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>> 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 multiple congressman rolling around in the aisles. once or twice, a gun went off in the house. physical violence and dual challenges. brian: you have got to tell the story about john boehner and don young. [laughter] brian: don young, 85 years old.

longest-serving member of the house of representatives. joanne: i discovered 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 interview where he went on at length and went on at length about things. in it 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 and 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 that 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 a bunch ofidst democrats and objects into something while standing amongst these 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." he says something like, i don't have to listen to you, slaveholders, and the democrat ollars over and grabs his c 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 northern 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. you end up with scores of congressman in a mass brawl. in and 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 southerners 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. indeed 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 are the sort of person who 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 deliberately tossing 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 defending their interest in an aggressive way. 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. he hadn't been written about him very much. if you 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. the 27 volumes of his writings. i started reading those, and that fascinated me. no longer was somebody else telling me the history, and -- it felt like 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

-- you 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. duals, 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 brawlsed in at least four 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. he?y foote, who was joanne: he was known as waspish. that came to a four during the 1880.bate of there was another democrat, they were not willing to totally eliminate slavery, but they disagreed about what should happen with slavery. foote was such an irritating and irritable character that in that debate, he tries to goad him 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. he saw benton sign his signature once and pointed to it and said, "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 it didn't have 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 saw. the more i looked at the diary and learned about him, he wasn't -- was 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. by the end of the book, he buys a gun in preparation to shoot southerners. when i realized 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 this union and 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 a big city 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. you put all of that 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. when 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 holding his hand. lincoln's assassination, who was at the bedside? benjamin brown french. the gettysburg address. benjamin brown french.

for someone that no one has heard of and in and of himself to not do anything to be remembered today, he is the most amazing, 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. he had extensive correspondence. and he wrote poetry about politics. he was beyond wonderful. there was the point when i was writing it towards the end, his diary was not as juicy in the

last few years before 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 strike me and give me an idea of what i want to write about. 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 be happening 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 incident. obviously, by the end of that time, i knew there was a story, i knew that for some odd 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 -- and 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 defends his party, and in doing

so, says something nasty about a new york newspaper editor. he asks graves 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 -- very much like southern things, and northerners were beginning to call it barbaric, they knew they could play with that and throw out the threat of dual challenges and northerners were not going to 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. they 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 southerners kind of stampeding over the rules and bullying northerners into 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 than 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 were 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 something threatening, 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 wigherner, but a fellow --e him to be allowed to say wants him 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 overs -- louisiana stalks

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 -- say 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 would 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 it is masked. 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 there, 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. i took the date 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

-- a 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 two 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 -- give me more evidence. the record give me a sensible of what 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 and try to piece together bit by bit what actually happened, or try to. brian: years 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 didn't like evening sessions, and one of them was -- and 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 -- drunk in 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 -- in 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 -- what 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 two guns, so 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 congress, yes. as a 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 challenged him to a duel but , 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 whispered that benton had been too scared to shorten the distance on the dueling ground and they dual again and this time benton killed lucas. explain the dual. how long were they allowed in this country, and how did it work? joanne: duals were illegal, even in this period. pretty much everywhere. there were anti-dueling laws, and the lawmakers were violating those laws. they were elite and they did what they did and they typically were not penalized for in any way. down south, dueling is illegal, but increasingly in the south, it is something that gentlemen do, particularly local -- political gentlemen. i guess lawyers as well. it was a way to prove your

reputation. if you were humiliated in an election, you could be involved in a dual to prove that you deserve to be a leader. if someone insulted you, it would be a way for you to push off the insult and prove it was not true. not all affairs honor get to the dueling ground. the point is to prove that you're 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. it happened quite often that there would be some way an apology can be negotiated and both men could walk out of it saying i have defended my name, i am 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. there isn't necessarily a lot of killing in duals. very often, the person who does the killing doesn't fare so well after because public opinion can turn against them. 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. 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 is not the kind of guy you are going to be able to slug. he is violence proof, and he knows it. he uses it. constantly taunting and bullying southerners, well aware

that they cannot slug him. sometimes the southerners say so, and henry wise and adams go at it. adams writes, today, henry weiss threatened to kill me in my sleep. -- 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 had a lifetime of experience and politics and he was fearless. you put that together and he was a force to be reckoned with. brian: would you describe the tobacco, the carpeting, the 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 frock coats with their finger in the air. some of that was going on, but particularly the house, it was crowded and stuffy. it did not small very good. it was much hotter than it was outside. and there were tobacco stains everywhere. people were spitting and not always hitting the target. the rugs were repulsive to the point that foreign visitors, i found a letter at one point from a reddish minister who is leaving and he writes to the people coming after him, something like, whatever you do, don't touch the rug. you don't want to touch the rugs. it was a dirty, heated, occasionally angry, stuffy place. one of the things i talk about in the book is a series of climate reports. because congressman keep saying it's the worst place in the

world to work. 30h report says it is degrees hotter in the house and there is no air circulation at all. there is a kind of symbolism and -- to 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 come from? joanne: it came from john randolph of roanoke. a lot of people did not know what he meant. some people thought he meant doe as in a cowardly person, i think more likely it was dough as in bread dough. there was some kind of gay you

would -- game you would play in which you put masks on your face and scared people. i think he meant people who are hiding behind masks. it was an insult he threw around. he threw it around a couple of times and it took on, people liked it and threw it around. it became this ultimate insult you would throw at a northerner for being a cowardly, submissive servant to the south. franklin pierce, i think he called it a craven man. it was highly insulting. 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. 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 schools. -- schooled. there was a school system in place there to a greater degree than there was in the south. early on, there were not a lot of colleges. there were not state colleges. they were coming to the four during this time. went to harvard, yale, william and mary, and after a while, i guess uva as well. but there were not colleges everywhere. a lot of people had what was 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 tin shirt saliva or something. 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. one of the things he does, he

comes and sits and watches congress. he explicitly asked for two congressman to be pointed out to him. one of them was henry weiss, and the other was john dawson, who had the bowie knife. dickens goes to congress and says i know those are the 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 sumter where you have someone plotting an attack on the floor of the house or senate. it is particularly ugly and symbolic. there are street fights. over time, there are more street fights because it comes kind of -- becomes kind of a northern dual. northerners that do not want to fight a duel, they will wait on the street for a chance encounter and they will be a

-- there will be a street fight. 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. 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 it 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] his biography was the basis of

the show. but it was surprising to see a show for the first time, i saw it off-broadway at the time in the public theater. i knew this person was writing a play, a musical about alexander hamilton, i had found a way when he was writing the book to give him my library of america collection of hamilton's letters. i figured, there will not be two musicals of alexander hamilton in my lifetime, and i wanted his words in it. 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 political figures.

there is an alexander hamilton volume 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. they are words i think are significant. brian: i know a little of the story, but you tell the story after we listen to this, a little part of rap from the musical. ♪

brian: when you were listening to that musical, and you 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 dual commandments. the first time i saw the play, i thought excellent, there is a dueling song. oh, it is a rules of dueling song. i wrote about the rules of dueling. when ron turnout wrote his book, now wrote his book, he asked me about the rules of dueling. then there is this line about the doctor turning his back so

he can have deniability. that's from a document i found in the bottom of a box, and when that line happened, i thought that is my chapter. i did get it confirmed. when i gave lin-manuel miranda ,he gift of "affairs of honor" i said is that part based on a part of the book? he said yeah. >> brian: to do deserve a cut of the action? joanne: [laughter] no. but i did at least get it confirmed. when i met miranda and i 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. a tiny part of my book is being 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 in my classes at 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 and 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 beats. there are humans, even 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, sixth-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 process again 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: i believe 141st, off-broadway. it is in harlem. i think 141st or 143rd. it 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. this last move, and kept 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 it looks that way. it is kind of wonderful to see it is looking good. brian: here is another part of a lecture in 2010, something called open yale courses, the american revolution. you can tell us whether anybody can watch this other than kids. >> the corpse disappeared. we do not know where thomas payne is. truly, there was a trunk that had him in it, and then it vanished. i went out today the four i gave this lecture trying to figure

out, maybe there is something. in 2001, there was a society it wanted to create a memorial in america, and they try to trace the body. what they found is that all over the world are people who claim to have a piece of thomas payne. his skull might be in australia, but his leg might be in england. brian: then there is the new york home of thomas payne. you have probably been there. joanne: i have not, i know it is there but i have not made a pilgrimage. brian: there are no bones buried there, they are all of the world? joanne: i have not redone my search, but every time i go online before i 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. 26 lectures, about 45 minutes. it is a essentially you sitting in a 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. here is a excerpt, it is audio, radio back story. let's listen. >> we know that fake news or fantasy news perceives the -- precedes the republic. how has it helped in the founding of the republic? >> helped. [laughter]

i can think of a lot of ways it shaped the republic, where there was a fake news directly incorporated into, for example, surprise, political campaigns. in the presidential election of 1800. the fact that it worked as fake news is partly because it was hard to spread information and hard to contradict rumors once they got started. the federalist, who definitely did not want thomas jefferson to be president, 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] >> it is ingenious. brian: what is back story? joanne: it is an american history podcast. 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, i heard it on the radio on saturday mornings, and there was a man on their named peter, a think he has something to do with your early 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: he is irreplaceable. but it 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. 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. "her research prodigious, her scholarship unimpeachable, by shifting her gaze from the conventionally causes of the civil war, she is deepened our understanding of its coming. she does not discount other sources of the union, but instead draws attention to the realities of governance, its rules, processes, and you does, thos, and theeh way their degradations can spill beyond institutions to affect wider public life." does that hurt to hear things like that? 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: that have an impact on sales? joanne: i couldn't tell you that yet. [laughter] you 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 were january the you write in this book, 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. it 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 the craft of doing history. i want an exploratory book, a book that shows people the thrill i have of playing with evidence and the way in which you can put it together to find things out. i think that will show signs of s 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 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. 2017] [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 qanda.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 rolling class is bringing america to the brink of revolution. next, where live with your calls and comments on "washington journal". then a debate on the candidates running for iowa's first house district seat. then, a conversation with larry kudlow. >> tonight, on the communicators, assistant homeland security secretary for cyber security and communications talks about cyber threats against the u.s. and how the country is working to foil foreign efforts to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections, and emergency communications. >> every single day, every system, a local government office, you are constantly