The Great National Circus: Punch-Ups in the Senate
Eric Foner, 22 November 2018
In her new book Joanne Freeman shifts her attention to the three decades leading up to the Civil War. She reports that not a session passed without punches being exchanged between congressmen, and knives and pistols being drawn. The pervasiveness of violence among lawmakers will surprise even specialists in 19th-century American history. From the mid-1830s to the outbreak of war in 1861, Freeman counts more than seventy violent incidents – duels, fistfights, stabbings – in the halls of Congress and the surrounding streets. Anticipating violence, she writes, congressmen regularly ‘strapped on knives and guns’ before heading to work.