BackStory; Divided States of America? The History of an Often Disjointed Union

major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor the national endowment for the humanities and the justice and rubber cornell memorial foundation this is the next ad welcome to back story the show explains the history behind today's headlines amazing collie i'm joanne freeman animators if you're new to the podcast all of us and our colleague brian balogh all historians and each week we explore the history of one topic that's been in the news today we're going to start off in philadelphia around seventeen thirty when benjamin franklin welcomed his first child a son named william it was a day of happiness for the franklin family but a complicated one we was illegitimate that the circumstances of his birth or on this day whatever his reasons i ended up adopting william mann beginning called himself an indulgent father an from all we can tell i think he was that's

historian she'll ask him he was the kind of father that i think also there's probably are going to get my kid but i never got what i was growing up and what are the people who you observed benjamin and william e in england when they were there together said ah this is to our current low light more like companions then a father and son i and i think other people observed the same thing by the time we reached adulthood father and son had become close political allies while benjamin was away in england his postmaster general william was appointed royal governor of new jersey in seventeen sixty three and despite the distance they looked out for each other's interests on both sides of the atlantic moderate in their politics band and william shared a love for the king as did many loyal subjects and did everything in their power to support the british empire but as things started to unravel between britain and america so today the

relationship between benjamin and william in seventeen seventy four benjamin was fired from his position in the british government as postmaster general and william ever loyal to the crown so this is a blessing in disguise he hoped that this could pave the way for his father's triumphant return to america to restore harmony on the heels of what would come to be known as the boston tea party little did he know that his father's support for british rule was waning and he would write to him at of only were over here why don't you come home if you're a gay don't like you ever there anyway come on home and you can deal with these people who are are being absolutely irresponsible and radical and you're the kind of person to listen to you so come back home and you can do you compose back together again it's not too late and i sincerely think that he expected that that's what his father would do he saw his father as a moderate as somebody who always tried to mollify people and to bring

people together and when did you bring came home and was clearly going to be not only for independence but leading the fight for independence i think william was shocked i just don't think he was prepared for the ash after the revolutionary war broke out william new jersey's royal governor was arrested in seventeen seventy six and charged with being an enemy to his country so while benjamin work to spearhead the revolution william was held captive in connecticut where he was brutally treated and locked in solitary confinement because he was a gentleman they gave him quite a bit of leeway and so he got to ride around the country and yet he gave his parole that he wouldn't do anything that he shouldn't do and the corps violated his parole and started trying to stir up the countryside to support the king when the continental congress found out what he was doing they were furious and they were removed him to a no their jail and put them into solitary confinement and he remained there for almost two years his wife

was kicked out of their home in new jersey taken to new york she got sick she died william heard that she was near death and asked for permission to go visit her one more time and he was denied that as the revolutionary war of arranged to franklin's completely fell out of touch about benjamin almost certainly knew of his son's plight he didn't lift a finger to help him it was not until after independence that william now exiled in england reached out to his father in an effort to repair the relationship after the war william wrote to his father and his father had not yet left for home and william was in england benjamin was in france and william said basically the wars over new line i did what i thought was right you did what you thought was right i would do the

same thing all over again because this is their view taught me to follow my conscience and i did it but now that the war is over maybe we can meet again and let bygones be bygones and reconcile benjamin wrote back and said i've never been to so hurt by anything that anybody has done an answer to publish and humiliating way i will never forgive you ben franklin letter to william franklin august sixteenth seventeen eighty four nothing has ever hurt me so much and affected me with such keen sensations as to find myself a deserted in my old age buy my only son and not only deserted but to find him taking up arms against me in a cause wearing my good fame fortune and all life were all at stake you conceived you say that your duty to your cable and regard for your country required this

we are men all subject to errors this is a disagreeable subject i dropped and you felt deeply betrayed his son's loyalty to the crown was a mark of shame and as a national leader benjamin had a reputation to uphold they cite other only one more time after the revolutionary war eventually benjamin wrote his son out of his will it was a decisive and permanent break what william did he did so publicly he didn't just support of a king in that heat he headed an organization called the board of associate loyalists and i think today we would probably call it a terrorist group he said man throughout the countryside on missions to try to punish people who who had done bad things to loyalists and people know that obviously i mean these are two rather famous people and there were people who spread rumors

that's benjamin and william were in cahoots with one another that this is all a big show that they were just trying to make sure that no matter which side won a franklin would be in a good position and so it was an embarrassment to benjamin at a time when he was trying to negotiate very very fragile and delicate moves to get the french to support the war and then to make the war a success and william threatened all of that and eighty when he wrote back emmys mtv done this quietly if you just think a quiet supporter of the king i might have been able to forgive you but what you did in such a public way i can never forgive or are she was camped is professor american history at the university of mississippi she's the author of

benjamin and william's father and son yom our own we are our walls on today's show a moment in history when america was most of it will discuss a revolutionary war and the plight of loyalists advocates will also talk about how things you experienced american art to have a

lot of prohibition other evolution corbin william franklin apart the rebels the division extended much farther than the franklin family in fact the revolutionary war split society into three distinct categories its first estimate that around twenty percent of college for loyalist with allegiance to the crown twenty to twenty five percent were patriots who support the rebellion and the rest were neutral not interested in joining your side it secures the revolutionary war was more than just a fight between patriots in the british oftentimes american college took up arms against her own neighbours accomplish was as much a civil war as was a revelation so you at the time actually call it a sore and for good reason nathan though many loyalists fled to canada or england most stayed put america and that presented a problem the new nation's face to the question how should for loyalist be punished for their treason

and the civil war of the american revolution got especially out of hand in south carolina that's historian rebecca brennan because there are locals fighting locals and it's not a civil war in the sense of the american civil war were a lot of his regional and if you live in south carolina pretty much everybody you know supports the confederacy in nineteen sixty one and fight for the confederacy but what you actually have in the american revolution and south carolina is small pockets where one village might support the loyalists in the next village over supports the patriots in both sides they joined local militias bombed and they know the terrain and they know the people intimately in either use that to harass and terrify civilians in an effort to tamp down support for the other side and the end result is ever escalating warfare and atrocities so that sounds like a hard situation to overcome to

put the pieces back together after the war is over how does that happen requested and that's our lead to south carolina but if the war was so terrible how did they manage to live together afterward right on in part of the answer is very impeach in practices after the war army where they allow themselves space and time to get over their anger they initially have single out saddam loyalists for very harsh punishments they confiscate or take away all of their property they tell them they have to leave and never come back and they sort of make an example of a few prominent people and decor played more ordinary people having to face criminal justice trials in the courts and then they quickly decides to really bad idea to use our new court system and sort of fill it with all these

angry cases and so they start to be much more symbolic punishments and they start to back away from even that and one prominent serve public intellectual and judge in south carolina for the frames the whole idea as ohm of course it's offensive to justice but he says you do it like you throw a tub to a way all right you just have to throw a little blood sacrifice to the angry people and then you can move on and when they start to move on and they're looking for things like were these loyalists willing to apologize to their neighbors or their neighbors now willing to support them and say i made a bad choice in the war but they're good dependable people and this is this bold experiment in democracy in a new nation and we need a dependable people on our communities to help us make this work was as a good idea i mean they go through show trials for a few people but then what most people off was that the affair

with painting show trials or there's legislator wants to be seen to be punishing people and so they take away their property but two years later these loyalists petition an appeal and say you know my neighbor supports me now on a map so that really aren't in their given their property back in the vast majority of loyalists and that's offering no permanent home disability as citizens they get their property back and get the vote that in some cases a nylon devote though that the vote back within a decade on and become full fledged citizens what's amazing do the loyalists kind of have to have based themselves to achieve these ask questions because it's really hard for me to caption the political record and so i found it in some places have to base themselves in part because the patriots are really angry and apologizing as hard and i have one example there's this so young man elias ball and he he's trying to get the

support of his very prominent uncle henry lauren there was also a negotiator of the peace treaty that ended the war with britain had the lines to support him in his effort to get off this confiscation legislation and get his property back and he apologizes to retire soon we noticed was harry warren's writes a letter of tree finally accepts the third apology that he thinks that allies fall has finally been abject and nothing truly apologize for his political conduct enough and we don't have allies paul's letter we only have henry warren's letter afterwards saying you know what you did was wrong we knew the cause was on just which is you basically you finally put together the right combination of words it made me feel better grab jacked enough and milling is actually willing to support allies fall ahmed and support him in front of the south carolina legislature in the legislature gives allies all his property back so a little object apologizing can get you a law it

says it can't about that the culture of honor that people are looking to him for ritual agreement that they did wrong and what should apologize then answer like what we can move on i think so i went into the psychological research about timidly cause i'm a historian and i found this research now that shows that we humans are deeply program to seek what we see is justice swift beef it's deeply scarring just to see what we see is injustice in the sense that when we think we're going to watch somebody who really deserves it get punished it lights up all the pleasure centers in our brain same was that like alcohol and who came in a good coffee however it is not a feedback loop we were looking for however the

research also shows that i'm actually seeing the punishment even if we think it's just is an incredible let down the pleasure is in the anticipation it's not in the reality and i kept thinking about that and how often these patriots would talk about how angry they were would entertain apologies and i think that right there they're basically almost on to something that it's pleasurable to imagine the punishment but it's not so fun to really do now as part of why they out loud themselves to begin to empathize with the plight of the loyalists and move to being more generous with how long is this process take for them to come to that realization but the main thing is it doesn't take that long slow it takes two or three years for them to start really backing away from the punishments that it sounded so good in the immediate aftermath of the war and they start to give property back the loyalists have been really savvy and tried

desperately not to leave and in a lot of times they're living in the family house even though the state is threatening to auction it off and seller and it's hard to argue with some pitiful widow who's standing here in the door yes i know the law says this about how my support us to support my family and ps i'll show up on your doorstep i've got nowhere else to go in and all of this starts to work on in their suit i call them public intellectuals but they're sort of the jurist some politicians of their day you say let's think about this a little more jazz doesn't make sense from the we reveal the laws we want to create this doesn't make sense from the point of view of that political entity we wish to be on let's learn to live together and they also make the savvy point that it was one thing to expel people to drive them out is a whole nother thing to keep them within your nation constantly oppressed and

discriminated against and second class citizens and that that is a far more dangerous thing to do what's interesting about all of this may actually it's all interesting and surprising is that it may actually have been a good thing and a bad thing for it and that all this were given is an icon of swine flu process afterlife did you was and angola i think of this is on the one hand the american genius at work on our propensity for forgiving and then forgetting on the one hand it has helped us historically heal from these times when americans been very divided it makes our society more inclusive in the sense they were willing to forgive people who caught on the wrong side of a war had the wrong political opinions wrong being not a moral judgment to just to want for it right practice compassionate and with the aisle that for people we think are

like us and i've often thought that because south carolinians did an amazing job forgiving and forgetting and moving on from their civil war the american rebel they didn't learn the lesson that civil wars are awful civil wars are lasting that they rip society apart but there's no way you can guarantee that you can put society back together again and that they will go on longer and be more bloody than you can imagine there's a sense in which they're not tempered by their own history as they embrace conflict and divide leading up to the american civil war rebecca brennan is a history professor james madison university she's the author of from revolution to reuse and re integration of the south carolina use

there are many ways to explore the polarized politics of the nation you can stand back and look for broad patterns like electoral results are policy debates you can study the extreme rhetoric of accusations and the press in newspapers or on tv or you can get up close and personal with people in the midst of the fray and try to understand how they experience the divisions that tore at their world i've recently published book the feel the blood violence in congress and the road to civil war takes the latter approach exploring how congressman and their constituents north south and west gradually grew to distrust each other to the point of violence in the decades before the civil war one rather obscure historical character left behind a remarkable record of this growing polarization the correspondence and diarrhea benjamin brown french a clerk for the house

of representatives offer of remarkable personal account of a nation being torn into a small town boy from new hampshire the thirty three year old french arrived in washington and at thirty three to begin his career as a clerk and at first he was awestruck by the grand architecture and sweeping symbolism of the capitol building where he spent his workdays keeping records of congressional proceedings he arrived in these grand surroundings as an extremely loyal norton democrat someone who at the time what it called a doll face democrat willing to appease the south on slavery to promote his party and preserve the union although he disapproved of slavery he didn't wanna discussed better to leave the south to its own devices if his views seem confusing it's because they were even french himself had trouble making sense of them i am so much a free soil or as to be opposed to the addition of any more slave territory to this union but utterly opposed to the agitation of the question of slavery if it can be avoided and

although a pouring slavery in the abstract defending it to the utmost of my power so far is it is tolerated or justified by the constitution for a time french told this party line defending and pouring slavery and agonizing when congress dissolved into outrage over the issue for that reason the dramatic rise in anti slavery petition to the aging thirties profoundly alarmed him through the efforts of abolitionists male and female white and black and the american anti slavery society congress was bombarded by hundreds of thousands of petitions many of them undoubtedly process by french representative is a slave states responded by demanding gag rules intended to keep anti slavery petitions off the floor and out of discussion many a northerner supported this strategy french did to him abolitionists were fanatics who threaten the union survival the final cabral was overturned an eighteen forty four but america's war with mexico in at forty eight inflamed the nation

once a and the large swath of western territory that the united states didn't in the conflict meant that a series of new states would be requesting entry into the union and each request compelled congress to confront the issue of slavery head on when the new state be a slave state or a free state this debate wasn't a matter of calm policy disagreements it was he did and sometimes violent with southern congressmen using bullying threats and violence against their northern colleagues to protect the institution of slavery and promote the celts hold on the union for french this debate increasingly became alarmingly personal when he tried to gain courtship of the house and eighteen forty nine with his own party democrats in power centers in that party his own party gave a position to a southern waiting rather than trusting it to a northerner after years of loyal service to the democratic party

and years of appeasing and pleasing southerners but the trail stunned french the south had served itself and no one else southerners couldn't be trusted the shock of the moment spilled over into a letter to his brother one thing i have learned and i intend to make a note of it if a northern man will not bow and an apple and prostrate himself in the dust before they're hiding my years of the south he must hope for nothing i will see the south all day under to everlasting perdition before i will ever crook my thumb and forefinger or open my lips in their defense yet even now however even after losing all faith in yourself french remained a democrat though a wary one it took one more major piece of legislation over slavery to finally push him over the edge the kansas nebraska act of at fifty four created the territories of you guessed that kansas and nebraska but the act also did something else that caused a frenzy it

let voters in the territories decide for themselves their states slaves status when they applied for statehood eager even desperate to sway the outcome they're way anti slavery and pro slavery settlers poured into the territories it wasn't long before kansas became a hotbed of violence and corruption the kansas nebraska debate stunned french for many reasons the violence in kansas was bad enough but events in washington were equally alarming president franklin pierce a longtime friend of french's seem to be siding with southerners on the question of slavery and southern police were even more aggressively trying to silence northerners in congress for french there can be only one conclusion the kansas nebraska act confirmed a vast conspiracy the southern slave power seemed willing to use any means necessary to ensure the spread of slavery it is now perfectly evident that the kansas nebraska act was for the purpose of establishing more slave territory in this union which i

am decidedly opposed to as regards kansas there is a determination among the slave aaker say that the people of that territory shall not make it free if they are ever so much disposed to do so not only was the slave power asserting its dominance over the rest of the union but his own party the democratic party was facilitating this plot unwilling to put the north in thrall to the south and distrustful of the celts and his party's intentions french did something that he'd never thought possible he cut all ties with the democratic party as he put it in a letter to his former friend franklin pierce i am now a free man and traveled by party or personal obligations ready to do what may seem best for my country french wasn't alone in his feelings many northerners cut ties with the democratic party is powerful emotions fit into the rise of the republican party a party that

declared itself dedicated to fighting slavery and the slave power french put his powerful feelings on paper in a poem if the file continued to push that slavery promoting agenda and disunion might be necessary than what the union slide if or that freedom glorious for which our fathers died slavery must be victorious then let the union slide for tis not worth the keeping it for our fathers graves man shackled man is weeping the half his race are slaves let it slide then this great union pronounce the compact dead with the south no more communion of slavery still must spread there's land thank god for freedom north of potomac stride but the self keep slaves and read him but left the union slide the rise of the republican party brought to congress a new type of northern are increasingly nor there is elected congressmen who were ready and willing to stand

up to the bullies of the self these northern areas wanted their representatives to fight for their rights sometimes to literally fight and it's republicans got tougher the south got angrier after at fifty five pilots in congress surged to new heights seven congressman responded to the attacks on their standing and way of life with a vengeance insulting and assaulting republican congressman with gusto hoping to frighten or intimidate them into compliance or silence emotions reached a peak in at fifty six in response to the notorious painting of abolitionist sen charles sumner of massachusetts incensed over summers aggressive anti slavery speech on the floor later titled the crime against kansas south carolina rep preston brooks can fronted sumner at his senate seat and brutally kingdom northerners responded with outrage and shock a good many senators praised brooks for defending the honor and standing of the self detaining stoke the flames of polarization even higher

than the attack on sumner didn't occur in a vacuum there were a number of violent encounters in washington at that time that all boils down to congress' inability to deal with the problem of slavery increasingly congressman themselves through to distrust each other there was simply no telling what the other side would do to promote its cause and to feed its foes by the late nineteen fifties the vast majority of congressmen were armed not because they wanted to go and down their opponents but because there were simply no telling what their opponents would do fear distrust anger the trail inside and outside of congress emotions rose to new peaks from shared these feelings to the point that in eighteen sixty he decided to buy a gun not because he wanted to shoot down southerners but because he was afraid that he might have to to french southerner simply couldn't be trusted june tenth at

age sixty i went down in the city and bought one of those little pistols that i can carry my watch pocket for if we are to be bullied for our principles i think we ought to be prepared to defend ourselves i also bought two pairs of underwear a dollar a pair i have one pair of them on now they're very comfortable french had come a long way in his decades in washington eager and willing to do all that he could to appease the self and working to do just that for many years well liked by southerners as well as by people on the other side of the political aisle he was now prepared to shoot southerners if he had to and he wasn't alone mania norther came to that same starting point had us french back in at thirty three when he arrived in washington if he might ever want to shoot a southerner over the issue of slavery he would have been horrified if at sixty he was prepared to kill fellow americans if he had two policies politics political parties and their personal implications drove people of all

kinds to extremes inside and outside of congress fb no no no no no the prohibition movement emerged after the civil war and activists groups of the women's christian temperance union began painting family dysfunction poverty and disease on the evils of alcohol today the echoes of prohibition still ring out in western ohio where the city recently erected a sculpture that recognizes the divisions caused by the prohibition movement the sculpture is called the american issue it was done by matthew gray palmer and it's very

interesting because at the bottom there's a huge limestone boulder which represents the people of the united states and that the bolder is actually split and yet so there's a large wedge granite wedge that rises out of that so i kind of art is about wedge issues and that's what the united states army is so it's representative of that and on either side of that brand wags are quotes on one side are quotes that are for prohibition and on the other side are quotes there are gaps prohibition at the very top is a barrel that is broken apart and arm it actually has it's the one at the water feature water comes out of that and runs on either side of the wedge and the two

sides represent the idea of legislating morality on one side a high and that's that's for prohibition on the other side it's more about liberty and letting people choose for themselves it's so it's a very interesting piece and it is now there in front of our city building after the anti saloon league moved to west of a latino night quickly rose to the forefront of the temperance cause as a national nonpartisan organization the anti saloon league pumped out propaganda lobby politicians and partner with churches to pass legislation to outlaw alcohol i've actually resulting in the eighties amended in nineteen nineteen the other thing about the anti saloon way as alma debuted our big cities as odd places of ice that's historian beth white hart she says the anti saloon league appealed to emotion and sees an anti german sentiment or war won to promote prohibition and

that and they were made of us to a certain extent they look at the immigrants that were coming into this country who are going to the cities and many of them came from drinking cultures your germans you're irish your eastern europeans your italians and this movement was made up of earl a white anglo saxon protestant or so and what's interesting is they were not even four at om constitutional amendment in the beginning they felt that they could drive the country precinct by precinct are through the printed word and this nonpartisan approach and so they are they look at the census in nineteen ten and they've taken local option as far as they could i if you look at a map of the united states our most states in the union which they look

at and they printed day the states are in the rural areas were dry in your big cities odd that with the bastions of immigrants they were wet and they knew they were never going to get the city dwellers to use local option and drive themselves up so date shows in december of nineteen thirteen to throw their lot in with odd the douglas et un the prohibition party who have been calling for a constitutional amendment all along and i it's at that point that there's a big march on washington aren't they marched on our pennsylvania avenue today marsha the cattle they saying onward christian soldiers on the steps of the capitol they go into the gallery of the capital and they unfurl petitions with tens of thousands of names calling for a constitutional amendment so both give us some sense of the kinds of predator that the anti saloon league

was distributing they began to print forty tons of anti alcohol information and shifted from here every month and so when you get to nineteen thirteen they are really at the peak of this printing they have their own national and state additions of newspapers call the american issue they have their own magazine called the patriot ah and may have posters and flyers that are going all over the country and actually eventually around the world they printed and six foreign languages and once this country was dried up they formed something called the world big against alcoholism to try to dry up the rest of the world well my small goals you know they're very savvy because they look at the sentence of nineteen ten and the country was about forty six percent urban and the rest was rule and nay noe with the influx of immigrants into the country

that by nineteen twenty that was gonna fly up now they were already in control of congress and a lot of the state legislatures so this flap meant that when aa there was re apportionment that day might be on the losing end of that scene as a congressional districts change and really baker who was the obtuse region of the leak when they came to western will was very emphatic about cities and i just want to read one quote he says the vices of the cities have been the undoing of past empires and civilizations it is but at the point where the urban population outnumbers the rule people that wrecked republics have gone down in some sense of the general themes i can be teased out of the anti saloon league propaganda becomes emotional appeals are patriotic sentiment to try to tap into there's some

amazing things they've done there's one that says that the full father kills the father out drinking in this alone with his cronies and then below him and another inmate is a young girl at home she has tattered clothing waif thin legs the plaster is off the wall in the room a pain in the window is patched and they're on the mantle he is a very empty stalking so the whole saying on on the cartoon is a forefather an empty stalking its very heart wrenching there's another one this is daddy's in there and our shoes and stockings and clothes and food are in there too and i'll never come out and showing a young girl and boy standing outside the saloon doors and so they are excellent at framing that kind of appeal to our

emotions and i'm never saying they had leading and a world where one is kaiser is i'm a broad and boos at home must go why were german americans specifically targeted as one of the main culprits behind the supposedly scourge of alcohol can get some specific examples it up to the war and of course we enter world war one in april nineteen seventeen you start to see a lot of cartoons odd in their american issue newspaper that address odd their feelings about germans and they tie the germans to the brewing industry so for example there is one cartoon that has got it the title on it is killing two birds with one stop it has to buzzard's sitting in a tree on a branch one is label brewer and right next to him is another labeled

kaiser and then as a man who has a slingshot and he is labeled all of us and he is picking up a rock that is labeled wartime prohibition so they make the lake are between the german brewers and of course if you look at the names of the brewers in the united states' miller shalit rihanna highs are really really really i bet they're all german and so it's easy to make this glowing colors approach of bundling concerns for the business sector anti immigration sentiment and by thinking about rural america versus urban america all this together proved successful eighteenth amendment was passed in nineteen ninety and alcohol was outlawed for over a decade you have to tell me how things startup unravel for prohibition anti saloon league was very persuasive and they're printed word and a nonpartisan approach however i don't think we really know that the majority of people were on board with what ended

up as the total prohibition of both art to sell products and crude products uneven the brewers are were thinking that they would be exempt from the eighteenth amendment where they thought they'd be allowed to produce three to be and so they're not join together with the distillers to focus on the way they show at om so i think that right from the beginning it may have been doomed because it and former a lot of people in order to have this kind of legislation and and nationally i think that people thought well you know this may be good for our children and they make you know for less drunks on the streets all of these things but very quickly what they began to see is that organized crime and or the vacuum that was left by the removal of the salon and sosa was recently replaced by speech easy's and all

along the people who are for this in principle because it sounded good could see when i began to criminalize activity that a lot of people were engaging in that really were not harming anyone they began to have second thoughts and so when you get to the mid nineteen twenties you have a movement and gets to this when prohibition was finally repealed in nineteen thirty three after imagine that a pleasant west of ohio opened up a bar or saloon right away in november nineteen thirty three before repeal had actually taken a fact we voted ourselves dry the vital role our yeah we wasted no time at a final bow was one thousand sixty three against alcohol to four hundred citizens who wanted it and you know that

continued until january two thousand scientists and how the locals reactors are well some of us johnny on the spot to buy that first few years ago some people were happy about it some you know longtime residents saw this as a point of pride we kept the stride tradition going for so long cage as much as anything they would go outside the city and by alcohol to bring an odd to serve in their homes so it wasn't like you know one year drank because they did but they like the idea that there were businesses in their uptown business area selling at ii quite sure how many establishment we have in our business district now that sell alcohol that we're too wine shop so we have our own brew pub where they grew out of all and actually that establishment is called temperance row ah in honor of the homes

that were built by the anti saloon leaders when they moved our community all this recording yet joann if he can pick up a newspaper or literature phone without seeing evidence and worry about divisions in the country you know this recent election seemed really dramatize one more time just how divided we are it's hard to get some kind of historical perspective on that but i guess as for podcast is also curious let's be a surprise to the founders that the country seem to be counted coming apart at the seams like this i well i mean i thought i'd say yes and no

on the one hand they expected faction they expected conflicts they did not assume that the nation would sort of waft its way with clout like with no division at all you know they they assume that make scary is that as we've talked about in the show but what would surprise them and what actually begin to surprise them even within the first ten or fifteen years the government was the likelihood of there being national political parties that just wasn't on their radar screen sort of this infection would look like they'd be lots of them there are lots of factions there be lots of ideas and people in groups bouncing against each other and that out of all of that bouncing around there and debating uncompromising would come policy you know that that the idea of a national party first the parties at all organized parties made them nervous because in their mind a party without for itself and not out for the good of the nation which created debate if that's true or not but if the idea of having a national party with the power

and discipline and control that we're seeing today and then as a result of that the impact that that has on the nation as a whole that definitely would have given them so the ideas seem to be though that it was a temporary division a temporary fight and you'd be able to have a shake hands come back out the other side and and move on and was example the loyalist that we saw in south carolina a precursor of things to come or is a history left behind the thing i think there's one big piece about the low story obviously which is that in many cases when you have a pleasant south carolina with a black slave majorities all the concern about who gets to vote who gets to belong to the citizenry becomes pretty clear you want to make sure that you have your property owing class a white males call working it out ultimately the la mort state if they don't and i wonder about the extent to which human division like that between loyalists and patriots it's easier to

paper over if you have other kinds of division around disenfranchised and who gets to be a free holder those benefits of those it's almost as if there's an inverse relationship where the more political but as a patient is possible the more these divides become almost irreparable i'm not sure you have to look at the maps of how people voted in animal manure and you don't see the store coming until pretty soon before it does and he's yelling at the thirties and forties you know the patterns are party international and it looks like the parties are actually helping hold the country together along one actress as much as they are dividing across another exactly so obviously the civil war is the big granddaddy of all divisions going to say the enemy of all this way and i wonder about the extent to which you know we can look at the civil war and the fault lines and sharpens as a way to explain what happens in the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century in other words is there something about the restarting of who has power our who does it come as a citizen but the way was the country was redefining any number of variables about who got to again

belonged how we understand that it has set the terms for what becomes the political divisions of the late nineteenth and twentieth century he has a great point made i think what happens is that therefore they became years after the war and everything seems up for grabs formerly enslaved men not become citizens new constitution is written crossing out of state to the forty the mammoth redefined what it means to be american all those things happen in just a few years ago with the warden's meet at math but then fellows is the gravitational pull of white privilege end of the two party system reasserts itself and despite the war had those two the same two parties that have been there to be a war veteran controller with a lifeline and an afro american people are marginalized more with each passing decade to the beginning of the twentieth century so it's almost as if combat your original point joe and about the parties emerging to the surprise of the year of the founders the party's survive everything else you know

when the constitution seemed to be failing and when the constitution is really made the two parties are still they are kind of contained and channeling and amplifying the division so on one hand as the saying goes that americans voted the way they shot after the civil war the democrats you know stay the party of the south by lara republican state a party of the north by large and so the worm maintains its imprint that the two parties are constantly changing adapting to immigration to westward migration all these different kinds of things in their twenties or the great flier wheels that kind of disability american history or the grange is a division three fifths with a key dividing us you know what's fascinating about that is early on when one party for first coming into being people realized and they felt the absence of an organization that allowed you to corral all

kinds of people and spread a unified message and do all these concrete things that now we associate with party politics so it's those very things that i think initially people were excited that because it allowed them to pull people together just as we're saying here those are those are the precise things that the founding folk were afraid of being able to pull people together at the same time push people apart so if you're talking about belonging us which is kind of what were you started us off needn't have enough belonging as a talking about who has power and who doesn't i suppose it helps to be part of an organization that has long roots in a lot of horror and in the face of italy's it seems very challenging because as with the party structure is also stretches of propaganda communications and media rights i mean you can tune into fox news or msnbc and the information is going to be curated based on the local party that's behind that operation and it doesn't leave a lot of people are represented in spoken for

overall as we look at the dump in the grand arc of american history are you folks optimistic or chastened or worried or something else and should we take comfort from the fact that we always need or do we feel there were in some new era when the divisions are just too deep and too entrenched inflamed to overcome given the book that i just wrote about divisions right and i've been thinking a lot about other times in american history when we've been driven to really polarized extremes and there have been a number of them and we've pulled out other one hand that's encouraging right we've pulled out of those moments often the political process and whether that's an election or a supreme court decision or a piece of legislation has helped pull us out because people have agreed that the process if they don't

like the answer they can at least agree that the process has really bad in and of itself is encouraging but you know i mean it's a cliche but i'll say it anyway you'll history doesn't repeat it teaches but it doesn't repeat so you know we're in an interesting moment i'm personally as a historian i'm watching very closely to see how the political process is playing out after this election i think that will matter a lot so what you just said as long as we maintain faith in that in the structure of the process that we can withstand that it only lose faith in the very integrity of the courts or of the parties were of our leaders refused to really dangerous i would say you know two things that might be kind of surprising coming from the other toys issue person which is that we have to actually put down our twentieth century thinking on this again i think in terms of a legend cycles right thing in the way that the founders did in terms of the long view or even the way you know our

forebears in the reconstruction and the end of reconstruction had to think like which is in terms of generations not simply election cycle it's not to say to the patient by way of being enacted but to really understand that like you said the deep structures require tremendous amount of were conducted over decades and decades and decades and i think you know when the things that we have as a nation to have to really work on is our patience and in terms of building elisa country what that really does require that precedent to get in touch of binders of backstory radio dot org or send us an email at backstory of virginia dudley do you follow some facebook ad for backstory radio whatever you do don't be a stretch at that back stories produced at virginia humanities majors support provided by an anonymous donor the national endowment for the committees

that shows that rubber core no memorial foundation and the johns hopkins university additional support provided by the tamil fought for the fresh ideas and the arts the committees in the environment brian balogh is professor of history at the university of virginia's larry davis is professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond john freeman is a professor of history and american studies at yale university nathan calm reasonable about saddam's associate professor of history of the johns hopkins university isn't it