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watch american history tv, tonight and over the weekend, on c-span3. >> all right. since we have a very on-time sort of calming of the room, i am going to go ahead and kick us off. thank you, so much, for coming to the violence in american politics panel. as i think we will see it as an incredibly timely panel. and a really good time to be putting these topics into the context of a broader american history. so i'm going to start off by introducing our panel. and then everyone's going to give their opening statement. and then, we will start the conversation. so who is sitting right next to me is t. cole jones. assistant professor at purdue university. he is author of "captives of liberty" prisoners of war and the politics of vengeance in the american reserve lugz, which will be released this fall by the university of pennsylvania

press. in addition to his book, he's published articles in "the journal of the early republic," the journal of military history and the new england quarterly. he is currently working on a project that is provisionally titled patrick henry's war, the struggle for empire in the revolutionary west. kelly carter jackson is a 19th century historian at wellsly college. her book force and freedom, black abolitionists and the politics of violence, out from university pennsylvania press, provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical uses of violence against black activists. and was featured in the history channel's documentary "roots." a history revealed. which was nominated for an naacp image award in 2016. gideon is a ph.d. candidate in history at northwestern university. his dissertation explores the causes and consequences of the crisis of economic voter intimidation in the late 19th

century united states. his research has received the support of the congressional center, the guilder institute of american history, the andrew w. mellin foundation. and finally, felix is assistant professor of history at austin college and his research focuses on the intersection of prejudice, politics, and popular culture. he is the author and assistant editor of two volumes of eleanor roosevelt's collected papers. so, coming from charlottesville, where i watched as neofascists clashed with protestors and anti fascists, i was one the site of visible political violence in the last few years. it was also a moment that opened a debate about political violence, particularly as americans learned more about antifa.

but, while the protestors who stood up to the neo-nazis and neoconfederates in charlottesville were often if not universally praised, even their supporters were unsure what to do with violence. on the rise in the past few years, would it cost moral high ground? did antifa's refusal to reject violence make both sides bad? those are the kinds of questions i run into when speaking to groups about charlottesville. and one thing that's missing from those questions, often, is any sense of history. maybe to put it more correctly, there is a mistake in our limited sense of history that runs through those questions. one that runs through the so-called nonviolent civil rights of the 1950s and '60s where, as the story goes, justice was achieved not through

war but through peaceful persistence. i'm really glad we are having this conversation today that takes us back to the nation's founding and the activities of the ku klux klan. >> excellent. thank you, so much, katie, for that introduction. or nikki. excuse me. and, katie, forganizing this amazing conference. so my research addresses a perennial theme. the relationship between violence and political change. in both the popular and scholarly imagination, political revolution conjures images of political violence. from the violence enacted during the arab spring in 2011, to that of the russian revolution of 1917, or the french revolutionary terror of 1793-'94, revolutionary political change seems to come hand in hand with widespread violence. cultural historians, drawing on the insights of their colleagues

and the social scientists -- social sciences -- describe violence as a language. it's a way of communicating when other forms of communication break down. when petition and protests fail to achieve the desired change, discourse can devolve into violence. these historians have been at pains to demonstrate that specific acts of violence have historically contingent meanings. in other words, the vocabulary of violence changes over time. but the correlation between political violence -- or excuse me -- political revolution and political violence, often, appears to be transhistorical. violence is the common denominator of revolutions. but what about the american revolution? unlike the french, haitian, mexican, russian, chinese, countless other political revolutions, america's revolution seemed stayed, even

restrained. although hardly nonviolent, we can all thank mel gibson for his gory reminder in his box-office disappointment, "the patriot." neither, does it appear to have much in common with the revolutionary violence that followed. american revolutionary violence appears legitimate, justified, even comical. think boston tea party or tar a and feathers. while wearing knee breaches and powdered wigs. as gordon wood noted in his seminal study, the radicalism of the american revolution, america's experience does not appear to resemble that of the revolutions of other natuions i which people were killed, property destroyed, and everything turned upside down. for wood, the revolution radicalism lay in republican ideology and popular sovereignty. this was ideology that would not only transform government but

society as well. all of which, was achieved by the early 19th century, without ever erecting a guillotine in philadelphia. the apparent absence of widespread violence has prompted some historians to question whether the american revolution was really all that revolutionary. after all, king george the 3rd survived the conflict with his head intact. perhaps, america's revolution was unique. maybe, itself even exceptional. in this framing, the american model appears as a shining city upon a hill, an example to be emulated, if not exported, around the globe. yet, to make this claim requires willful ignorance of the eight years of bloody and divisive civil warfare that pitted british-americans against their metropolitan cousins. liberated slaves against their masters and indigenous nations against one another. most historians of the american

revolution have segregated the political and social transformations of the era from the actual fighting. thus, we have a war for independence, with its fifes and drums, its generals and battles, which is separate from the political revolution of 1776. when thinking of the political history, scholars often concentrate on the declaration of independence's enlightened preamble and forget jefferson's v vitriolic for ravaging our coasts, burning our towns, and destroying lives of our people. this segregation of the war from the revolution would baffle historians of the french, haitian, or russian revolutions. but it would've pleased the founding fathers, to no end, as -- as john adams wrote jefferson, in 1815, what do we mean by the revolution? the war? that was no part of the revolution. it was only a cause -- or was

only an effect and consequence of it. adams and his peers, in the founding elite, scrubbed the war's violence from their histories. theirs was the good revolution. the moderate revolution. the gentlemanly revolution. but adams' revolution was not the one its victims remembered. recently, historians, such as alan taylor, patrick griffin, holger hook, to name a view, no doubt influenced by our post-9/11 world ongoing confrontation with political violence have worked to bridge the gap between the revolution's rhetoric and its reality. unearthing shocking levels of violence in the process. but highlighting this violence is not enough. we must seek to understand its social, cultural, and political causes and effects. if not, we will continue to accept a narrative of the american revolution, divided into two halves.

on the one side, the war, destructive and repressive. and, on the other, the political revolution. idealistic, though unfinished. breaking down this barrier requires making the connection between revolutionary political change and revolutionary violence.forthcoming book and t cycle of vengeance that treatment generated centers the war and horrors and consequences of the american revolution. it argues that the political revolution, rejektsicting monar in favor of a republic founded on popular sovereignty had the unintended consequences of transforming the war waged to achieve it. by making the people sovereign, the revolution shattered the political elites' monopoly unlegitimate violence fostering the conditions necessary for a

cycle of vengeful reprisals. prisoners of war, as victims of revolutionary violence, reveal a side of the revolution the founders preferred forgotten. the violence of the democratization of war. thank you very much. >> good morning. so i want to -- i want to tell a couple stories. some of those stories will come from my book. for some freedom, black abolitionists and the politics of violence. i look at a lot of violence taking place particularly before the civil war, i siee the 1850s as one of the most violent decades to prelude the war. the story of senator charles sumner from massachusetts and his caning while he is in his senate chamber. but then, i also want to go a little bit further because i know we're familiar with the story. and tell you how people responded and, in particular,

how black people responded to this caning. charles sumner, just to give you a little context, giving a speech, talking about the kansas nebraska act and talking about how horrible he thinks this act is. so charles sumner spoke out against the kansas-nebraska act, during a speech in which he ridiculed its authors steven douglas and andrew butler. using incendiary language and sexual imagery, he claimed southerners' claims against kansas. senator accused senator butler of being in love with the harlet. can you imagine for speaking for three hours? his three-hour speech was so controversial that steven douglas remarked to a colleague this damn fool is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool. sure enough, preston brooks, a congressman from south carolina and nephew to andrew butler, intended to make a lesson out of sumner.

political violence took place, not only in the remote and growing territories of the west, but, also in the senate chamber of the nation's capitol. just two days later, on may 22nd, while sitting at his chamber desk, brooks approached sumner and said, quote, i have read your speech twice over carefully. it is libel on south carolina and mr. butler, who is a relative of mine. at that moment, he began to strike sumner over the head using a thick cane with a gold head. sumner was repeatedly bludgeoned over and over his entire body. he tried to crawl under his desk for refuge. but the desk was bolted to the floor. it only served as a holding pin while brooks continued to take aim at him. brooks beat him so relentlessly that the desk eventually released from the floor. as sumner lay bloody and unconscious, brooks only stopped when his cane broke. in the end, sumner miraculously

survived. it took him more than three years to recover from his injuries. and some might argue that he never fully recovered. but what i think is interesting is the letters of support that poured in for charles sumner from the black community. and one letter that i'd like to share with you, in particular. sumner's attack validated african-americans' desires to intervene in politics at the national level and have their voices heard. one of the most remarkable responses to sumner's beating came from the new orleans daily creole. the op-ed was titled, quote, a challenge to mr. brooks. mrs. amelia robinson called the attacks cowardly. to beat a man, unarmed and down. she referred to brooks as a cringing puppy, who she would gladly challenge to meet her any place with, quote, pistols, rifles, or cow hides. the outrage, robinson felt, had

no bearing on her sex, she like other black leaders was exacerbated by the sacrifices it cost her dearly. she was 50 years old and a widow. she had lost two sons in the mexican war. and brooks' actions represented a direct affront to her own liberty. quote, now, then mr. brooks robinson challenged, let us see some of your boasted courage. you are afraid to meet a man. dare you meet a woman. robinson declared that she was anxious to do her country some service, either by whipping or choking the cowardly ruffian who threatened what she perceived america's most precious right, the freedom of speech. robinson was willing to put her strong words into print. and more than any other man, she admitted to what she was willing to do publicly. while many were praying for sumner, robinson illustrates what she was willing to do with the pistol. and i like this because there's

no anonymity behind it. she puts her name on it. like, first name, last name. she gives her age, right? she lets her know -- she lets him know, like, who she is. so much is revealed by robinson's remarks. she was publicly challenging senator brooks and even taunting him. she wrote with rage that signalled she had little to lose. the fact that sumner was immobilized for most of the beating under his desk was perhaps the greatest act of cowardice on brooks' part. not only was robinson ready to meet brooks, weapon for weapon, with pistols, rifles, or cowhides but she claimed she would even whip him out questions, quote, by choking the cowardly ruffian. robinson was 50 and fearless. and few men, white or black, responded to threats to meet sumner's violence with violence. robinson was willing to -- not just to take on any man but a public figure and a politician. more than sentiment -- regarded

as southern barbarism, threatening violence against a white man, should also be dually noted. the sexual violence that white men committed against black women was rampant. and sumner was not wrong to allude to sexual imagery in his speech. it is likely that robinson's rage also stemmed from violence that enslaved black women faced daily. accordingly, her response was clear. meet violence with violence. or, more specifically, meet cowardly acts with justice. thank you. >> is this on? hello? >> it's on. >> now, it's on. thank you. so, today, i'm going to talk about my research, which focuses on a form of voter intimidation that might not actually fit all that well with the topic of the

panel because it's an explicitly nonviolent one. or at least it seems to be. i am talking about what's called economic voter intimidation. now, this kind of intimidation is typically done by an employer against an employee. and it's been part of american history since the beginning. there are cases of swintimidati, what often was called coercion, going all the way back into the 18th century. but what i argue is that, in the last half of the 19th century, particularly after what was called the panic of 1873. it was a really disastrous financial panic. there was a crisis of economic intimidation. the number of incidence dramatically increased. the number of people who were dependent for their wages, on one boss, dramatically increased at this time as well. and at the same time as political contests became closer and closer, it became reasonable, it became a tactic used by many politicians, by many employers, to use their employees to try to win close elections. and i'm going to give you a few examples of how that worked.

and then, also, talk about the long-term consequences of this kind of intimidation on the laws that we have today. because, to an extent that historians and political scientists have not grappled with economic intimidation is why we vote in secret. and economic intimidation, in particular, activated labor con stit con stit constituencies in a way they never did before. so what did voting look like before we did in secret? i'll give you one example -- kind of a perfect example of it from osuego, new york. the armory. it was a large building in the center of town. but to get into that polling place, to get to the center of the building, you had to pass by two tables. one staffed by republican, one staffed by democratic operatives. and they were the ones who gave you your ballot.

the ballot were printed by parties. and the operatives who worked for the republican party at that polling place happened to also work for a man named thomason kingsford. you might use kingsford. still, a large company today. and it was widely known that, as the kingsford employees, as the men who worked for thomason kingford, would remind them they were expected to vote the wait thompson kingford wanted them to. and as one of the democratic observers testified, the workers dare not do it. they dare not change their ticket. they dare not try to fight against thompson kingsford because they're watched. that was the key element. they're being watched as they walk into the polls. and, because they were precarious at work in this very tough economic times, and also insecure at the polls, workers often had little recourse. this happened throughout the

country and the crisis blew up, in part because it was a politically useful crisis for some people. while these events did happen while there are thousands of people being intimidated, it was also useful for the partisan presses of the time to accuse the other side of doing this, even more than they were. and so, gradually, democratic presses began to accuse republican employers of intimidating their employees, all out of proportion with what they were actually doing. this is kind of a difficult element in my work in that this is a real crisis. this is really happening. but, in the same sense, it is also a rhetorical crisis. and it becomes an even broader rhetorical crisis because these forms of swintimidation, threatening to fire someone if they don't vote the way you want to, struck deeply at what a lot of these workers believed was their manhood, their independence, their ability to provide for their families. just as one example, in portland, maine, in 1880, the road workers on road working municipal crew in portland were

especially worried that year because there was going to be a tough winter coming. the election was going to be taking place in september, as it always did in maine at that time. but they knew the winter was coming and they didn't want to be out of work in the winter. so their foreman yelled out as they walked to the polls from work, mind how you vote, boys. vote for your bread and butter. if you cut my throat now, i'll cut yours hereafter. i am on your track and i'll camp on it. he walked them to the polls. watch as he took the ticket that he wanted. and voted. they had very little choice. it seems one person actually refused to do so, went home, and was never employed on the road work crew again. what's most remarkable about this form of intimidation is that it could interlace with other forms of coercion, other violent forms of intimidation. this is especially true in the south where, in virginia, the black workers of the local insane asylum, were marched down to the polls by their boss. now, in virginia at that time, there were two lines to vote. the white line and the colored

line. and the remarkable thing about this incident is that the employees of the asylum were allowed to skip both lines. they didn't have to wait in either line. of course, the white line was allowed to vote before the colored line. as long as there's anyone in the white line, no one in the colored line would be allowed to vote. these men were allowed to vote but they absolutely were not allowed to vote for the candidate they biwished for. in this case, they were told to vote the democratic ticket and they did. the legal intimidation. the legal separation and suppression into different lines is overlaid on the knowledge of the violence rendered against african-americans in the south. and then, add to that, the coercion, the intimidation of losing your job. now, states tried to fight against this kind of intimidation a number of ways. in the state of connecticut, which experienced a great deal of economic intimidation, they passed several laws making this kind of intimidation illegal. and, in 1884, they actually attempted to enforce those laws. the state of connecticut arrested a man who had

intimidated his employee in a mill in waterbury, connecticut, and the man seems perfectly happy to admit, yes, i intimidated him. i told him what to do when he went to vote. but the court dismissed the case. the judge determined that the employer had simply been using his first amendment right to tell his employee how to vote. attempting to solve this problem, through a punitive law, through a law that punished you, didn't seem to be working. and so, gradually, in this state happened in the late 1880s, states began to adopt secret ballot laws. and the secret ballot was invented. the modern secret ballot we use was invented in australia, 1851. comes to the united states shortly thereafter. and the first american to advocate for the secret ballot in print is a man named henry george, who was a reform advocate. but this is 1871, before he is fully famous for his reform advocacy. and he duo kalts for a secret ballot because it would end bribery, and he put it, another form of election corruption,

which is even worse and more demoralizing than bribery, the coercion of voters by their employers. the secret ballot, the first time it's mentioned in the united states, in this particular form, is coupled directly with economic voter intimidation. and allies in labor circles took up the call and advocated. the socialistic labor party was actually the first national labor party to include it in their national platform. in 1885. in a rush of legislation between 1888 and 1891, most states passed secret ballot laws. finally, separating employers from employees when they went to the polls. but those laws weren't passed in all states. particularly, in the south, secret ballot laws lagged. north carolina, for example, didn't pass a secret ballot law until 1929. but, also, secret ballot laws are not necessarily useful to protect against generalized form of intimidation. they don't really protect african-americans going to the polls. they protect specific workers from their specific employers. it breaks the chain of

information. and so the secret ballot laws are never going to be effective at preventing generalized intimidation. but, after all, that's not what they were designed to do. so when we talk about secret ballot laws, as my research aur argues, we should remember what they were enacted to do. prevent bribery and -- exchange between an employee and employer about how they were voting. as we're doing away with ballot secrecy in a number of ways by allowing ballot selfies in polling place. oh, yes, supreme court refers to ballot selfies of taking a picture of your ballot, whether or not you're in it. don't seem to understand what selfie means. but also, absentee ballot, reintroduces the possibility that you are voting in the presence of someone who might have a coercive influence on you. so a core element of my research that kind of brings it up to the present is that we need to understand why we have the laws we do before we decide to do

away with them. and i think the secret ballot is one of those most-important laws, too. thank you. >> excuse me. as you can tell, perhaps, i'm getting over a cold so i'm a little croaky. so that's one of the reasons why i'll keep my formal comments brief. the other reason being that i want to get to our conversation. really, this is just so that we can understand kind of the context in which i am approaching these questions and this issue. my research focuses particularly on the ku klux klan of the 1920s, which is really when the organization was at the height of its power, in the united states. it's when the organization is breaking sectional boundaries, moving outside the south to establish a nationwide power base. one of the strongest, most kind

of powerful and influential klan strongholds, for example, was right here, in indiana, of course. and the klan of the '20s peaks in membership numbers organization not just as adherence to the ideology, to the tenants of white supremacy, but the klan of the '20s sells itself as the answer to a variety of ills or supposed ills. so it's a fraternal organization that protects against the break down on masculine society. it's a law and order group

pushing prohibition enforcements. they're pushing against modern things and jazz. they're very upset about jazz. they're picking up on anti-catholic and anti-semitic sentiments to really drive calls to restrict immigration or halt immigration entirely. far more than that. really the klan is very responsive to local concerns and tailors itself in those ways. so we have this kind of interesting phenomenon with the klan of the '20s. even as this membership grows, klan violence declines. in fact, racial violence overall declines during the 1920s after a kind of sharp spike in

lynchings post world war i. certainly compared to what's effectively the paramilitary klan of reconstruction or the terrorism of the klan in the civil rights era, historians have written about the klan of the 1920s as less physically environment, though of course still driven by the same fundamentally violent ideology. that's not the whole picture though. to correct that misunderstanding, what we need to do is look at the klan's political involvement. i think it's particularly interesting to look at this from the federal level. now if we focus on electoral success, it's pretty easy to

dismiss the influence of the ku klux klan on the politics of the 1920s, which is what historians have tended to do. they are very, very good at drawing a lot of attention to themselves. they're generally very, very bad at getting a klan candidate or a candidate affiliated with the klan to be elected to office. they have successes sporadically, generally in local strong holds. indiana of course one of the most notorious strong holds of klan power as i mentioned and, therefore, relative success in electing local officials, but very rare at the federal level. what my current research focuses on is the fact that that electoral success isn't really the key to understanding the

klan's influence on federal politics. the key to understanding the klan's involvement with federal politics in the '20s is understanding the ways in which the klan functioned as a political lobbying movement, not to think about what the klan is doing at the ballot box, but to think about what the klan is doing on a yacht on the potomac filled with senators and chorus girls. it's there the klan is tremendously impactful in shaping legislation. that is directly relevant to klan interests and particularly klan hatreds. it's there the klan is going to help shape what federal prohibition legislation is going

to look like. it's there the klan is going to help shape what the immigration legislation looks like in the 1920s. because of this, the klan doesn't need extra legal vi vigilante violence to achieve their goals. instead, the klan of the 1920s is very effective in shaping policy to support their violent ideology. political power meant the klan violence expressed itself as state violence. it expressed itself not through robed klansmen, but through federal prohibition enforcement agents. it expressed itself through the border patrol created in 1924, the same year the klan's

membership peaks. so, if we're to understand the enduring legacy of the klan, it's that enter sectional nexus between bigotry, violence and politics that we need to understand. thank you. [ applause ] >> well, that is a pretty good place to jump off on a broader conversation about violence in political history. i think the first thing i would love to hear you all talk about is the relationship between violence and politics from kind of a broader level. which is to say there's often this idea that violence is a failure of politics and somehow exists outside of politics. in some cases it seems like violence is a core component of politics in a lot of ways. where do you see violence fitting into political history and into the practice of

politics? >> well, i can say in my own classes i talk about violence really -- violence is how we understand history in a lot of ways. every significant moment in history we bench mark with violence. even if you think about how classes are taught it's from the slave trade to the american revolution to the civil war. then we teach classes in between war. all these moments, 9/11, all these moments are violent moments. that's how we mark turning points. in a lt. of ways i see violence as this great accelerator or this fluid that moves political movements or social movements along. it's a great way to look at how we examine change. a lot of times there's a tendency to have this idea that changes comes about through nonviolence. when we look at the civil rights

movement, we say they pushed nonviolence. that's how we get these great changes. what they're responding to is violence very much so in every aspect of their lives. i'm constantly pushing students to nuance how we understand violence, not to dismiss it as something that's fanatical or is an episode that happens, that it was just a moment, but really an explanation for how policy is made or not made in terms of how progress is developed or not developed. i think guidance is the perfect framework for that. >> so, i think -- this is an excellent question. where does violence fit in? if we need to think about violence as a political language, violence has meaning, specific acts of violence has meaning. it can be used for political

purposes. very rarely is violence unrestrained, unrestricted. it's usually focussed for a particular purpose and groups use violence, specific acts of vie lolence violence, to try to get their political points across. i have students think about what does a lynching mean in the 1920s? what does a cross burning mean? what are they trying to say? there's a ritual to this. who's their audience for that act of violence? i think also as political historians we need to think of the role of violence in the state and the growth of the state. talking about the border agents, the violence of the state. the violence is embedded of the state. the idea that the modern state has a monopoly on violence. think about police violence,

police brutality, the violence of the state. if you get students to think through that, it's an enormously useful exercise. we should also be attentive to it in our scholarship. we can't ignore that violence is at the heart of american political history. >> one element as well that i've come across in my research and teaching students, it's easy to play a what aboutism game. to say because this party used this form of violence and this party got into a scuffle they're both violent. i think this is what you were talking about earlier. one thing i noticed in the guilded age is being able to claim the other party was doing bad things was a way to excuse your much worse things. the speaker of the house in the

1990s when talking about lynchings in the south, he said yes, these are crimes, but catching fish out of season is a crime too. no one would ever confuse them. h think about how violent acts compare to each other and dig deeper into that. >> i teach a class on terrorism in the united states. the fun never stops in my classroom. i think i do so as a way of getting -- addressing with students the idea that not just violence, but fundamentally political violence has been a through-line in american history. we look at obviously definitions

of terrorism. that's going to be crucial within that, but ideas of legitimate violence, illegitimate violence, state violence, individual violence, they really do often function as driving questions in, as we said, change or moments of change. actually to do the terribly uncool thing and respond to a question with a question, something i was thinking about while listening to everybody talk is this myopic place we're in today with regards to the use of violence and political violence particularly. it's interesting -- again, off the top of my head just thinking about this, do you think we've come to a place where reform is associated with nonviolence, but

revolution is associated with violence and that that's why political violence is seen as beyond the pale now? >> what do you guys think of that? does violence render whatever the political aim is illegitimate? is revolution considered illegitimate today? >> i would say in some ways yes. for my own work, you know, i think it's very easy to look back at slavery and say it was wrong -- hopefully. i think it should be easy to say that. >> we have a consensus. >> a lot of the stories in my book are about blacks who are fighting back, who are protecting their communities and using force and violence to protect their communities. everyone loves hearing these stories because they're like, yeah, slavery is wrong.

i think in some ways you can support that in talking about seg gre gags and jim crow and hopefully people think taking up arms in self-defense might be rational. today the way that race has reincarnated itself, it's extremely difficult to take up those same sort of stances to use protective violence or self-defense in a way to purport revolution or change. people think you're a radical. people think you're crazy. in the civil rights movement they thought they were crazy too. i feel like maybe you need distance in order to accomplish it. but, no, i don't think that people -- i think that people believe you can accomplish anything through nonviolence. while i agree with that to some extent, there's a little

historical naivete in terms of how thingins came about in this country. >> i think we're living with the legacies of that. this is a nation that was born in violent revolution, of civil warfare. yet, rather consciously on the part of revolution and the founding fathers they 'shued that because the flip side of evolution is rebellion. slave rebellion, insurrection, must be suppressed by the state. how do you justify a new nation state that was discovered on an act of violence to overthrow the sitting government? the way you do that is in part rewriting the history of that initial revolution.

then, also, combatting and becoming counter-revolutionary. i think there's an argument to be made that the united states is one of the most counter revolutionary societies in the world. think about vietnam. that was a counter-revolution. we sort of need to think through that a bit more. as historians we love to explain change. to think about some of the continuities that exist as well. >> i think some of this can be explained in a way through the recent rehabilitation of john brown and the fact that he's now being reintroduced into america as the most american of all heros when that would seem -- in part because of the aftermath of the civil war and white supremacists' efforts to paint

him as a crazy person. now to have him discussed as at the forefront of american liberty is a remarkable moment. i wonder what it says about people that are putting him in that way. what do they think about political violence if they're making john brown their patron saint? >> just to pick up on that for a second as well, it's interesting we're seeing that the mainstreaming of that john brown idea, but the people who have most often in the recent past compared themselves to john brown have been those attacking abortion clinics and abortion providers. that's a specific form of political violence that they see themselves acting within the tradition of. >> one of the words that keeps coming up is legitimate and

illegitimate. what's interesting about the question of violence, aside from a very few committed pass fists there aren't that many people in the united states that think all violence is legitimate. how do you see historical actors making the case that their violence was legitimate? as historians it often changes over time and john brown is a great example of that. how are your people making their cases? >> i can tell you mine. i have found no other group of people that have a moral sort f of -- for using violence. they talk about american hypocrisy. about the american revolution being uncomplete. the haitian revolution is where the real evolution takes place

because they freed their slaves and put in place equality. i think black ab ligs are saying slavery is wrong and we have a moral authority, a god-given right and that's important when they can solidify their tenancy with biblical sentiments? they're using biblical al gories to justify using violence and force. and they're using revolutionary language -- i love the idea. i talk about this idea that violence is a political language. he who would be free must strike the first blow. they're using this language over and over to threaten and provoke, you know, the abolition of slavery and they feel

justified in that because they feel they are most oppressed. again, it's easy to look at this from a 21st century perspective and say, of course, you're justified in this. i think legitimacy comes through winning. we look at it as legitimate because they won. if you don't win, does that mean your cause is not legitimate? with black freedom and black liberation, there haven't been a lot of victories, but that doesn't mean it's not legitimate. >> the american revolutionaries were the masters of this game. from the beginning of the process they used the press. they mobilized the press in a quite effective way to paint their enemies, those who oppose the glorious cause or the common

cause as illegitimate. if you think of the declaration of independence, it's the masterful political document justifying american nationhood on the grounds that the british violates the laws of respectable nations and they were guilty of barbaric acts of violence. and this new nation would be respected in the eyes of the world because they played by the rules. that's why washington is so animated to turn the massachusetts militia man into what he calls a respectable army. they need to look the part of europeans and play by these rules as a way of legitimizing what was illegitimate.

the british had suppressed countless insurrections. by labelling it that way their violence was illegitimate. >> that's good. >> it's interesting to consider the legitimate/illegitimate question with effective/ineffective. this is something you see over and over with the question to how to respond to white is he

pr supremacist violence. there's a fantastic debate that ra rages around that in the 1920s that says what is the best way to respond to this? do we ignore it and let the fire burn itself out? we could do that, but while we're doing that the fire is burning and causing devastation. presumably we have to do something. what is that something? there are those in the black press who say simply, no, they sent us a severed hand in the mail. we're not carrying on a debate. we're encouraging our readers to carry a gun or brick or bat. if you encounter a klansman, you don't try to reason with him. there's an interesting question there as well about not just how do we defend violence as

legitimate, but how do we defend violence as effective at the same time? >> that's good. >> so employers in the late 19th century legitimized their coercion of their employees by claiming the persuasive right. because i give you your bread and butter, i have the right to persuade. in different places they enforced that right differently. in the south it was taken to mean that it will have an effect. you will do what i said. in some places in the north and especially in the west, that persuasive right is you will have to listen to me. i'll give you my opinion, but i won't follow it up with discharge from employment. in some places those threats are less aggressive than others, but always the right is claimed because i pay you, i have gained an extra political right because i pay you your wages. that's where the legitimacy

comes from to make these claims. doesn't work the same in all parts of the country. >> it strikes me that one other missing legitimate tool for violence is the claim of self-defense which is used quite broadly across the spectrum whether we're talking about the black panthers in the '60s or the white is supremacists at an time in the country. i'm going to ask one more question and then i'll open it up to the audience. i don't know that it's a good question. you can tell me. it seems like one of the things that came out earlier in the conversation was about state violence and violence almost as

a tool of state building. i think that forces our eyes to this neutrality as few of you have suggested, the violence in american politics and american history. how does that change the story we tell about u.s. history to put violence at the center of it? i think that is very contrary to the story americans like to tell themselves. we don't always tell self-comforting stories as historians about the nation. it seems like a particularly disruptive move to put violence at the center of that story. >> i mean, i feel like that's what i'm trying to do in my work. it's incredibly hard to do, to sort of flip the script a little bit in terms of how we understand violence and how we've been told i think these really romantic stories about

the underground railroad or about the civil rights movement that feel very sweet. there are stories you can tell to kids. rosa parks refused to give up her seat. that's very like yay or you can talk about harriet tubman and she rescued these slaves. you can package these stories so well. what i try to do is tell the stories that are in order to flee a lot of times you had to fight. i tell the story about a man who was running away from slavery and this man was pursuing him. he was like stop chasing me. if you don't stop chasing me, i'm going to kill you. he kept chasing him and he killed him. he tells this story and the audience is like applauding. i tell this story to let people

know the whole system of slavery was violent. in order for people to bring about their own freedom, they had to bring about violence. how do we understand that in terms of black freedom and black liberation? how do we justify that and how do we take it into the present? one of the concepts i'm trying to work with is this idea of protected violence which to me is more than self-defense. it's not just protecting yourself. protective violence is protecting your family, your community, but even strangers. you're protecting marginalized people, oppressed people, people who don't have access to the ballot or to traditional channels to bring about reform. how do we examine protective violence as useful and as something that's legitimate. it's a hard exercise to do

because there's a paradox. on one stand we hate violence, we think it's awful. on the other hand we love american revolution, we love reenacting the civil war and doing these violent things and reenacting them. there's this love/hate relationship with violence i've not been able to reconcile. >> it brings up a great question. for my students, the war for independence and the american revolution are the same thing. they're not aware of the republican synthesis. for them it's washington crossing the delaware and it's good. that's a good violence. we like that. what i try to do with my book

is -- that's what the revolutionary wanted us to think. i think that fails. that restrained battlefield victory story de grates. we lose control of the war. we need to sort of in some ways rethink the constitutional moment as an effort by these -- we can call them nationalists in this period to reassert a monopoly on violence. we need to control this. we need to control violence because that was messy and bad. we're going to take charge of it. as we saw, there's great debate over this. this is one of the origins of the second amendment, an armed population. it's a very contentious issue.

we're still dealing with the reverberation of the debate. are people allowed to self-defend? we need to engage with that. >> i think about the election of 1860. have any of you heard the phrase lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in the south? when you think about it, that doesn't make sense. there was no official ballot. people had to hand out party ballots outside the polls. lincoln wasn't on the ballot because republicans in the south would have hand to stand at the polls with ballots handing them out. there's no way that would have been allowed to happen. those people would have been beaten up. they wouldn't have existed. the way that simple phrase, the republican party was the sectional party, concealed a great deal of violence that would have happened if they attempted to hand out ballots in

the south. in that one moment we talked our way past a moment of extreme violence or potential violence. >> that's good. >> so, there's two things i wanted to respond to there a little bit. first of all the idea of the self-defense violence or violence in self-defense, it's similar in terms of thinking about that's a difficult question because it asks us what counts as self-defense. think of kathleen blue's book, she can't unfortunately be here today, but her point that the paramilitary white supremacist movement post vietnam is in large part new because it breaks with the state and starts to see the state as the threat. as much, must defend itself

against the state and would argue they're acting in self-defense in a way of that protective violence. the other kind of, i guess, definitional question i suffer with with this is then this relationship between political history and violence going back to dr. candy's key note from last night he discussed political history being the history of power. at that point we have to determine what is the relationship between power and violence. i think that is a huge question that i am in no way prepared to provide a definitive answer to. what i will say is that jacqueline jones' biography of

lucy parsons, the radical feminist black an arcist in the late 19th century talks about parsons' approach to violence and her belief in violence as legitimate because within that framework, the state is inherently violent. all politics is inherently violent. i think there's an argument to be made there for viewing it through that lens. >> to go back to what was said, it's not violence, it's anti-racist violence. so if you can call it -- it's not discrimination, it's anti-racist discrimination. it goes into the same thing. >> you can say it's racist self-defense and anti-racist self-defense. >> excellent. i would like to open it up to the audience.

two ground rules. introduce yourself. wait for the microphone since we're filming. >> hi. i'm ellie sherma. you did a great job of doing about the revolution to the 1920s. my question is picking up on do we need to expand the definition of violence? i think it's clear after the new deal and the question of labor. i'm going to not do labor because, even though it may not be as physically violent, the kind of clashes that excite us and we can turn these narratives, what about the work of nathan connelly, like putting a freeway right through black communities? he said it's no less violent. how about the tax policies that rip whole communities apart in the central areas, completely

disl dislocating those communities? we have taken away your right to join a union and have that ability to -- right to work laws and then there are the right to starve laws. we have the questions about voti voting. now we can blame you for not getting to the polls on time or registering. how about the zoning that goes along with not allowing multi-family units that might be possible for those dislocated or enabling them to have food in their neighborhoods, the lack of health care questions? there seems to be casualties to these trade rules. what was shocking over the last three years we have across the entire board a decline in life expectancy for the first time since the 1930s. we're dealing with levels of depression and suicide that we

haven't seen. how much can we incorporate that as violence by not only the state, but corporations? if we expand the definition of violence, does that help to change where we might be seeing other acts of violence in the 18th and 19th as well? >> i think -- >> i'm sorry. >> no. it was a great question. it tackles a lot. i'll stick with voting because that's what i know best. methods of preventing people from voting or taking away the right will always try to adapt for whatever we do. so any law that we pass has to think about not just what does it solve right now, but what are the ways that the people who are trying to get around this, what are they going to do to get around it? a lot of the scholarship now is

the progressive nature of it. you have to be able to read and write. these are things that make voting more difficult than taking a piece of paper and dropping it into a box. if we're going to try and get rid of the problems of ballot secrecy or voting in a physical poling place, we have to remember the ways in which the people who try to get around these things and the people who try to subvert or undermine any ballot protection law we have, they already have a blueprint for what they can do. we've done this already. the idea that we might say, oh, we don't need ballot secrecy anymore -- justice ginsburg compared it to closing your umbrella in a rain storm because you're not getting wet. we do know a lot of these things could happen. focusing on, okay, if we're going to solve the problems, we have to be thinking about how to

solve the next problems and how they all chain together. that was the voting aspect. you guys can handle the rest, right? >> i don't know that i can. i mean, that's a lot. everything you said is a lot. it's violence in so motion. it's playing out in this very insidious silent, subtle way so that when you call it violence people are like you're overreacting. it's just a policy. those policies are destructive, intensely destructive and not just destructive for a generation, but for generations. it's really hard, i think, because we think violence is immediate and in your face and aggressive and, you know, flashy and all of these things we have. we don't recognize it when it plays out very slowly. >> i think for me in some ways

it's time to start thinking about our definition of war too. part of that is i argue that there's a war at home during word war ii. we can't pretend otherwise. those violent labor struggles continue to be sure. now we're dealing with what does war look like now. it's not easy to talk about. drone attacks. we've left that human act. i think we need to think about -- is this the turn of millennial warfare? an impersonal drone attack, is that just pushing a button? how do we think about there might be a casualty to this kind of warfare even though it seems like a joke to call it on par

with something like the war in iraq and the war in afghanistan? if we think about a different definition of war and violence, that it can happen at home, that it can be impersonal, is that something that we can think about with the 18th and 19th century? i'm not sure. >> it's interesting to think how you define violence, where you draw the lines. what is the utility of expanding the definition or sometimes it's -- i don't know the answer to this question. is it a metaphor of violence in some situations or is it actual the definition of violence? there's a trade-off for which one it is. yes, i think it's a great question.

we have one. >> thanks for the great panel. felix at the end gestured towards the talk last night. i was thinking about your panel like the talk last night overturns an older narrative of a nonviolent american past. he focussed on why that old narrative persisted. cole, you've gestured to this, kelly, too, how rosa park was a sweet story. i'm wondering how through time you think this sort of narrative of political of violence got papered over and how was it papered over in especially big

synthetic histories? why is it papered over? who is doing the papering over to get this narrative that is in most american's heads about the history driven not by violence, but by something else? >> i think part of it -- perhaps a small party, perhaps i'm overestimating the influence the academy has. part is that historians don't tend to be violent people. the reason i study violence is because i don't understand it. i don't understand why you would -- it's hard for me to understand how you would hurt another human being. so i'm trying to figure that out and figure out what it means at the time. i think that violence in part has been written out of a lot of our histories. yes, of course, you have the triumphant battle of gettysburg

stories and military history has had its own niche. how much violence is there really? i don't know. when we were writing synthetic histories, are we a little bit to blame for that? i'm not sure. i haven't fully thought through that. >> yeah, it's -- we've definitely sanitize history. there's no question there. i think, you know, the benefit in that is -- this is such a -- i hate using this because we use it all the time. white supremacy. i feel like that's the answer to everything. in white supremacy whiteness gets to be the villain and the hero. the villain is the slave holder, the klan, really easy things that we can attach to being bad, right?

the hero part of it is also the savior, the lincoln that frees the slaves, the william lloyd garrisons, the kind white man who says not on my watch. we tell these stories because they perpetuate ideas of whiteness being the villain, but then the hero. if you can show something bad happened and then show another good white person that did something to replace it, to remove it, to cure it, then you still get to be the hero at the end of the day. i think a lot of these stories that we get, one, they push people, in particular black people, into the peripheries of their own movement. we'll talk about rosa parks and mlk, but there's no other civil rights leaders.

that's intentional. we don't want you to know that hundreds, if not thousands, of people were involved. we don't want you to know that it was not a white person who didn't do the right thing at the end of the day or who didn't tie it in a nice pretty bow at the end of the day. that's a way to incorporate ideas of patriotism. we can buy into that story because it makes us feel very good, feel very empowered, feel like we can play a role in solving these issues. you can throw a hashtag on something and now you're progressive. there's real reasons why we do this, but none of them are effective at solving problems, but they're very effective at making you think you solved the problems. you can look at the civil rights movement and say racism is a

thing of the past. we solved that nonviolently. why black lives matter? why are you so angry? because we don't want to acknowledge the anger, having to acknowledge the anger or rage or brutality forces us to have to answer questions we don't want to answer which is how white supremacy stays supreme. >> to continue full speed ahead on the white supremacy train, that feeling good element is a crucial issue here as well. first of all, when we come to write these histories violence is seen as something unsaferry. very rarely we find people who

define themselves as violent. look at the klan of the '20s or slave holders, they don't define themselves as violent people. they can make say they used violence, that they deployed violence to achieve goals, but they're not themselves violent people. therefore, violence isn't their story, right? so it becomes this interesting question when we're writing these histories. how do we center violence in a story in which the subject themselves denies the centrality of that violence? do we have to write the history of george washington as a violent man? he's a military man. he's a slave holder. violence is integral to his life. we never talk about him as a violent person, right? when we talk about violent white supremacists, george washington

isn't the first name that comes to mind? why doesn't he fall into that category? what does that say about our willingness to use and define violence within the life of these historical actors? >> that's a good point. >> i echo everything that's been said. also, military history is not exactly a popular sub field in history. it's been exiled outside history. i know that's changing to some degree. to specifically focus on military history and violence in some ways makes it feel like you're not within the academy when you talk about these things. i've experienced this to some degree in my own training. when i mention in seminars and talking particularly about wars, people don't say we don't want to talk about that. they'll say i'm more interested in these other areas. that's perfectly fine, but just the idea that it's something that we can put aside, the fact

that anyone would think we can put aside violence or warfare in american history is, i think, incorrect. >> thank you so much for this panel. it's been thought provoking. one thing i wanted to ask about is democracy. i think in authoritarian regimes we expect violence. we expect it's a violent state. what i found suggested by the panel is maybe there's something inherent about democracy that makes it violent or violent in different ways. something you said about popular sovereignty leading to a sense of violence. is there something about democracy or popular sovereignty that leads to a particular type of violence and how is that

different than other types of regi regimes? >> that's a great question. it gets to the heart of my book. when we think of democracy we think of the democratic peace. if only we could export democracy around the world, if only we could make iraq and iran democratic powers, then no one would ever go to war. it's a noble dream. democracy has been divorced of its historic violence. it's one thing the founders were very concerned about. the 51% who could use that power to coerce others, right? coerce the minority. you see that happening very clearly. it's one of the great ironies that i discuss in my book. at the beginning of the revolution people like washington were men of violence, but it's a particular type of

european style violence. violence is enacted in specific ways and specific context where it was acceptable, but in other ways it wasn't. that violence, that restrained orderly violence degrades over the process because ordinary people have a voice in this and they're mobilized through rhetoric and in part through the newspapers and in part of the violence of the british army to demand revenge and demand that their government engage in revengeful practices. so i think we need to do more to think through the ramifications of violence and democracy throughout american history. i'll turn it over to my colleagues here to see what they think.

>> i mean, yes, i agree. i mean, i don't think that we should think that democracy is not violent or that, you know, democracy has this moral high ground that doesn't allow for violence to take place. i think that's a falsehood. i think in a lot of ways democracy is a double-edged sword that you have to sort of, you know, use violence to employ your means, to get your means across. we've seen this play out in history time and time again. even just introducing that concept or the idea that democracy can be violent or democracy has violent tenants is something i don't think americans would be comfortable hearing, but i don't think it's far from the truth.

>> ben? >> this has been very thought provoking. i'm inspiring by the comments and reflected upon candy's conversation last night. we're speaking about democracy and the state and then violence and the ballots, the extent to which american society has been democratic considering the nature of the ballot and the nature of racism and how democracy works. what i think is missing -- i struggle when she made this comment. the idea that the response to racism is anti-racism. when we had some of the first laws passed, were about violence

americans could perform against africans. racism and violence were born in this country, what became this country. racism, violence and captain captainalicaptaina captainali captainalism. we have this intensely capital lis tick state, in the united states of america. they were all born together around 1619. i'm inviting you to muse on that, not really a question, but a comment. that is the root of the deprivation, scarcity and greed which i think breeds this intense violence that defines our society. >> absolutely. well, thank you for the question. it's a well-taken one.

my work focused on the late 19th century, this moment of industrial saigs and capitalism. there's a crisis, people call it the labor crisis or the labor problem. people worried about what they see as new capitalism and what that will mean for democracy. what's shocking to me now is that we don't seem to have that sense of crisis when capitalism is changing rapidly around us. democracy is just as under threat. in the 19th century people were discussing it. it was driving elections. the fact that now we don't -- there is discussion. it's absolutely out there. i don't think anyone would say it's a crisis of democracy and capitalism now the same way they would have used those terms in

the 19th century. >> still dealing with the throat. sorry. i think it's a great question. it's something that, again, tying it back to the klan issue a little bit, historians of the klan haven't dealt with it all that well even though there's a lot of material on this from the time, particularly from somebody like a. phillip randolph or 0 organizers in the '20s and '30s who see this as capital to divide and suppress labor. that's why i think seeing influences of something like the klan in federal politics is significant because then you see how that's used not just as the

violence on personal level to kind of bring up the distinct shun we wedistinction we were looking at before. not only are you sending the klan in as strike breakers, or as a means to divide june yours, but also that they're starting a crusade against socialists and they'll take it into their political lobbying that will become formalized and where they'll become things where john e. rankin is going to sit and declare that the ku klux klan is an american institution even as he turns the state's attention on radical change, radical organizers, particularly within the african-american communities. >> i think that's an important

question because it actually -- i was chewing into ellie's definitional question, but so many questions you were citing were the extreme violence at the heart of anything from slavery to the labor union battles of the entirety of american history, the last 150 years or so so, but that that is so core to that's how capitalism works in the united states, not just labor strikes, but workers' health and workers' safety. >> for me it's something we need to be attuned to as historians. we have to watch that our analytical words, frame words we're using, that they shift over time. for the labor question continues. it stopped being asked in a language that we're talking

about. it has evolved. robin munsey published a great article that we have to redefine -- we have to stop using the word class. that is a word that comes at a industrial moment that americans stop using over the course of the 20th century. so with you know have working families but we talk about power inequality at the heart of the capitalism that we need to be more attuned and as part of the reason thinking about some of the conversations at this conference how to connect outside of the academic jargon and if we start talking in the way that americans have talked over time, not just today but about the kind of violence, that kind of stuff, i feel like we have a better way of reaching and making the larger connections about how violence has always been endemic too this perfect supposedly democratic republic and why the language

isn't there but the teacher upriserings and i do call then uprisings and the heart-wrenching stories about how much they're struggling to make basic ends meet is right there. and it could be there are important analogs there to discussions of the late 19th and early 20th century about abuses in sweat shops and not public employees trying to do their best by children. things to think about. >> in order to keep all of the trains running on time, we're going to close it there. please help me thank our panelists for a great discussion. [ applause ] every saturday night american history tv takes you to

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