congress and the road to the civil war." after that, british prime minister theresa may at the annual conservative party conference. vice president pence talks about u.s. relations with china. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," yale university history professor joanne freeman. she discusses her book, "the field of blood: violence in congress and the road to civil war." ♪ brian: joanne freeman, what is your book, "the field of blood" about? joanne: physical violence in the u.s. congress between 1830 and the civil war. brian: how many instances of violence do you have in your book? joanne: i found about 70, which is not the total, but at some point i had to stop researching

and sit down and write good in the book, there are roughly 70 violent incidents, and that means something physical. punching, shoving, hitting, caning, enormous melees with congressman rolling around in the aisles. once or twice, a gun went off in the house. physical altercations and dual challenges. brian: you have got to tell the story about john boehner and don young. [laughter] brian: don young, 85 years old. joanne: i discover that late in the process. i can't remember what year the interview was, it wasn't that long ago, there was that intimate john boehner interviewer he went on at length and went on at length about things. in he talks about how young

pulled a knife on him in the house, before he was speaker, but still, he pulled a knife on him. i had just spent all this time researching congressman pulling guns and knives on each other, and it sort of reminded me that i am writing about a lot of things we have not heard of before really. but there is still stuff that goes on in congress and the capital and politics that even as outrageous as that, we don't know about until somebody leaks to the press. brian: do you remember what don young was upset about? joanne: i think it had to do with tax, a tax of some sort that he opposed? there were two incidents, one had to do with the tax. it had to do is some kind of policy that was going to affect alaska. brian: did they ever make up? joanne: they did.

you would think they wouldn't, but apparently they did makeup. i think boehner tossed off some cuss words as they parted. one of them was the best man and the other one's wedding after the fact, so apparently they did not hold grudges. it was a momentary flash. brian: 17 years. why did it take so long? joanne: partly because digging up the violence, and most of the time i was finding it in pieces, so finding these bits and pieces of violence and weaving them together so i could figure out what happened, it took a really long time. once i had done that and had this wonderful collection of violent incidents, the big question was, how do i tell that story? i agonized about it and wrote different versions of different

chapters and different versions of the book before i figured out the best way to make it more than a string of one chapter, one fight. brian: i don't know how to ask this because there are so many, what one of these did you find the most interesting? joanne: violent incident? brian: yes. joanne: there are a lot of them. one of them stands out to me because, conveniently, people at the time commenting on it said exactly what i wanted them to say. it happened in 1858. by this point, you have the northern anti-slavery republican party in congress. they come to congress aggressively willing to fight the slave power and some of them literally do that. in 1858, during an evening debate, a fellow from pennsylvania, a republican, is standing on this defense amongst a bunch of southern democrats. a fellow from south carolina, a democrat, got upset and is offended, and he yells, "object from your side of the house, don't do that here."

and the republicans said something like, i don't have to listen to you, slaveholders, and the democrat came over to throw a punch, and the republican knocks him flat. at that moment, a bunch of southern democrats go rushing across the hall, some of them probably to break it up and more of them probably to join in. at that, a bunch of more than republicans, seeing their ally is being surrounded by southerners, moved across the house, jumping over desks and chairs, to get to that point of conflicts. scores of congressman in a mass brawl. in an of itself, it is dramatic,

guys throwing punches and spit tunes, a massive encounter. what was interesting to me is that people at the time looked at it and what they saw was a group of northerners and a group of seven hours, lots of them armed, running at each other at the house of representatives, and several of them said, this does not look like a normal congressional fight, this looks like north against south. it looks like a battle. and that is really striking. it certainly did look like a battle, and it was not that long before the civil war. brian: who is the biggest fighter? joanne: most frequent fighter? brian: i know there have been several. joanne: [laughter] one of them was henry wise of virginia. one of the many quirky things about writing this book is i would end up being very happy when i would find a congressman that had a rage problem on the floor. henry wise was a younger congressman from virginia. at the time, he was called a

bully. if you were the sort of person came to the floor and were very willing to fight in a literal way to pass your policies, you were defined as a bully. he was. he was not a stupid man, he was not a monster, but when you look through peoples letters and diaries, again and again, he is either the liberally popping out insults, or asking for tools, or launching himself at someone. the significant thing is that it did not hurt his reputation in any way. at one point, when someone said you should be ashamed of yourself, he said, send me home for doing it and my constituents will send me right back because this is what they want me to do. he was reelected six times, and for this time period, people were elected one time, maybe two. so he was being applauded for being aggressive.

brian: how long have you been a yale? joanne: this is my 21st year. brian: when did you first come onto a guy named hamilton? joanne: when i was about 14 years old. it roughly coincided with the bicentennial. the 18th century was everywhere, the folks we call the founders were everywhere, and i started reading biographies. i remember starting with a and adams, but when i got to hamilton, i stopped. he was such a strange founder. not many people have written about him. if people knew about him, he was the bad guy who opposed thomas jefferson. he had such a strange beginning and dramatic end. i thought, maybe there is cool stuff i can find out about him.

i started reading biographies and then i got frustrated with the biographies and a librarian pointed me to his writings. i started reading those, and that fascinated me. no longer was somebody else telling me the history, and select the history was in my hands. he was a person, the bulk of his correspondence, and i could read from the beginning of his life to the end of his life to figure out what it meant. i did that forever. i would finish and then go back and start again. because there was so much he could tell about him and his world and his politics and the late 18th century and the early republic, just by reading his letters. brian: anybody that wants to know about this stuff needs to read this book, because it is so complicated and there are so many people. i will jump around here. this is page 152.

"not surprisingly, foote was a frequent fighter. he fought for tools during his political career and was shot and three of them, suggesting that he was a far better at shooting off his mouth than his gun. in addition, during his five years in the senate, he was involved in at least four paroles with senators, once exchanging blows with jefferson davis in their boardinghouse, and episode that prompted two near duels, once exchanging blows with simon cameron on the senate floor, the eloquent and impassioned gentleman got into each other's hair." joanne: he was known as waspish. there was another democrat, they

disagreed about what should happen with slavery. foote was such an irritating and irritable character that in that debate, he tries to goad dentin into losing his temper and humiliating himself so that he will destroy his character and his argument. brian: thomas hart benton, why was he famous? joanne: he is the famous sort of manifest destiny, the person who sort of spoke about the nation spreading across the continent. he was the senior senator in point of service for quite some time. he was in the senate for a very long time.

he had quite a reputation. he was definitely, even in that period, seen as one of the nation's great statesman. the narrator says that he knew his own importance, i guess is what the narrator says. that he saw benton sign his signature once and point to it and say, "that is the signature of a very famous man." [laughter] so he knew he was significant. he had a reputation. but he was not just proslavery. in 1850, that made him controversial. brian: when did you decide that benjamin brown french was your guy? joanne: he kind of saved my life. early in the project, i had 70 fights and each could be a chapter and i could not figure out how to tell the story, and i thought, one narrative device would be a person you could hook onto at the beginning of the book and follow through.

i knew there was an abridged version of the diary of this fellow, benjamin brown french. i remember didn't had a lot of personal details. it was interesting. it was not, had lunch with mr. smith, coffee with mr. jones. he talked about what he felt and salt. the more i looked at the diary and learned about him, he wasn't the ideal person to put at the core of the book because he starts out at whatever time would be called a dough faced democrat. he was a northern democrat willing to do anything to appease the south, to promote his party and preserve the union. he bought a gun in preparation to shoot southerners. when i understand the transformation he undergoes, with him at the center of the book, even though it is about more than him, the reader meets

him at the beginning and watches him transform over the course of the chapters to get to that end point where he is thinking about how and where he might have to shoot other americans. that is a remarkable transition and it really shows you something about the deeper emotional logic of the approach of the war. brian: i have to ask you about the diary. joanne: 11 volumes. brian: handwritten? joanne: handwritten. he was a clerk, so he had good handwriting. he was a minor clerk in the house. brian: where was he from? joanne: a rural town in new hampshire. he arrived in washington in 1833. in the big city for the first time, although it was not quite so big at that point. his diary starts a few years before that. it is detailed, he writes about his feelings about things, what he sees, and he records details about a lot of the fighting. he cannot quite believe what he is seeing.

he put all of together, and as i was writing the book, i thought people are going to think i made this guy up. he is kind of like a zealot of the mid-19th century. if things are happening, he is there and sees them. someone tries to assassinate andrew jackson, french is there and see that happen. john quincy adams has a stroke in the house, french not long after is going his hand. lincoln's assassination, who was at the bedside? benjamin brown french. the gettysburg address. benjamin brown french. for someone who has not been heard of and in and of himself to not do anything to be remembered today, he is the most amazing, motives, sensitive, and intelligent eyewitness that a writer could hope for. so he really is at the heart of the book. brian: where is the diary? joanne: the library of congress.

brian: were you allowed to put your hands on it? joanne: i was. and he was a wonderful source. not only did he have the 11 volume diary, and i have a picture in the book because i wanted people to see what it looked like. he had a newspaper column and he pasted some of the columns he wrote into the diary, which is wonderful. extensive correspondence. and he wrote poetry about politics. he was beyond wonderful. there was the point when i was writing it 20 and come his diary is not as juicy in the last few years for the civil war. i'm getting to the end of the book, and i'm like, french, where you going to give me about this union? i don't see much in the diary and i am thinking, you have gotten me all the way to this point, i'm shuffling through papers. i discover, he wrote a poem. i quote the the poem in the chapter.

he was an amazing source, seeing americans turn on each other. it was such a ground level i think it reveals things that have not been captured before. brian: more than once you talk about somebody being killed. how often did that happen? joanne: not a lot of deaths. there is one big dramatic death, a congressman kills another congressman in a dual that's what started me on the project. my started, i did not fan going to write about congressional violence, because nobody knew there was all of this violence. i just thought -- my first book is about the logic of national political combat in the 1790's. i thought, i want to write about political violence, i don't know what to do next. i will look a couple of decades ahead from what i have written about and maybe i will notice something different in the

culture or language or logic that will stretch me give me an idea. i knew that one congressman killed another in 1838. so i went to the papers of a congressman from the same state as the one who was killed and began reading. dumb luck, he wrote almost every day to his wife, and his letters were wonderful. as i am reading, i keep seeing these incidents. henry wise stands up to throw a punch. all of these violent incidents i have never heard of before. i started noting them down. i thought at one point, maybe he was making them up to entertain his wife, because how could all

of this has happened and i had never heard of it? i finished his papers and i thought, i have to test this out, basically. i spent about three months at the library of congress reading the papers of congressman. i never opened a collection without finding at least one violent incidents. obviously, by the end of that time, i knew there was a story, i knew that for some on reason, it had not been told yet, and i wanted to figure out what the story was. brian: who were the two involved in the dual where there was a death? joanne: a main congressman in a democrat, and a kentucky wig. brian: why were they in a dual? joanne: this is the wonderful and horrible thing about the dual, they had no issue with each other. the dual breaks out, henry wise is at the heart of it, it breaks out because henry weiss stands up and says something nasty about the democratic party during a debate. the democrat stands up and defenses party, and in doing so, says something nasty about a new york newspaper editor. he asks great to deliver a letter. neither had any understanding of dueling culture. by the simple reason that graves delivers a letter on behalf of the editor, he is tangled in the affair of honor, and the two men, because they don't want to

hurt the reputations or humiliate themselves in front of their constituents and the nation, and want to defend the honor of their state and region, they end up getting pulled into this dual that nobody wants to happen. there is a whole chapter on it for that reason. i call it the dual that no one wanted. it happened because it was so hard to pull out once that sort of thing goes into motion. the dual shows the power of violence in congress and around the nation, and the ways in which congressman, and particularly northern congressman who were not necessarily accustomed with the dueling customs. brian: why were southerners bullies? joanne: i think on a basic

level, the slave regime is grounded on violence. these are people who as leaders have to be violent. that's just the nature of a slave regime. they also knew that dueling and dueling culture, and it was beginning to seem for a much southern things, and northerners were beginning to collect barbaric, they knew they can play with that and throw out the threat of dual challenges and northerners were not know what to do. what do i do? if i move into a dual, my constituents will ostracize me, i will lose my standing back home. if i turn my back, i look like a coward and i will humiliate my constituents and my region. it is the northern congressman's dilemma. southerners knew they had advantage because of the 3/5 compromise. a had a cultural advantage because of the culture of violence. they deployed that to manipulate what happened on the floor. a lot of what the book shows is that southerners kind of

stampeding over the rules and bullying northerners and compliance or silence. brian: how often did people, we are talking about the 1830's up to the civil war, how often did members of congress carry guns? joanne: i was dying to track that in some kind of organized way. it is very hard. there is no way to record it. i think a lot of southerners, not all of them but a good number of them, were routinely armed in life and were armed in congress more so than northerners. by the time you get to the 1850's and northerners are beginning to feel threatened, the crisis is beginning to heat up and northerners want congressman to be a little more aggressive on the have come up more and more northerners have guns them before and that continues to build through the 1850's. brian: in the house of representatives? joanne: the house and the senate. brian: they are wearing them on their body? joanne: on their body, guns and

knives. i found a letter from a north carolina congressman, i believe in 1850, in which he and a friend of trying to estimate how many people in the house have guns and they guess 70 or 80. that is a lot of guns. a lot of people were armed. a lot of times, you only had to be a man who was armed to be threatening. if you are known to carry a gun or knife and say some things running, people know you mean business. bullying is powerful for a lot of reasons. here it is a tool of debate. brian: how often what a knife be pulled on the floor? joanne: again, it is hard to -- brian: is there an example? joanne: for sure. there is an incident where john quincy adams is trying to say something about antislavery petitions and a congressman, a

seven or but a fellow wig, want them to be allowed to say what he wants to say even though he doesn't agree with them. he says, it is his right to speak. a congressman from louisiana stocks over to the fellow who said let adams speak, and he always wore a gun and knife, and he makes visible the knife and says to this congressman, you do that again and i will cut your throat from year to year. and we know that because not long after, the fellow raised his hand and said, you know what, can i tell you about something that happened a while back that felt disorderly? that's one of the adjusting things about writing the book. you find incidents like that by accident. like when they are leaks or someone says something they shouldn't. very often, someone will say, henry wise had the habit of saying what he should not say. he would stand up and saying

something, and the other congressman would say shh. i say hosanna to the evidence gods, because not only did he say it but now i know he wasn't supposed to say it. all of that is good content. brian: how much did the 11 volume diary of mr. french, how often was it your source of violent activity on the floor? joanne: a lot. brian: if you didn't have a diary, would you have a book? joanne: i won have, but i would've had a lot less emotional understanding i think of what was going on. i think french really let me get at the personal experience of it. i had this weird triangulation to find the violence. i learned quickly, it is essentially censored out of the equivalent of the record. it is there, but masks.

there are code words sometimes that indicate what is happening but if you did not know that, you would never notice it. i spent a year just reading the congressional globe, the equivalent of the record, and did not find in their obvious violence other than the occasional brawl and exchanges of words that felt heated. it wasn't until i started reading private writings that i began to find evidence that stuff was happening, and knowing that, i went back to the record and confirmed. took the day from the letter and went into the record. that's when i discovered that when the record says something like the debate became unpleasantly personal at some point, that often means of violent moment. but you would not know that. or the record would say, there was a southern sensation in the corner. in that case, to congressman started punching each other and flip the desk. but you would never know that. french gave me some evidence by talking about what he saw. other diaries gimme more

evidence. the record give me a sensible was happening on the floor so i could get a sensible was playing out. the press, initially there was not a lot of the violence in the press, but newspapers became important because i could triangulate all of those things in peace together bit by bit what actually happened, or try to. brian: use ago i can remember sitting in the house gallery before television, at night, i am bringing this up for an obvious reason, and you knew there was drinking going on, and a lot of noise and activity off of the floor. how much drinking was there going on in the 1830's, 1840's, 1850's? joanne: a lot of drinking. there were many reasons congressman do not like evening sessions, and one of them was because tina would go to dinner, drink, and come back. almost inevitably, during

evening sessions, something bad would happen. it would be an hour when everyone was tired and tempers would snap. alcohol was a big part of it. there are accounts, and i talk about some of them, congressman too drunk to stand or leave their boarding house. john quincy adams at one point is talking about someone who is sitting in for the speaker, and he writes in his diary, drunken the chair. a lot of drunkenness. benjamin brown french, that's one of the first things he notices when he gets to washington. wow, there is liquor on every corner. i think he said something like, if washington was in heaven, there would still be liquor on every corner. he cannot believe the amount of alcohol. not everyone is a bachelor and washington, some congressman bring their families with them, but a lot of them don't.

so there was kind of a bachelor culture. brian: has anyone else done when you have done, find these incidents of violence? joanne: no. a lot of historians have written about the 1850's, written about the fact that congress got more violent in that era, in a general way. there is a quote, south carolina congressman who said something like, the people here who don't have one gun have to guns there was a general acknowledgment, but as far as and again, i can't be comprehensive, but putting together a collection and getting a sense of the scale and what the logic was and the impact, no. brian: thomas hart benton, he was a senator, did he shoot somebody?

joanne: before he got to did he shoot somebody? joanne: before he got to congress, yes. as the young man. as a lawyer, he fought a duel with an opposing lawyer on a case and killed him. brian: you have a footnote, page 153. benton became involved in three disputes with the opposing lawyer, charles lucas. lucas called benton a liar during the case and benton , butenged him to a duel lucas argued that it in pension on his rights at the bar. nine months later, benton called lucas a puppy, and lucas challenged him and lucas was shot but recovered. not long after, lucas's friends began whispering benton had been too scared to shorten the distance on the dueling ground and they duelled again, this time benton killed lucas. explain the duel.

how long were they allowed in the country, and how did they work? joanne: duels were illegal, even in this period. brian: everywhere? joanne: different states, different ways, but pretty much everywhere. there were anti-dueling laws, and the lawmakers were violating those regularly. part of that was because they were elite folk, who did what they did, typically not penalized for it in any way. isth and south, dueling illegal but increasingly in the south, it is something that gentlemen do, particularly local political gentlemen. i guess lawyers as well. defenda way to prove, your reputation. if you were humiliated in an election, you could be involved in a duel to prove you are a man of honor who deserved to be a leader. if someone insulted you, a duel would be a way to push off the insult and prove it was not

true. not all affairs of honor go to the dueling ground. the point is to prove that you are willing to die for your name. there is a lot of challenges and letter sending and negotiating, and the second sending things back and forth. hoping, and it happened quite often, they would be some way an apology could be negotiated and both men could walk out saying i defended my name, i'm a man of honor, and that would be the end of that. it is counterintuitive, but the point of a dual is not to kill somebody, not even necessarily to shoot. if you go to the dueling ground, the point is not to kill the other person, it is to prove you are willing to stand there and face fire. so there isn't necessarily a lot of killing in duels. and often the person who does so welling doesn't fare afterwards because it is easy for public opinion to turn against that person. brian: you write a lot about who dominated from a political

standpoint in the house of representatives. joanne: one person in the late 1830's and 1840's is john quincy adams. he's amazing. brian: you say he taunted the southerners. joanne: he did. he's kind of a magical character for me as far as the story goes. by the time he goes to the house, he has already been president, he is elderly in age, he is the son of a founder and another president. he's pretty much not the kind of guy you are going to be able to slug. he is violence proof, and he knows it. and he uses it. he's constantly taunting, bullying southerners, well aware they can't slug him, and sometimes they say so. henry wise, at one point he says, if you weren't who you are, you'd feel more than my words. adams writes, in his diary, today henry wise threatened to

kill me in my seat. he took advantage of his reputation to defend the right of petition and against slavery. he was incredibly powerful. he also was a brilliant parliamentarian. he knew the rules. he had a lifetime expensive politics and he was fearless. you put that together and he was a force to be reckoned with. brian: when you describe tobacco, the carpeting smoke, the dirt. joanne: yeah, the tobacco. i started out the book talking about tobacco stained rugs. because congress in this time, i think people think back to this time and they think of henry clay and daniel webster, people in these black frock coats, standing around with their finger in the air saying great debating words. some of that was going on, but particularly in the house, it was crowded, it was stuffy, it did not smell very good, it was much hotter than outside, and

there were tobacco stains everywhere. spittoon's all over the place. people were spitting, and not always hitting the target. the rugs were tobacco juice spattered, repulsive to the point that foreign visitors, i found a letter at one point from a british minister who is leaving, and he writes to the person after him saying, whatever you do, don't touch the rug. you don't want to touch the rugs. it was a dirty, heated, occasionally angry, stuffy , smelly place. one of the things i talk about in the book is a series of climate reports. because congressmen keep saying it's the worst place in the world to work. and climate reports say it is 30 degrees hotter in the house and then it is outside and there is no air circulation at all. there is a kind of symbolism and that, there is this moment with the southerners are holding forth and bullying their way

into protecting slavery, that it is tobacco juice staining the floor of congress. it is sort of symbolically carrying out what is happening through the legislation. brian: dough-faced you mentioned earlier. where did that name come from? joanne: it came from john randolph of roanoke. it has always been a phrase, people are not quite sure what he meant. some people think he may have meant doe-faced, like a cowardly person. i think more likely it was dough as in bread dough. there was some gain you would make her you would make a mask of dough, scare people. peopleink he meant these hiding behind masks. an insult that he threw around a couple times, and it became this sort of ultimate insult you

could throw at a northerner for being a cowardly, submissive servant to the south. franklin pierce, he says if you call me a dough face, you call me a craven man. it was insulting, because it seems like these northerners were appeasing the south at any cost, and a lot of these northern democrats were very much trying to appease southerners. brian: you have a footnote on 314 that got my attention. i am looking for it rapidly. it is about members of the house, you say 282 at the time. in the house in the 1830's, 61.1% had not attended college. 61.1%. in the 1840's, 55.9%. and in the 1850's, 48.5%. what you think it meant that the

huge number had not attended college? joanne: education, particularly in the early part of this period, was scattered. new england was very schooled. there was a school system in place there to a greater degree than there was in the south. initially early on, there were not a lot of colleges. there were not state colleges. they were coming to the four during this time. to some degree, he went to harvard, yale, william and mary, and after a while i guess uva, too, but not like today with colleges everywhere. a lot of people had what would have been called common school education, you go to school for a number of years and then you go have a life. brian: others in here, a name that everyone will recognize, charles dickens. 1842. a visit to the united states. did he see this stuff? joanne: he did.

there's a kind of wonderful thing that he does. first of all, he writes about what he sees, and he talks about the tobacco and the spitting. i think he says congress is the center of tobacco-tinctured saliva, something like that. so he sees congress at its best and worst. what is wonderful about it is clearly this idea that some congressman were bullies, and they were notorious for that. clearly that was something that he knew before he came. because one of the things he does, he comes in sits and watches congress. he explicitly asked for two congressman to be pointed out to him. one was henry wise, and the other was john dawson, the guy who had the bowie knife. the two foremost bullies. dickens goes to congress and he says, i want to know, wise and dawson are troublemaking guys, what do they look like?

and he writes, wise is a scary looking guy with a big ball of tobacco in his teeth. it is not as though this is invisible, at the time. brian: what are the stories of the people that would do the violence out of the house of representatives, around town, and they would even ambush people? how much of that went on? joanne: some of that went on. one of the things about the fighting that is counterintuitive, despite all of the mayhem i am talking about, the people doing the fighting are not trying to destroy congress. they want to get what they want from congress, but they are not trying to destroy the institution. they are very focused on fair fighting. if they are in a fight, they wanted to be fair. for example, if two men are fighting, sometimes they will be allowed to continue the fight. if one is armed and the other isn't, they will be separated because it is not a fair fight. some kinds of fights, explosions on the floor happen on the floor, but if someone is out to get someone, has a grudge or

issue, those kinds of fights tend to play out on the street. you can stage an attack on the street and have it seem less controversial than if you do that in the house and senate chamber, where it looks like with the caning of charles sumner where you have someone plotting an attack on the floor of the house or senate. it is particularly ugly and particularly symbolic. so there are street fights. over time, there are more street fights because it comes kind of a northern duel, northerners who don't want to fight a duel but want to defend their name, sometimes they armed themselves with weapons, friends, and wait on the street for a chance encounter and there will be a street fight of sorts. there is even a moment where a congressman says, after a fight, there are plenty of places outside for you to do this, go outside to do your fighting. don't do it in here. so the fighting, it is important to say along the lines of that statement, there is a crazy amount of violence, but america

is also violent in this period. some of what we are looking at is congress and some of it is the slavery debate, and some of eit is polarization, and some of it is antebellum america was a violent place. it's not only happening in washington. brian: i have to divert for a minute and ask you, i've wanted to ask you ever since this happened. what was it like watching your primary, authoritative work being made into a broadway show and ron chernow got all of the attention? joanne: [laughter] welcome his biography was the basis of the show. but it was surprising to see a the show for the first time, i saw a off-broadway at the public theater. i knew this person was writing a play, a musical about alexander hamilton, and i have found a way when he was writing the book to

give him my library of america collection of hamilton's letters. because i figured, there will not be two musicals of alexander hamilton in my lifetime, and i if there is one i want hamilton's own words to be in it. brian: explain what the library of america is, and what you did. joanne: the library of america is a nonprofit organization that is basically about keeping great american letters in literature in print. they produce wonderful volumes and have been doing it quite some time. wonderful quality, and to keep america's culture alive, in a way. they do it for literary characters, and also historical, political figures. there is an alexander hamilton volume that i edited. it is about 800 pages, of what i consider to be the most important and most revealing letters of hamilton's 27 volumes. that is what i wanted to get to lin manuel miranda. there are words i think are

significant. brian: let me run for you, about 25 seconds, i know a little of the story. you tell the story, after we listen to this little part of rap from the musical. ♪ >> what we call the sun is in the sky -- next of a not for you kin -- >> ready for the moment of adrenaline, when you finally face serotonin. -- your opponent. >> they can set the record straight. brian: when you are listening to the musical and heard that, what was your reaction? joanne: i thought that really sounds like chapter four of "affairs of honor." [laughter] particularly because there is a line in that song that comes from a document i found at the new york historical society.

that is the 10 duel commandments. the first time i saw the play, i thought excellent, there is a dueling song. as a goes on oh, it is a rules , of dueling song. i wrote about the rules of dueling. when ron chernow was writing his book, he interviewed me about dueling, i thought, it is probably for my conversations with him. and then there is the line about the doctor on the dueling ground, turning his back so he can have deniability. that's from a document i found in the new york historical society. when that happened, i thought, i think that is my chapter. [laughter] brian: did you deserve a cut of the action? joanne: for that bit of my chapter? no. but i at least got it confirmed. miranda i lin-manurel gave him a gift of "affairs of honor" to thank him for doing the play, he said, i have that already. i said, you do? was that song based on part of that book.

he said yes. ok. my historian has a tiny bit of my book sung on broadway. brian: we know the impact it's had on the country, but what impact has the musical had on your work? joanne: as a teacher, it has had a profound impact. because young people are now, not just fascinated by history, but early american history to a degree i have never seen before. so, obviously it is musical theater, so it is not 100% accurate, nor was it intended to be. but by getting students, and students of all ages, i have spoken at high schools, they are young people to hear my talks about hamilton because they want to learn more about hamilton, and then my classes thaat yale are bigger now because of this. if the play gets people to be interested in the period and opens the door where i and other professors in history teachers can use the interest to teach past the play, to use as a

starting point, that is pretty profound. i think the play has had that kind of an impact. i think it also reveals to a lot of people, not just students, that history is not just a bunch of dates. it is human. real people, and even though the writing and the words from that time sounded distant and foreign and stiff, but they are real people engaging in moments unfolding. brian: fill in the blanks. i was visiting the grange, his house in new york city, and as we were coming out of the grange, six graders were walking in rapping "hamilton" musical score. what did you have to do with the grange? joanne: i have a long history with the grange. many years ago, i don't even know, probably more than 20

years at least, maybe 25 or 30. when i first moved to new york after college, i was already the hamilton person. by dumb luck, the lord and taylor christmas windows that year were great houses of new york, and one of them was the grange. i thought, of course, the grange is here in new york, i can volunteer my services to the grange. one thing led to another, i ended up being hired to do some research for them and maybe put together a small exhibit for them. i did that for a number of years, i would go up there on weekends and do research and hang out at the grange. years later when they begin to think about moving it and upping the visitor center in some way, i was brought in as a consultant for that purpose, and worked on that with them for quite a time. now i just, whatever i can do for the grange, i want to do for the grange.

brian: for those who will go to new york, where is the grange? joanne: it is on i believe 141st, off broadway. it is in harlem. i think 141st or 143rd. brian: one of the things is the move -- joanne: it has moved several times. when i first went up there, it was crammed -- it was going to be destroyed, and it was bought by a church and reshaped so it would fit in a space, and that's the only reason it survived. it keptlast move, and being moved because of the street pattern advancing north in new york. the last time it was moved to where it is now, for the first time, it looked like a house. it had land around it, they put it together, it is a very symmetrical, federal style house and for the first time it looks that way. it is kind of wonderful to see it is looking good.

brian: here is another part of a john freeman's life, 2010, something called open yale courses, the american revolution. you can tell us -- corpse disappeared. we truly do not know where thomas payne is. truly there was a drunk with -- trunk with payne in it, and it vanished. i went searching before this lecture trying to figure out, was there a recent development? no. although i did discover that in 2001, there was a society it wanted to create a memorial in america, and they decided they would try to trace the body. so they set out, and what they found are all over the world people who claim to have a piece of thomas payne. his skull might be in australia, his leg might be in

england. brian: and then there is the new rochelle home of thomas payne. joanne: i know it is there but i have not made a pi total image. brian: there are no bones there, but they are all over the world? joanne: i have not in the last few years redone my search, but every time i go online for a teach that course, i do not find a solution to where thomas payne's body went. brian: who can watch open yale courses? joanne: everybody. yale did a great thing, they put cameras in the back of lecture rooms for popular lecture courses and just filmed the lectures and put them online for free. and i know it is on itunes, and i believe youtube as well, but you can go to open yale courses, i think it's history 116, the american revolution. it's the entire course. all about lectures,

35 minutes. essentially it is like you are sitting in the classroom with my students. and it is the american revolution beginning to end. brian: one more thing you are involved in, something called back story. joanne: yes. brian: here is an excerpt, it is audio. let's listen. >> we know that fake news or fantasy news proceeds -- precedes the republic, but other issues where it helped in the founding. joanne: helped? [laughter] i can think of a lot of ways it shaped the republic, where there was fake news directly incorporated into, for example, surprise, political campaigns. so in the presidential election of 1800. that this worked on fake news relies on the fact it was hard to spread information, and because of that it was hard to contradict rumors once they got started. so the federalists, who definitely didn't want thomas

jefferson to be president, and he was running in that election, there were some federalist newspapers that began to spread a story in the middle of the election that jefferson died. [laughter] which i think is just ingenious. brian: what is back story? joanne: it is an american history podcast. and every week, we choose a subject that in some way or another is touching on current events, and we do a deep dive into the history that shows something about the past of it. so the shows are thematic or topical. there are four of us who are cohosts, all historians. the show is a combination of interviews with specialists who tell us amazing stories around the topics we are discussing, and conversations between the four of us in which we just get to enjoy talking to each other and seeing what we think. brian: when i first heard this, on the radio on saturday namedgs, there was a man

peter, and i think he has something to do with your earlier work? joanne: he is my graduate advisor. the original back story, there were three people, and they were the back story team. when peter decided he did not want to do it anymore and looked for an early american replacement, i ended up stepping into those big shoes to be essentially the early americanist. he did that for many years and they were quite a team. brian: what was it like replacing one of your former mentors? joanne: i can't replace him. he is irreplaceable. but it certainly is moving to me. that i get to stand in his place and fill the role. when you are a graduate student, you don't imagine yourself ever reaching any height anywhere near your teachers. if you come anywhere close, it is the biggest honor in the

world. brian: you are at yale now. where were you born? joanne: queens, new york. brian: your parents did what? joanne: my father was a market researcher who worked for general foods and bristol-myers, and then transferred some of those marketing techniques to film. so very early on, when 20th century fox and warner bros. are creating market research departments, my dad was out there. brian: what about mom? joanne: mom was initially a teacher, stopped teaching for a while, became an interior decorator, then went back to teaching. brian: this is a review of your book in "the weekly standard" by a man named james banner. "freeman's research is prodigious and her scholarship unimpeachable, by shifting her gaze from the conventionally cited causes of the civil war, she has deepened our

understanding of its coming. she draws attention to the realities of government, the rules, process and ethos and how their degradation can spill beyond institutions to affect, in this case fatally, wider public life. does it hurt to hear things like that? [laughter] joanne: it was very nice to see that review. after working on this book for 17 years, getting positive reviews is a wonderful thing. brian: does it have any impact on sales? joanne: i could not tell you that yet. [laughter] i mean, you would assume it would, right? i don't know that yet. the book came out a week and a half ago. brian: your early comments in here, january of this year. are you on to your next book? if you are, what is it about? joanne: i am pondering how to jump into my next book. my next book has a working

title, "hunting for hamilton." i don't want to write another biography about hamilton, but i want to write a book about figuring out how to get to know who he is through his writing and through the craft of doing history. i want it to be kind of an exploratory book, kind of a book that shows people the thrill i have of playing with evidence, weighing how to put it together, find things out. i think that will show a side or sides of hamilton as a real person, and as a political thinker that hasn't necessarily been really written about a lot before. i think people tend to write about him either as a person or a thinker, and i would very much like to come out with a different picture using history, historical evidence in an interesting way. brian: the name of the book is "the field of blood: violence in congress and the road to civil war." our guest has been joanne freeman, professor at yale. thank you very much. joanne: thank you so much for having me.

[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a.org. our programs are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ >> next week on q&a, fox news host tucker carlson on his book, "ship of fools." how a selfish ruling class is bringing america to the brink of revolution. c-span's "washington journal," live every day with

news and policy issues that impact you. monday morning, a discussion on the races to watch in campaign 2018, and carolyn shapiro of the institute on this up in court of the united states at chicago college of law talks about the history of supreme court confirmations in the senate. watch "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern, monday morning. joi the discussion -- join the discussion. >> on monday, president trump will perform the ceremonial swearing-in of justice breyer kavanaugh -- brett kavanaugh. our coverage begins at 7:00 p.m. on c-span. >> british prime minister theresa may gave the closing keynote speech at her party's conference in birmingham, calling for unity as britain prepares to exit the european union. this is about an hour.