The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

"It’s a great, great, great book. It’s one of those single point contributions that is nevertheless really important and really eye-opening. The book’s point is that in the nineteenth century, Congress was an incredibly contentious place. Today, we think the parties can’t get along, but back in the nineteenth century, tensions were so severe that members were physically fighting on the floor of Congress. They had weapons. American schoolchildren learn the famous story of southerner Preston Brooks caning abolitionist Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate over slavery, but we’re taught it was an anomaly. Freeman shows that level of brutality was commonplace in Congress during the time surrounding the Civil War. Tensions over slavery brought Congress to the point of total dysfunction by the middle of the nineteenth century. The book is well-written, and it brings Congress to life through these stories. She opens up an understanding of the violent nature of life on the floor in these decades that has generally been left out of the history books. Freeman conveys the flavor of the floor in a way very few other people can—that’s why I put the book on the list. Are tensions in Congress a product of larger problems or the cause of them? You can’t really disentangle the two. That’s something that’s true throughout American history. When there’s fighting in Congress, whether it’s physical fighting or just partisan fighting, it often reflects tension that exist outside the Capitol. So, it’s important to always put Congress in the context of the moment you’re studying. In the period Freeman writes about in The Field of Blood , the tension on the floor reflects broader sectional tensions that were tearing the union apart."