WITH Pod: Political Violence in U.S. History

More painting for me, and so more podcasts. I didn't think the most recent episode of Why Is This Happening would be as interesting as all the others I've listened to, but I was wrong.

The topic is political violence in the U.S. Congress, both in the country's early years and leading up to the Civil War, and the guest is historian Joanne Freeman, who has written books on both topics, including the brand-new The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.

Freeman spent 17 years sifting through letters and diaries of Congress members and staff to find details on the violence that took place over 30 antebellum years. Until now, only a few really egregious incidents were well-known, even to historians, because the details were euphemized or omitted in the official records.

Some of the most startling facts I learned:

• Representatives and senators, especially Southern ones, often were armed in the chamber.
• Southerners routinely used that, and sometimes their own physical size, to intimidate anyone who spoke against slavery.
• When the Republican party arose and replaced the Whigs, it was partly because they were willing to bring weapons and use the threat of physical violence, too.
• Possibly part of the reason the modern press is so hesitant to call Mulligan a liar is that using that word to describe someone led directly to being challenged in a duel.

Overall, I learned that my country's way of governing is historically and thoroughly grounded in toxic masculinity. When NRA-supporters show up armed to state legislative hearings, as they have in Minnesota and other states, or with open-carried weapons at the office of a legislator, as happened in Texas, they are throwbacks to this earlier way of doing things that we should all decry and work together to stop.