In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn ...
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In The Field of Blood, Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery. These fights didn't happen in a vacuum. Freeman's dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities - the feel, sense, and sound of it - as well as its nation-shaping import. The result is riveting - and it reveals fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
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Read in June of 2020, this story of men from the early to mid 1800s is relevant.
The subtitle contains all the spoilers; "Violence In Congress and the Road to the Civil War."
Southerners consistently unleashed verbal abuse on Northerners, even from their own party. And when the northerners yielded any ground they were branded as weak. Many examples given on these tactics in a well written and researched book.
But as the topic of slavery became more frequent, the southerners had to both ramp up their bullying and back away as the northerners started using the south's tactics against them. Freeman gives good examples here too.
While researching an earlier book, the author came across info on the Cilley - Graves duel in 1938. This got her thinking about how Congress was conducted in the antebellum years. Apparently Antebellum is a misnomer as it means, "before the war". Congress and the Senate had been in skirmishes since the 1820s.
Many groups use these bullying tactics today, most not in Congress even though they bicker childishly too, but we are not as far removed from a violent split as we might think we are. Lessons to be learned here.
Finally how can anyone help but appreciate the fact that a book about what lead to the Civil War was authored by a historian named Freeman.
