unitarian voters were whigs virtually to a man. very few of the transcendentalist intellectuals, who sympathized the enlightenment with romanticism and elements of christianity, very few of them embraced the democratic party. i can't help but suspect that 's has finishedta his worthwhile inquiry into the religion of the jacksonians, he will not find that an enlightenment rational version of christianity was what the democratic voters had in common. thank you. now at last, we have the chance to entertain questions and comment from the audience. i will be happy to call on up ore who put their hand indicate that they would like -- yes, sir. yes, please. come to a microphone. >> my question is for daniel. if you consider civil religion to be a religion, how would we relate polk to that? one religion that neither of you mentioned. : i do not consider civil religion to be religion. ofave particular definitions religion which has to do with human relationships and specific human powers. speaking in the more general term, my problem with t

/republican whig vision of using the power of the federal government to create opportunity. in some ways they take advantage of the fact that there is a ump running the country. culturally, it is an interesting question, and i am sure people have written about it, but nothing occurs to me about the strange paradox of a nation , knitting a railroad together a society on an east-west access at the same the it is torn apart on south-west axis. >> as a teacher, what can we do better to communicate what history really is? because now i realize i don't really know what appeared -- know it. [laughter] know, impbell: you spend a lot of time working on , typicallymaterials not related to this history but more to issues of race and slavery. i have some sensitivity to some of the questions you are asking. one of the things is that people at universities like this happen ourselves on the back that we have exposed these dark undersides of history and expect fourth-grade teachers to simply roll it out in their classrooms without thinking very carefully about how you do that. ways in which

that a strong central government might institute savory but that the expression in the program of the whig and later the republican party embodied by such leaders as architects of the american system and the protigi, abraham lincoln. lincoln who served one term in the illinois state legislature which he devoted primarily to try to secure navigation improvement in the sangamon river in order to help its constituents gain access to the mississippi and threw it to the market in the world. abraham lincoln is the only american president who has a patent. the nature of the patent and here's a copy of it tells you a great deal about the world i'm trying to describe. this action, this inflatable balloon was set up to help net the draft of wrath. lincoln knew a bit about that since floating down to new orleans by raft. didn't make any money off of it. the most celebrated canal project and ultimately the canal system, this was completed in 1825 not from support of the federal government but of the state of new york. this allowed the perverse system of some 363 miles an elevation gain over 500 feet t

but then the whigs a fool me why. and yet the 2nd. disc business that's here in this enough to nothing almost the same for the. first well if you go on this. this is so like us now. you know i want my name off confiscated but i song relations i know. i'm going to. paul's knife and. find these additional deceit she didn't mention shelling and stuff. certainly didn't do it and says even me that's what i'm thinking you eat the fish teach me. eat eat. eat. your father says to. him find the balance of the inside come thoughts on my eyes i know i'm not only. me. to take on that's nominative has done the nonviolence a block on the nuts and i'm one tough guy. if you. flip into defense mission. because. you. know in baghdad we demand and yes you can you know this is good but i think found tied on the line you can't. hear. i wouldn't. be one. of the sons of the year there was a bodyguard. to do be all it's 5 months of the outside world say it was a simple annoyance it's once a guy who wasn't it was not as you would spit it out as a model and i

joanne: a maine congressman and a democrat, and a kentucky whig. brian: why were they in a duel?oanne: 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

he was a recent convert from lincoln's whig party, and was rewarded by his new associates with a lucrative public office. he also built the best house in the city, over which he had erected a lightning rod, the only one in the place. 15 years, lincoln's senior, he declared the young man would have to be taken down. after waiting with suppressed excitement, lincoln resumed the stand. he acknowledged he was young but he said his critics remember i am older in years and i am the tricks and traits of politicians. i desire to live and i desire a place of distinction but i would rather die now then, like the gentleman, live to see the day i would change my politics for an office worth $3000 a year then feel compelled to erect a lightning rod to protect a guilty conscience from an offended god. [laughter] prof. carwardine: during the same phase of life, lincoln learned a painful lesson that self-indulgent, aggressive humor could injure its author as well as its target. in september of 1842, he wrote for a journal. a satire ridiculing 36-year-old james shields, the state auditor. shields was an im

from the whig party. so henry clay leads the charge to kick john tyler out of the party so john tyler, the first accidental president, becomes the president without a party. he like all accidental presidents becomes obsessed with the idea of i'm determined not to be an accident. need to win election in my own right. so the only path for him to win the eplex in 184 4 , since he can't run as a whig and the democrats don't want him because they're mad as running him as whig but they have to annex texas. so looking at the impulsive and erratic behavior of our current approximate, i remind you john tyler decide tedesco virtually annex texas which precip tated war with mexico and brought is closer to the civil war. going back to the vacancy in the vice-presidency, this is important because on february 28, 1844, john tyler is sailing on the o'tomac on the uss princeton and a gala on the nautical wonder designed to celebrate american naval prowess and the fact he was on the verge of texas' annexation. they fire o