[applause] [inaudible conversations] up next on booktv, after words with guest host Matthew Continetti editor of the Washington Free begin. This weeks Heather Cox Richardson and her new book to make men free a history of the Republican Party. In it she discusses the once republican belief articulated by lincoln that government is supposed to promote Economic Opportunity for all. She explores the parties repeated abandonment of that principle in the 20th century and its return to its roots after every economic collapse. This program is about an hour. Host hello i am Heather Cox Richardson editor of the Washington Free begin and you can follow me on twitter at continetti. Today we are going to discuss to make men free a history of the Republican Party. My guest is professor Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College. Welcome professor. Guest thanks for. Guest thanks for having me. Host how long have you been teaching at Boston College . Guest this is my fourth year at Boston College but ive been teaching since 1987. Host what class did you teach . Guest politics and economics but pretty much anything they want to throw at me. Host what is the most unusual course you have taught . Guest a course in the history of comic books in the 1970s. Host preparing a second book on comic books . Guest no. Host why a book about the Republican Party . Guest im a scholar of their broken party. I studied economic and i teach in American History so moving into the 20 century the Republican Party seemed a nobrainer. Host when did you have an idea of this particular but . Guest im going to have to go with 1987. I wrote four books first to really get the 19th century under wraps and i taught again for a couple of decades but its been in the back of my mind for a long time. Itll be interesting to move on after this one. Host thats right so it took you much of a decade or more to write a . Guest took me more than a decade to think about it. It took me four years to write it. Host who would you say is the intended audience for a book like this . Guest is intended for a popular audience. It is theoretically informed that you would not know that reading it. Its a bunch of Great Stories that tell the largest issues of the american past in a way that i hope its fun and adjustable. Host how would you describe your own politics . Guest i am a historian. That is how i would describe my own politics. People who read my work from the left insist that im afar ready and people who read my work from me right same a far lefty. Im historian and i look at what happens and i say what happens. Host would you say many republicans are on the faculty at you see . Guest i dont know they dont really talk about it. Host they are just tight to their profession. They dont really have politics . Guest i think we divide politically according to issue. I dont know how people vote nau. Host what is your sense of the student population that you have been teaching . Have there have been any political shifts among students . Had they been more conservative in the 80s or in more liberal today . Guest thats a good question. Im not entirely sure i could make a statement on that because of course if you look at the students who come to u i get enormous numbers of republican students who are about who are up with a republican in and say im a republican like you which i answer a math professor who studies history so i dont think i have a very good sense of what the young people are doing right now because they are selfselecting to work with me because they think a mother right. Host im struck by you saying that you dont really have a political bent. The final chapter this book the conclusion is they were both toward barack obama at least from my writer and a reader. That was the sense i got. Is it fair to say . Guest hes not in the final chapter. Host you in the conclusion i believe. Guest has assembled. Host what you think its fair to say you are a supporter pam . Guest its interesting the final chapter was very difficult to write. In fact i found myself my footnotes for that chapter in the original draft and the original draft started around well over five or 600 footnotes in that one chapter which i think amounted to 30 pages. At one point im amassing more and more evidence because i wanted to make sure it was crowded. And if i were studying the 1920s are the 19 teens or the 1880s i would have stopped amassing evidence a good 400 sources ago. Its time to quit. This is what i think happened as a historian. I think its right and i suspect you will disagree with me. Host we will get there. Guest it is well sourced. It was never intended to be a diatribe in much of this book came out in very different ways and i expect them to. Some of my favorite president s ended up not being my favorite president s anymore and some people i didnt really like at all i ended coming up a really short. Host what most surprised you during the writing of this but . Guest i think what most surprised me was the panic of 1983 and how it happened. I think what also surprised me was and this may shock people by how relatively important watergate turned out to be. Watergate for me was what got me into political and economic history. It was huge in my life when i did a book proposal i expected i would have an entire chapter in watergate. The original draft was going to hinge on watergate and when you look at the sleep of American History watergate is very important but it is not anywhere near as important in the scheme of American History as i thought it was. Before we turn to the book what conservatives or republicans journals or magazines do you read or draw from in the composition of this book . The biggie in the 20th century is of course is the review. Personally i read fairly widely across the spectrum. Host and you are going to the free beacon everyday i assume . Guest actually go to the Weekly Standard and the National Review. But i will start. Host i hope so as soon as this interview is over. Why dont we just begin with a very general question which is how would you summarize the basic thesis of your book . To make men free . Guest theres a large thesis in the book and that is one of the central themes in American History is the conflict between the declaration of independence in the constitution. The declaration of independence set for the concept that america is a land of equal opportunity not of equal outcome but of equal rigidity. It was a great principle, the principle on which they rally to fight the American Revolution but it was not the founding law of the country. But the binding law was the constitution by the time the Founding Fathers were writing the constitution they were concerned for Something Different than they were when jefferson wrote the declaration of independence. They were concerned about the protection of property. That became another founding principle of america the protection of property. The conflict between equality of opportunity in the protection of property has never been fully resolved in American Society. The Republican Party i argue was the political arm that set out to resolve that profound conflicts. So theres a thesis about their book and party but the larger question is a question for america whether or not they care about the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or any party at all and that is how do you resolve the conflict between equal opportunity in the protection of property both of which are legitimate and very important founding principles for this nation. One question i had while reading your book gives why not write another book about the Democratic Party . Guest you know i am fascinated by the Democratic Party so the issue here is that i liked the 19th century and the democrats in 19th century not very interesting. Some of them are and i can certainly talk about the democrats but the democrats are much more interesting in the 20th century which to my mind is not as interesting as the 19th because its a different set of questions. That does come across in the book to match your knowledge of postcivil war history, very impressive and the passion comes through as well. You mentioned this tension which i also identified in your book between equality of opportunity and the Property Rights in the protection of property. I guess i have two questions. One is typically those are not seen to be in conflict and kind of taking a step back talking about small al liberalism. These are a foundational concept to thinkers like john locke were the Founding Fathers. So my first question would be wide of the conflict . My second one would be mutually in american political discourse its not so much equality versus property as a quality versus liberty. So why property instead of liberty . First of all because its property of the constitution versus equality established in the declaration of independence. To put this in the american context locke place in funny ways america and is not americas Founding Fathers just to be clear. Host but you would agree on blocking ideas. Guest not on all lucky and ideas but that being said in the american context one of the factors in play here in addition to the conflict between the party of opportunity and protection of opportunity is expansion and expansion into the American West. You can come up with new ways to construct a society that has limited space and you can argue about those ways and nothing will have changed as long as you are not expanding. Once you add expansion today, but conflict so as soon as the American Revolution is underway and there is a law that the americans cannot cross the appalachian daniel boone does it in because across the appalachian from virginia to kentucky opens up and tacky and we have this new concept of what an American West is going to be. Once hes there in kentucky and for various reasons that filters back to the east coast of virginia and affects people like Abraham Lincolns grandfather once people start to point to kentucky what happens is a complex a very explicit obvious conflict, its not a state actually put a region in virginia and kentucky between the idea that poor man like daniel boone can go out there and make a fortune versus the slaveowners, the planters to come in and take over the legislature and take over the laws. So what the Founding Fathers say because this will take place in the 1790s. What they see as this conflict. Ken bennett actually rise in this new land or is that nuland going to be taken over by wealthy and in this case slaveowners who then change the law and manipulate the laws so that they are able to a amass land and property in their own hands . Host said the abundance of free land in the American West ignited this conflict between the strivers you know the go west young man followers, scrap the young entrepreneurs. Guest thats later, yes. Host versus what they are called during that time the slave power who also wanted to expand their economy into that so far unsettled land in the west. Guest yes. Im going to be a professorial here. What im looking for here is the ideological conflict if you will between these two quite legitimate quite important and quite fundamental principles. So what happens, you have the congress under the article of confederation you know they dont do a lot but one thing that they do that is very important in northwest oregon everybody pays attention to the lack of slaves with the northwest ordinance making sure there will be no slavery in what becomes the midwestern states that the first thing the northwest does is one of the things is trying to do to make sure that power does not get the mast in any group, not because they are objecting to the idea of people having stock but because of what that does to the concept of democracy. If a few people get too much and of course in this area the numbers we are talking about are ridiculously small but they looked very big in those days. If a few people get too much they will bite the press and they will buy their own representation in the legislature to congress. Once they do that the laws will change so that individuals will no longer have a say in their government and they will not be able to have equal access to resources to be able to rise write on their own. The whole concept of government which is what they are talking about most period they are not talking about individual wellbeing or what is socially good burn it out there talking about a concept of creating a new type of government. That whole concept will collapse. Thats a concept that the Founding Fathers are struggling with if the northwest agency is based on but they are struggling within that foundational period period. Lets turn to the creation of the Republican Party. What role did the kansas nebraska act play in that . Guest the kansas nebraska act as my favorite event in American History. Its as the first event i ever memorized. Its one of the few that i cannot come up with. The kansas nebraska act is central and the reason for that is the kansas nebraska act is 1854. It passes in the spring of 1854 and its anonymously important because it is the act that passes congress that condenses northern man, north and men on the make that there is the slave power that you mention, that the country really is in danger of falling into the power of a very small class of slaveowners who are going to monopolize the executive legislative branch and the court and it passes the nebraska act which negates the compromise that guaranteed that the northwest a huge huge piece of land would stay free and be accessible to poor man. That is now going to deal with slavery and lincoln said its only a hop skip and jump until slavery is national. After the passage of the kansas nebraska act to the house of representatives in may of 1854, the people point to wisconsins birthers is this really cool meeting that takes place in washington in the rooms of Edward Dickinson from massachusetts and another member of the house of representatives and he is a fun character because his daughters emily dickinson. She actually follows him to washington. They meet in their rooms and a select boarding house and they take that pick babraham is the boarding house has the best food in washington. 30 guys come together centralized actually around a group of three brothers who in congress at the time and they come to that meeting from a number of different parties but they leave that day saying we have got to start a new party that will stand against the slave power and they began to call themselves republicans. There are meetings all over the country against the kansas nebraska act that may feed into what is the Republican Party. But that meeting in dickinsons room at the boardinghouse of those 30 minutes the germ of the Republican Party. Its wonderful. Imagine those guys. Host i want to talk to about kind of the two men identified as something that pulls in your book. The first is Abraham Lincoln and the second is James Henry Hammond. Im going to start with lincoln. What do you most admire about Abraham Lincoln . Guest i most admire about Abraham Lincoln is his brain. I think is one the brightest america has ever produced and eisenhower is another who has never gotten his due. And disability to figure his way through a problem without taking things personally. Hes an exceedingly bright band up against an impossible situation who manages to walk a nice edge for a very long time. Host of course he study geometry and apply the method of reasoning based on the book to the problems of the day. Fascinating. Guest logic matters. We dont teach logic anymore and we should because logic matters. Host lets turn to James Henry Hammond. Hes a figure that i was not familiar with their forwarding your buddy comes on to take on great historical historical importance. He was a senator from south carolina, he was a democrat. Why was important . Guest James Henry Hammond is a fascinating figure. You did know him, you probably just didnt know his name. He gave the speech that i talk about called the mudsill speech where he goes on to say cotton is king and we will win if we go to work because everyone eats cotton. Hamilton hammond is almost a cartoon character in a number of ways. He was sexually abusive not only to slaves but often too who were extraordinarily wellconnected and i was part of the wade hampton family. He had a very different view of america than men like Abraham Lincoln. He believed that the way a Healthy Society worked and mind you he was moving in one of the wealthiest societies in the world at the time. Southern slave owners were enormously wealthy. They were welleducated. They owned beautiful paintings that they had on their walls and i mean rembrandts. I dont mean once their daughters did. Host my daughter did a painting i have to say and its a beauti