blood. after that, british prime minister theresa may's announcement friday that she is stepping down on june 7 and her appearance at question time several days before her statement. ♪ brian: joanne freeman, what is your book, "the field of blood" about? joanne: it is about physical violence in the u.s. congress between 1830-ish and the civil war. brian: how many instances of violence do you have in your book? joanne: well, i found about 70, which is not the total that there is, but at some point i had to stop researching and i

had to actually sit down and write, but in the book, there are roughly 70 violent incidents, and that actually means something physical. punching, shoving, hitting, caning, a couple of enormous melees with multiple congressman rolling around in the aisles. once or twice, a gun went off in the house. physical violence and duel challenges. i think i threw that in there too. brian: you have got to tell the him story about john boehner and don young. him [laughter] joanne: yeah. brian: don young, 85 years old. longest-serving member of the house of representatives. joanne: indeed. and that came along -- 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 revealed a lot of things. people were talking about it and buzzing about it for a while. and in that interview, he talks about how young pulled a knife on him in the house, before he was speaker, but pulled a knife

on him in the house. i had just spent 17 years writing about congressmen pulling guns and knives on each other, and it felt to me what the 19th century, and lo and behold 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 obviously goes on in congress and the capital and politics that even as outrageous events 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 a tax. something to do with walruses. it had to do is some kind of policy that was going to affect alaska. brian: did they ever make up? joanne: yeah, they did. you would think they wouldn't,

but apparently they did makeup. i think boehner tossed off some cuss words, 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, sort of, 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, weaving them together so i could figure out and what happened, it took a really long time. once i had done that and i had this wonderful collection of violent incidents, the big question was, how do i tell that story? and i really 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, 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: which incident? which violent incident? brian: yes. joanne: there are a lot of them. one that stands out to me because conveniently, people at the time who were commenting on it said exactly what i wanted them to say. this is an incident that happened in 1858. and by this point, you have the northern anti-slavery republican party in congress. and they come to congress aggressively willing to fight the slave power, and some of them literally do that. and so in 1858, during an evening debate, a fellow from pennsylvania, a republican, is standing amidst a bunch of southern democrats and objects to something while he's standing amongst these democrats. and a fellow from south carolina, a democrat, got upset and is offended, and yells, "go object from your side of the house, go away from us, don't do that here."

he says something like, "i don't have to listen to you, whip-driving slaveholders," and the democrat storms over and grabs his collar to throw a punch, and the republican beats him to it and slugs him, and knocks him flat. at that moment, a bunch of southern democrats, seeing one of their allies go to the ground, 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 that their ally is being surrounded by southerners, moved across the house, jumping over desks and chairs, to get to that point of conflict. and you end up with scores of congressman just in a mass brawl. so, in and of itself, it is dramatic. guys throwing punches and throwing spittoons, it's 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 in the house of representatives, and several of them said, this does not look like a normal congressional fight, this looks like north against south. this looks like a battle. and that is really striking. and 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: most frequent fighter. and 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 that 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. and he, at the time, was called a bully.

if you were 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. wise was. he was not a stupid man, he was an intelligent man, so he was not a monster, but when you look through people's letters and diaries, again and again, he is either deliberately tossing out him insults, or asking for duels, or just losing his temper and launching himself at someone. he is one of the most frequent fighters. the significant thing is that it did not hurt his reputation in any way. and as a matter of fact at one point, when someone said you should be ashamed of yourself, he said, oh no, 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, which in this time period, people were there for one term, maybe two. so he was essentially being applauded by the folks back home

for defending their interest in an aggressive way. brian: how long have you been a yale? joanne: this is my 21st year. him brian: when did you first come on to your guy named hamilton? joanne: wow. when i was about 14 years old. it roughly coincided with the bicentennial. and so, the 18th century was everywhere, the folks we call the founders were everywhere, and i started reading biographies. and i remember starting with a and reading adams. i don't know what i read between a and h, but when i got to hamilton, i stopped. because he was such a strange founder. first of all, he hadn't been written about him very much. people did not really care about him, and those who did, he was the bad guy who opposed thomas jefferson. as a 14-year-old, he had such a strange beginning and dramatic end. i thought this guy is kind of interesting and not many have written about him, so 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. him and i started reading those, and that fascinated me. because no longer was somebody else telling me the history, it felt like the history was in my hands. here was a person, the bulk of his correspondence, and i could just read from the beginning of his life to the end of his life and figure out what it meant. so i did that forever. i would finish and then i would go back and start again. because there was so much 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. and i am going to be jumping around here. this is page 152. "not surprisingly, foote was a frequent fighter. he fought four duels during his

political career, and was shot in three of them, suggesting that he was a far better at shooting off his mouth than his gun." you are writing this. "in addition, during his five years in the senate, he was involved in at least four brawls with senators, once exchanging blows with jefferson davis in their boardinghouse, an episode that prompted two near duels, once exchanging blows with simon cameron, a democrat from pennsylvania, on the senate floor. as sam houston put it, the eloquent and impassioned gentleman got into each other's hair." i am not going to read much more, but, henry foote, who was he? joanne: henry foote, he is a southern congressman who was known as being waspish. that came to a fore during the big debate of 1880. there was another democrat,

southerner, and 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 destroy his argument. brian: thomas hart benton, why was he so 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. so he was in the senate for a very long time. so he had quite a reputation. he was definitely, even in that period, seen as one of the nation's great statesman. the person in the book who is sort of the guide/narrator says

that he knew his own importance, i guess is what the narrator says. and he says that he saw benton once 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. so he had quite a reputation. but he was not just pro-slavery. in 1850, that made him a controversial southerner. brian: when did you decide that benjamin brown french was your guy? and explain what i mean by that. joanne: benjamin brown french 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, ok, one narrative device would be to find a person who you could sort of hook yourself onto at the beginning

of the book and follow through. now, i knew there was an abridged version of the diary of this file named benjamin brown french i had looked at before and i remembered it because it had a lot of personal details. it was interesting. it was not, had lunch with mr. smith, had coffee with mr. jones. he actually talked about what he felt and saw. the more i looked at the diary him and the more i learned about him, i discovered he was the ideal person to put at the core of the book because he starts out as a northern democrat who was willing to do anything to appease the south to promote his party and preserve the union. and by the end of the book, he buys a gun in preparation to shoot southerners. and so when i realized the transition that he undergoes over the course of the years that i discuss in this book, i realize with him at the center of the book, even though it is about more than him, if the reader meets him at the

beginning and watches him transform over the course of the chapters in that book 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 that really shows us something about the deeper emotional logic of this union and the approach of the war. brian: i'm going to ask you about the diary. 11 volumes. handwritten? joanne: handwritten. he was a clerk, so he had good handwriting. generally speaking he was a minor clerk in the house. brian: where was he from? joanne: from new hampshire. a rural town in new hampshire. he arrived in washington in 1833. he is 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. but it is detailed, he writes about his feelings about things, he writes things about what he sees, and he records details about a lot of the fighting. because he cannot quite believe what he is seeing. so 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.

because he is kind of like a zealot of the mid-19th century. when things are happening, somehow benjamin brown french is there and sees them. someone tries to assassinate andrew jackson, french is there and sees that happen. john quincy adams has a stroke in the house. benjamin brown french not long after is holding his hand. abraham lincoln's assassination, who was at the bedside? benjamin brown french. gettysburg address. who is standing up at the platform? benjamin brown french. but for someone that no one has heard of and in and of himself did not do anything of great significance that would be remembered today, he is the most amazing, emotive, sensitive, and intelligent eyewitness that a writer could hope for. so he really is at the heart of the book. brian: so, where is the diary? joanne: at the library of congress. brian: were you allowed to put your hands on it? joanne: i was. i was.

and since 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 in the diary, which is sort of wonderful. he had an extensive correspondence. and he wrote poetry about politics. so, he was beyond wonderful. there was the point when i was writing it towards the end, his diary is not quite as juicy in the last few years before the civil war. so i'm getting to the end of the book, and i'm like, french, what are you going to give me, where you going to give me about this union? i don't see much in the diary and i am thinking, oh no, you have gotten me all the way to this point and you are giving me nothing about the union. i'm shuffling through papers. i discover, he wrote a poem. i quote the poem in the chapter. it certainly expresses what he is feeling at that moment.

so, he was an amazing source, and it just reveals the experience of seeing the nation being torn into and seeing americans turn on each other on such a ground level, it reveals things that have not been captured before. brian: more than once in the book you talk about somebody being killed. how often did that happen? joanne: not a lot of deaths. there is one big dramatic death, so, in 1838 a congressman kills another congressman in a dual. that is actually the incident that started me on the project. my started, i did not say i am 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. so i thought, ok, i want to write about political violence, i don't know what to do next. i will look a couple of decades ahead in the period 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 just began reading. and dumb luck, he wrote almost every day to his wife, and his letters were wonderful. and as i am reading, i keep seeing these incidents. henry wise stands up and pushes up his sleeves to throw a punch. all of these violent incidents i have never heard of before. so 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? so i finished his papers and i thought, i have to test this out, basically. and so i spent about three months at the library of congress reading the papers of congressmen. and i never opened a collection without finding at least one violent incident. and so, 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 knew i wanted to figure out what the story was. brian: who were the two involved

in the duel where there was a death? joanne: a maine congressman and a democrat, and a kentucky whig. brian: why were they in a duel? joanne: this is the wonderful and horrible thing about their duel. they actually had no issue with each other. the duel breaks out, henry wise is at the heart of it, it breaks out because henry wise stands up and says something nasty about the democratic party during a debate. the democrat stands up and defenses party's name, and in doing so, says something nasty about a new york newspaper editor who scurries down to washington to find out if he needs to duel, and he asks graves to deliver a letter. and neither had any understanding of dueling culture, any of it. so by the simple reason that graves delivers a letter on behalf of this editor, he is tangled in this 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 their region, they end up getting pulled into this duel that nobody wants to happen. and there is a whole chapter on it for that reason. i call it the duel that no one wanted. no one wants that duel to happen, and it happened because it was so hard to pull out once that sort of thing goes into motion. so, the duel really shows the power of violence in congress and around the nation, and the ways in which congressmen, and particularly northern congressmen who were not necessarily accustomed with the dueling customs. and how hard it was for them to maneuver that in congress. brian: why were southerners bullies? joanne: well, i think on a really basic level, a 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 the code of honor, which at this point was beginning to seem 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 duel challenges and that northerners would not know what to do. what do i do? if i move into a duel, my constituents will ostracize me, i will lose my standing back home. if i turn my back, i am going to look like a coward and i will humiliate my constituents and my region. so i refer to it in the book as the northern congressman's dilemma. southerners knew they had advantage of numbers because of the 3/5 compromise. they had a cultural advantage because of violence, the way they could use violence in the way northerners were not comfortable with. and they deployed that to manipulate what happened on the floor. a lot of what the book shows is southerners really kind of stampeding over the rules and bullying northerners into compliance or silence.

brian: how often did people, and we are talking about the 1830's up to the civil war, but how often did members of congress carry guns? joanne: well, so, i was dying to track that in some kind of organized way. and it is very hard because there is no way to record it. i think a lot of southerners, not all of them but a good number of them, were just routinely armed in life and were armed in congress more so than northerners. but by the time you get to the 1850's and northerners are beginning to feel threatened, the sectional crisis is beginning to heat up, and northerners are beginning to want their congressmen to be a little more aggressive on the -- on their behalf. 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 one letter from a north

carolina congressman, i believe in 1850, in which he and a friend are trying to estimate how many people in the house have guns and they guess 70 or 80. that is a lot of guns. so, a lot of people were armed. and sometimes, you only had to be known as 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. so, you know, bullying is powerful for a lot of reasons. and here it is a tool of debate. brian: how often would a knife be pulled on the floor? joanne: again, it is hard to -- brian: but i mean, is there an example? joanne: oh, yeah. for sure. there is an incident where john quincy adams in the house is trying to say something about antislavery petitions and a congressman, actually a southerner, but a fellow whig, wants him to be allowed to say what he wants to say even though

he doesn't agree with them. he says, let him speak, it is his right to speak. a congressman from louisiana stalks over to the fellow who said let adams speak, and he always wore a gun and knife, and he makes visible the knife and he says to this congressman, you do that again and i will cut your throat from ear to ear. and we know that because not long after, that fellow raised his hand and said, you know what happened? can i tell you about something that happened a while back that felt disorderly? that is one of the interesting things about writing the book. you find incidents like that by accident. like when they are leaked or when someone says something they shouldn't. very often, someone will say like, henry wise had the wonderful habit of saying what he should not say. he would stand up and say something, and the other congressmen would say shhh. i sing hosanna to the evidence gods, because not only did he

say it but now i know he wasn't supposed to say it. both of those things will be wonderful content for me to write about. brian: how much did, that diary, that 11 volume diary of mr. french, how often was that your source of violent activity on the floor? joanne: a lot. brian: i mean, 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 lets me get at the personal experience of it. i had to do this sort of weird triangulation to find the violence. so, i learned very quickly that it is essentially censored out of the equivalent of the record. it is there, but it is masked. there are code words that you him see 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 to me. so it wasn't until i started reading letters and diaries and 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. and that was when i discovered that when the record says something like the debate became unpleasantly personal at some point, that often means a violent moment. but you would not know that. or the record would say, there was a sudden sensation in the corner. in that case, two congressmen started punching each other and they flipped a desk. but you would never know that. french gave me some of the evidence by talking about what he saw. other people's diaries give me

more evidence. the record give me a sense of what was happening on the floor so i could get more of a sense of how it was playing out. the press, increasingly over time, because initially there was not a lot of the violence in the press, but then databases and newspapers became important because i could triangulate between all of those things and try to piece together bit by bit what actually happened, or try to piece together what actually happened. 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 that there was drinking going on, and a lot of noise and activity off the floor. how much drinking was there going on in the 1830's, 1840's, the 1850's? joanne: a lot of drinking. [laughter] there was a lot of drinking. there were many reasons why congressmen didn't like evening sessions, and one of them would go to dinner, drink, and come back. and almost inevitably, during

evening sessions, something bad would happen. and it would be at 2:00 in the morning or somehow work when everyone was tired and someone would say something and tempers would snap and a bad thing would happen. and alcohol was a big part of it. there are accounts, and i talk about some of them in the book, congressmen 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 just writes in his diary, drunk in the chair. just drunkenness, a lot of drunkenness. my wonderful narrator, 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 quite believe the amount of alcohol. and, you know, not everyone is a bachelor in washington, some congressmen bring their families with them, but a lot of them don't. so there was also kind of a bachelor culture that is probably fostering some of the

drinking and gambling. brian: has anyone else done what you have done in this book? in other words, find all these incidents of violence on the floor? 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 kind of a 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 him getting a sense of the scale and what the logic was and the impact, no. brian: thomas hart benton, he was a senator -- my question is, did he shoot somebody? joanne: before he got to congress, yes. brian: he killed him? joanne: 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 pinched 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 that, lucas's friends whispered that benton had been too scared to shorten the distance with -- distance between the two men on the dueling ground and they duel again and this time benton killed lucas. explain the duel. how long were duels allowed in this country, and how did it work? joanne: duels were illegal, even in this period. dueling was illegal. brian: everywhere? joanne: different states in

different ways, but pretty much everywhere. but you know, there were anti-dueling laws, and the lawmakers were violating those laws regularly. part of that was because they were elite and they did what they did and they typically were not penalized for it in any way. north and south, dueling is illegal, but it was also something, increasingly in the south, it is something that gentlemen do, particularly political gentlemen. i guess lawyers as well. it was something they would do. it was a way to prove, defend your reputation. prove if you were humiliated in an election, you could be involved in a duel to prove that you were a man of honor who deserved to be a leader. if someone insulted you, a duel would be a way for you to push off the insult and prove it was not true. not all affairs of honor end up going to a dueling ground.

the point is to prove that you're willing to die for your name. so, there is a lot of challenge sending and letter sending and negotiating, and the second of principles in a duel, sending things back and forth. it happened quite often that there would be some way an apology can be negotiated, 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. so it is kind of counterintuitive, but the point of a duel is not to kill somebody. it is not even necessarily to shoot. if you go to the dueling ground, the point is not to kill the other person, it is to be there and to prove you are willing to stand there and face fire. there isn't necessarily a lot of killing in duels. and very often, the person who does the killing doesn't fare so well afterwards because it is very easy for public opinion to turn against them. brian: you write a lot about who dominated from a political

standpoint in the house of representatives. him joanne: certainly one person in the late 1830's and 1840's is john quincy adams. he is amazing. brian: you say he taunted the southerners. joanne: he did. and he's kind of a magical character for me as far as the story goes. so, by the time he comes 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 pretty much not the kind of guy you are going to be able to slug. he is violence-proof, and he knows that. and he uses it. so he is constantly taunting and bullying southerners, well aware that they cannot slug him. and sometimes they say so. henry wise, he and adams go head to head quite a lot. at one point wise says if you were not who you are, you would feel more than my words. adams writes, today, henry wise threatened to kill me in my seat. so, he took full advantage of his reputation to really aggressively fight to defend the right of petition and against slavery. and he was incredibly powerful. he also was a brilliant

parliamentarian. he knew the rules, he had a lifetime of experience in politics and he was fearless. so you put that together and he was a force to be reckoned with. brian: would you describe tobacco, the carpeting, smoke, the dirt? joanne: yeah, the tobacco. i start out the book talking about tobacco stained rugs. because congress in this period, i think people think back to this period and they think of henry clay and daniel webster, people in these sort of black frock coats standing around with their finger in the air, saying rate debating words. some of that was going on, but particularly the house, it was

crowded and stuffy. it did not smell very good. it was much hotter than it was outside. and there were tobacco stains everywhere. are there were spittoons. 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 british minister who is leaving and he writes to the person coming after him and he says something like, whatever you do, don't touch the rug. you don't want to touch the rugs. so, 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 this is the worst place in the world to work. they keep doing a climate report and each report says it is 30 degrees hotter in the house than it is outside, and there is no air circulation at all. there is a kind of a wonderful symbolism to that, there is this moment with the southerners are holding forth and bullying their way into protecting slavery, that it is tobacco juice that's tainting, 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 does that name come from? joanne: it came from john randolph of roanoke. it has always been a phrase that people aren't quite sure what he meant. some people thought he meant doe as in a deer, a cowardly person. i think more likely it was dough as in bread dough. there was some kind of 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 that he threw around. he threw it around a couple of times and it took on, people liked it and threw it around. and it became this sort of ultimate insult that you would throw at a northerner for being a cowardly, submissive servant to the south. i think, what does franklin

pierce call it? i think he called it a craven man. it was highly insulting. and it was insulting because it seemed like these northerners were appeasing the south at any cost, and in fact they were. and a lot of these northern democrats were very much trying to appease southerners. brian: you have a footnote on page 314 which got my attention. i am looking for it rapidly. it's about -- excuse me. members of the house. and 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 do you think it meant that the huge number had not attended college? joanne: well, you know, education, particularly in the early part of this period, was

kind of 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 fore during this period. you went to harvard, yale, william and mary, and after a while, i guess uva too. but it is not like today where there are colleges everywhere. a lot of people had what was called common school education, where you go to school for a number of years and then you go on and 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. so, 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 or something like that. there is a wonderful phrase that he uses. he sees congress at its best and worst. what is wonderful about it is clearly this idea that some congressmen 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 and sits and watches congress. he explicitly asks for two congressmen to be pointed out to him. one of them was henry weiss, and the other was john dawson, who had the bowie knife. they are the two foremost bullies. so 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 individual with a big ball of tobacco in his cheek. so, 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 was going on? joanne: some of that went on. so one of the things about the fighting that is counterintuitive, despite all of this 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. so, they are very focused on fair fighting. if there is going to be a fight, they want the fight to be fair. so for example, if two men are fighting, sometimes they will be allowed to continue their fight. if one is armed and the other isn't, they will be separated because it is not a fair fight. and so, some kinds of fights, kind of explosions on the floor happen on the floor, but if there is someone out to get

someone, has a grudge or an 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 then it looks like with the caning of charles sumter when you have someone plotting an attack on the floor of the house or senate in a deliberate kind of way which is particularly ugly and symbolic. so, there are street fights. over time, there are more street fights because it becomes kind of a northern duel. northerners who do not want to fight a duel want to defend their name, they will 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. 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. so, some of what we are looking at here 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. so, it's not only happening in washington. brian: i have to divert for a minute and ask you, i've wanted to ask you this 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] oh, well, no, his biography was the basis of the show. but it was certainly surprising to go see the show for the first time, i saw it off-broadway at the time in the public theater. and i knew that this person was

writing a play and it was a musical and it was about alexander hamilton, and i had found a way when he was writing the book to give him my library of america collection of hamilton's letters. because i wanted -- i figured there will not be two musicals of alexander hamilton in my lifetime, so if there is one i wanted hamilton's words in it. the library of america is a wonderful nonprofit organization that is basically about keeping great american letters in literature in print. and they produce these wonderful volumes and have been doing it quite some time. wonderful quality, and just to keep america's culture alive, in a way. and they do it for literary characters, they also do it for political figures. so, there is an alexander hamilton volume that i edited. it is about 800 pages or something of what i consider to be the most important and most revealing letters of hamilton's 27 volumes. so, that is what i wanted to get to lin manuel miranda. because i thought these are the 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. joanne: ok. ♪ brian: now, when you were ♪ brian: now, when you were listening to that musical, and you heard that, what was your reaction? joanne: i thought, that really, really, sounds like chapter four of "affairs of honor." [laughter] particularly because there is a line in that song that comes from a document that i found at the new york historical society. so, that is the 10 duel commandments. it is a song about the rules of dueling. and when it started, the first time i saw the play, i thought

excellent, there is a dueling song. and as it goes on i was like, oh, it is a rules of dueling song. i wrote about the rules of dueling. when ron chernow was writing his book, he asked me about the rules of dueling. so i thought it was about my conversations with him. 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 think that is my chapter. brian: do you deserve a cut of the action? joanne: [laughter] for the bit of my chapter? 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. and i said, you do? was that song based on part of the book? he said yeah. oh, ok. a tiny part of my book is being sung on broadway.

brian: so we know the impact it's had on the country, but what kind of impact has the musical had on your work? joanne: certainly as a teacher, it has had a profound impact. because young people are now, not just fascinated by history, but fascinated by early american history to a degree i have never seen before. so, you know, 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, there are young people to hear my talks about hamilton because they want to learn more about hamilton, and my classes at yale are bigger now because of this. if the play gets people to be interested in the period and opens a door where i and other professors and history teachers can use that interest to teach past the play, to use as a starting point, that is pretty profound. and i think the play has had that kind of an impact. i also think it reveals to a lot of people, not just students,

that history is not just a bunch of dates. him that that is humans, that they are 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: ok, fill in the blanks with this. i was visiting the grange, his house up in new york city, and as we were coming out of the grange, sixth-graders were walking in rapping the "hamilton" musical score. what did you have to do with the grange? joanne: well, i have a long history with the grange. so, many years ago, probablgy talking, gosh, i don't even know, probably more than 20 years at least, maybe 25, maybe 30. years ago when i first moved to

new york after college, i was already the hamilton person. and by dumb luck, the lord and taylor christmas windows that year were great houses of new york, and one of them was the grange. and i thought, of course, the grange is here in new york, i can volunteer my services to the grange. i can work for the grange. and one thing led to another, i ended up being hired to do some research for them and maybe put together like a small exhibit for them. so i did that for a number of years, i would go up there on weekends and do research and hang out at the grange. then years later when they began to think about moving it and began to thinking about 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 at some point, where is the grange? joanne: it is on i believe

141st, off-broadway. it is in harlem. i think 141st or 143rd off-broadway. brian: one of the most interesting parts was the move. joanne: 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. and so, this last move, and it kept being moved because of the street pattern advancing north in new york. the last time that 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, 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 lecture in 2010, something called "open yale courses, the american revolution." we're just going to watch a

little bit. you can tell us whether anybody can watch this other than the kids. >> payne's corpse disappeared. we really do not know where thomas payne is. truly, like, there was a trunk that had payne in it, and then it vanished. i went searching today before i gave this lecture saying trying to figure out, maybe there has been a recent development with the corpse. but no. in 2001, there was a society it wanted to create a memorial in america and they decided they were going to try to trace the body. they set out trying to trace the body. what they found was 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. [laughter] brian: and then there is the new york home of thomas payne. you have probably been there.

joanne: i have not actually been there. 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: you know, i have not in the last few years 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 can watch open yale courses. 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. so, and i know it is on itunesu, and i believe youtube as well, but you can go to open yale him courses is the website. i think the course is history 116, the american revolution. and it's the entire course. 26 lectures, all of them about 45 minutes. it is essentially you are 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 him back story. joanne: yes. brian: here is an excerpt from its audio, radio back story. let's listen. >> we know that fake news or fantasy news precedes the republic. are there examples where it actually helped in the founding of the republic? >> oh, helped. [laughter] i can think of a lot of examples where it shaped the republic, where there was a fake news directly incorporated into, for example, surprise, surprise, political campaigns. in the presidential election of 1800. and again, the fact that it worked as fake news is partly because 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 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] which i think is just ingenious. brian: what is back story? joanne: ok, so back story is a podcast, 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, who are all historians. and the show is a combination of interviews with specialists who tell us some of the amazing stories that surround the topics we are discussing, and conversations between the four of us, the cohosts, 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 there named peter, and i think he has something to do with your early work. joanne: he is my graduate advisor.

so, the original back story, there were three people, and they were the back story team. and when peter decided that he did not want to do it anymore and looked for an early american replacement, i ended up stepping into those very big shoes to be essentially the early americanist. but he did that for many years and they were quite a team, the three of them. brian: what was it like replacing one of your former mentors? joanne: oh, i can't replace him. 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. so, if you come anywhere close, it is the biggest honor in the world. brian: you are at yale now. where were you born?

joanne: i was born in 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, did that for a while, stopped doing that, then went back to teaching. him him him brian: this is a him brian: this is a review of your book in the weekly standard by a man named james banner. "freeman's research prodigious, her scholarship unimpeachable. by shifting her gaze from the conventionally causes of the civil war, she has deepened our understanding of its coming. she does not discount other sources of the union, instead draws attention to the realities of governance, its rules, processes, and ethos, and to the way their degradations can spill beyond institutions to affect,

in this case, fatally, wider public life." i can go on. does that hurt to hear things like that? [laughter] joanne: it was very nice to see that review. you know, after working on this book for 17 years, getting him positive reviews is a wonderful thing. brian: did that have any impact on sales? joanne: i couldn't tell you that yet. [laughter] i mean, you assume it would, right? i do not know that yet. the book came out 1.5 weeks ago. brian: so your early comments in here were january the you write in this book, of this year. joanne: right. brian: are you on to your next book? and if you are, what is it about? joanne: i am pondering how to jump into my next book. my next book right now has the working title, "hunting for hamilton." i don't want to write another biography about hamilton, but i do 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 to do kind of an exploratory book, a book that shows people the thrill that i have of playing with evidence and the way in which you can put it together and find things out. i think that will show sides of hamilton as a real person, and as a political thinker that hasn't necessarily been really written about a lot before. because 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 really interesting way. brian: the name of the book is "the field of blood -- violence in congress and the road to civil war." and our guest has been joanne freeman, professor at yale. him thank you very much. joanne: thank you so much for having me. ♪ >> on q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org.

>> next sunday, professor kate bowler talks about her memoir, everything happens for a reason, where she reflects on being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at age 35. >> on sunday, june 2, at new eastern, in-depth is live with senior fellow thomas sold, from the campus of stanford university. slavery was banned for centuries before george washington and thomas jefferson were ever born.

lincoln was able to do something not simply as president but as the commander-in-chief in a war. what he did applied only to statesagainst the united but there is no basis otherwise. race, andctuals and discrimination and disparities. join the interactive conversation with your calls, tweets, and facebook questions. live, sunday, june 2, from new to 2:00 p.m. c-span2.n book tv on art commencement speeches all week on c-span. starting monday at 8:00 p.m. speakers include patrick shanahan at the u.s. naval academy, congressman michiganming, democratic governor gretchen

witmer at the university of michigan ann arbor, and we will 1993 for to may president ronald reagan's remarks at the citadel. watch commencement speeches monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> after failing at several attempts to get a brexit agreement with the european union, for prime minister theresa may announced her resignation, effective june 7, in a speech outside prime minister's residence.