Transcripts For CSPAN2 Heather Cox Richardson How The South Won The Civil War 20240713

Cabletelevision companies as a public service, and brought to you today by your Television Provider here. Welcome to this Virtual Event with historian Heather Cox Richardson about her new book how the south won the civil war oligarchy, democracy, and the continuing fight for the soul of amerca i am joanne freeman, a professor of history and american studies at yale university, and this afternoon i have the pleasure of being in conversation with heather about her book and other matters political. This program is being produced by the Brooklyn Historical society which has been a cultural have for civic dialogue and committed outreach for over 150 years. Thats some real history. Now, her book has got a lot of critical praise, for example, the Washington Post writes Heather Cox Richardson and professor of history at Boston College explains gold wonders crusade and the trajectory of modern conservatism in her masterful book. A timely book that sheds light on preps what was the most important Political Coalition of 20th century. And Publishers Weekly says their richardson and emphasizes the prevalence problems of racism, sexism and inequality in other parts of the country during and following the civil war, she marshals of evidence to support the books provocative title. Conservative will cry foul but liberal readers would be persuaded by this lucid jeremiah. Now i would is really excited to dig in your but first i want to invite those of you in the world listening to share your questions for heather, and you can do that by typing into the q a box that if think you all see at the bottom of your screen. We will take as many as we can in the second part of the program which has hope will last about an hour. Now its my great pleasure to introduce Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, author of six books about american politics and writer of the very popular newsletter, letters from americans. Welcome, heather. Thank you, joann. I was trying to undo to myself. I want to stop and think a first Brooklyn Historical site for doing this, but also to city people watching that im incredibly excited about this because this is a first time that joann and ive been able to our own a history thing together. I have asked her to open this way beyond my book, dont want to talk about her new book as well, but also to talk about how to pass speaks to the current moment and to talk about whats going on in american politics today. So we certainly will talk about my book and will talk about her book will also talk about the first moment. The fact its a limit to an hour is such a grim thought but thanks for giving it a shot, joann. Im excited to be here, so this will be fun. Let me start with and assist with the obvious question but its probably one of love people wondering about right now. So even in just the two little bits that i read about responses to your book, they use words like provocative, timely. I want to stop asking, how is it that you came to write this book . What brought you to it given the time it is . You never know its when woe times when you start fighting but one of the things i study is the zeitgeist. I read politics fulltime and i say how are people thinking about things . Ill explain later where i came to end up on that but what happened was when i was writing my last book in the history of the Republican Party, when i read conscious of a conservative i was gob smacked because its a summer to james hendry hansons speech in 1858 in 1858 in whics about really government is run by a few good people and the government cant get involved in things because its going to be unconstitutional and going to destroy certain peoples liberties. They were very, very, very similar. I had never seen a comparison for when i was writing the book i was also teaching the trail f tears, the 1830 movement or the pushing out of the native americans out of the southeast into oklahoma. I was at rotational rate the congressional creation but thay it was a good thing for the indians to lose their land into force on the stump in march and which so many of them died of why this happened to become way congress had to do this, why does good things of the indians. It happened to be the same way that some Football Player, an adult member which one it is, but some Football Player was caught on nvidia striking his girlfriend girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair. I dont member in the characters involved but we hit me about those two things was that the language was the exact same. The same excuse for this man dragging his girlfriend out of an elevator by her hair. She wasnt listening to it. It was for the good. All those things. The same thing eyes reading in congress about why the indians deserved to be pushed into oklahoma. This all said to me that there was something about that day now that echoed other power struggles in the past. What it wanted to get to was what created those power struggles and how do we end up in a moment today that sounded so much like the confederates had saudi, like the elite confederates have found in the 1850s . That of course reinforced to my mind what i decide was this had to do a lot with language. With this book about a trip is about is how language great power structures and decides to permit certain people to take power. That to me one of the reasons, that to me speaks very much to what you did in transept talked about the importance of emotion and how the field of blood you focus on the early part that i did really had to do with emotion. How did you end up writing that book . Well, youre right, that innocence of the book is about physical violence and u. S. Congress and the logic and the impact of it, what struck me and when i begin that book was i knew was going to be looked congress. I knew is going to give up violence. I did know how much violence there was but the language that people were throwing around and the response to language, even just in the historical records, you could see how any case of my book, they were really strategically and deliberately using language to intimidate or silence or manipulate people who disagreed with them, in light of work. It worked really well. Its hard because it really relied on emotion. Intimidation is something that often works. Fear or humiliation are things that if youre in congress under performing before national audience, if you want to you can manipulate that to really shape what someone is able to do. Kind of along the same lines of what youre talking about, i was interested in doing in my book was looking at the real dynamics of what was going on in congress and how that was shaping politics overall. Use the word bullying again and again and again. Bullying behavior. What im arguing is the way bullying takes shape, at least not even anissa, the way bowling always takes shape is to language. The way you put things come the way you say things. We talk nowadays about about gas lighting but really what youre doing is your shaping a worldview through the use of language to establish dominance over somebody else, to bully them. It is astonishing to me the parallels between the pass, the 1850s, not not all the past, but the 1850s and where we are right now. For sure. I think about all the time. Even just in the realm of bullying. What bullying is about and the reason why its particularly effective in politics is because you dont have to exert force. You have to make clear you could exert force if you want to. Its about the threat. If youre a bully you are suggesting you could do really ugly things. If you wanted to do that to them. You just have to be sure that the person being bullied understands that and will respond to that. Its a brilliant way to manipulate people. And when it works it really works. I need you to do me a favor now. The threat that, ill do that but but i need you to do me a favor though. A fight i could do this to you,. Or i i could do something to you. Right. Or we could get a long. Yes. As long as you do what i want you to do. Yes. Whats an example in your book, you talk, one of the things i think we both share in our books is his fascination with language and the power of language and the ways in which we take it for granted but its such a force of shipping politics. What is an instance into book of a moment when it really struck you that language in and of itself was having a shaping influence . There are two places that really shows up. Kind of everywhere if you think about it. One of the reasons people start studying it, its very hard to say this matters because you cant quantify it. We all do it matters. Summary said once to one on the books, you never quantify how this talk was important. I said i understand i didnt do that but can you stand the right now this wouldve been in the 80s or the 90s, can you stand the right outcome Rush Limbaugh doesnt matter . Of course the matters that we cant measure. Does that mean we shouldnt study . The places that jumped out at me out at me in that if it were come it cracks me up you with a 19 feet for professor because so much of it in 1954, in 1954 right after joe mccarthy goes, crashes and burns in the mccarthy hearings because people once and for all i could see him come they dont use seeking. Its not the language, the actual seem and rather than say hes a a crusader for anticommunism, they look at him come hes a thug, both with a lot of any part of it. After that, shortly after that, buckley junior and his brother, with the book mccarthy and his enemies. In that they say mccarthy mightve been the front edges but he was right. We conservatives, this becomes a Birther Movement for conservatives cannot pause because Movement Conservatism was that ever really traditional. He was a radical mood to undo the deal. We see play out right now. They write this book and they say we conservatives have to stand against what the call liberalism. By liberalism payment everybody else. They made all the democrats, all the eisenhower republicans. This is the time in 1950 went eisenhower republicanism looks terrific. Regaining interstate highways, we have g. I. Bill, putting a blood into middleclass jobs. Not everybody, it didnt nearly as much a people of color but a lot of people i grew up with the weather been probably not even skilled workers because of the g. I. Bill vaulted into the middle class, engineers or as printers was any number of things they could do without it now education is not attainable for them out of the depression are at this moment we met buckley junior writes his book and they say we conservatives are standing against all these liberals. Basically everybody else. They do Something Interesting in that book. Thats the time for the first time when they capitalize conservatism and capitalist liberal. Tabletalk general about we are all liberal. A literary critic says you cant talk or liberalism because everyone is liberal these days. They make it in this general we believe the government has relatively regulated business and providing basic social state of promoting infrastructure like the interstate highway. All agree. Republican democrats have different ideas about which parts of our more important. Everybody thought of themselves as liberal. They capitalize it and they say these guys are essentially like the communist party in china. They are a party, taking over america. That powerful construction, as of the time it was, the book itself was not terribly well received. Really, mccarthy is a good guy . By now the idea of being a liberal remember liking 80 people started to call the l word . Literally remember that. Dont call them the l word. Now if this epitaph. You could see it being constructed. That was one moment and the other moment was in the 1990s Newt Gingrichs Political Action committee literally they were in charge of we use the word and docketing but a word like that. They were the coaches for the new republicans, newly elected republicans to socialize them into the Republican Party. What they do is they actually circulate a document with all the words that they should use when you talk about democrats and those are words like trader and lacey and special interest and angry and all these really negative words, and then they had a list of what words they should use when the talked about republicans and republican policies, and they were patriots, fiscally responsible, family, happy, all this good stuff and you could literally see the Republican Party under Newt Gingrich was the mode in which they bite out of the park all the real republican, called traditional republicans that they even label rhino even though its the other way around, Newt Gingrich and the Movement Conservative again very powerful use of language. You could literally see them using the language to divide the country and into label half ofs negative and half of it as positive. So those were the two touchdowns for me, but unkind remember, u talked about a similar touchdown i think in the field of blood, did you. Was certainly. Wit you describe what i talked about an the snake just described with language is a small group of people creating a new lead. So capital, says sitting, just capitalizing those words helps to suggest there is in it there. Conservatism and liberalism are not just words. They are capitalized. They are in it. The power of that is, in a way however is leading doesnt necessarily have an awareness of the power that they become and it just by looking at it. That gets back to the power of language and politics. Because if youre really effective at that scale, then you basically finding a way not just great and us and them but to plug people into functions and emotions that are going to play well through you. Because words are like a drill that can be righted emotions come responses. Why do things that you are not going to nestle the process . One example in my first book, and its which is called the fears upon it by the way. I loved. Thank you. Whats interesting, in part one of the factors of democracy and full of the was a democracy is how important which is because democracy is about negotiating power which is about persuasion. By definition is more vulnerable and flexible as i can be used for good and bad. So all of those dash at the beginning of the republic they are playing these games with words. Even in the first few years of the government, theres a federalist and the Federalist Party in the 1790s is in the sense more elitist and more big money driven and are discomfited by democracy, and theres a letter from the federalist talks about if you go out and give a a speech in front of the public, and anyone uses the word aristocrat, you are done. Thats a privilege, elitism and denial of rights. Theres a whole cascade of things from that one word that ten years earlier didnt have the baggage attached to it. Part of being in the sense respond to the same thing which is the intense power that Something Like a work could have and in which that shapes power and politics. In the late 20th and early 21st century that were less taxes. Paul said people were not that concerned about taxes by the the 1980s, but if you talked about taxes, it conjured up this idea that somehow the taxes of hardworking white people who going to go to the pockets of lazy people of color and feminists. We even have a conversation by one of the political operatives, lee atwater, who talks about it and he says, by 1968 you cant use racial epithets, although uses the racial epithet in this quotation. Says you can recycle out and say vote for me or you have to deal with this. He says we generalized it. We started talking a blessing. People know what youre talking about. He said then you can take one more step back and user talk about taxes, and people are like yeah, like i care about taxes. When to talk about taxes, it is not, you ride on the paper or you studied it in congress. It is not carrying the baggage of this long history of American Fear of an underclass redistributing wealth. But the reality is, by 1980 when americans here from republican politicians where they will never raise taxes, and the democrats want to take money from the makers and give it to the takers, it is absolutely coded racial language. All you have to do and even now to some degree all you have to do to make sure the wood on a social welfare legislation is to say do you want your taxes raised . There you go. When 150 years of american hists right on the table with a three letter word, and deploying it is the key to certain kind of politics. Its so effective because its so snake. He said all the time now. Someone will Say Something and youll see on social media people will say dont wiggle. Thats a dog whistle. Another people say no, its not. The person she is referring to x, y and z. It is probably a dog whistle. It is popping into a coded message but the fact that can be argument shows the power of that kind of attack. Also that the purchase because you can say i dont know what i did. I remember when people started using what we know as the okay symbol as a white power symbol. Right. I remember the first time i bet that thinking no, i been doing that my whole life. Its time you start seeing it in all these places like youre right, that that is a dog whistle. Its a treat of ambiguity where, if you said it was a white power symbol, especially older people looked at you and what you people are social justice warriors. It was a way to deploy that symbol in such a way that it was doubly powerful, not only were you calling your people to you but anyone who called you out on it then had come and follow people say no, youre being paranoid which is one of the way languages work. Thats why we keep talking the kazakh gas lighting. Thats exactly a gas lighting works. Just as you are saying in the early days there was that weird ambiguity about this means okay does it mean something more. In that early. But it is to forget says it means something more, by some logic, some people, you declared your loyalty to them. Just ask a question which is a fair question but which buys right into the us and them creation. Thats shaping politics. When i was working on my book, the degree to which people at the time understood the kind of power. In the late 1850s when we removing up towards the civil war, i found a lot of members of congress, and actually others outside of congress, saying to each other over and over again we have to control our words. Which is a a striking thing hee if youre talking about people in an intense sexual crisis and what about if the unit is going to collapse and they are saying watch your words. Thats like testimony to what a power and an emotional power that can have on a high level and on a popular level as well. Theres one southerner in that late period refers to words being spoken in congress as missiles. He says to her northerner, dont send missiles at us. Certain kind of words without bloodshed to hold off on the missiles. They are plugged into this but the power of that is it so easy to not acknowledge it. In the 19th century they studied rhetoric. People like Joshua Chamberlain from the famous the professor of rhetoric. They literally studied how to use words to mobilize populations. We kind of let that go into early 20th century, and ive got on the back of the shelves and holsters the books on famous orations in history. From the 19th century. You can take these home instead. The fact we are permitted that to be the study of it to be forgot but that also for it to be deployed by people who are acting in such a way that most americans are not aware of it is really deeply problematic. I saw today there is a a new ad out from the Trump Campaign that is really, really misleading, chops all kinds of stuff up and does all kinds of stuff that is not historically accurate and makes people sound like theyre saying things that they are not saying. I was going to give a great example, both you and i both know were so what use a quotation and was entirely i accurate except he took out the word not in which just had hes like its true. Except for the little word not which kind of matter. One of the things i really focus on is the difference between image and reality and how people can tell if somebody is being manipulative or not. One of the things i lay out in how the south won the civil war was one should get this us versus them at my work is all based, theoretically based on eric coffer who wrote a book and you take a body of people. In 1951 and who knows what about the rise of hitler and mussolini and he said and how they managed to rise. Who cares how they rose . Every generation is hitless and misleading. What you cannot is why in certain areas people will listen to them because theyre always there at how the rise at certain times . What he argued was once youve done the as and then think, that is absolutely done by language, then you have to weaponized it. I went from that and came up with 1850s these four stages of how you go from it in my interest to create an us and them, to have that turns into first a societal view of yeah, we have enough of them and us is better than others to religion, society, all those things. And then them, they probably shouldnt vote and once they cant vote they really shouldnt have any power. Present you read a point where if the people who are defined as the others are still having a sense of sight you killing it. Its a four stage process and the question of how do you know when youre being manipulated . How do you stop the process . I think is one that speaks directly to this moment, and i wonder, i know you have ideas about that and i think thats probably an important place to go. How do people know that they are being manipulated . Its a really good question. Its probably the most consistent question that my students asked me when we are studying political history. In my class i am mostly look the late 18th and early 19th century so even look at founders who are supposedly great men who say reliable things, but inevitably if youre talking politics and words, students get to point with the get confused and they basically say outright what you just said, which is how do i know what to believe . How do i know, what did these people mean what he was saying and when are they saying things just have an impact . How can a judge when youre being politicians or when youre being sincere . The fact that ask tell you a lot about politics. Its that fuzziness that is the engine of it, so to speak. In part my answer the question always has to do with being aware of details surrounding context, not letting yourself respond in the way youre often expected to respond which it if someone says something to you and you get swept up and response, rather if youre able to sit back and think about who do they think theyre speaking to . What outcomes might you do wanr not want . To really focus on the details which innocent is what i teach as as a historian teaching history majors, its all about thinking about evidence, able to think about evidence, what it is, what it means and what the circumstances are that might shape its meaning. Its a a tricky question at a kansai sit here someone say, thats totally you know to believe that. Sometimes you katella sometimes you cant but you have to think about it before assuming something. I think particularly now when technology, technology always shapes democracy and unpredictable ways and by the one of the things it is doing is making it even harder than normal to decide what the facts are. Even as insidious think we need to step back and consider circumstances, sometimes its hard nowadays to know what the circumstances are. Its confusing. I guess i would say that confusion is truth and reality is ultimately part of what creates a particular kind of moment in politics. So i say, tell my students come certainly would always do the who, what, why when where and all that but always talk about two things, and when is step back for a second, like do you really think that your neighbors are keeping babies in the basement . Step back for a second or two really think that this wouldve happened . So much of what we hear is, we see this in a config discourse for some in the present moment so much what you hear youre like oh, my god they are going to did you say really . I know i love these people like that. Ive met a lot of people in my life into my knowledge none of them ever, people in barrels in the basement. That scattered not normal behavior. Thats the first stage. The other thing i always talk about and its funny im telling you that because, because of this pandemic i am sitting on property that belongs once upon time to the woman who told me this. She is long gone. She was born in 1896. She was come when i was young, i care a lot about how people think about stuff, and i would come to her house and i would say the republicans believe this and they do this. She would say heather, who is giving the money and he was giving the money . I was like no, no, they cared about this. Heather, who is getting the money and follow the money, follow the money. That the other thing that we see all the time is people sensed up to you and say, is this real . Is this real . This is terrifying. Is this real . Fake about who is making the money from that. You can see this thing, i see this all the time. I get emails saying you will say the thing to do because you are so highly paid. Like, seriously . I make a very good living but the idea that somehow sean hannity is telling the truth to them and i am not a a cuss i ao wellpaid . Its like how much is on the internet . I promise you as a College Professor i am not giving sean hannity a run for his money. You might want to sit there and say, plus i still do my day job, you might want to sit there and say who is making money from this particular video . Who is going to stand again not only from the propaganda also from the legislation that is being put in place . I could see her and tell you that im doing fabulous things for the farmers in iowa, but you might want to look at what im doing and not what i am saying. Because i can say anything. I can tell you its snowing outside. That doesnt mean it is snowing outside and thats one of the important things i think both the 1850s and the present bring really to the table is if youre not going to be swept up in this emotional language, how to step out of it . I think both of those eras talk about really examining whos talking and why. What emotions its treating injured. Doesnt make you feel angry and afraid and miserable or does it make you feel hey, i could do something, im in power. Thats an important distinction. Also is a believable . Was a really be sharia law in oakland . I was a waitress in oklahoma. I dont think ever anybody even talk about sharia law. I dont think i ever saw anybody who would have brought sharia law. That was one of those ones that made the rounds and you thought really . Really . Sharia law in oklahoma . If it happened i would go see at. [laughing] right. Often, in one way or another its a way to plug in to the ground is to ask that kind of question, is to ask, just recently someone on twitter was proclaiming about all exes are people who are like this are all like that, theyre evil and it out for no good and only out for money at blah, blah, blah. My response was, so am i evil . If i do is like that, we engage all the time. And i no, youre not. Okay, so who are you talking about . Why are you saying that . What interesting about what you just said is, on the one hand, its the way to decode and process something but you can also see how it might feed into conspiracy theories, right, and thats one of the big sort of detracting problems of this kind of moment that we are in now that the 1850s the 1850s were,e 1790s were windows a real us and then component and people really feel that something fundamental american is going to be decided. They want understand how and why things are working when did you and their almost more prone to come up with a conspiracy to explain to. Ive never quite understood that, because i am not a conspiracy person. I am a very kind of lets just keep asking questions into we get to the base of things. One of the things thats astonish me is if you want to understand conspiracy understand how things really work, they are everywhere around you. If you want to really get into something, go ahead and look at the history of the post office which is this entangled, complicated, fastening human story. Why are you manufactured something under so much real stuff . I was talking just yesterday about the lead up to the iraq war, and the group of neocons who organized for the projects of the American Century and i member hearing about that in the 1990s and thinking that its on the unit signed by them, by no crystal and all around so i who doesnt vote in the were and are back. I are people inventing conspiracy theories about what happen when you can sit there and say heres a group of people who launched this argument that after the cold war america need to reassert its power and needey so begin in iraq. They also heard about Donald Rumsfeld after 9 11 saying did we get enough to it Saddam Hussein . And me thinking thats a conspiracy theory. Of course once i i did the research he did. Callously said. I wonder that conspiracy theorist because like if you want to get really involved in step and look at the levers of power and how things change, its all right there. You dont have to invent something happening in a basement of a pizza parlor or the idea that somehow somebody planted a birth certificate in hawaii, or that Anthony Fauci somehow start Something Back with aids at a seven uncovered by a failed medical researcher. There is plenty thats right there dash. Theres no but that goes been simply like you know something no one else does. Its partisan people feeling not imperfect and what to say they know more than the experts. Some of the experts are cheating and they somehow know more just either own gut sense. Thats really deeply problematic because as a said to somebody yesterday, experts can be really prettily. We can i think you and are fairly approachable but certainly i in wit and im sure youve had experience asking what seemed like a Pretty Simple question to expert and they treated you like you were the stupidest, dumbest, like, you werent even an extension like. Its always mortifying. Some of it can be difficult but i dont think ive ever met a real expert who wasnt deeply and profoundly in love with the topic and in love with the truth. You have to be their friend, but the idea that somehow some researcher, some real researcher who is pulling down 30,000 to 40,000 bucks thousand bucks a year tops is working 80 hour weeks because somehow she is on the payroll of big pharma, is just nuts. You know . If you want to look at is on the payroll big pharma you can see that. The idea that somehow the poor researcher at university of nebraska is hard at some conspiracy is just again a real divorce from reality. Right. Its a a satisfying divorce because its plugging right into what and validates your assumption, plug it into emotions, creates a new, clerestory. Just saying, you have to find the facts, they get them out, understand how they fit together or dont fit together which is sometimes not that difficult to do. Its not as satisfying, and also the people who you talk about, including us, who are experts on the topic and passionate about it and want to talk to people about it and want to engage about it, what they are doing as experts is something that conspiracy theories dont plug into, and that is history isnt about clear story. Its the struggles that create whats happening. And the struggles are always more interesting than the storyline that we create because theyre neat and tidy and wrap things up in a bowl. The struggle in the fight and the complexity of the ambiguities, thats part of fastening part of history is finding them and immerse yourself in them and trying to look through the eyes of someone at the time to see how they are making sense of that. That some of what i love to do about history is, i did it when i studied dueling. How does that make sense . Two guys are met at each other and they go to field and one shoot at the other and then everything is solved. Really . People thought that was logical. Okay, let me dig around it to grant the logic of it because its really logical because theyre risking their lives for the logic. Its next up with things like reputation and political power and all these things get mixed in and it makes perfect sense, but it is far more interesting than what, they were mean and nasty and hated each other, as people, so they kill each other and what a rough time that was. That doesnt tell you anything about the time or about history. One of the things we do in history is people say either everything in the past this great or everything in the past was bad. Human beings are mixed and i think our history is next in one of the thinks about the polarizing language were talking about and want to emphasize polarizing language that is designed to create and sustain a power structure. One of the problems with it very clear nativelanguage is it takes away the ambiguity of what you and things really are. While theres a negative site with one of the things that always come that i find so powerful about American History is that your heroes come from nowhere. Like nobody as ic device tunes nobody wakes up one morning and says im going to be a real jerk today. Im going to go out and kill a bunch of people. They put their feet on the floor and this if im going to go out and protect my family. They dont see nobody ever sees himself as the villain. And less they are i guess is always a caveat of the most part regular people, the kind of regular people you talk about in the field of blood like your french guy goes into washington and hes just a regular guy skype. By the end of the book is caring again. He woke up and said im going to go about my day, and gradually he got radicalized. One of the things that pass its me but that is the opposite is also true. People put their feet on the grant and they say, itll sound going to go out and be here today. Think about and they say im going to go fishing today because ive got to put food on the table, or as you and i know so well, im going to go to work today because its my job to go to work, or my favorite, theres a great book called angels of the underground that it was a because its about the women during world war ii in the philippines. You read them in their sort of obit life and light, she did this as she did that and she did that, id hate to give away a spoiler one of them pecans i hate her because she goes to get enrolled by the japanese which is going to lead to everybody else to be encamped, incarcerated, she goes, i can but as she goes to be signed up where theyre supposed to be signed up. Just before the japanese do that she has a panic attack and she cant be there and a printer like just stay to minister right reverend you can go home. No, i cant pick up at the go. Because she has a panic attack she gets put in such a position that she is the only person who has not been rounded up, and shes terrified so shes in an apartment for weeks without being discovered as he watches the movements of the occupiers fulltime. When she emerges just information that nobody else does. But she did not wake up the morning of enrollment as a im going to be hero and refuse to be enrolled. Im going to spy on the japanese. She went, im going to go along with everybody else, then go home, have dinner go to bed. People are like where are our heroes . They are us, you know . You might be putting your feet on the ground today thinking you are just going to go downtown, and when push comes to shove and your to make a decision between doing whats right and doing whats wrong, if you choose whats right, thats the first step to being a hero. Thats the piece that i feel like this got lost in these sweeping narratives where either your good or you are bad. No, you are both. The trick is to keep choosing to be good. Well, right. When you look over the broad sweep of american [inaudible] is a tendency often among some people to try and find the golden period, the good period when it was all smiley and happened and got bad after that. Of course there is no golden moment. August 13, 1897. For ten minutes in the morning thats right. But that moment doesnt exist, right . There are always compromise is being made, always people making good choices and bad choices. The struggle of any country but certainly the american story is about some people having ideals and ambitions and hoping to make the right choice. Other people being motivated by Different Things. Some people unable to proceed possibles, of the been able to. They bang up against each other and choices are made in the story moves on. There is no moment in American History when you dont have the struggle and ugliness and ideals all bound up together in one big messy blob. Part of the challenge of being a historian is acknowledging that, allowing yourself to believe in the things that feel believable without painting something as perfect or golden or better here when you do that you erase the human struggle from history and that is what history is. Also the future. People making choices about where we go from here. Right. And how it will pass the moment that we are currently in. Right. Now, im glancing at the corner of my screen. I see a lot of people have been asking a question in a in a gel kind of the way, which is, we keep talking a history and the links to the present. Theyre asking and when we or another have civil war itself laid foundation for rhetorical shifts and ideological shifts that we see today. So lets begin there. How do we see, particularly this applies to your book, how [inaudible] this conversation is so good. Since youre making that pattern clear over time, how does the first period in your book may pattern for what comes later, and in particular what comes today . Thats a great question and i will be as brief as i can, but i do think it is a fascinating how to what i would point to his best the support and it is reconstruction. What happens in the civil war, i argued about but i also believe, is that there are two important things that come out of the civil war under what is within the Republican Party, the brandnew Republican Party, and that is on the one hand, you get a push for the inclusion of africanamerican men in the declaration of independence, in the idea that they, too, should have equality of opportunity not equality of outcome but of opportunity. You get that push during the civil war. You also get during the civil war with the Republican Party, you get a rejection of the idea that a few wealthy men should run the country. You get the idea that the government itself should be the government of the people, by the people and for the people. That plays out in ways we can do forget today. It plays out obviously in the inclusion of africanamerican men in that definition of body politics but its the homestead act which offers free land. Its of course American Indian land, but the land to farmers to grow crops and to make money and to be upwardly mobile. We get the establishment of our public university. The dissolution of the department of agriculture which is assigned to get really good seeds and regular farmers. We get that Union Pacific railroad act which is in the Northern Pacific which is inside to get people out to the Western Plains and to the western minds so they can join the mobile society. We get our First National money so people can do business over state lines which by the way joe anna theres a great piece on the field of blood when you guys try to get across the country and his is money doesnt work. Right. Best money ive ever seen of that. You also get for the first time in American History national taxes, national taxation. So you get the idea that people are investing in the government and that government intern is doing something for the people, the people on the government. The government then takes care of the people who are investing in it. Thats everybody. Not just people buying bonds. Anybody paying what such a sales tax and it is income tax. Those are both invented during the civil war by the Republican Party. They have completely disintegrated during the walk and they might want to back but its clear that its long gone, you can never untangle anything that happened during the civil war. But they dont apply rights, what happened during the summer of 65 as africanamericans tried to enter the free Labor Society and work for their survival, they cheated, they cheat them, the women, they attacked the men, they kill the men and because of the black coast of the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 65, they cannot sue, they have no rights at all. Under those circumstances, they go to Army Officers who are empowered on the department that has been established in the army of bureau of refugees of abandoned lands, they say help us out, we worked hard and after three months of work they say we did not earn anything. And officers who are Army Officers get the area of the government that the congress chose to put it in, the officers of the language of the bureau of refugees, they freed them in abandoned land in the summer of 665 is known as the freedman hero. About 70 of the time but 60 of the time. At that point, southerners, southern democrats start to say we can care about slavery after all, what we really care about is a giant federal government that is telling us how to treat our people. This is going to change over the next three or four years and republicans in congress try to guarantee the africanamerican men have the ability to protect their own rights in the civil rights legislation and by establishing federal courts under the primavera they said you cannot do that because a White American men are not labeled by name in any legislation because it was written for them. He said youre giving rights to black man that youre not giving to white men. Then he said something huge, he said what youre doing is creating a giant federal government, a giant federal government that is designed to give rights to black people that white people use the word men that white men dont have. The only way to pay for the rights is by tax money, tax dollars. What you are doing is redistributing wealth from hardworking white people too lazy impoverished africanamerican. That language is in his veto of 1856 and by 1871, southern democrats based on racial issues, they suddenly say what is the latest worried about, the fact that theyre having poor people, the people who used to hold the field are saying how our tax dollars are supposed to be spent, it is right there that we get the use of the word socialism, all the papers talk all the time about socialism in the south and about how socialism has taken over america because state legislators and the federal government are creating bureaus and programs have to be paid for by tax levies and those things will benefit africanamericans and because africanamericans are impoverished after war, that will come from taxes on white people. Even today, you hear people screaming constantly on the Massachusetts State House two days ago, there was somebody saying that the whole idea of closing down society so we did not have to die from a pandemic was because democrats want to turn into the socialist state of america. What they are saying is any legislation that helps achieve equality of opportunity across society as a redistribution of wealth because its going to take tax dollars, has nothing to do a 20 century socialism in the ownership of a state ownership of production, it is right here from this area of reconstruction and it comes out of the civil war and i keep saying, and various articles of when reconstruction ended but you can make a good case of reconstruction when it still has not ended because were having the exact same conversation today that they had in the 1870s. A civil war by definition shuffles the relationship between government and the people in doing so scrambles the we. That is right. What youre describing is an ongoing battle for who the wii is, who is included and excluded from it and those are obviously highly significant questions, as some. They are more pressing than others them were in one right now and people who know that that is part of the battle going on and thats part of why its so personal, people are so engaged in that kind of away. It is so cool, this is what happened after world war ii, it was clear who the wii was, it was the g. I. From all walks of life, from the mexicanamericans who were the first to say, we should have a vote under Doctor Garcia and africanamericans of course in women, my mother was black, it is our government, we literally get to save democracy, it is our government, somehow that has broadly used of language and where the wii is a very small group of people who believe that they should control the wealth and the power in society for the good of the rest of us and that sounds very much like what slaveholders are saying and im not comfortable with that. Precisely. Im gonna switch because we were asked a question which talks in a sense about us and historians than it does about periods and i think its an important point to talk about. The question is, given what were doing right here in speaking to each other in speaking with a group of people in the public, why are historians at the current moment so eager to be public intellectuals, what is at this current moment that is inspiring some historians to step more aggressively forward to the public then moments where they might have done that in the past . I am not sure i can answer that, it is not been my experience that theres many people of our generation doing it. There is the twitter historians but literally you can count on a maximum of two hands, younger historians have always been involved in the public sphere because there are not any jobs in the academy. But i sound like eric here, joanne and i have both been public intellectuals for most of our careers, it is that nobody pays any attention. The letters from the american, i did not i did not wake up one day and put my feet on the ground and say im going to write these letters, i was painting my house and got stung by a Yellow Jacket and im allergic to them. I had to observe and i did not have my epipen i had to observe the reaction and i started writing about politics and the next thing i knew, everybody was asking questions. So that was born and it was very funny at one point i wrote an article, i did not have enough time to write an article for a newspaper anymore but i wrote in a place in the guardian right love to write and i written for many years, its great that they discovered you. But i think its an a moment where we recognize that we have for too long paid attention to a narrative that was not rooted in reality and what historians have is in many of our children and family members who probably say they have too much of, it is reality insane thats not what happened in 1954, thats not the way cleveland was, i think people love to hear our real story, how did we get here and how can we get out of it. I think that is the thing that historians bring to that conversation the other commentators dont necessarily. I will often joke that i have a double brain at this particular moment a part of my brain is looking at whats happening and thinking broad pattern. In thinking about what has happened and think about why it happened and be i in and historian, some part is imagination the other part is i have a sense of urgency and im thinking like a historian. I do think theres a different sense of urgency to this moment and you are right, both of us have been engaged in talking to the public forever but theres an urgency to this moment that is different or feels different so thursday morning they do an online webinar where i talk about looking at the past and i talk about how you can use the tools figure out the present. I was driving myself crazy trying to think of something i could write or do that would get people to ask Smart Questions about the present. That was only thing i can think of, as a historian, i struggle with history and i do it on a computer and a webinar and the one to hold it has taught us things about technology. I do think the moment that has added urgency to the equation of things and help structure how science and generally and how public minded historians think spieth engine entered. Reporters are different than you and i that we find it frustrating when you get an article and is says i making this up, joe smith, director of the office of something youve never heard of, a document that pertains to something that you never heard of and some congressperson, some important congressperson said im going to cut his mother off at the knees and youre like what on earth just happened, a lot of what i do is literally saying here is a player, here is the larger story of why this play matters and heres how it might come out, people complain sometimes they dont go into a lot of stuff but if you actually literally took the post that i write and you took out my explanation of who each person is, i bet there is probably 50 200 words and every one of those post and its just to the players are. If you took out what the play is, that an actual analysis comes down to probably less of what i write every night but the whistleblower with rick right, the first time i saw that last night i remember this, i remember this i remember that name, i remember there was a whistleblower complaint and i remember it was somebody important. But so many of the articles say wait a minute it was a back story, i know there was a back story, i wrote about the back story, i think thats why were important, right now we can say, here is the context and heres why it matters. And really theres not room in newspapers to do that. Washington is doing well but there too long because they do it for every single story and you like i have a job, i cant read a thousand stories every day. I do a great job with that but really no one can read that much stuff on each particular thing. The study of history is about context. We are primed to do that sort of thing right at this moment. And its the stories, people are sending me wonderful wonderful stuff about mathematical models in the really, really interesting but its hard to make a mathematical model, life. And we have the story to make it come alive. We have in a sense humanity and what can touch you more at a moment of change that feels unsettling and people who could connect with the humanity of the past and humanity of the present and try to make sense of it in a way that is sincere and comes from your own attempt to figure it out. Its all that that stuff makes perfect sense to me. I will flip things, this is a good question in turning things on a tight kind of question. I think we should address. We have talked about it in particular, you talked about conservative, cuppercaseletter conservative, doing things with language to shape luppercaseletter, what people think of luppercaseletter liberals, is there some liberal counter language, this is happening on both sides and if it is, are there similarities, differences, how is the reverse working . This is a huge question but its a fabulous question in there is a whole book to be written here. This is out there. This is a great question because i think joey and said something that is really important, this is absolutely what the new book is about that one of the things that has been powerful in america since the 1980s is the degree to which the Movement Conservative language has dominated everything, even the democrats got swept up, the new democrats got swept up into the idea of market sources controlling things and we ended up with a nation that is in such a place that it really was shaped along an ideological view, even if you are speaking against that or saying there are not weapons of mass destruction in iraq, even if you were doing those things, you were still reinforcing the space that that rhetoric had caused. What are the big projects that im engaged in and that people are saying what can i do, one of the things that im engaged in and for my study of history is to develop a different language to say yes its us versus them in my includes people who want equality of opportunity, people who want to use the government, not to put money at the top up put money at the bottom. And to make sure people can work a job and make a enough money to support a family. In my us looks very much like the us of the 1950s, of the eisenhower years except i would hope that my us is more inclusive, i think you could get into a big argument of what eisenhower was up to but theres no doubt that the 1950s were not exactly a dock you time for people of color or women or whomever. If i am right, the language controls politics and power and if joann is right that it controls it that has deeper Human Emotion and an american value, the way that you change history is by changing our language and when you use the word patriot and you dont mean somebody screaming and 70s face at a steakhouse and he gets in his truck and goes off to work to support his family and the changes the association of Words International narrative and is what changes history, people speak up, say what you believe in, say what things matter because that is what is going to change history and change the moment were in a people feel good about being in america and not feel like it means hating and killing and destroying and dominating but building up and working together and creating a society where everybody is calling about opportunity. Is there another narrative, there has not been since fdr and i would argue this is important but its not been one for today because it to was nail centered and really racist. And sexist. But we have the space to build our own new narrative in this to me is a great excitement of this moment. We are in a crisis and we get to decide what comes next, we get a put our feet on the floor in the morning and say im going to make the next right choice, while it sucks, i would rather be seen sitting on a hammock reading a book, its a really exciting time to get to choose the future. Is also a moment when were being called upon inches to think about processes, to appreciate process of government and to appreciate how the constitution on a basic level structure, what does it mean to have branches of government and what are our checks and balanc balances, what are the Different Things of being a citizen has met over time, how does our politics work, what is the process itself, i think what were experiencing right now is people who are not plugged into that and as a historian, some of what im experiencing is the need to step forward, the process matters, the how matters, if you cant trust elections, just a simple process which is to say there will always be 100 honest or it will happen smoothly, if americans cannot step back and say we believe in the process of elections and oversight and if it goes wrong, theres a way to fix it. What process comes in its place, we talked about this before, but when i talk about the founding and its very tempting when you talk about the founding, iuppercaseletter ideology and big thoughts, thats one conversation, if you asked them at the time, what the most valuable contribution was, some of them even said so outright, they would tell you the process that they created, right now madison says that jefferson says that theres going to be all kinds of crises, we cant even imagine what theyre going to be in the future but were setting in motion a process with the constitution and the convention itself which people in a room debating in a way that we wish, there are things that i would hope they would say differently but still. Putting a process in motion that during the time of crisis, you can refer back to that and have a platform so you can find a way out that is part of a shared agreement on how this nation works. I feel like we lost the process and were so used to things being unprecedented in president and in many ways and right now were losing the touchtone and its a really important one. Thats what happened in the 1850s and now in the past three years that were destroying the process, once you destroy the process, the pieces are there for anyone to pick up. This is the ultimate outcome in the 1850s the course that when the people who did not like the process did not get their way, they simply said we are done, were taking her marbles and going home, its from watching things being destroyed around us today, what is the outcome of that and i talk about this all the time, if you dont have that group of bureaucrats, the people who are loyal to the government or to the state, not to individual, then you become a group of oligarchs, you are beholden to ever hold the reins of power and you have no means of reclaiming that because at the very least, even if you replace that person with your person, you still dont have a disinterested process in place. Thats the other thing we desperately need to do is protect elections but also protect nonpartisan civil service, the ones loyal to the state. There dedicated to the state and process. I think on that note, we will pull her selves around two pathways that certainly lead to progress and i think along the lines of what youre saying, it is tempting to experience this moment and think either everything is going to be fine or we are done, i think part of the spirit of what youre saying, we still matter as the public, this is a moment of extreme contingency, what we do matters, its a moment of possibility and contingency and thats a positive and encouraging message to pull out of this moment. Amen, thats the way to look at it. But its also the moment to realize that democracy is not a spectator sport. And this is been so exciting to see so many people get involved in the process that you and i have loved and are own private ways for many decades, it is also a moment to recognize really that democracy is about us and we need to step up to the plate and decide what we want to do, what were okay with and what were not okay with. For the terror of this moment it is one of extraordinary possibility. Absolutely. I think it makes sense to in there, i want to think everyone out there who has been watching and engaging in this conversation and look towards the Historical Society for mark programs now that when the virtual universe, who knows what will happen at any rate, thank you all for coming, ive had great fun today. Thank you joanne, this is been great and i hope we do many of these in the future and thanks to the Brooklyn Historical society and thank you everyone for having patience with what was not probably what you expect and seems to be a much more fun thing to do and if you want to follow along with the actual book, i do do my own facebook series, im on the sixth week and that will be archived on youtube, as soon as i get the time to label the videos. If you felt like you did not get enough on that particular thing, it is available elsewhere as well. Thank you very much joanne, it was totally fun. I will add my last commercial advertisement, those of you that are interested in my conversations about looking at history in applying it to the present, every thursday morning at 10 00 oclock, they are live at an archive at mc hc. Net back conversation. I cannot believe you remember that. [laughter] thank you guys. Tonight on book tv look at bestsellers and awardwinning books beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern author eric larson discusses the splendid and the vile, that looks at Prime Minister Winston Churchills leadership during the london blitz. Then James Patterson and his latest book on the politics of the kennedy family. Later the announcement of the 2020j Anthony Lukas prize, the winners announced during this Virtual Event including carrie greenidge and her book black radical, and alex which is an american summer, watch book tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan2. Having lived through a loss of confidence, a wave of cynicism that has left us unable to trust what we are told by anyone who calls themselves an expert it becomes very difficult to rise through a challenge like this, our first reaction is to say they are lying, their only in it for themselves and a lot of our National Institutions have got to take on the challenge of persuading people again that they exist for us and theyre here for the country. Sunday june 7 at noon eastern on indepth, a live conversation with author and American Enterprise Institute Scholar and its a time to build, other titles include the great debate and a fracture of republic. Join the conversation with your phone calls, tweets, text and facebook messages. Watch indepth on book tv on cspan2. My name is kaylee and im a historian at the national museum, today i have the pleasure of interviewing caitlin about her book, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Im going to give you a second, she is a great stream of photos that shes going to put up for us so we can see as we discussed the book today. Let me see if i can figure this out. Here we go. This is just going to roll, nothing specific,. Enjoy the photos as we discussed