one is what does this emerging political culture of the antebellum congress reveal about wider american society. so i'm going to return to those questions at the end of the lecture but i want to present to you now some evidence that i hope will begin to answer that question and will help you to understand how political culture operated in this period. as i mentioned, the three areas that i'm going to investigate today, tobacco culture, political friendships, and affairs of honor. they are interrelated. it's not to say that one couldn't affect the other. some are more important than others as we'll see. but broadly, these are three important aspects of the political culture of the day and when we think about it in those terms, we see that these are ways for us to understand why and how politicians came into conflict with each other in the era before the civil war. so the first piece, tobacco culture. this draws a lot on my own research that i've done so i've not yet published these findings. i'm he fromming them to you today with an eye towards seeing what you think. but there are some elements of the tobacco culture i found really interesting. i have a few really kind of compelling images here. amazing what you can find out there. some of the elements of the tobacco culture i found include chewing tobacco, snuff, and cigars. in the 19th century, i should just say right now, they had not yet quite invented the cigarette by this period. so if you were doing tobacco, you were doing it one of these ways. it may seem a little silly, may sound a little funny but indeed, tobacco was one of the key ways that politicians across parties could even talk to each other. i found numerous instances where sharing a cigar, sharing a pinch of snuff or sharing a wad of chewing tobacco could bridge a gap that otherwise existed between a democrat and a whig. i want to share a story with you from that. but to convince you that tobacco wasn't just an every day thing that didn't matter for politics, let me read to you this quote from an english observer who came to the united states, who went to washington and who checked out the scene. he said the habit of chewing tobacco is also prevalent in the states, nor is it as in great britain and ireland almost entirely confined to the poorer classes. members of the house of representatives and of the senate, doctors, judges, barristers and attorneys, chew tobacco almost as generally as the laboring classes in the old country. even in a court of justice, more especially in the western states, it is no unusual thing to see judge, jury and the gentlemen of the bar all chewing and spitting as liberally as the crew of a homeward bound west indiaman. so you had the house of representatives, you have the senate, you have judges, everyone is chewing and spitting. it's incredible to think about it if you were sitting in the congress in 1840, you would be hearing the spitoon, the cling of the spitoon as commonly as you would be hearing the voice of politicians but actually it was the other form of tobacco i found in the u.s. senate was more common. this is really kind of incredible to think about, because this is really kind of a nasty habit. it's called snuff. this is from a book from 1840 that i found called "a pinch of snuff." here's what this author said. a man's character may often be judged by the manner in which he takes snuff. we detest the stealthy micerly ungraceful attitude in which some people feed their noses. a liberal elegant hand may be known in this work at a distance too great for the fact it serves to be seen. that unattractive person on the screen you're seeing, i assume a woman, it's hard to tell, is actually reaching into a little box much like the one on the left. she's taking a pinch of this very fine polarized tobacco and she's putting it into her nose by way of a snort. when you took a pinch of snuff, the first thing that would happen is you would sneeze violently, as the particles were in your nostrils. then the second thing is you would get the hit of tobacco in your system. what i found was that the most inveterate, the most common use of tobacco of the entire u.s. senate was henry clay. now, this is the guy who is the leader of the whig party, who is mr. anti-jackson, yet henry clay was more known for using tobacco than perhaps any politician in the antebellum senate. on the right, we see william rufus king, who was a deshg and jacksonnian supporter, and these two men it turns out in 1841 had a major incident that almost led to a duel. the confrontation came when senator king asserted that the character of andrew jackson, his president, and that of his editor, francis blare, would quote compare gloriously to that of mr. clay. so this is king making an attack on clay by comparing him and his character to a jacksonnian supporter. it was then said that mr. clay considered this remark as placing blare on an equality with himself and therefore, pronounced it false and cowardly. whenever you hear the word coward in 19th century america, get ready because a duel's about to happen. it's a bad word. king promptly issued a challenge to clay and both men went so far as to arrange for seconds. now, in the process, clay realized that he was a little bit overboard and should not have merited a duel. the two men come to reconciliation but on a personal level they had not yet kind of apologized to each other so this is how clay does it. there are apparently no hard feelings after the formal apology because in the senate the next day, clay approached king's desk who was seated, and in a friendly manner said king, give us a pinch of your snuff. and the gallery who heard it burst into applause because they knew that this was clay's way of saying i'm sorry. so this incident demonstrates and there are so many more like it, political actors could rely on a common cultural practice, in this case taking a pinch of snuff, to bind even the most partisan divisions. so what do you think of this example? had you heard of tobacco before? what do you think? i mean, i thought it was pretty incredible. yeah, omar? >> is there any remnants of the tobacco culture today? >> it's a good question, because i mean, we think maybe it's just henry clay who was snuffing. well, what i found out, i really cannot believe this, is that even when you walk into the congress today, in the senate gallery, there are boxes just off to the side that are filled with snuff. and any member could take it, because again, with today's anti-smoking laws you can't smoke inside a public building but you can take snuff. >> it's funny, i actually was watching an old -- some television performance of one of my favorite musicians. in 1970, this was in 1970, it wasn't offensive for them to tell the snuff commercial from when he was a little kid. he was singing on the air. this is 45 years ago. goes to show you, times have changed. >> yeah. snuffing. >> yeah. >> okay. we are going to snuff that conversation and move to political friendships. all right. maybe this will be a little more friendly of an audience now. all right. well, look, tobacco shows that you know, we can all just get along a little bit and it also shows that if henry clay, who is the most jackson hater that there is, can reconcile with a jackson supporter over tobacco, maybe there's hope for america. indeed, political friendships were a big part of the antebellum congress. now, here i'm drawing on both my research and a growing research field of other historians, including rachel sheldon, who talks about a washington brotherhood. now, for sheldon and in my own research i find there are key elements that define this brotherhood. boardinghouses is a big part of it, that politicians lived together. fraternal organizations, things like the freemasons. if you are a mason and you are a democrat, and you are a mason and you are a whig, you are still masons together. taverns. because as we saw, politicians like to drink. so you know, go into a tavern to talk over issues was a way in which they bonded. social clubs. more formal clubs where men could gather and you could see in the picture, smoke their cigars and have brandy. this was a thing of the antebellum period. and lavish parties. washington was nothing if not a place to party. and it typically was the case that there would be balls and receptions and that the president would have balls and this also is the case where a first lady could help to arrange those parties. smoking cigars comes up. it's one of the ways men bonded with each other and became friends. and more. so what we have here is a washington, d.c. by the time of the civil war period that is indeed quite advanced along these lines. that was not exactly the case when thomas jefferson became president. in 1800, washington, d.c. was just getting started. this image shows the white house as it was just built in 1800. john adams was the first president to occupy it for a few short months. jefferson was the first president to occupy the white house during his entire presidency. the washington of 1800 was a kind of undeveloped place. there were swamps and muddy roads all over and in the capital there was very little to do. not so by 1850. one of the big differences between 1800 and 1850 when it comes to the city of washington is that it's actually a city now. this is kind of a familiar outline to us. there's a few things that the modern washington, d.c. has that they didn't have yet in 1850 but i want to zoom in on this part of the map that shows us kind of the important government center. this is zooming in on the map of washington in 1850. there are few elements that are maybe familiar to us. in the circle there you see the president's house. that's the white house. on the other one you see capitol hill. that's where the capitol was. which means that yes, indeed the national mall, the smithsonian institute and at that time, the unfinished washington monument. the rest of the swamp here is not yet been filled in, nor has the tidal basin been created. but even by 1850, there was a lot going on in washington besides the president's house, besides the capitol. i mean, after all, look at all these other buildings that had filled in. what i want to argue is that political friendships took place in the in-between spaces. in the other buildings and particularly in the boardinghouses. in places that you wouldn't expect on the map like right here. notice where that arrow is pointing. it's a small building and it's next to a larger one. this is today by gallery place in washington, d.c. and it's at a place now called the old patent office, part of the national art museum. what i was able to find as part of my research was a photo that shows this exact scene from the 1840s and here it is. it's what was then the patent office, wasn't the old patent office, in the background, the columns, then those buildings in front. now, in this photo which was titled the old patent office, the point of the person looking at it might be to say you know, what's important here is that big columnated building. that's what's important. what i'm going to argue is actually it's that building. it's the building that you don't really see, because that's the washington boardinghouse. that's the place where the politicians lived. and that's the place where deals got done. just going to mention one example of an important boardinghouse pattern and group that changed the course of american history. in fact, they lived in a boardinghouse on the same street, on f street, and it's for that reason that they are called the f street mess. here they are. take them in. there are five of them. they are called a mess because the boardinghouse was sometimes often referred to a mess because people ate their meals there like a mess hall, right? so f street mess. so-called because their boardinghouse was on f street. you got james mason, robert hunter, david achison, william good and william butler. what do these men have in common? what do you see? >> they are all democrats. >> that's right. lot of "d"s there. what else do they have in common? >> they are all southerners. >> yeah. southerners because virginia, that's the south. because missouri, well, it's still the south. because south carolina, that's definitely the south. right? southern democrats. the party of andrew jackson. but what's ominously missing here from the party of andrew jackson are northerners. where are the northerners? why would a group of five southern democrats choose to go into the same boardinghouse together? well, there's a lot of answers to that question. lot of reasons but one result is undeniable. it was this group, the f street mess, that was more responsible than any other group of politicians for the most important piece of legislation in the antebellum congress. and that was the kansas-nebraska act. it was this group who on a cold snowy night in january of 1854 marched over to then president franklin pierce's house, the white house, and demanded that pierce support their plan to organize the new territory of nebraska, to permit slavery. there it is. southern democrats have one thing in common that northern democrats don't and that's an interest to expand slavery. this is ominous. because this shows that the politics of the party through this political culture were becoming increasingly sectional. now, what year was the kansas-nebraska act, do you remember? 18 -- 54? okay. so 1854. gave you that one. all right. what year did the civil war start? >> '65. >> that's when it ends. >> i don't know when it started. >> 1861? all right. so some basic dates we got to remember. the kansas-nebraska act is 1854. the civil war starts 1861. that's only seven years away. that's my point here. not to quiz you on dates. it's to say look, this change really forebodes the coming of the civil war. so what do you think? is a boardinghouse as powerful then as the capitol or as the white house? what do you think of this example? go ahead, josh. >> i think it's more powerful because there's no opposing views inside the boardinghouse compared to like in congress. so like you have northerners and southern all in one place, all battling for their views and stuff but if the southerners all live in one house, they all have the same views and they all want [ inaudible ]. that's how they got their job done. >> that's really well said. the power of the domestic sphere, we might say, in politics. yeah. other thoughts on that? well, remember these, guys. because the f street mess made quite a mess. and in fact, what comes out of the f street mess, what comes out of this period, is really my third category, affairs of honor. that is not to say that affairs of honor did not take place in the earlier period because they did. famously, the most important affair of honor of all from the first party system, the duel between aaron burr and alexander hamilton. a few images of which you see here. this material draws upon a book by joanne freeman called affairs of honor. it's a really excellent book. i look at some of the affairs of honor in the later period, i will end with that last example which you will see but broadly speaking, affairs of honor across time had a few things in common. they were part of a culture of honor. and again, this transcends both north and south but it becomes more of a southern institution in time. indeed, the culture of honor is more associated with the south and especially by the start of the civil war. honor is very important to those southern politicians, like the f street mess. it's associated with reputation. reputation can further be categorized by different elements but broadly speaking, it's what you were thought of. and at this time, your reputation was all you had. in some ways i think of it today like our identity, which when we talk about identity theft, we talk about the problems that happen when our identity is stolen, think of that, think about that as an attack on reputation, as when your reputation has been besmirched or sullied or attacked. it's about gossip. it's about spreading lies and rumors, potentially of a personal nature, potentially of a political nature. it's about posting which not too long ago, this might not have been a word you didn't know because this book that i'm thinking of was written in 2001, but now i think we all know what to post means. actually it's the same thing. to post on my social media site is to put information out there. of course, only back then, all they had were newspapers. but when they posted, that is to say, when they published pieces in newspapers, they could precipitate an affair of honor if those postings were attacking reputation. and indeed, it often went in this way. it often went gossip, then posting and finally dueling. dueling. dueling is the last stage in the cycle or in the process of the affair of honor. dueling was a last measure. there were lots of threats of duels. we saw one earlier with henry clay and william king. but indeed, dueling was a last measure. it's not to say that it didn't happen, because it did. as the burr-hamilton duel suggests and as countless others, perhaps some 200 to 300 in total, i have heard, in this period between politicians. but dueling was the end of the process, not the beginning. so i want to present to you three examples of affairs of honor, one from this early period of federalists and republicans and then the later two from the period of the second party system of democrats and whigs. and i wanted to start with this one, because we get to bring in our own connecticut senator, roger griswald in this case from the house of representatives. so we have got one of our own here. roger was born in lime, connecticut. he's a connecticut politician from this period. he was a federalist as many connecticut politicians were, right? and he goes to the congress to be a congressman and is there from 1795 to 1805. so roger griswold was a long serving federalist congressman from connecticut. matthew lyon, on the other hand, was from vermont and he was a supporter of thomas jefferson so he became a republican. well, republicans and federalists as you see, as we have seen, could get along sometimes, but they also could get into big fights with each other, and what i'm going to describe is known as the lyon-griswold brawl with our own griswold having a club in his hand and the vermonter, lyon, with a pair of fire tongs. how in the world did they get this way? it all came about over an argument over politics. it was during an impeachment hearing of a particular democratic republic officer, william blount of tennessee, that griswold, mr. club, was trying to attract the attention of lyon, mr. tongs, in order to have a dialogue on the issue. in other words, in order to engage in the political process. but lyon was ignoring him on purpose since they belonged to opposing political parties and indeed, this is where the line starts to get crossed. griswold finally lost his temper and insulted lyon by calling him a scoundrel. that's another word like coward, which when you say it, everyone gets quiet. eyes pop out. what will you do? it's like the dirtiest word in the affair of honor. you were saying you, sir, are a liar. well, it did not go too well from there. lyon declared himself willing to fight for the interest of the common man, to take on griswold. griswold, knowing a little bit about lyon's past, asked if he would be using his wooden sword, which we think is a reference to the fact that lyon had been dismissed from the continental army back during the revolution and thus did not have an actual sword anymore. this is when lyon spat on griswold's face. so now we have spit in the face. okay, that's where it stopped there. they broke the two men up. lyon made an apology to the house but again, formal apology, claiming he had not known it was in session because it was an impeachment session. weak excuse. but that he meant no breach of decorum or disrespect to the house as a whole. now, two weeks later, not satisfied with the apology, griswold retaliated by bringing in the club. by attacking lyon with his club here and beating him about the head and shoulders in view of the house, and this scene shows how all the congressmen were just watching on. lyon, who wasn't seriously injured, then went to a fire pit and grbd grabbed the tongs and that is seen here in the picture. now, they were broken up once again. it led to a house investigation. nothing happened. because the lyon/griswold brawl was part of a code of honor, acceptable conduct for gentlemen. of course, apologies had to be made. the fact is, it could happen sbchlt it d. and it did. the fact that it didn't go on to be a duel is surprising about this, that it stopped at the level of a brawl. we move ahead to 1850. we get to another one of these affairs of honor this one, though, is getting a little bit more of a loaded gun. this one is the foote-benetton dispute. we have the mississippi senator, henry foote here, who we now see is holding a gun. and on the right here, we have the missouri senator, thomas hart benetton, who has his chest pulled back, saying let me at him. i have nothing to hide. that's the scene here. this one, too, comes from words being exchanged that merely lead to blows. foote calls benetton a culuminator. ooh. this caused the missourian to start approaching foote behind in a menacing manner. foote pulled out the pistol, prepared for such a response. and, again, the word itself may not seem all that bad. but, again, it's one of these words that are saying you, sir, are a liar. and these are fighting words in antebe antebellum america. when the gun was taken out by foote you can see he was immediately called back and eventually the two men were wrestled away. this is sort of a false alarm, you might say. indeed, both men were democrats. this doesn't quite fit into the sectional pattern we might expect of this period. when you have two democrats -- although from different wings of the party -- fighting it out. there are details there to think about. it's the final example, the one that's most famous. perhaps the most famous affair of honor of all that reveals what i think the breakdown of american politics. and that's the brooks/sumner affair n this cartoon from 1856 entitled southern chivalry, arguments versus clubs, an unknown assailant holding a cane with his face blocked. that's purposeful. the artist didn't know who the heck it was -- attacking a man who seems to be holding a pen and perhaps a bill in his hand that says "kansas" and, that man was charles sumner. the assailant was preston brooks, a democrat from south carolina. sumner at this point considered himself a republican from massachusetts. and prior to that, he had been a wig. it all began when charles sumner made a speech in the senate in which he attacked the results of 1854. there was violence in kansas and sumner knew this. he wanted to point out that there should be blame placed for the passage of the act on a few men in particular. he called out steven douglas of illinois, northern democrat. and he also called out andrew butler, of south carolina. butler, remember, was a member of the f-street mess. one of those powerful southern democrats who forced franklin pierce at that time to support the kansas/nebraska act. two years later, sumner makes this speech in which he says, and i quote, that steven douglas, with was, quote, a noisome squat and in his next breath he insulted senator butler. he said of butler that he was, as having taken, quote, a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him. though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaised in his sight. i mean the harlot slavery. so, charles sumner just issued two major insults against two u.s. senators, to men of the opposite party. now, what this scene actually took place shows us is that the violence in the u.s. senate is starting to sxlaescalate. foote-benetton brawl was broken up. but a senator not mentioned in the speech but was a cousin -- in fact, a second cousin of andrew butler from the same town, edgefield, south carolina. he, along with two of his cam d compadres, the three of them, they conspired. they made a plan. and brooks had a prepared speech. he probably had a piece of paper in front of him. he may have memorized it. here is what he said he said. you tell me if he actually said this. he walked up to sumner, who was sitting at his desk in the senate. senate was out of session. sumner was busily writing. he was said to have said, and i quote, mr. sumner, i have read your speech twice over carefully. it is a libel in south carolina and mr. butler is a relative of mine. sumner gets up, brooks loses control and starts whacking him withi his cane. it began to crack on impact on sumner's skull. you see some blood on his forehead. sumner was a large man, trapped under his senate desk. as he tried to ghetto out of it, he ripped the bolts from the floor. by the way, this senate desk is preserved by the massachusetts historical society today. i've seen it. it's incredible. and brooks continued to bash sumner until he was on the floor, bleeding and unconscious. sumner was out for the count. brooks composed himself, walked out, took a deep breath and went off into history. it should be noted, too, though, that one of brooks' compatriots was to keep others away. you see him wielding the cane. the desk, the ink that had spilled. people tried to come to sumner's aid as much as people were laughing. some thought sumner's attack on senator butler went too far. concerned, as well as humored. when you have someone beaten senseless on the floor of the senate, something was fatal ly wrong. my question to you is -- you've heard this story now -- to what extent was the brooks/sumner affair about politics and to what extent about personal issues, do you think? do you make this as a political thing or a personal thing? >> seems more personal. >> go ahead, jimmy. >> i would say any time it get this is heated it's more personal than political but it's probably a combination of both. >> okay. >> but i would say more personal. >> what other things? we have one down here. >> i thought it was a little political. one is democrat and one is republican. so they're on two opposite sides. and it looks like he takes the political cycle a little strong. >> yeah. that's a good lesson for our times. it takes it a little strongly. the violence in kansas they think is caused by terrible decisions, opening it to slavery, and bleeding sumner. that this personal attack -- i want to offer you a few conclusions that sum up all of this in affairs of honor make sense to politic cancal culture and why they're important. and to help you understand. it used to be okay, so to speak, to cross those party lines, to be friends, to have those social clubs in common and smoke tobacco together. those friendships broke in the heated climate over sectional divisions. and i find -- this is part of my research. that the boarding houses became more sectional and partisan in nature. the f. street mess, although the most powerful and private example was not alone. and especially after the brawl, for their own safety they knew it was best to stick with their own. this breaks down trust and the personal bonds that the men had once shared, that the political establishment that had promoted it. and it gets to the last piece. the burr-hamilton duel was so infamous. it was one of the few times that american politicians fought and killed one another in a duel. lyon-griswold duel suggested things had gone too far. when henry foote draws a pistol and points it at thomas hart benetton, no one is surprised. in fact, there was a quote that it was the only way to defend yourself against a pistol is to bring two pistols. when preston brooks senselessly beats charles sumner down to the ground, people laughed and said he got what he deserved. in the south you get one story. in the north, you get another. and, finally, to conclude, the political culture of the antebellum congress had come apart at the seams. thank you. okay. i'm going to stop here and take questions and see what you think. i want to hear from you guys. go ahead, josh. >> okay. so i never heard of boarding houses, which sounds like boarding school and all that stuff. do they still exist in washington, d.c.? >> that's a good question. boarding houses. i mean, who had not heard of it before? raise your hands. i'm not surprised really. it's not a term we use very much today. it's not really in our culture. but, in fact, there are some boarding houses today. i actually had a bonus slide on this. let's see if i can find it. i thought someone might ask that. here. yeah. it was this one. i found this article in the new yorker from 2010 about the so-called frat house for jesus. it was incredible to me and changed my whole view on what the heck was happening in washington today. there was actually a group of congressmen in 2010 who were living together in basically a boarding house. as you can see in the image, what they all shared in common was a christian belief. some of these men are still in congress. some have, because of scandal, had to step down. but the article was talking about the so-called fellowship on c. street. it got me thinking about the f. street mess. these guys are from different parties, it turns out, democrats and republicans. the thing that unites them is more that religious view. perhaps it's not as comparable to, you know, the boarding houses of the 1850s. but this stuff is still happening. maybe with rising rents in washington, d.c., we'll see more of this as time goes on. it's a good question. other questions? yeah. katie? >> what happened to brooks and sumner after like the caning? >> he didn't go hope happily ever after. i'll tell you that. so which one, brooks and sumner? >> yeah, both. >> good question. brooks, let's see. well, he died. he kind of had like a villain's ending. he died pretty early. the caning was may. he died the last year of a could you have, croup. sumner actually live aid long life. charles sumner recovered and went through some serious like 1850s medical treatments where he had burns put on his back as kind of electroshock treatment. he was probably suffering from what we would call post traumatic stress disorder. at the time they didn't know what to do with that. sumner was a big man. he lived with these wounds his whole life. he lived until 1874. he was a senator during the civil war, during reconstruction. he was from massachusetts. and he ended up writing some of the best civil rights legislation of reconstruction. so, charles sumner was down, but not for the count. he got back up. and from 1859 through 1874 to his death, he served in the senate. other questions? zachariah, yeah. >> you said they still allow smoking in congress nowadays? >> they allow snuffing, which sounds kind of disgusting. i'm not sure if anyone snuffs today. but, i mean, that's not -- yeah. what else was i going to say about that? oh, yeah. the other thing is -- i'm not going to ask if there's any smokers out there. please don't answer that question. in doing my research for this, henry clay -- you got me thinking on something. henry clay really doesn't go away in tobacco culture. i have a slide here. yeah. this guy, henry clay, is all over product placement throughout american history. there's a cuban cigar called the henry clay. and we see this box is probably -- i'm not sure if it's a chewing tobacco box or snuff box. probably chewing tobacco, with a henry clay face on it. the other thing i found was franklin pierce gets literally shafted here. he gets made into a pipe head. during the campaign of 1852, everyone thought it would be a great idea to put franklin pierce's head on a pipe and smoke it. what can i say? kind of a misunderstood figure, franklin pierce. other questions? i assume you all figure at this point that we don't duel anymore. yeah? or do we? well, i just had one other thing, then. i had a few slides ready for you. here is one. it's this. you're on your cell phone doing the paces on the duel. so hold on. i've already lost track of my place. sorry. it's kind of funny. although dueling has ended, guys, the rhetoric of dueling has not. i was shocked. i remember actually watching this in 2004 and, thanks to youtube -- the joys of youtube, i have been able to find this clip. and at the time, i didn't believe that it was actually said. so, this is a senator from georgia. american politician, popular senator, zel miller and chris matthews, msnbc commentator. listen to this clip here. which i had queued up here. listen to this. matthews is going to confront miller. it will get heated really quickly. >> if you're going to ask the question -- >> well it's a tough question. it takes a few word. >> get out of my face! if you're going to ask me a question, step back and let me answer. >> senator -- >> you know, i wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel. that would be pretty good. >> he almost couldn't keep a straight face because in the days when you could challenge a person to a duel, america was a pretty nasty, violent place. we're going to end there if there are no other questions. we have our return to abolitionists and reform. bring documents with you for our discussion. if there's any other questions about the chapter quizes, let me know over e-mail. otherwise, thank you for your attention. see you tuesday. wednesday, american history tv in prime time, life, career and legacy of president abraham lincoln. authors and historians took part in the event. life of our nation's 16th president starting at 8:00 pm eastern here on c-span 3. >> c-span's washington journal. coming up wednesday morning, president of the plow shares fund and author of nuclear nightmares, securing the world before it's too late. he will join us to talk about this week's nuclear security summit taking place here in washington. he will also detail u.s. and global efforts to secure nuclear material so it doesn't wind up in the hands of terrorists. then yahoo! news deputy director will be on to discuss a new project, taking a closer look at the typ