next, a discussion on congress, political parties and polarization from the time of america's founding through the civil war and into the 21st century. this online event was hosted by the national constitution center which provided the video. >> and now it is a great honor to introduce our guests. what an amazing panel. america's most distinguished historians and scholars of congress to help us understand our current vexations. edward ayers is tucker boat right professor of the humanities at the university of richmond.

he is the author of many books on the civil war and reconstruction including and i will just highlight one of his many award-winning books, "the thin light of freedom: the civil war and emancipation in the heart of america" which he discussed at the national constitution center in 2017. his forthcoming book is southern journey, the migrations of the american south, 1790 to 2020. edward ayers, welcome. it is an honor to have you. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> and joanne freeman class of 1954 professor of american history and of american studies at yale university. where she specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods. she's co-host with ed ayers of the very popular american history podcast back story and it's great to unite these co-podcasters together. and is the author of many books as well, including, and most relevant for our discussion

tonight, the path breaking "affairs of honor: national politics in the new republics" as well as "field of blood: shy lens in congress and the road to the civil war." joanne, it is such an honor to have you with us. >> thanks for having me. >> norman ornstein resident scholar at the american enterprise institute where he studies politics, elections and the u.s. congress. his books include "one nation after trump: a guide for the perplexed, the disillusioned, the desperate and the not yet depart." i love norman's book titles the next one we did at the constitution center and it depressed us even before we began the program "it's even worse than it looks: how the american constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism" and very relevant for tonight as well "the broken branch: how congress is failing america and how could get it back on track." he is a friend of the center and appears frequently on our programs.

norm, wonderful to have you back. >> always a pleasure, jeff. >> let us jump right into the history of the violence that consumed the nation in general and congress in particular in the years leading up to the civil war. joanne, we'll begin with you because your book "field of blood" describes it so vividly, the statistics that you talk about are so striking between 1830 and 1860 you write there were more than 70 violent incidents between congressmen in the house and senate chambers or on nearby streets and dueling grounds and you note it wasn't confined to congress. between july and october 1835 alone, there were 109 riots nationwide. so much more -- well, let me ask it this way, is it true that there was more violence then in congress in particular but also in the nation in general than there is now? why was it? and give our audience a sense of how violent congress was. >> sure. well, to answer your question first, this is going to be an obvious thing to say, but

congress is a representative institution. so it does very much reflect the ethos of the time, and the fact of the matter is the first half of the 19th century and i'm sure ed will tell us the second half of the 19th century were very, very violent. so some of the violence that you're seeing in congress is really representative of that moment, but what i was interested in and what really drew my attention was the amount of it and the dynamic of it. and, you know, you were discussing the years leading up to the civil war and it's worth noting the violence or at least the extreme violence really begins in the 1830s. it's not a constant wave, it sort of comes and goes, but it's the 1830s and '40s and '50s that see these incidents. what's interesting and what's totally logical is if you track who is fighting who, initially you see one party fighting another and then over time you see north versus south and slavery is at the center of the fighting.

now, what struck me as interesting most of all and what really shows violence as a tool in the antebellum congress is southerners knew that to a certain degree they had an advantage because they were willing to duel and more willing to engage in hand to hand combat with then some of the northerners. and they used that advantage on the floor. they used it as a tool of debate. and they would deliberately intimidate and threaten northern congressmen. and some of them would silence themselves or sit down or not stand up rather than risk either that threat or being humiliated in front of the public by being threatened and then having to back down before it. so violence was -- it's shocking all by itself, but what's particularly interesting is it was a deliberate tool of debate. over time what happens is by the

1850s, the mid 1850s, some northerners decided that it can be their tool, too. >> that's such a powerful turn in the book when you describe how the decision of northerners to challenge southerners to duels actually decrease the violence and you quote from that remarkably moving letter which you said moved you to tears when representatives wade, chandler and cameron all pledged to challenge future duelers to fight, you write when it became known that some southern -- northern senators were ready to fight for sufficient call the tone of southern insight softened although the abuse went on.

norm ornstein, and it is often said or at least said by norm mccarthy who is a scholar at princeton who says that we are more polarized today than at any time in the civil war. you are such an expert of party systems, can you explain what it was about the political parties right before the civil war that led us to be so polarized then? >> so, you know, going back through history and we will see echos of so many of the divisions that are familiar to people today. if you look at the period leading up to the civil war and looking at the party system that was in flux. we had a whig party that became that was transformed into the

modern republican party, and we had along the way a know nothing party and the ire and the focus was on catholics and on some elements of the northern europeans in part, and we had actually a president-elected on the know nothing ticket, and ultimately it became the two parties that we know today or at least that we know today the democrats and the republicans, and of course, we had that overarching issue of race and slavery and the parties flirted with that. for a while the democratic party had a pretty strong pro -- or anti-slavery meaning. we had others in the party, copperheads who viewed it in a different way. and of course it shook it down in a republican defeat to abraham lincoln and the republican party, who became the force

to defeat slavery and we will talk about the things and how it changed in the aftermath of slavery and the reconstruction period, and all of those things that were life and death issues to so many really created a level of polarization in the society, and it broke down obviously along the regional lines, and those regional divisions continued to persist, but not necessarily in the same way as the parties change, and the democratic party which became a more dominant party many decades later had a merger of southerner and northerner democrats, but the polarization of the society and the parties and nolan mccarthy is right that what we are seeing now is something far more distinct than what we have seen since any period in 100 years. >> that is fascinating and you are teaching that the party system in the civil war period mirrored the polarization period

in society and nicely reinforces joanna's point in congress -- the violence in congress mirrors the violence in society. >> yes. >> ed, your book, the thin line of freedom, argues powerfully at every step those who had advanced freedom found sometimes defeated as history shows black freedom advanced further than their champions dreamed possible precisely because the opponents of freedom proved that with each of the powers of support of the northerners as norman told us of the post civil war period to reconstruction and the system polarized to where reconstruction was ultimately abandoned.

>> yes, so as norm was saying the polarization inside of the north between the democrats and the republicans in the north, it was a fundamental fact that people often tend to forget. people would say, well, the democrats lost because they only had 47% of the vote, and as we have seen in our time, the electorate doesn't just go away when they lose. so in 1864, 10,000 votes in different districts and see if that number sounds familiar, would have given the election to the democrats in 1864 after the suffering of the civil war, and we forget that had a sum battles gone differently, abraham lincoln might not have been elected. that substrateham was there. and the northern democrats were as racist as the white southerners and they hated everything that the republicans were doing. so the war ends and the white

south says, well, okay, we have lost. but, in the meantime, the election, andrew johnson becomes president, and he seems to cut some slack for the white south, and they go, great, okay, let's push for everything that we can get. and let's put the black coats in there to institute as much slavery as possible, and before republicans come back into congress, and right now, there is a quiet white president running everything. this sounds familiar, too, and so we will do everything that we can under this president. after the riots in new orleans and memphis and widespread violence against black people in the south, and the republicans say, we cannot have lost 350,000 men for this. we must restore the purpose of the war. and because the white south is just running roughshod. so the white south keeps pushing and pushing. and northern republicans say, okay, it is going to take an

amendment to the constitution that you have to support, and you are going to have to allow black men to vote and be delegates to rewrite the constitutions before you can come back in, because you have shown us that you are not, you are not sorry at all. you admit that you were defeated, but you don't admit that you were wrong and you have congressional commissions to to go out and talk to people across the south and say what you are looking for is rebelism, and the spirit that even though you are lost, they are still the rebels, and so the patterns that we still see playing out today are there, and i am not giving up my heritage, and holding on to this identity, and so as a result, you would not have had the 14th amendments if the republicans had not felt that if they did not revise the fundamental law of the land, the democrats up north are going to join with these white southerners and take away what was lost in the civil war.

so that is what i mean by the 15th amendment because to really make sure, we really mean it, you can't take away the vote. so reconstruction begins ending almost as soon as it begins. in virginia, it is over by 1870, and there are textbooks with the number 1877 in our head, but reconstruction really ends in 1871, 1872, all along, drenched in violence. and so the south brings along the fundamental law recognizing that if you were a native born american and you have fundamental laws of the southern white recalcitrants. after reconstruction comes to an end, the # united states settles into a pattern that's going to follow for a very long time. very closely contested elections. with the south, and special amp

disenfranchisement after the turn of the century. and those are the most closely contested and most finely calibrated contested elections in history, and that is when most people think it is boring, but a few votes here or there could change the outcome. so it's a fundamental restructuring, but the commonality, from what joanne and norm and i are saying, polarization finds a way to happen no matter the situation. winner take all, two parties, the us/them and it was shifting, but there is a polarizing impulse in american political culture. >> so interesting. thank you for all of that, and what an important point that it was the fear of losing the gains of the civil war that led the supporters of the 14th amendment to want to embody the constitution, and we told the story of the exhibition that we might have the party forever, and they said, no, we might lose it, and that is the warning of

so many of the parties that it might go away which is so prescient and sobering for today. now, joanne, we have a bunch of questions from our friends. to you, howard green says that when the northerners are willing to step back and stop bullying, is that like facing up to a bully? and we also have a question about whether any members of congress were trying to reach across the aisle at this time and a question about whether in the prewar era, were brawls mostly broken out over slavery as ununspoken catalyst,

and respond to any of those that strike you as provocative? >> oh, sure. well, the first question about the northerners and the southerners and i would say that the southerners don't stop fighting, but they are just sort of thrown off of their feet, because the northerners who have been caving in, suddenly, there are northerners that are fighting back. and the word bully that is asked in the question is right on target, because that is the word that people used at the time for the people who were provoking the fights, and bully brooks, who attacks pres -- andy brooks, and preston brooks who attacks charles sumner, and that is his nickname and a word applied to the people throughout this period, and so there was a sense that these people before the second half of the 1850s that the southerners were picking on people who could not be bullied because they could not fight back in the same way and what then happens is that these northerns come, and the northern congressmen, they were campaigning on the idea that they were going to fight the slave power, and there a reality

to that in congress that they meant it, and some of them came with weapons, and literally made it clear, and the document that you mentioned that i will confess did make me kind of teary, that these three northerners explain why they will now agree to duel from now on, and the part that captured me is that attend after describing this with all of the emotion, they said that we are putting this down on paper so future generations will understand how hard it was to fight slavery on the floor of congress. so, they make it clear precisely how i am describing in the book, and it is bullying. but what happens when you are being bullied, i suppose -- and this is sort of a, you know, simple answer, but if you stand up to the bully, sometimes that is a useful thing to do, and i will mention briefly the aisle question if there were not people reaching across the aisle, there were, and after a certain amount of time, that became hard to do, and you can see the mere hint at a certain point in the 1850s that someone would reach across

the aisle is sometimes met by mockery, the or even they will joke, but the joke will be, yeah, you do that. and i think that there is one congressman who says to another, you do that and you better tell your kids to put their sunday best on, because they will never see you again. so there were some people trying, and strikingly to me in the handful of years before the civil war, people were reaching across the aisle off of the floor. right? they couldn't do it on the floor in the public eye with the press watching, so they removed themselves from congress and tried to do it in a separate space, but by that point, those were not issues that could be compromised. >> that reminder that compromise is only possible sometimes in private. during the constitutional convention, which was secret, you were able to forge those compromises and tweeted in real time when the press is watching in the civil war and that is comparable only in name. and norm, everybody wants to talk about the present, and

friends we will, but we have to learn the history as well, and so that is why i am not jumping right into your modern questions. but many of your friends are asking, why isn't congress standing up to the president today? bill asks, how could congress tolerate the refusal of president trump to provide personnel who have been subpoenaed to testify in front of committees? should it be met with fines or imprisonment? and ralph hendrickson, how can congress resume the oversight of the executive branch, and sarah cunningham, our first guest asks why is congress and the senate willing to bow to this executive any kind of bipartisanship, and so now answering those questions in a bipartisanship, it seems that congress was willing to

stand up to the president, and they passed the civil rights act of 1866 over the republican president johnson's veto, and indeed impeached him because of its diss taste for his policies. so compare congress' willingness to stand up to the president then and now and why. >> i will digress a little bit, jeff, because i want to bring in some history, too. one thing i will say just to set that context, there is a wonderful book called "the first congress". the first congress did not consistent of a lot of wonderful towering figures other than a james madison here and there. there were a lot of mediocre people. but they all saw that they needed to establish this as an institution that meant something that had respect. and they did some remarkable things including the bill of rights of course, because they had institutional

loyalty in the sense that if the constitution was going to work, they needed to get it going, but to step back, the constitution was set up through those compromises to give an inordinate amount of power to the south. they knew it. it was not just the way they set up apportionment, and the so-called compromise and the electoral college, the nature of the house of representatives gave them a lot of clout, and because of this determination to maintain slavery and in aftermath reconstruction to make sure that they could recapture their power through voter suppression and the use of race, and i would remind people of one other thing or something that most people don't realize, the house started with 65 members, and it was capped in 1929 at 435. it actually didn't change in size after the 1910 census, and that is because the southerners

saw that if they kept responding to the population by adding members, it was going to dilute their power or give the power to african-americans who were emerging, and so they figured it out how to keep the size at 435 and use their power of redistricting and aportionment, use their ability to maintain control to basically keep blacks from having any role in the south and to keep the law as such that there wouldn't be significant civil rights which of course we didn't get until the 1960s 678 so there is a lot of history that we have to keep in mind. we also have to keep in mind that it was those southern democrats who, from the 1930s, all the way through, really a long period of time, 40 consecutive years of power in the house of representatives for the democrats where they could build a compromised coalition with the northern democrats that maintain voter

suppression and their role in the south while giving democrats power. and in the aftermath of that as the south change and the regions began to change, it was the republicans who moved in, and took over from southern democrats and began to court voters in a way that was focused around race and suppressing the power of race. so i want to get all of that on the table. now, what i would say about the questions that were asked directly is that we have moved from polarization to tribalism, and that began, i would say much more with newt gingrich and his arrival in congress in 1978. and it is a change in our politics, and in particular a change in the republican party and i would say bluntly, it is more of a cult now than a

political party. and what the framers built in from the beginning, and ended much more in a recognition of the president who would not behave in a fashion that the entire country was put first and who might look out for his own economic interest or the family's economic interest or subordinate the interest of the foreign power, sometimes for economic interests. the electoral congress was formed because it was not beholden to the president, and because it was elected independent me, because of a belief that the members would have what political scientists have called institutional patriotism would provide those checks and balances. and if you have a party that subordinate nats its own institutional interests to that of a corrupt president or a cult, then you are going to lose that fundamental check. and if another one of those

checks, the independent judiciary s cast to the side with a desire to fill it with people who also have will loyalties that don't match what we believe should be an independent judiciary, you lose many of those checks and balance. and we have lost a large number of them in and out. and the right role of the senate for example, to use the power of confirmation of judges and of executive officials, of congress to use the power of the purse to put some boundaries around a presidency or bad behavior by members of the executive branch -- but those begin to shred, you lose control over the system. and i believe frankly that that's what we have had over the last several years. and it is not something that i think the framers would have viewed in a favorable light. >> very interesting.

>> and jeff, if you view the other party as worthy people all trying to solve the same problems with misguided problems you can agree with the problems and then work through are the compromises and the political process to where you can achieve some accomplishments along the way. if you begin to believe that the other party is an evil way of >> just very quickly, jeff, if you view the other party as worthy people who were all trying to solve problems, they just have misguided ideas, you can agree on what the problems are, and then work through compromises and political process where you can at least achieve have accomplishments along the way. if you believe the other party are an evil people, then preventing them from gaining power, keeping them down becomes a central goal.

and you will swallow hard and accept a number of things that otherwise would be unacceptable to you. that's where we are now. and i believe that's the fundamental difference. >> that's amazing. i have to ask whether you stake from norm's comment that people were actually less willing to recognize members of the opposite party as people of good faith today than they were at the time of the civil war? which is an amazing statement. then i am going to ask you to tell our friends who are watching about the really powerful website that you have helped to establish electing the house of representatives where you seek to recapture the role of congress as an equal branch of governing, worth worthy of studying side by side with the presidency. and you have really granular data about how landslide presidential wins often fail to produce policy victories and you really need both presidential and congressional majorities to coincide to get sweeping

legislative reforms? >> the fact is that political scientists are sometimes better than historians at looking over long periods of time. we are really good at these moments and looking at the contingencies, because they always could have. if you pull the camera back, you can see broader patterns. norm mentioned that the republicans maintain control of the house from 1954 to 1994. three of all the things that are happening in america in those areas. and net we had the stability of bipartisanship. we don't want to glorify that because in many ways that control was based on the solid south and its own kinds of tribalism. when you have just white men disagreeing with other white men, they are not duelling each other, they can feel a kind of -- a solidarity. part of what we are seeing now is a political system that

encompasses more americans. which is, obviously, the way things should be. but if you think about the stability in the house of representatives for decade after decade after decade, we want to point out that was in many ways kind of a deal in which the white south would get what it wanted, willing left alone with segregation for as long as possible. at the same time, it would work, say, before this fdr. so you would have elaborate deals in which different constituents were served. so i would agree with what norm is saying, is that all the norm versus fallen apart, so to speak, in recent times. but the fact is is that we don't want to forget that all of american politics has been built on tribal identity. it was racial for most of american history. it was made invisible by

disfranchisement and suppression of voting. so we are seeing that. the map that you referred to allows us to see how every congressional district in the united states has voted from 1840 to the spent. and you can see which ones flipped. i come from a very strange one in there. i come from the only congressional district in the south that has voted republican since the civil war. when people look at this later, not now you will see in the corner of tennessee there is one little red arrow. that's where -- i went to andrew johnson elementary school there. and we had the identity of being this republican identity. in my life time, to go from being what republican in the 1950s meant in the south and what being republican today means, are entirely different things. that's another thing that's confusing that this map helps you understand. the labels -- you will see

people today attacking democrats who want to support getting rid of confederate monuments because all those guys were democrats back in the day and they are being hypocrites. what being a democratic in the 1850s meant and what being a democratic today means are entirely different things. i think being able the see the broad shifts and the great stability in voting, i don't know that it gives us any confidence that there is going to be stabilization. i think in some ways what it allows us to see is that after the tre transition in the south from democrat to republican the system has -- and with newt gingrich coming in, there is a kind of disequilibrium that i think is feeding through the political system that has many origins in the social system. >> fascinating. we will talk about some of those causes. and donna cohen asked where is the website? we just posted it. please explore the link -- not now, friends, because you have to listen closely to the

discussion. no surfing during class. but afterwards. it is an amazing website, illuminating to dig into a particular election year and learn about it. one thing that you pointed out that happened during the civil war era and is relevant today, is technology. -- in a world where people are more eager to play to their base on twitter than to serve the institutional interests of the white house or the presidency or even of the media. talk about the role of technology and polarization throughout history, especially beginning in the civil war period. what can we learn from it? >> sure. well, the moment that i find myself thinking about very often these days is the telegraph. the rise of the telegraph as a form of technology. before the telegraph, there was a certain amount of wiggle room in congress that if you said

something you were sorry you said or did something you were sorry you did you could rush over to the newspaper office and go to the reporter and change what you said. there was wiggle room. i think it was easier to keep things out of the public eye because there were limited reporters in washington. the telegraph fundamentally changes everything. it takes away the wiggle room. there is -- you know 45rks minutes and everybody knows about something. all of a sudden there are all of these reporters in washington from all over the nation who can travel that far distance, stay there, and telegraph back home what it is they are seeing. so congress and congressmen lose control of the spin. and if you think about congress ideally speaking, it's supposed to be an ongoing conversation between the public and their representatives in one way or another. public says what they want. representatives respond in some way. there is an election, and it

gets readjusted. technology changes the conversation. and there are moments, i think, and right now we are in a social media pseudoequivalent of the technology age when no one quite understands the absolute give and take of that form of technology and everyone is trying to master it and manipulate it and take advantage of it. and every now and again, something happens and you can tell that no one expected that to happen. you know, if the telegraph removed wiggle room, imagine now. someone, you know, says something goofy at a private dinner and someone has their phone and tapes it and then tweets it or puts it on facebook, and the entire world hears it, that's, a generation of politicos who lose control of the conversation to a degree. and now it is at hyper speed. we are at the moment where the conversation has changed fundamentally at a time when it

is highly polarized. and everyone is othering everyone else. i am american, and i represent america, and you, as norm put it, are one of those evil others who cannot be dealt with. that's -- that's a dangerous time to be in this moment of hyper speed. of course it is made worse by the fact that we have the first president who is a tweeting president. if you think back to just a couple years ago people were trying to figure out what that meant. if something is on a tweet, how do you take it? is it formal? is it not formal? it's kind of mind boggling and i think we take for granted the degree to which a technology can fundamentally scramble the workings of democracy. i think that's kind of what we are working our way. >> technology can scramble the workings of democracy is good way of putting it we are feeling our way through it n a dramatic way. norm, how did we obviate some of

the polarizations the last time around? we saw similar pressures from technology and from a fraying party system. but nevertheless, we evolved to the relative stability of the post-war period. and what can the lessons of that reconstruction of the deliberative mead sonnian model tell us how to get out of our current situation? >> it is not going to be easy to get out of it. i will say, listen og joanne, which was just wonderful, there is a little book called the victorian internet, which is just a wonderful description of how the telegraph transformed the world. and many people that you it would be just wonderful. that we would be able to communicate face-to-face, and wars would end, and lots of things would change for the better. and what we see now of course is things can change for the better. but they can also change very much for the worse and you can enhance tribalism and division

through that medium. i would say, you know, when we had parties that were, as it were, broader tents, which is what we have had really from the period from the 1930s on. to some degree it was there before as well. when i first got to washington in 1969, we called the southern democrats boll weevil, or that insect that infects cotton in the south. but we had moderate republicans from the northeast, the new england region, some from the midwest, a lot of them anchoring the west coast, which was a republican region back then -- washington, oregon, california. and we called them gypsy moths, or that bug that infects hardwood trees mostly in new england and the northeast. and when we had this grand sorting and our parties did polarize idea logically, it

created a real dilemma. we had leaders in an era that did not have the kind of populous surges much of it at least until the 1980s, 1990s where media -- new media and c-span for example, could exacerbate some of those divisions. but we had leaders who understood larger obligations here. one of the things i would say is we begin to talk about -- or as we begin talking about race as this dividing issue. we would not have had those dramatic civil rights bills in 1957, 1964, 1965, without republicans, northern republicans, being decisive factors. it was everett dirksen in the senate. it was bill mcculloch from ohio in the house who made sure that you could overcome the southern democratic opposition to those things.

but as we began to see these changes that polarized us further, the opportunity was there, exasser baited by technological change. tribal media emerging. talk radio, as well as cable news w leaders who found that they could gain power and advancement by adding to this able toism and the business models that worked that have had us careen out of control. and without major changes in media -- and that's going to be very hard to bring about -- without this sense of a jolt -- and what i believe has happened now is we have a republican party that i think going to have to go through at least three elections in a row with losses. not just in 2020, but in 2022 again, to begin to give traction back to what will be quite conservative people, but problem-solving oriented and not willing to use some of these

divisive things like race and immigration the way they have been used in the past to begin to right the ship and begin to move us back in the right direction. but it is not going to come easily, and it is not going to come quickly, i'm afraid. we have to brace ourselves for what's going to be an extended period of real challenges trying to solve the major problems that we have, economic, racial, and otherwise. >> thank you for that sobering but pertinent thought. >> have a nice night. >> come up with another book title -- >> run for your life is the next one. >> absolutely. is that right? i'm sure it will be. ed, we are at the kind of solutions part the discussion. several of our friends in the audience are asking, as char does, how big a crisis is this? do you see a path to fix the problems with congress, the electoral college, gerrymandered district, voter suppression? norm just suggests you would need a total reconception in the

way the parties reality to the media to get them to be able to begin deliberating again. so your thoughts on solutions. and then i have to ask, because it is such a great shout-out to your teaching abilities, william friends says jeff ayres was my favorite professor, so you have to answer my question. so we will. >> thanks for the nice plug. i feel that it is important the think about what's happening right now outside the political system that's going to have profound effects on the political system. so we have been referring, including myself, to southerners as if they were white. black southerners have moved american politics in its most progressive ways all the time from reconstruction. there is no 14th amendment if african-american people are not making it clear they are willing to risk their lives to vote.

right? unless the testimony from the south on these telegraphs is that these people held in slavery for almost 200 years cannot wait to get into schools, to learn to read and write, to exercise their incredible speakers. reconstruction is not just republicans in the north. it is black people in the south putting their lives on the line to show what they would do with american freedom. then you take the people with the least power in american society, poor african-american southerners. after 100 years of disfranchisement and segregation they are the ones who lead the great moral evolution of the united states and the voting rights act and the civil rights act that followed. that's not going to happen unless they are in the streets. today black lives matter is also showing, look, you have grid look, you are all tied up in

worry being each other's tweets. meantime, we are dying. things are going to have to change. i think a more optimistic throughline through these stories that the people who have been the most victimized by american political system have also been the people most eloquent in articulating american ideals and fighting for them. it's hard to know -- who would have thought, being that all of this list tree is a constant surprise. who would have thought two or three years ago that most americans would have supported weeks' long protests against the police? it is the way that it was done. it's the voice that people are using. the only lesson i have been able to discover in 40 years of studying history is that nobody ever has any idea what's going to happen. it's just one surprise after another. here we have gone through that, you know, terrible period of dismay. we may be seeing the sprouts of a new era coming up.

so that's -- before the nice words from my friend, that's what i was going say is that we don't want to forget that along with every effort to disempower people they have taken it upon themselves to find power in every way that they can. and right now it is the evident to remove the symbols of the order that held them down so long. there are reasons to believe that are rejuvenative powers in american democrats at work even now. do you remember what the question was from one of my favorite students. >> he was asking why doesn't congress stand up for itself? i think you have given good reasons for that. >> i think the people know that voters have number backs, they will. so what you are seeing is that people are developing more courage when they know they are speaking for the majority of people who want justice.

i think you are going to see a new progressive era that's going to be coming very soon, and it is going to be sustained for a long time by young people for whom the events of the last decade have been the formative political experiences of their lives. i think looking at cycles, there is reasons to believe that some of the things that we have been worrying about may have a chance to heal themselves. we'll see. >> thank you for all that. >> joanne had her hand up. >> yes. >> can i just set it up? i have many questions -- i know you want to respond, but -- we can't predict history, as ed says, but we can as you have argued so powerfully, learn from it and contextualize. i have to ask you, things seem less violent today than they were at the tile of the civil war, to put it mildly. the protests have been by and large peaceful and we are not seeing people beating each other up in congress. the question is why is it that

things are less violent now than they were there if that is in indeed from your view. and i will put on the table this big theme that susan soleman raises and which you introduced, the drive to transparency, televising seems to get in the way of deal making that might allow compromise. is there such a thing as too much transparency? if that's true might the first amendment prohibit any technologies that might allow the kind of moderation and compromise that madison expected. >> i will start with -- >> there is a lot there. >> there is a lot there. i might have to ask you to remind me. the first one is why is there less violence now. part of that is a clear answer in that the united states in 2020 is not the united states in 1885 when during elections you

routinely had people killed at polling places. a cannon was shot off at immigrants at a polling place. in part, we are in a different moment. we are seeing i think more violence and more threatening behavior than typically we might expect to see. i mean i think that's part of what people are responding to. i think some of it is being encouraged, and that's why it's there. but in one way or another, i think, yes, we are less violent. but, yeah, we are also seeing a lot of extreme language and a lot of extreme behavior that goes beyond where i think we would be comfortable with under normal circumstances. as far as transparency goes, you for example that's the eternal problem is transparency seemingly on the surface of it is good. we all know what's happening. we can all see what's happening. but then just as you suggested, and just as my book discusses,

when things happen in front of the public eye, that complicates them enormously. so how do you balance the need to, in essence, work behind the scenes to maneuver things and then bring it forward to present it in a way in a the possible still feels is responsible? i don't have an answer for that. i think that's one of the fundamental questions of balance in politics generally. but particularly in congress, which is so bounds up with public opinion. you asked a second question in there, i think, which i have now forgotten? do you remember it? if not i am going to go back to what i wanted to say before because i wanted to pull together what norm and ed said. >> pull away. and i think this is the last rounds. so closing thoughts for our friends as well. >> okay. you know, norm was talking about run for your lives, that we are at this moment where many bad

things have happened and might happen, and to find our way out of them is going to take a lot of time and work. ed was talking about the possible blooming of you kinds of progressive change. and i suppose the way i think about this is during moments of extreme, intense change and unstable bharvegs as ed said, we have no idea what's going to happen. we don't know if it's all going to go down -- you know f with your circling the drain. we don't know if it's all going to be okay. and i don't think we can assume yet either one. but what that means is, as unstable as things feel now, there is room for change. so what matters now is what we do with this moment, right, how we respond to what's going on now, how we realize the fact that what's happening now, things are changing, we don't know what's going to happen, but there is room for growth in

addition to collapse. and i suppose the way i join them together is just to encourage people to realize that it is vitally important that people think about this moment and its importance, let their thoughts be known. some of what we are seeing now is a great sign of that. but it's important for people to realize that check help bring change and that things aren't absolutely over with. >> that's a wonderfully important note. all is change -- -- said this in the metamorphosis. and you can influence it, as you just said so powerfully. and thank you for saying that so well. norm, your closing thoughts? i won't presume to shape them. what would you like our friends to leave with from this discussion? >> a couple of things, jeff. one is we can do some things structural, difficult as they

may be. i was just a part of an american academy of arts and sciences commission on the common good. and we had a whole list of things that we could do that include enlarging the house of representatives, altering the electoral college, bringing us, if we could, a form of the -- akin to the australian system of mandatory attendance at the polls, and other changes in the institutions. there are things that can be done that would improve the process, improve elections, improve the institutions. but i would also leave you with another challenge that we have. and i agree with ed that we have so many positive things happening now, including, i think, a wider awakening among many white americans that have been ignored for so long that minneapolis and others have set out, that black lives matter is a meaningful phrase, not something to just push to the side or ignore. and i think the immigration

struggles have taken us back to understanding what it means to have a larger and better society. but the institutions that were built by the framers are going to be more distorted as time passes. and it has nothing to do with donald trump. by 2040, 70% of americans will live 15 of our 50 states, 58% of americans in eight states. that means we are going to have more case where is the winner of the popular vote loses the presidency. and it means that -- will elect 70 of the 100 senators. and we know that natural residential patterns as well as the way in which we do districts and a supreme court that basically brushed aside doing anything about partisan gerrymandering will distort the house even further so that what voters want won't be reflect

there had and the courts are going to take us further and further away from popular will, whatever it is, with those election. we are going to have work to do to even a crisis in legitimacy in the system that goes beyond some of these issues that we talked about and even tran sends some of these deeper divisions along regional and ethnic and regional lines. >> thank you very much for that, for sobering us in such a powerful way. ed, the last word is to you? >> the era of american civil war and emancipation remind us that things far worse than we can imagine can happen and things barber than we can imagine can happen. the largest, most powerful system of slavery in the modern world coming to an end would something that people could not plan for. the other thing i would say, as i read this wonderful report that norm referred to that the american academies put out, the final part of that, after all

these impressive structural changes is specific culture of the country. it's what you are doing right now. it matters what we are thinking and saying and talking to each other. and we have got to keep that alive, too. whatever the election cycle brings us, we have to keep the civic culture of democracy alive. that's what i think. >> thank you so much for that. it is an important reminder, it does matter what we say and talk and do. friends, the fact that you are all taking an hour in middle of your busy evenings, hundreds of you coming to ask great questions and uk you are hanging on our every word as i can see in the chat box is a reminds hear the when we come together to learn with reason we can appeal to the better angels of our nature and continue to grow together. what's the constitution center is going to continue you to do, bring you brilliant minds like the ones you just heard. i am grateful to all of them for

having spread so much historical and constitutional lead. joanne, norm, ed, on behalf of the national constitution center thank you so much for a wonderful discussion. friends, thank you for joining us, and see you on june 30th for the battle for the constitution, and the future of policing. thanks to all. have a good night. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. bye. >> thanks. ♪♪ middle and high school students, your opinion matters, so let your voices be heard w c-span's student cam video competition. be part of the national conversation by creating a documentary that answers the question, how does the federal government impact your life? your five to six-minute video will explore federal policy or program that affects you or your community. c-span's student cam competition has 100,000 in total cash prizes. and you have a shot at a grand prize of $5,000. entries for the competition will begin to be received wednesday, september 8th.

for competition rules, tips, and more information on how to get started, visit your website at student cam.org. >> next, discusses the result in use relationship between president jefferson and members of the congress, the first to have a full session in the new capitol of washington, d.c. he explains how the differences between the democratic republicans and federalists shaped everything. today is the inaugural scholar series. we thought we would start with our have you own chuck geeadacamonter ayo, one of the na's