several artifacts of the great war. watch american history today now and over the weekend on c-span3. up next historians the violence in political change. this talk was part of a conference held at purdue university held last year. >> all right. since we had a very sort of on-time calming of the room, i am going to go ahead and kick us off. thank you so much for coming to the viance in american politics panel. as i think we will see, it is 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 is going to give their opening statement and then we will start the conversation. so, sitting right next to me is t. cole jones. cole holds a ph.d. in colonel

american history from john hopkins and "prisoners of war and politics of vengeance in the american revolution" which will be released this fall by the university of pennsylvania press. articles in the journal and the new england quarterly and working on a project that is titled "patrick henry's war the struggle for empire in the revolutionary west. kellie carter jackson is from wellesley college. out from university of pennsylvania press provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical uses of violence among black activists. she is co-editor of race, politics and memory and featured in the history channel documentary "roots a history revealed" which was nominated for an image award in 2016.

gideon cohn-postar the causes and consequences of economic voter intimidation in the late 17th century and the institute of american history and the andrew w. melon foundation and the social science research council. and finally felix harcourt is from austin college and his research focuses on 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, virginia, where a racist clash i was at the site of one of the most explosive moments in the

last few years. also a moment that opened a debate about political violence, particularly as americans learned more aboutand a legitim means of stopping actors. and while they stood up were not often universally praised and unsure what to do on their position of violence. with visible racist and political violence on the rise in the past few years would it cost the moral high ground. did it make them irree deemuble and did the refusal to make both sides bad? those are the kind of questions i run in to when speaking to groups about charlottesville and one thing that is missing from those questions often is any sense of history. maybe to put it more correctly, there is a mistaken or limited sense of history that runs through those questions. one that runs through the

so-called nonviolent civil rights movements of the 1960s and '70s justice was achieved not through war but peaceful resistance. but that story is a thin one in the broader history in american history and i'm glad that we're having this conversation today that takes us up through the activities of the ku klux klan. i'm really eager to kick this off. why don't you get us started, cole. >> excellent. thank you so much, katie, for that introduction and for organizi organizing this amazing conference. my research addresses a perennial theme in political revolutions. 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 or the

french revolutionary change and seems to come hand-in-hand with wi widespread violence. drawing on the insights of their colleagues and social sciences describe violence's a way of con other forms of communication break down. when petition and protest fail to achieve the desired change, discourse can evolve 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 seems stayed even restrained. although hardly nonviolent, we can all thank mel gibson for his reminder in the box office disappointment "the patriot" does it have much in common of the revolutionary violence that followed. american revolutionary violence appeared legitimate, justified and even comical. think boston tea party. it's hard to imagine john adams or thomas jefferson lobbing people's heads off while wearing wigs. as gordon wood noted in his study the radicalism on the american revolution, america's experience does not appear to resemble that of the revolutions of other nations in which people were killed, property destroyed and everything turned upside down.

for wood, the revolutions radicalism lay in its republican ideology and popular sovereignty. this was an ideology that would transform not only america's government but society, as well. all of which was achieved by the early 19th century. 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 iii survived the conflict with his head in tact. perhaps america's revolution was unique. maybe it was 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 war fare that pitted british americans against had

their metropolitan cousins, american loyalists against their patriot neighbors and liberated slaves against their masters and indigenous nations against one another. most historians of the american 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 vitriolic denunciation of king george 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, and t.h. breen to name a few, 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. my forthcoming book, "captives of history," which is a sequence of history and cycle of vengeance that treatment generated centers the war and horrors and consequences of the american revolution. it argues that the political revolution, rejecting monarchy 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 see the 1850s as one of the most violent decades to prelude the war. and so i want to tell a story that you're probably all familiar with.

it's the story of senator charles sumner from massachusetts and his caning while he's 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 n 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. u as sumner lie 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 r.m. 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, a liberty she believed her country should protect. 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 as america's most precious right, the freedom of speech. robinson was willing to put her strong words into print and to

expose her disdain for the attack on sumner. 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 signaled 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 claims she would even whip him without weapons, 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. while northern sentiment regarded it as southern b barbarrism, 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 intimidation, 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 i'll talk about the long-term consequences of this kind of intimidation of 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 constituencies in a way they never did before. so to begin with, what did voting look like before we voted in secret? i'll give you one example -- a kind of perfect example of it from oswego, new york. it was called 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 ballots 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 thomas 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 thomas kingsford would remind them they were expected to vote the way thomas kingsford 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 intimidation, 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 to them 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, watched 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 was 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 was 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 wished 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 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 -- it happened in the late 11880s -- 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, shortly before he was to become famous. but this is 1871, before he is fully famous for his reform advocacy. and he advocates 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 george's 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 argues, we should remember what they were first enacted do, was to prevent bribery, intimidation, and specifically this exchange of knowledge 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 through no-excuse absentee balloting, reintroduces

the possibility that you're 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 in 1924, with an estimated 4 million members nationwide. those members were drawn to the organization, not just as adherence to the ideology to the tenants of white sue prem sichl but also the clan of the '20s sells itself as the answer to the variety of ills or supposed ills. so it's a fraternal organization to protect against the femme

nighization and the breakdown of masculine society. a law and order group that's pushing prohibition in force. they're moralists defending against the air parent ee vils of modernism and jazz. they're very upset about jazz. they're natives particularly picking up on popular anti-catholic and anti-semitic sentiments to really drive calls to restrict immigration or halt immigration entirely. and far more than this. really the klan is very responsive to local concerns and tailors itself in those ways. and so we have this kind of interesting phenomenon with the

klan of the '20s where 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 generally written about the klan of the 1920s as less physically violent, though, of course, still driven by the same fundamentally violent ideology. that's not the whole picture though. and to correct that misunderstanding, what we need to do is look at the klan's political involvement. and 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 generally tended do. they are very, very good at drawing a lot of attention to themselves. they are generally very, very bad at actually getting a klan candidate or a candidate tagged as affiliated with the klan to be elected to office. they have successes sporadically, generally in local strongholds. indiana, of course, one of the most notorious strongholds of klan power as i mentioned, and, therefore, some relative success in electing local officials and state officials, but fairly 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. real situation. and it's there that the klan is tremendously impactful in shaping legislation. that is directly relevant to klan interests and particularly klan hatreds.

p it's there that the klan is going to help shape what federal prohibition legislation is going to look like. it's there that the klan is going to help shape what the immigration restriction legislation looks like in the 1920s. and because of this, the klan doesn't need extra legal 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 that the klan's membership peaks. and so if we're to understand the enduring legacy of the klan, it is that intersectional nexus between bigotry, violence, and politics that we need to understand. thank you. >> well, that is a pretty good place to jump off on a broader conversation about violence in political history. and i think that the first thing i'd love to hear you all talk about is the relationship between violence and politics from kind of a broader level, which is to say i think that there's often this idea that violence is a failure of politics and somehow exists outside of politics and that in some cases it seems like

violence is kind of a core component of politics in a lot of ways. so 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 benchmark with violence. so even if you think about pedagogy and how classes are taught, it's like the slave trade to the american revolution or the american revolution to the civil war. then we teach classes in between war. all of these moments, like 9/11, all of these moments are violent moments, and that is how we mark turning points. so in a lot 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 non-violence. when we look at the civil rights movement, we say they pushed non-violence. 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 peripheral or an episode that happens, that it was just a moment, but really an explanation for how policy was made or not made, in terms of how progress is developed or not developed, and i think violence 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, and specific acts of violence have meaning. it can be used for political purposes. very rarely is violence unrestrained, unrestricted. it's usually focused for a particular purpose, and groups use violence, specific acts of violence, to try to get their political point across. that's one thing i have students think about. what does it mean? what does a lynching mean in the 1920s? what are they trying to say? what does it mean? what does a cross burning mean? what are they trying to say? there's a sort of ritual to this? who's their audience? 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 violences embedded of the state, the idea that the modern state has a monopoly on violence. you 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 continue to 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 in teaching students is that it's very easy to play a what-abo 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 with regard to antifa.

one thing i noticed in the gilded age is being able to claim the other party was doing bad things was a way for you to excuse your much worse things. the speaker of the house in the 1990s when talking about lynchings in the south and economic violations in the north, he said, yes, these are crimes, but catching fish out of season is a crime too. no one would ever confuse them. when you think about how violent acts compare to each other, don't label it as acts of violence. 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. and when 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 kind of 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 was this kind of almost myopic place we're in today with regards to the use of violence and political violence particularly, and it's interesting.

this is, again, off the top of my head, kind of just thinking about this. do you think we've come to place where reform is associated with non-violence, but revolution is associated with violence, and that that's why political violence is seen beyond the pale now? >> yeah. what do you guys think of that? does violence render whatever the political aim is illegitimate? is revolution considered illegitimate today? in american culture? >> i would say in some ways yes. like for my own work, you know, i think it's very easy for us to look back at slavery and say that it was wrong, hopefully. i think it should be easy to say that. but i think a lot of the stories

in my book are about blacks who are fighting back, 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 segregation and jim crow and hopefully people can see that was wrong and people can see that taking up arms and self-defense might be rational, but i think today the way that race has sort of reincarnated itself in the way that it looks, it's extremely difficult to take up those same sort of stances to use protective violence or self-defense in a way to purport, you know, revolution or change. people think that you're 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 that you can accomplish anything through non-violence. while i agree with that to some extent, there's a little historical naivete in terms of how we really see change come about in this country. >> i think that's an excellent question. 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 the revolution of the founding fathers, they eschewed that because the flip side of evolution is rebellion, slave rebel yugs, 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. and so i think we sort of as political historians need to think about 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

canon as the most american of all heroes 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. 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 that we're seeing that the -- 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 is that aside from a very, very few committed passivists, there aren't that many people in the united states who think all violence is legitimate. so how do you see historical actors making case for their violence being legitimate because i think as historians it often changes over time, which actors we think are -- john brown is a great example of this. which actors are used violence legitimately and which aren't. 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

of impetimus for using violence. they talk about american hypocrisy. about the american revolution being incomplete. the haitian revolution is where the real evolution takes place because they freed their slaves and put in place equality. i think black abolition are saying slavery is wrong and we have a moral authority, a god-given right and that's important when they can sort of solidify their tenancy with biblical sentiments? who can argue that? you can't really do that. they're using biblical allegories to justify using violence, to justify using force, and they're using revolutionary language -- i love this idea. i talk about this idea in my book as well. they talk about give me liberty,

give me death. 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. and i think, again, it's very easy for us to look at this from a 21st century perspective and say, of course, you're justified in this, but i also think legitimacy comes through winning. so we look at the american revolution as legitimate because they won. we look at, you know, the civil war is legitimate because the north won, right? but what happens when you don't win? does that mean your cause is no longer legitimate? i think especially when you're looking at black freedom and black liberation, there has not been a lot of victories, but it doesn't mean these actions are not legitimate. >> that's excellent. 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. inherently illegitimate, right? if you think of the declaration of independence, it's the masterful political document justifying american nationhood on the grounds that the british violated the laws of nations, respectable nations, and they were guilty of these barbaric acts of violence that made them outside the political fear and this this new nation would be respectable in the eyes of the world because it had -- it played by the rules, right? and that's why so very early on, you see washington is so animated by the desir to turn these rag tagg massachusetts

militiamen into what he call as 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 domestic insurrections, not only slave insurrections, but scottish and irish insurrections. and by labeling them as others, their violence was illegitimate, right? so their revolution was quickly attuned to that in this political game and justifying their own actions. >> that's good. >> i think it's interesting to consider the legitimate/illegitimate question with how it intersects with another question that i see brought up as well, which is effective/inffective, and this

is something you see over and over again with the question of how to respond to white, is he supremacist, violence. there's a fantastic debate that rages around that in the black press of the 1920s which 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 ignoring that, the fire is burning and causing devastation, so presumably you have to do something. what is that something? and certainly 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. and so i think there's really kind of an interesting question there as well about how not just 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 what they called claiming the persuasive right, because i give you your bread and butter, i gipay for the house you live in, and 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 considered you will have to listen to me. i'll give you my opinion, but i won't necessarily 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. and so that's where the legitimacy comes from to make these climbs. it doesn't work the same way in all parts of the country, but generally the idea that i've paid you, and, therefore, i have that right. >> it does strike me that one other missing ledge mating tool for violence is the claim of self-defense, which is used quite broadly across the spectrum, whether we're talking about black panthers in the late 1960s or talking white supremacists in any period of american history that there is sort of an inherent legitimacy to i am defending myself or defending my country or defending a set of beliefs or institutions that has been wielded effectively in the past.

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. but it does seem 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, this neutrality to 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? because 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. but it seems like a particularly disruptive move to put violence at the center of the 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 nostalgic and sweet. there are stories you can tell to kids. rosa parks refused to give up her seat. that's very like, you know, yay, or you can talk about harriet tubman and she rescued these slaves, and she did it without hurting anyone. i think you can tell these stories, and you can package them so well. but what i like do is try to tell the stories that 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. they're like, you did right, bravo. i tell this story to let people know the whole system of slavery is inherently violent and that oftentimes in order for people to bring about their own free m freedom, they had to employ violence. and 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. right? you're protecting marginalized people, oppressed people, people who don't have access to the ballot, people who don't have access to these traditional channels to bring about reform. and how do we examine protective

violence as useful and as something that is also legitimate? and it's -- i don't know if i'm answering your question, but it's a really hard exercise to do because there's this paradox, right? on one stance, we hate violence, we abhor it, we think it's aw l awful, on the other hand, we love the american revolution, we love re-enacting the civil war and doing these violent things and re-enacting 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 synonymous. they're the same thing. you know, they're not aware of the republican synthesis. for them it's just, you know,

shooting red coats at lexington and concord and then it's 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 revolutionaries wanted us to think. i think that fails. that restrained battlefield victory story degrades. we lose control of the war. we need to sort of in some ways rethink the constitutional moment, right, as an effort by these -- we can call them nationalists in this period, to sort of reassert -- to reassert a monopoly on violence. this new state, we need to control this, right? 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, right? an armed populous. it's a very contentious issue. we're still dealing with the reverberation of the debate. does the state have a complete monopoly on violence, or are people allowed to self-defend? as historians, 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 in 1960? 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 it would have required republicans in the south to have 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, driven out of town. 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. so just in that one moment, you can see we've managed to talk our way past one moment of extreme violence or potential violence. >> that's good. >> so, i think 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, and similar in terms to thinking about that's a difficult question because it then asks us to determine what counts as self-defense. i'm thinking of particularly something like kathleen blue's book who unfortunately can't be with us 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 that i struggle with is then this relationship between political history and violence, going back to dr. candy's keynote from last night. he discussed the idea of political history really being the history of power. and at that point, then we have to determine what is the relationship between power and violence.

and 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 anarchist in the late 19th century, talks a lot about parsons' approach to violence and her belief in violence as legitimate because within that anarchistic framework, the state is inherently violent. all politics is inherently violent. and so i think there's certainly an argument to be made 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 exact same kind of thing. >> you can say it's racist self-defense and anti-racist self-defense. >> excellent. so with they 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. one thing i loved about this panel is you did a great job of going 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 particularly clear particularly after the new deal and the question of labor. i'm actually going to not do labor because even though it may not be as physically violent, the kind of clashes that do excite us and we can turn to these narratives, what about the work of nathan connelly, like

putting a free rey 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 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 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 actually enable thing to have food in their actual neighborhoods, that we have whole food deserts, the lack of health care questions, and that there seems to be -- there are real casualties to these trade rules. rural america has already been

devastated. what was shocking over the last three years we have across the entire board a decline in life expectancy for the first time really 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're going to expand the definition of violence for the 20th century, does that help to change where we might be seeing of 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 or making it more difficult and all these senses will always try to adapt for whatever we do, and so any law that we pass has to always think about not just what does it

solve right now, but what are the ways that the people who are going to try to get around this, what are they going to try to do to get around it? a lot of the scholarship on the secret ballot now is the progressive nature of it, the fact that 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 will try to get around these things, the people who will try to subvert or undermine any ballot protection law we have, they already have a blueprint for what they can do when there's no ballot secrecy. 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 rainstorm 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 that exist now, we also have to be thinking about how to solve the next problems and how they all chain together. that's the voting aspect of it. 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 sort of violence in slow 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, flashing all of these things that 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 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 also the trade war the devastation that will cause on

rural communities struggling to make agriculture work. how do we grapple that and think about how 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? these are just questions, i'm not sure, but 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? we have also these economic conflict. i don't know. 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. how the founders wanted us to think the revolution was non-violent but i'm wondering how through time you think this sort of narrative

of political of violence be being super central to american history got got papered over and how was it papered over in especially big synthetic history, who ask doing the papering over to get this narrative in most american's heads of a american-history driven not by violence but by something else. >> i think, part of it, perhaps a small part, perhaps i'm over estimating the influence the academy mass. part of it is the historians don't tend to be particularly violent people. 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. and following. but i think in joe lapor's new book, 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. it's a thought. >> yeah, it's -- we've definitely sanitized 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. but i feel like, you know, 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, of the evolutionist movement, the kind white man who says not on my watch. the person who intervenes. we tell these stories because they perpetuate ideas of whiteness being the villain, but then the hero. right? 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. i can't tell you how many times

we will talk about frederick douglas and harriet tubman but there's like no other black abolitionist, or 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 incolcaate -- 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. right? . like -- i think that 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 problem. you can look at the civil rights movement and say racism is a thing of the past. right, like, 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 the harm or the brutality forces us to have to answer questions we don't want to answer which is how white supremacy stays supreme. >> i guess just 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 unsavory.

so often left to the side. but at the same time, when we're looking at self-definitions from historical actors, i think, very rarely we find people who define themselves as violent. look at the klan of the '20s or white supremacyists 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 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 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 and so i think we do need to do more to think through the

ramifications of violence and democracy throughout american history. and i'll turn it over to my colleagues to see what they think. >> yes. i agree. i don't think we should think democracy is not violent or it has a moral high ground that doesn't allow violence to take place. that's a false hood. in a lot of ways it is a double-edged sword that you have to sort of, you know, almost use violence to employ your means, to get your means across the. -- and we've seen it play out in history time and time again. just introducing the concept or idea that democracy can be

violent or has violent tendency. something americans wouldn't be comfortable hearing but i don't think it's far from the truth. >> [ inaudible ] >> i'm inspired by my colleagues comment in the corner and also just reflecting on the kennedy conversation last night an in light of this conversation i actually find it kind of wanting because we're speaking about democracy, we're speaking about the state and then violence and 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 was struggling when she made this comment and also reflected on the remarks last night, the idea of this response to racism is

anti-racism, going back to when we had the first democratic assembly, with the first laws passing were about the violence citizens can enact towards africans. so creating scarcity from the outset. what's missing is the critique of capitalism because racism and violence were born in this country. racism, capitalism and violence together. we can critique democracy and the state, what i haven't heard is the critique of capitalism. so i'm just inviting you to muse on that for a moment. we have this intensely capitalistic state in united states of america and it's in tensive violent and intensely raci racist. i think they're all born together on 1619 so i invite you to muse on the comment. because that is the root of the

dep ravation and scarity and greed which i think greed is this intense violence that defines our society. >> uh-huh. >> absolutely. thank you for the questions. well-taken one. one thing i've noticed, my work focused on the late 19th century, massive industrialization and capitalism expanding in a bunch of methods and ways. le there's a crisis. usually called the labor crisis or labor problem. people worried about what they see as newly industrial capitalism. what it will mean for democracy and this coercion by employers is part of that crisis. what's shocking now is we don't seem to have that sense of crisis when capitalism is changing rapidly under us and democracy is just as under threat and yet the labor crisis of the 19th century, people were discussing, it was driving elections, pretty much everyone had a opinion on the labor question. the fact that now there is

discussion, it's absolutely out there but i don't think anyone would say it was a crisis of democracy and capitalism the same way they would explicitly use those terms in the 19th century. >> i think that's a great question and it's something that can tie back to the klan. historians of the klan haven't dealt with it all that well, even though there's a lot of material on it at the time, particularly from somebody like a. phillip randolph or other black radical organizer who's see the violence of the klan. fundamentally a tool of capital in order to divide and suppress labor.

and that's why, i think, seeing the influence of something like the klan in federal politics is significant because then you see how that's used, not just as the violence on a personal level to kind of bring up the distinction we were looking at before, from kind of personal violence versus an impersonal violence that not only sending the klan as strike breakers or means to divide unions but also that they are starting a crusade against socialists and bolchiks they're taking into their lobbying that will become form allies -- formalized. where one of the most obnoxious being to sit in the house will declare the klan is an american

institution even as he turns the state's violence on radical change, radical organizers, particularly in the african-american communities. >> i think that's such an important question because i was chewing into the definitional question but so many examples you were siting were the extreme violence at the heart of everything from slavery through to the labor union battles of the entirety of the last 150 years or so, but that this is so core to how capitalism works in the united states, through various forms of violence, not just labor strikes, but workers health and workers safety. >> for me, i think it's something we need to be a tuned to as historians, i think we have to watch that our

analytical framework that's we're using that they shift over time. so for me the labor question still continues. it stoppled being asked in the public smear in the language we're talking about but it has evolved. actually robin lindsey published a great article about that. we have to redefine -- we have to change -- we have to stop using the word class. the word comes at a particular industrial moment that americans stopped using so we now have working families and we have a way of talking about capitalism we need to be more a tuned to update. part of the reason, thinking of the wonderful conversations we've had this conference how to connect the side of this academic jargon if we stop talking about the inequalities, the violence, that kind of stuff, i feel we have a better way of reaching and making the

larger connections how violence has always been endemic to this imperfect supposedly democratic republic. that's something to think about. why the language isn't there. the teacher uprisings, i do call them uprisings, i mean look at the discussions they're having and heart wrenching stories how they're struggling to make basic ends meet. it's right there. could be important analogs there about the abuses in sweat shops something we're more used to thinking about in terms of poverty not public employee trying to do their best by children. things to think about. >> in order to keep the trains running on time we'll close it there. please help me thank our panelists for a great time. [ applause ]

tonight at 8 eastern. world war i. the 47 day battle that ended the great war in 1918. we travel to northeastern france with historian mitchell and french battle field guide to tour several battle locations and along the way we discover several artifacts of the great war. watch american history tshs -- tv now and over the weekend often cspan3. >> with the federal government at work in d.c. and throughout the country use the congressional directory for contact information for members of congress, governors and federal agencies. order your copy at

cspanstore.org. >> up next on american history tv, historians discuss the effect of media and technology on politics, topics include silicon valley, artificial intelligence and cable television. from purdue university, this is about 90 minutes. >> so good morning and welcome to the media technology and the state panel. this is part of a large r two-dy session called remaking american political history where we're all talking about history and how it's going to be taught and talked about and consumed over the years. this conference is sponsored by the department of history here at purdue university and is organized by one of our panelist, katey brownel. thank you, katey and by nikki and leah. we're t