the public to assume that these are all respectable, upstanding, white citizens. members of boston society who were struck down by a tyrannical power. so yeah, i think that's how that would play out. thanks. thank you very much. [applause] i really appreciate the opportunity. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> american history tv is on social media. cspanhistory.--@ between violence and political change from the american revolution present day. this was part of a conference called "remaking american history."

a very one have calling of the >> all right. i going ahead and kicking things off. thank you for coming to the violent in u.s. politics panel. i think you will see this as a timely panel and a good time to put these topics into the context of a broader american history. i will start off by introducing our panel and then everyone will give an opening statement and we will start the conversation. sitting right next to me is an assistant professor of history at duke university who holds a phd in two -- from duke university. author of "captives of liberty," which will be released this fall. in thepublished articles journal of the early republic, the journal of early american history. and he is working on a project

provisionally titled, patrick henry's war. kelly carter jackson is a 19th century historian at wellesley college. , out from university pennsylvania press, provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the use of violence on black activists. of -- coeditor and was featured in the history nominateddocumentary, for an naacp award in 2016. the phd candidate in history a northwest university, his dissertation explores the finally, felix-

is the author of "ku klux kulture," and the assistant editor of to do volumes -- of to do volumes on eleanor roosevel'' is personal papers. i was at the sight of one of the most explosive moments of political -- site of one of the most explosive moments of political violence in the last few years. it was also moment that opened a debate about political violence, particularly as americans learned more about antifa. some

anti-fascist organizers accept violence, but those who stood up to neo-nazis in charlottesville were not often universally praised. even their supporters were unsure what to do in the face of violence. would antifa cost anti-racists the moral high ground? even rejecting the formulation of the people on both sides, did antifa's refusal to reject violence make both sides bad? those of the questions i run into discussing charlottesville. and what is missing from those questions is any sense of history. maybe to put it more correctly, there's a mistaken or a limited sense of history that runs through these questions, one that runs through the so-called nonviolent civil rights movement when "justice was achieved not through war, but through peaceful resistance. " but that story is quite a thin one in the broader history of violence in american history. i'm glad we are having this conversation.

i'm really eager to kick this off. what you get us started?>> -- started? >> excellent. thank you, katie, for organizing this amazing conference. my research addresses 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 the russian revolution of 1917 or the french revolutionary terror of 7093 and 7094, revolution and political change seems to come hand-in-hand with widespread violence. cultural historians, drawing on the insights of their colleagues in the social sciences inscribed violence as a language, a way of communicating when other forms of communication breakdown.

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 of political violence -- excuse me, political revolution and particle violence tends to be trans-historical. 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' is revolution seems stayed, even restrained. although hardly nonviolent, neither does it appear to have much in common with the revolutionary violence of those that followed.

it appears legitimate, justified, even comical. the boston tea party. it's our joe manchin john adams or thomas jefferson lopping peoples heads off while wearing knee breeches and powdered with eggs. as gordon -- while wearing powdered whigs. as gordon wood noted, america's experience does not resemble that of other nations were people were killed, property destroyed, and everything was turned upside down. for wood, the radicalism laid in the idea of poverty sovereignty. this was an ideology that would transform not only america's government, but society as well. all of this was achieved by the early 19th century without ever erecting a guillotine in

southern philadelphia. it prompted the question of whether the american revolution was at all that revolutionary. perhaps america's revolution was unique, maybe exceptional.

in this framing, the american model appears as a shining city on a hill, and example to be emulated, if not exported around the globe. but to make this claim requires ignorance of eight years of bloody and divisive civil warfare that pitted american loyalists against patriot neighbors, liberated slaves against their first wild masters, and indigenous nations against one another. most historians of the american revolution have segregated the political and social transformations of the area from the actual fighting. thus we have a war for independence with its pipes and drums and generals and battles, which is separate from the political revolution of 1776. when thinking of political history, scholars often focus on the online preamble and forget jefferson's vitriolic enunciation of king george for plundering our seas, burning our towns, and destroying the lives of our people. this graphic segregation of the war from the revolution would baffle historians, what would it please the founding fathers to no end? as john adams wrote to jefferson, what do we mean by the revolution? the war? it was only an effect in consequence of it. adams and the founding elite scrubbed the war of us rest violence from their histories.

theirs was the good revolution, the moderate revolution, the gentlemanly revolution. but adams's revolution was not the one its victims remembered. recently, historians, no doubt influenced by our post 9/11 world have worked to bridge the gap between the revolution's rhetoric and its reality. but highlighting the violence is not enough. we must seek to understand it social and political causes and effects. if not, we will continue a narrative of the american revolution divided into two halves. on one side, the war, district of and repressive. on the other, idealistic and unfinished. it requires making a connection between revolutionary political change and revolutionary violence.

my forthcoming book centers the war and is horrors in these scholarly debate about the character consequences of the american revolution. it argues the political revolution, had the unintended consequence of transforming the war which to achieve it. by making the people sovereign, it shattered the monopoly on pub -- public violence.

prisoners of war, as victims of revolutionary violence reveal a side of the revolution the founders prefer to have forgotten. the democratization of war. thank you very much. [applause] >> good morning. i want to tell a couple stories. some of the stories will come from my book. i look at a lot of the violence taking place in the 1850's before the civil war. the 1850's is one of the most violent decades. i want to tell a story you are probably familiar with, the story of senator charles sumner and his hanging in the senate chamber, but i also want to go further and tell you how people responded to this caning.

to give context, he is giving a speech. he is talking about how horrible he thinks this act is. so, he spoke out about the kansas nebraska act during a speech. using incendiary language and sexual imagery, he claimed that the southerners climb i -- crime against kansas was akin to being -- a rape of a virgin. his three-hour speech was so controversial, stephen douglas remarked to a call late, this damn fool is going to get himself shot by another damn fool. sure enough, a colleague intended to make an example of sumner. political violence was in the senate chamber of the nation's capital.

brooks approached sumner and said "i have read your speech twice over carefully. it is liable -- liblebel on south carolina. -- carolina." he began to strike sumner with a cane. he tried to crawl under his desk , but it was bolted to the floor. brooks beat him so relentlessly, the desk released from the floor and sumner laid bloodied and unconscious. sumner -- brooks only stopped when his cane broke. sumner miraculously survived. it took him three years to recover and some might argue he never fully recovered. the letters poured into support charles sumner from the black community and one i would like to share with you in particular.

it validated desires to entertain and politics at the national level. one of the most remarkable responses came from a black newspaper that debuted about a month after the attack. the op-ed was titled "a challenge to mr. brooks." a woman called the attacks cowardly, to eat a man, on art -- to beat a man unarmed and down. she challenge brooks to meet her anywhere with pistols, rifles, or cow hides. the outrage had no bearing on her sex. she and other that she was 50 years old and a widow. she had lost two sons and the mexican war and brooks action represented a direct affront to our own liberty, a liberty that she believed her country should protect. she said "now then, mr.

brooks, let's see some of your courage. you are afraid to meet a man. dare you meet a woman?" she said that she was ready to do her country service by whipping what she called the cowardly ruffian. more than any other man, she admitted to what she was willing to do publicly. well many were praying for sumner, robinson demonstrated what she was ready to do with a pistol.

i like this. there is no anonymity. she puts her name on it, first name, last name, her age. she lets them know who she is. she was publicly challenging senator brooks and even taunting him. she wrote with rage that signaled she had little to lose. not only was robinson ready to meet brooks weapon for weapon, but she claimed she would meet him without weapons "by choking the cowardly ruffian. few men white or black responded to threats to meet sumner's violence with violence. robinson was willing not only to take on a man, but a public figure and politician. robinson was undeterred.

the significance of her being a black woman threatening violence against a white man should be duly noted. sumner was not wrong to allude to sexual imagery in his speech. it is likely that this also stemmed from gendered violence that in slate black women faced daily. she said meet violence with violence, but more specifically, meet cowardly acts with justice.

>> is this on? now it's on. thank you. today, i am going to talk about my research, which focuses on a form of voter intimidation that may not fit that well with the topic of the panel because it's an explicitly nonviolent one, or it seems to be. economic voter intimidation. this kind of intimidation is typically done by an employer against an employee and it has been part of american history since the beginning. there are cases of intimidation, often called coercion going back to the 18th century, but what i argue is the last half of the 19th century, particularly after the panic of 1873, there is a crisis of economic intimidation. the number of people dependent for their wages increased during this time as well. at the same time it became reasonable, it became a tactic used by many politicians to use their employees to try to win close elections. i will give you a few examples and talk about the long-term consequences of

this type of intimidation on the law we have today. to an extent historians and political scientists have not grappled with, economic intimidation is widely an open secret. it activated labor constituencies and activist to advocate for ballot secrecy in a way they had not before. what did this look like before we voted in secret?

i will give you a perfect example from us waco new york in 1878. voting in the sixth ward took place in the center of town. to get into the building, you had to pass by two tables. one was staffed by republican, one by democratic operatives and they gave you your ballot. the ballots were printed by parties. and the operatives who worked for the republican party happen to also work for men in thompson kingsford who owns the kingsford mill. you might you'd kingsford starch and cooking. it's still a large company today and it was widely known that as kingsford employees walked into the building republican operatives would hand them their tickets and remind them they were expected to vote the way thompson kingsford wanted them to. they had nowhere to go. they had to go in. as one of the observers testified, the workers they are not do it. they dare not change their ticket because they are watched. that was the key element. they were being watched. and because there was precarious

work in these tough economic times, they often had very little recourse. this happened throughout the country, and the crisis blew up in part because it was a politically useful crisis. there were thousands of people being intimidated. it was also useful for the partisan press to accuse the other side of doing this more than they were. gradually they began to accuse republican employers of intimidating employees. that was a difficult part of the work. it is happening, but it's also a rhetorical crisis.

and intimidation to fire someone struck deeply at what many of these voters of as their manhood , their ability to provide for their families. as one example, in portland, maine, the road working crew in portland was especially worried because there is going to be a tough winter coming. the election would be taken place in september. they did not want to be out of work in the winter. so they yelled out to them, " mind how you vote, boys. vote for your bread and butter." he walked with them to the polls. they had very little choice. it seems like one person refused to do so, when home, was never employed of the road crew again. what was remarkable was it could interlace with other violent forms of intimidation. this is especially true in the south. in virginia, the black workers

at the local insane asylum were marched out to the insane asylum. there were two lines to vote. the remarkable thing was the employees at the asylum were allowed to skip both lines. these men were allowed to vote, but they absolutely were not allowed to vote for the

candidates they wished to vote for. there were told to vote for the democratic ticket and they did. that's the way these forms of intimidation can be interlaced on top of each other. the legal separation is overlaid on the knowledge of violence against african americans and add to that the coercion, intimidation of losing your job. states try to fight this in a number of ways. they passed several laws making this kind of intimidation illegal. they attempted to enforce these laws. they arrested a man who had intimidated his employees at a mill and the man seems to have been perfectly happy to admit, yes, i intimidated him, i told him what to do, but the court dismissed the case. the judge determined the business owner was simply using his first amendment right to tell the employee how to vote. so gradually -- and this happened in the late 1880's, states began to adopt secret talent laws. it comes to the united states and the first american to advocate for the secret ballot imprint is a man named henry george. this was 1871, and he advocates for -- another form of coercion. it is coupled directly with economic voter intimidation.

they took up the call and advocated for ballot secrecy. there was a rush of legislation between 1888 and 1890, but those laws were not passed in all states. particularly in the south. north carolina did not pass a secret ballot law until 1929.

secret ballot laws are not only useful to protect against generalized intimidation. they do not just protect workers. it breaks the change of -- the chain of information. they will never be effective at preventing generalized intimidation. but that's not what they are designed to do. we should remember what they were first enacted to do. to protect this chain of knowledge between the employer and employee about how they were voting area as they are doing away with ballot secrecy, allowing ballot selfies at the polling place -- yes, the supreme court refers to ballot selfies as taking a picture of your ballot whether or not you are in it. they do not seem to know what a selfie means -- it reintroduces the possibility that you are voting in the presence of someone you might have influence on you. 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 the most important ones. thank you. [applause]

>> excuse me. as you can see perhaps, i am getting over a cold. i'm a little croaky. that is one reason i will keep my formal comments brief. the other reason being i want to get to our conversation. my research focuses particularly on the ku klux klan of the 1920's. it's when the organization is breaking sectional boundaries to establish an nationwide power base, one of the strongest klan strongholds was right here in indiana, of course. it peaks in membership numbers in 1924 with an estimated 4 million members nationwide. those members are drawn to the organization, not just as adherence to the ideology to the tenants of white supremacy, but also they very can only sell itself as the answer to a variety of suppose it ills.

so, it's a fraternal organization to protect against the feminization, the breakdown of masculine society. it is a law and order group pushing prohibition enforcement. they are moralists defending against the apparent evils of modernism and jazz. they are very upset at jazz. they are nativists, particularly the king up on popular anti-catholic and anti-semitic sentiment to really drive calls to restrict immigration or halt immigration entirely. and far more than this. the klan response to things in these ways.

even as the membership grows, klan violence declines. compared to what is the paramilitary reconstruction or the terrorism in the civil rights era, historians have written about the klan of the 1920's as less violent. that is not the whole picture. to correct that misunderstanding, what we need to do is look at the political involvement. i think it is particularly interesting to look at this from the federal level.

compared to what is the paramilitary reconstruction or the terrorism in the civil rights era, historians have written about the klan of the 1920's as less violent. that is not the whole picture. to correct that misunderstanding, what we need to do is look at the political involvement. i think it is particularly interesting to look at this from the federal level. if we focus on electoral success, it is pretty easy to dismiss the influence of the ku klux klan on the politics of the 1920's. that is what historians have tended to do. they are very good at drawing a lot of attention to themselves. they are generally very, very bad at getting a klan candidate

to be elected to office. they have successes, sporadically, generally in local strongholds. indiana, of course, one of the most notorious strongholds, as i mentioned. some relative success in electing local officials and state officials but very rare at the federal level. what my current research focuses on is the fact that electoral success is not really the key to understanding the klan's influence on federal politics. the key to understanding the involvement in federal politics is understanding the ways in

which the klan functioned as a political lobbying movement. to think about what the klan is doing on a yacht on the potomac filled with senators and chorus girls. real situation. it is there that the klan is tremendously impactful in shaping legislation that is directly relevant to klan interest. it is there that they will help shape federal prohibition legislation. it is there that the klan will help shape what the immigration restriction legislation of the 1920's looks like. because of this, the klan does not need extra vigilante violence to achieve their goals.

instead, the klan of the 1920's is very effective at shaping policy to support their violent ideology. political power meant the klan violence expressed itself with state violence. it expressed itself not through rogue klansmen but through federal prohibition enforcement agents. it expressed itself through the border patrol. and so, if we are to understand the enduring legacy of the klan, it is the intersectional nexus between bigotry, violence, and politics that we need to

understand. thank you. [applause] >> that is a pretty good place to jump off to a broader conversation about violence in political history. the first thing i would love to hear you talk about is the relationship between violence and politics from a broader level, just to say that i think there is often this idea that violence is a failure of politics and 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? >> i talk about violence -- violence is how we understand history in a lot of ways.

even if you think about how classes are taught, we teach classes on wars, all of these moments are violent moments. that is how we mark turning points. in a lot of ways, i see violence as this accelerator that moves political movements or social movements along. i think it is a great way for looking at how we examine change. a lot of times, there is a tendency to have this idea that change comes about on an island. what they are responding to is violence. i am constantly pushing students to nuance how we understand violence, not to dismiss it as something that is fanatical or peripheral or is an episode that happens, just a moment. but really as an explanation for how policy is made or not made in terms of how progress is developed or not developed.

i think violence is the perfect framework for that. >> i think -- this is an excellent question. obviously, where does violence fit in? if we need to think about violence as a political language, violence has meaning, it can be used for political purposes. very rarely is violence unrestrained, unrestricted. it is usually focused for a

particular purpose. we use violence to try to get their political point across. what does a lynching mean in the 1920's? what does a cross burning mean? what are they trying to say? what is the ritual to this? who is the audience? is there a performative nature? think about the role of violence in the state. talking about the border agents, right? the violence is invented -- embedded in the state. thinking about police violence, police brutality. if you get students to think through that, as you are saying, it is an enormously useful -- we

should continue -- we cannot ignore violence is at the heart of american political history. >> one element i have come across in my research, it is very easy to play a what about-ism game. this party got into a scuffle. this is what you were talking about earlier. one thing i noticed in the gilded age was that being able to claim that the other party was also doing bad things was away for you to excuse your much worse things. thomas brackett reed, when talking about lynchings and violence in the south and economic intimidation in the north, he said, yes, they are both crimes. murder and catching fish out of season are both crimes, too. we have to be clear what kinds

of violence we are talking about, what are historical actors are using -- what our historical actors are using. >> i teach a class on terrorism in the united states. the fun never stops in my classroom. [laughter] 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 in american history. how we look at definition of terrorism will be crucial within that. ideas of legitimate violence, illegitimate violence, state ,iolence, individual violence

really do often function as questions in change or moments of change. that terribly uncouth thing and to sponsor to a question -- respond to a question with a question, one thing i was thinking about when i listen to everybody talk, this myopic place we are in today with regards to the use of violence and political violence, in particular. off the top of my head, thinking about this, do you think we have reform isplace where associated with nonviolence but revolution is associated with violence? and that is 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? revolution considered illegitimate today in american culture? >> in some ways, yes. it is very easy for us to look back in slavery and say that it was wrong, hopefully. stories in my book are about black abolitionist who are fighting back, protecting communities and using force and violence to protect their communities and everyone loves hearing these stories. i think in some ways, you can even support that, in talking about segregation or jim crow. hopefully, we can all agree that

was wrong. taking up arms in self-defense might be rational. today, the way that race is reincarnated itself in the way it looks, it is difficult to take up those same sort of stances to use protective violence for self-defense in a way to purport revolution or change. people think you are a radical or crazy. in the civil rights movement, they thought they were crazy, too. i feel that maybe you need distance in order to accomplish it. i do not think people -- i think that people believe you can accomplish anything through nonviolence and while i agree with that to some extent, there is a little bit of historical naivete in terms of how we really see change come about throughout this country. >> that is a great question. i would like to jump in and take

us back to the founding moment. we are living with the legacies of that. this is a nation that was born in violent revolution. civil warfare. rather cautiously, on the part of the revolution, the founding fathers -- the flipside of revolution is rebellion. slave rebellion, insurrection. illegitimate, must be suppressed by the state. how do you justify the foundations of a new nationstate founding in an act of inherent illegitimate violence? an effort to overthrow the sitting government. the way you can do that is rewriting the history of that initial revolution. also, combating -- becoming counterrevolutionary. the united states is one of the most counterrevolutionary nations in history. think about vietnam.

it was a counterrevolution. i think that we as political historians need to think through that a bit more and trace -- we love to explain change, right? to think about some of the continuities that exist as well. >> some of this can be explained in a way through the recent rehabilitation of john brown and the fact that he is now being reintroduced into the american canon as the most american of all heroes. it would seem like because of the aftermath of the civil war, but even at the time, he was considered quite the radical. now to have him discussed as at the forefront of american liberty is a remarkable moment. what do they think about

political violence if they are making john brown their patron saint? >> just to pick up on that, it is interesting that the mainstreaming of john brown idea and the people who have most often compared themselves to john brown have been those attacking abortion clinics and abortion providers. that is this very specific form of political violence that they do see themselves acting within the tradition of. >> one of the words that keep coming up, legitimate and illegitimate. what is interesting about the question of violence, aside from a very few committed pacifists, they are not that many people in the united states to think that all violence is illegitimate.

how do you see historical actors making the case for their violence being legitimate? i think that as historians, it often changes over time, which act there's -- which actors are using violence legitimately and which ones are not. how are your people making their cases? >> black abolitionist, i have found no other group of people who have a moral impetus for using violence. they talk often about american hypocrisy and the american revolution being on complete -- incomplete. i think that black abolitionist are saying that since slavery is wrong and we have a moral

authority, a god-given right -- and that is really important when they can solidify their legitimacy with biblical tenants. who can argue against the bible? in the 19 century, you cannot really do that. they are using these local allegories to justify using violence, to justify using force. they are using revolutionary language. i love the idea that violence is a political language. give me liberty or give me death. they are using this language over and over again to threaten and provoke the abolition of slavery. it is easy from us to look at this from a 21st century perspective and say, of course, you are justified in this. i think legitimacy comes through winning. you look at the american revolution as legitimate because they won.

what happens when you don't win? does that mean your cause is no longer legitimate? when you look at black liberation, there are not a lot of victories. it does not mean it is not legitimate. >> the american revolutionists were masters of this game. from the very beginning of this process, they used the press, quite effective way to paint their enemies, those who opposed the common cause is illegitimate. inherently illegitimate. if you think of the declaration of independence, 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 of the political sphere. this new nation would be a respectable and the eyes of the world because it had -- it played by the rules, right? that is why you see washington is so animated by the desire to turn these ragtag massachusetts militiamen into a respectable army. they need to look the part of europeans and paid -- and play by these rules. it would be understandable to european eyes as a way of legitimizing illegitimate. the british had suppressed countless domestic insurrections. not only slave insurrections but insurrections of irish by labeling them as others.

their violence was illegitimate. the revolution was quickly -- the revolutionists were quickly attuned to that and justified their own actions. >> is interesting to consider the legitimate-illegitimate question with how it intersects with another question. effective-ineffective. this is something you see over and over again with --there is a fascinating debate that rages around that in the black press of the 1920's that says what is the best way to respond to this? do we ignore it?

do we deny it the oxygen of attention and let the fire burn itself out? we could do that but while we are ignoring it, the fire is burning and is causing preventable devastation. presumably, we have to do something, and what is that something? there are those in the black press that say, no. they already sent us -- we are not carrying on a debate in society. we are encouraging our readers to carry a gun or a brick or a bat. if you encounter a klansman, you do not try to reason with them. there is an interesting question there as well about not just how we defend violence as legitimate but how we defend violence as effective at the same time. >> because i give you your bread and butter and because i pay for

you to live in a house, i have the right to persuade. in different places, they enforce that right differently in the south, they enforce it by taking it to mean that persuasion will have an effect. in some places, in the north and in the west, that persuasive right, you will have to listen to me and i will give you my opinion but i will not necessarily follow it up with discharge from employment. in some places, those threats are less aggressive than others but always the right has claimed, because i pay you, i have gained an extra political right. that is where the legitimacy comes from to make these claims and it does not work the same way in all parts of the country but generally, the idea that i have paid you and therefore, i have that right.

>> does strike me that one other missing legitimating tool for violence is the claim of self-defense. missing legitimating tool for it is used quite broadly across the spectrum, whether we are talking about like panthers or -- black panthers or white supremacists. there is 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 want to ask one more question and then i will open it up to the audience. i do not know if it is a good question. 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. it forces our eyes to the centrality of violence to american politics and american history.

how does that change the story we tell about u. s. history? i think that is very contrary to the story americans like to tell themselves and we do not always tell self comforting stories as a story and about the nation but it seems like a particularly disruptive move to put violence at the center of the story. >> i feel like that is what i am trying to do in my work and it is incredibly hard to do, to flip the script a little bit in terms of how we understand violence and how we have been told, i think, these romantic stories about the underground railroad or about the civil rights movement that feel very nostalgic and sweet. they are stories you can tell the kids. rosa parks refused to give up

her seat. that is very light, yay!harriet tubman rescued the slaves and she did it without hurting anyone. you can package them so well. what i try to do is tell the stories, in order to flee, a lot of times you had to fight. i tell a story about a man running away from slavery and this man was pursuing him and he was, like, if you do not stop chasing me, i am going to kill you. he kept chasing him and he killed him. the audience is applauding. i tell the story to show that the whole system of slavery is inherently violent. often times, in order for people to bring about their own freedom, they had to employ 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 am trying to work with is protective violence. it is more than self defense. it is not just protecting yourself but protective violence is protecting your family, your community. even strangers. your protecting marginalized people, oppressed people, people who do not have access to the ballot. how do we examine protective violence as useful and something that is also legitimate? i do not know if i am answering your question. it is a hard exercise to do because there is this paradox, right? in one stance, we hate violence and we think it is awful. on the other hand, we love the american revolution, and we love

reenacting the civil war. there is this love-hate relationship with violence that i have not yet been able to reconcile. >> that brings up a great question that i deal a lot with them i question -- i deal a lot in my classroom. they are not aware of the republican synthesis. for them, it is just, shooting redcoats and washington crosses the delaware and suddenly, we are a nation. that is a good violence. we like that. what i tried to do with my book, that is what the revolutionaries wanted us to think. what if that fails? it is a restrained battlefield victory story degrades over the

course i think that we need to in some ways re-think the constitutional movement, as a effort by we can call them nationalists in this period, to sort of reassert a monopoly on violence. in this new state, we need to control. there is a debate over this. the second amendment, right? a armed populace, a very contentious issue and we are still dealing with that. does the state have a monopoly on violence, or are people allowed to self-defend

historians need to engage with that. >> i think about the election of 1860. many of you heard the phrase, lincoln wasn't on the ballot in the south in 1860. it doesn't really make sense. people had to hand out party ballots outside the polls, and lincoln wasn't on the ballot because it would require republicans in the south to stand up at the polls, handing them out. [laughter] and when you about that historical moment, there's no way that would have been allowed to happen. they would have been beaten up, driven out of town. so the way in which the simple phrase, lincoln wasn't on the ballot in the south, actually conceals a great deal of violence that would have happened had they attempted to hand out ballots, in the south. in just one moment, you can see we managed to talk our way past a moment of pretty extreme violence or potential violence. >> i think there's two things i want to respond to there a little bit.

first of all, the idea of self-defense, violence in self-defense. similar in terms of thinking about, that's a difficult question, because it asks us to determine what counts as self-defense. i think particularly of something like kathleen blue's book, who unfortunately cannot be with us today, but her point the kind of 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, and as such needs to defend itself against the state, so they would argue they are acting in self- defense, very much so. in the way of that protective violence. >> yes.

>> the other kind of, yes, uh, definitional question i struggle with with this, that this relationship between political history and violence, going back to the keynote last night, he discussed the idea of political history really being the history of power. then, we have to determine the relationship between power and violence. i think that is a huge question, that i'm in no way prepared to provide a definitive answer to. what i will say is that jaclyn jones' biography of lucy parsons, the radical, feminist, black anarchist in the late 19th century, talked 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. i think there is 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. if it is not discrimination, it is antiracist discrimination it kind of goes into the same thing. >> absolutely. >> i guess you could say it is racist self-defense, and antiracist self-defense. [laughter] >> excellent. with that i would like to open , it up to the audience. two ground rules. introduce yourself, and wait for the microphone. >> hi, i'm elly sherman. i really enjoyed this panel.

you did a great job getting from the revolution to the 1920's, but then we get to the rest of the 20th century, and picking up on the idea of do we need to , expand the definition of particularly the new deal and the question of labor. even though it may not be as physically violent, the clashes, what about the work of conley of the destruction, putting a freeway right through black communities. he says it is no less violent. i think he is right there. how about the tax policies that rip whole communities apart in central areas, completely dislocating those communities? labor laws. you are right, we don't have violent clashes as much anymore, but we have basically taken away your right to join a union and have that ability, the right to

work, right to starve laws. that kind of question. voting,a question about that now we can blame you for not getting to the polls, or not registering. how about zoning, not allowing multifamily units to have food in their neighborhoods, food deserts, lack of healthcare, and there seems to be -- there are real casualties to these trade wars. rural america has 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 since really the 1930's, and we are dealing with levels of depression and suicide we haven't seen, and how much can we incorporate that as violence not only by the state, but by corporations, and how does that framework -- if we expand the definition of violence in the

20th century, does that help us see other aspects of violence in the 18th century and 19th century as well? >> a great question. 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 in all these senses, we'll always try to adapt, so any ball we pass always has to think about, not just what does it solve now, but what are the ways people build try to get around this? a lot of scholarship on the secret ballot law now emphasizes the progressive nature of it. the fact you have to read and write, all these things that make voting by secret ballot more difficult than just taking a piece of paper and dropping it into a box. but this, is one area where yes

that's absolutely true, but if , we are trying to get rid of the problems of ballot secrecy, or voting in a physical polling place, we have to remember the ways in which the people who will try to get around these things, 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 is no ballot secrecy. we have done this already. the idea we might say, oh we don't need ballot secrecy anymore, like comparing closing the voting rights act when it was working, is like closing a umbrella in a rainstorm because you are getting wet. [laughter] we know these things can happen. so focusing on if we can solve , these problems now, we also have to think about how they solve the next problems and how they chain together. that's just the voting aspect. you can handle the rest. [laughter] >> i don't know if i can. that is a lot. everything you said is a lot.

but it is sort of violence in slow motion, right? it is playing out in this very insidious, silent, subtle way, so that when you call it violence, people are like "you are overreacting, oh my gosh. it is just a policy." but those policies are destructive, intensely destructive, not just for a generation, but for generations. it is really hard, i think, because we think violence is immediate and in your face, and aggressive, flashy, all these things we have with violence. we don't recognize it when it plays out very slowly. >> i think that for me, in some ways, it's time to start thinking about our definition of war, too. part of that is that i argue vociferously that there is a war at home during world war ii, and we cannot pretend otherwise. violent labor struggles

continued after into the 1930's, to be sure. now we are dealing with, what does war look like, not the kind of combat situations that are easy to talk about. drone attacks. i do think -- i kept thinking, is this the turn of millennium warfare, by an impersonal drone attack that is harder to call violence, because it is unseen, somebody pressing a button somewhere. but also, the trade war, and you think about the devastation that will cause on folks in the rural community still struggling to make agriculture work. how do we grapple, think there might be a casualty to this kind of warfare, even though it might seem like a joke to call it on par with the war in iraq, the war in afghanistan. i'm not sure. if we are going to start thinking about a more capacious definition of war and violence,

that it can happen at home, that it can be impersonal, that it can be about economics, can that be something that might be interesting to think about with the 18th and 19th century? i'm not sure. it is an idea. >> it will be interesting to think through, to what extent, how you define violence, where you draw the lines around it, what is the utility of either expanding the definition or sometimes it is, i don't know the answer to this question, but is it a metaphor of violence in some situations or is it actually definitional violence? there's a trade-off for which of those it is, but yes, a great question. >> thanks for the great panel.

felix, at the end, gestured towards the talk from last night, and i was thinking, like last night, the panel overturns an older narrative of a nonviolent american past. but he also focused on why the old narrative persisted. you gestured about rosa parks, or how the founders wanted us to think the revolution was nonviolent. but i wonder how, through time, you think this sort of narrative , of political violence being central to american history got papered over? who was -- how was it papered over, especially being a synthetic history. why is it papered over? who is doing that papering over to get the narrative in the heads of most americans of a kind of american history driven not by violence, but by

something else? >> i think that part of it, perhaps a small part, and perhaps i am overestimating the influence that the academy has, but part of it is that historians do not tend to be particularly violent people. [laughter] the reason i study violence is largely because i don't understand it, i don't, it is hard for me to understand how you would hurt another human being. so i am trying to figure that -- and his store size it, figure that out and historicize it, figure it out. but i think violence has been written out of a lot of our histories. yes, you have the triumphant battle of gettysburg story, and military history has always had its own sort of niche and following. but in a new book, how much

violence is there, really? i don't know. when we are writing synthetic histories, are we a little to blame for that? i haven't thought through that, but it is a thought. >> we definitely sanitize history. there is no question there. and i think the benefit in that is -- i hate using this because we use it all the time, but white supremacy. [laughter] i feel like that's the answer to everything. but in white supremacy, whiteness gets to both be the villain and the hero. the villain is the slaveholders, the klan, these really easy things we can attach to being bad, right? but the hero part of it is also the savior, the lincoln who frees the slaves, the

william lloyd garrisons of the abolition 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 happens, and then show another good white person who did something to replace it, to remove it, to cure it, 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, to the periphery of their own movements. i cannot say how many times people talk about frederick douglass, harriet tubman, but no other black abolitionists, or rosa parks and mlk, but no other civil rights leaders, and i feel that is intentional. we don't want people to know that multiple people were involved, that hundreds, if not thousands of people were involved, and 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 did not type it up -- tied it up in a nice, pretty bow at the end of the day. that is a way to inculcate ideas of patriotism, but also ideas of whiteness being supreme. we can all buy into that story, because it makes us feel good, feel empowered, like we can play a role in solving these issues, because it feels easy to play a role, when you can put a hashtag on something, and now you are progressive, right? [laughter] i think there are real reasons as to why we do this, and none of them are very effective at actually solving problems. but they are very effective at making you think you solved the problem. you can look at the civil rights movement and think, racism is a thing of the past, we solved that nonviolently, so why black lives matter? why are you so angry? because we don't want to acknowledge the anger, because having to acknowledge the anger,

the rage at the harm and brutality forces us to answer questions we have never wanted to answer, which is how white supremacy stays supreme. >> i guess, just to continue full speed ahead on the white supremacy train. [laughter] that feeling good element is a really crucial issue here as well. first of all, when we write these histories, violence is seen as something kind of unsavory, so is often kind of left to the side. but at the same time, when we're looking at self-definitions from historical actors, i think very rarely will you find people who define themselves as violent. if you look at the klan of the 20's, or white supremacists, or slaveholders, they won't define themselves as violent people.

they maybe say that they use violence, that they deploy violence to achieve goals, but they are not themselves violent people, and therefore violence isn't their story, right? so there comes this interesting question when we are writing these histories. how do we center violence in a story in which the subject themselves denies the centrality of the violence? do we have to write the history of george washington as a violent man? he is a military man. he is a slaveholder. 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 is not the first name that comes to mind. but why doesn't he fall into that category, and 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 absolutely echo all that has been said. also, military history is not exactly a popular sub-field in history these days. it's kind of been exiled outside of history. i know that has been changing to some degree. but to specifically focus on military history and violence, in some ways it makes it feel like you are not within the academy, when you talk about these things. i've experienced this to some degree. i'm currently a graduate student and when i mentioned in seminars about violence, about wars, they won't say i don't want to talk about it, but more, i am more interested in these other areas. that is perfectly fine, military history has been covered in american history, but the idea that it is something we can put aside. that anyone would think we can put aside violence or warfare in american history, i think is incorrect. >> thank you so much for this panel. it's been really

thought-provoking, and i am still processing a lot of it. but one thing i wanted to ask about is actually democracy. i think in authoritarian regimes, we expect violence. we expect, it is a violent state, a violent environment. what i found suggestive on this panel, perhaps there is something inherent about democracy that makes it also violent, or violent in different ways. something you said about popular sovereignty leading to a new kind of violence or a particularly intense violence. i was just wondering if you all might be able to comment a little more on that. is there something about democracy or popular sovereignty that leads to a particular type of political violence, and how is that different from violence and other types of regimes? >> that's a great question, that gets to the heart of my book. when we think of democracy, we think of the democratic peace, right? and if only we could just export

democracy around the world. if we just make iraq and afghanistan democratic powers, no one would ever go to war. it is a noble dream. so democracy, in many ways, has been divorced of its historic violence, but it is something that the founders were concerned about. the tyranny of the majority, the 51% who can then use power to coerce others, coerce the minority. you see that happening, very clearly. it is one of the ironies i discuss in my book, at the beginning of the revolution, these elite founders like washington, men of violence. but it was a particular type of european-style violence, violence enacted in specific ways in contexts where it was , accepted and legitimate, and others where it wasn't.

that sort of restrained but orderly violence degrades over the process, because ordinary people finally have a voice in this, they are mobilized in part through rhetoric and in part through the newspapers, and in part through the actual violence of the british army that they view as legitimate, to demand revenge and 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 to see what they think. >> yes, i agree. [laughter] i don't think that we should think that democracy is not

violent, or that 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 this double-edged almosthat you have to use violence to employ your means, to get your means across. we see this play out in history, time and time again. but even just introducing the concept, the idea that democracy can be violent, or democracy has violent tenets, is something i don't think americans would be comfortable hearing, but i don't think it is far from the truth. >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> very thought-provoking. i'm inspired by my colleague's

comments in the corner, and his reflection on the conversation last night. in light of this conversation, we're speaking about democracy, about the state, and violence, the ballots, the extent to which american society has actually been democratic, considering the nature of the ballot and considering the nature of racism and how democracy works. but what is missing, and i was struggling with this comment and the remarks of last night the , idea that the response to racism is antiracism. 1819 -- butck to going back to 1619, when we have this first democratic assembly, some of the first laws we pass are about the violence citizens can enact towards africans. so creating scarcity, greed from the outset, a critique of capitalism. racism and violence were born in

this country, racism, violence and capitalism were together. we can critique democracy and the state, but what i did not hear was a critique of capitalism. i invite you to muse on that for a moment. we have this intensely capitalistic state, the united states of america, and it's intensely violent and it is intensely racist, and it is like they are all born together around 1619. so i invite you to muse on that. not really a question. because that is the root of the deprivation, scarcity, and greed that i think breeds violence in society. >> thank you for the question. a well-taken one. one thing i have noticed -- my work focused on the late 19th century, this moment of massive industrialization, capitalism expanding in a bunch of different methods and ways. there's a crisis. it is usually called the labor

crisis, or the labor problem. people worried about what they see as newly industrial capitalism, what that will mean for democracy. isthis coercion by employers part of that crisis. but what is shocking to me now, we don't seem to have that sense of crisis when capitalism is changing just as rapidly around us, democracy is just as under threat, and yet the labor crisis of the 19th century, people were discussing it, it was driving elections, pretty much everyone had an opinion on the labor question. the fact that now, there is discussion absolutely out there, but i don't think that anyone would say it is a crisis of democracy and capitalism, the same way they would explicitly use those terms in the 19th century. >> it's a great question, and it is something that, again, can

tie back to the klan issue a little bit. historians of the klan really haven't dealt with it all that well, even though there is a lot of material on this from the time, particularly from radical black organizers in the 1920's and 1930's who do see the violence of the klan as 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 is used not just as violence on a personal level, to bring up the distinction we were looking at before from personal

violence to impersonal violence. sending the klan in as strikebreakers, or as a means to divide unions. but also, that they are starting a crusade against socialists and bolsheviks, taking into their political lobbying that is going to become formalized, that's going to become things like the house un-american activities activity, where johnny rankin, one of the most noxious human beings to ever sit in the house, is going to sit and declare that the ku klux klan is an american institution, even as he turns the state's attention and state's violence on radical change, radical organizers, particularly within the african- american communities. >> and i think that is such an important question. i was tuning in to the definitional question, but so many of the examples you were citing were at the extreme

violence at the heart of everything from slavery to the labor union battles of the entirety of american history. [laughter] the last 150 years or so. that is so core to, you know, that's how capitalism works in the united states, through various forms of violence. not just labor strikes, but workers' health and safety. >> for me, something we need to be attuned to as historians, we have to watch that our analytical frameworks we're using, that they shift over time. for me, the labor question still continues. it has evolved. an article was published, we have to redefine, stop using the word "class."

that word comes out of a particular industrial moment. americans stop using it over the course of the 20th century. we now have working families. but we have a way of talking about power and equality under capitalism, that we need to be more attuned to and start updating. thinking about some of the conversations we have had at this conference about how to connect outside academic jargon. if we start talking in a way that americans have talked over time, not just today, about the kinds of inequalities, violence, that kind of stuff, i feel we have a better way of reaching, making the larger connections about how violence has always been endemic to this imperfect supposedly democratic republic. that is something we can think about. while the language isn't there, but the discussion -- the teacher uprisings, and i do call them uprisings. if you look at the discussions they are having, the heart wrenching stories about how much they are struggling to make basic ends meet, it's right there.

there are important analogs there to the 19th and 20th centuries about abuses in sweatshops, something we are much more used to thinking employees public during to do their best by children. >> we will close it there. please help me thank all my panelists for a great discussion. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> american history tv is on social media. follow was at c-span history. >> this year's american history tv -- this is american history tv, exploring our past every

weekend on c-span3. next on our weekly series railamerica, in 1957, the soviet union launched the first artificial satellite into orbit and american educators reacted with alarm and determination to improve science education, education 57 is a u.s. commissioner of education report on the status of schools at the time. the film suggests teachers are underpaid, parents are apathetic, school construction needs to increase, and many students drop out before they graduate. this is the first of three films on education airing on appeal america this week the school year for many ends around the country. at 6:00 eastern, american history tv joins a tour guide to learn about the history of mobile alabama from the jim crow era to the civil rights movement. the tour features churches, businesses, leaders, and entrepreneurs who thrived despite segregation and racial

tensions. at 7:00 eastern, oberlin college history professor talks about the experience of newly freed african-americans, particularly women, in the washington, d.c. area, following the 1862 district of columbia emancipation act. and yet 8 p.m. ronald reagan gives his first press conference on january 20, 1981. that is what is coming up here on american history tv. >> johnny is my given name. america is my nation. the school has is my destination. ♪