Look, I don’t like expanded police powers, surveillance, emergency declarations, suspension of normal rules… but this is an emergency. We can deal with civil liberties later. That logic isn’t new. It’s a recurring pattern in U.S. history — and almost every time, the rollback never comes. A crisis hits, government claims extraordinary authority, and when the crisis fades, the powers don’t fully retreat. They ratchet. The baseline shifts. What used to be unthinkable starts to feel normal. In this episode of Past is Prologue, I trace that “emergency powers ratchet” across two centuriesbefore bringing it to the present moment and what’s unfolding right now. In this episode, we cover: The Quasi-War and the Alien & Sedition Acts (1798): “national security” as cover for partisan repression The Civil War: suspension of habeas corpus, military arrests, and how emergency authority becomes precedent World War I: the Espionage Act, sedition enforcement, propaganda, and Schenck’s “clear and present danger” The post-WWI pivot: the Palmer Raids and the migration of emergency logic inward (“the enemy among us”) World War II mobilization — and the moral catastrophe of Japanese American internment (Korematsu) The Cold War as “permanent emergency”: HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology as governance 9/11 and the War on Terror: the Patriot Act, DHS, surveillance, indefinite detention, Guantanamo, and the end of endpoints The core argument: emergency powers are politically addictive — and institutions rarely return to baseline once fear becomes normal The present: why today’s claims of emergency and “security” should trigger immediate skepticism — and civic resistance

00:00 — The “emergency” argument (and why the rollback rarely comes) 00:35 — The emergency powers ratchet: crisis → authority → baseline shift 01:27 — Past Is Prologue intro + today’s topic 01:53 — The Quasi-War: fear, fragility, and the first big expansion of police power 03:09 — Alien & Sedition Acts: national security as cover for partisan repression 04:19 — The recurring formula: emergency + politics = expanded power 05:07 — The Civil War: Lincoln, habeas corpus, and executive power in existential crisis 07:18 — The lesson that sticks: “move first, ask legal questions later” 07:45 — World War I: total war and emergency governance at scale 08:07 — Espionage Act + sedition: criminalizing dissent and manufacturing unanimity 09:36 — Creel’s propaganda apparatus + managing the press 10:03 — Schenck v. U.S.: “clear and present danger” and the legal rubber stamp 12:49 — Postwar pivot: emergency logic migrates inward 13:10 — The First Red Scare + Palmer Raids: repression in the name of “internal security” 14:29 — The New Deal builds capacity; WWII turns it to full throttle 15:46 — WWII mobilization: coordination, rationing, censorship, and propaganda 17:05 — Japanese American internment: the clearest civil liberties catastrophe 18:20 — Korematsu: courts defer; fear overrides rights 19:14 — What remains “acceptable” after 1945: the ideas that linger 20:20 — The Cold War: emergency power becomes a default setting 21:23 — The enemy “among us”: second Red Scare conditions take shape 22:01 — HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology 23:25 — McCarthy exploits a system already built for repression 24:01 — The Cold War’s inheritance: emergency governance sustained indefinitely 25:04 — 9/11: the modern ratchet click forward 25:57 — Patriot Act + surveillance expansion 26:20 — DHS: the security state reorganizes itself 27:12 — The War on Terror’s key shift: a war with no endpoint 27:49 — Guantanamo, indefinite detention, and legal black holes 29:08 — Rendition, torture-by-proxy, and reputational damage 29:55 — Domestic politics adapts: disloyalty narratives and opportunists 31:03 — Iraq: narrative convergence and marginalizing skepticism 32:12 — Takeaway: emergency powers are politically addictive 33:15 — The present moment: federal power surge in

The Missouri Compromise is often remembered as a clever fix — a temporary truce, a line on a map, a way to “save the Union.”

But that’s not what it really was.

In 1820, Congress faced a choice it had spent decades trying not to make: confront the future of slavery now, while the country was still small and fragile — or postpone the reckoning and keep the system expanding. Congress chose postponement. And by doing so, it didn’t avoid the slavery question. It built it into the machinery of national politics.

This episode tells the story of the Missouri Crisis and Compromise as a turning point — the moment the United States chose accommodation over confrontation, and set itself on a path of escalating sectional crisis that would eventually end in Civil War.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Missouri statehood triggered an explosion: slavery’s expansion, power in the Senate, and sectional deadlock

• The Tallmadge Amendment: what it tried to do — and why the South treated it as an existential threat

• Slavery’s transformation after 1790: cotton, the domestic slave trade, and the rebirth of plantation power

• Fear and hardening ideology: Haiti, Gabriel’s Rebellion, and the end of gradual-emancipation optimism

• The political math behind the crisis: the Virginia Dynasty, 3/5 representation, and northern fears of planter domination

• The compromise deal: Maine + Missouri, and the 36°30′ line that “contained” slavery on paper

• Missouri’s pro-slavery constitution — and the fight over banning free Black Americans from entering the state

• Jefferson’s “fire bell in the night”: why many understood the crisis wasn’t solved, just deferred

• The pattern that follows: balance → containment → postponement (Texas, Mexican Cession, Kansas-Nebraska)

• The core question: did the Missouri Compromise create more problems than it solved?

Guiding question:

Did the Missouri Compromise end up creating more problems than it ultimately resolved?

Sources referenced:

American Pageant

Give Me Liberty

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought

Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846

John Craig Hammond, “President, Planter, Politician: James Monroe, the Missouri Crisis, and the Politics of Slavery”

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Chapters:

00:00 — Cold open: the choice Congress didn’t want to make

01:21 — Welcome + sources

03:38 — The Missouri Compromise: not a fix, a choice

05:04 — Why many thought slavery would fade

06:34 — Cotton + expansion + the rebirth of slavery

08:12 — Haiti/Gabriel’s Rebellion and hardening white politics

09:22 — Missouri applies for statehood: why it detonates

10:09 — Congress’s earlier attempts to limit slavery in Missouri

11:19 — Hemp, growth, and Missouri’s enslaved population

12:00 — The Illinois slavery fight and the “butternut” West

14:25 — The illusion breaks: slavery is advancing west

15:03 — Tallmadge Amendment: restriction + gradual emancipation

16:42 — Not abolitionism: northern fear of planter domination

18:02 — Southern backlash: states’ rights and disunion threats

20:24 — Amendment passes House, dies in Senate: sectional deadlock

20:57 — Why the Union felt fragile in 1819–1820

23:05 — Maine leverage and the deal-making logic

23:42 — The 36°30′ line and Monroe signs the...

The “Era of Good Feelings” is usually sold as a moment of national calm — a post-War of 1812 breather before Jacksonian chaos. But when the boom ends, that calm turns out to be thin. In 1819, the United States hits its first nationwide capitalist crash. Credit evaporates, paper money destabilizes, foreclosures spread, and debtors’ prisons fill — while the institutions most responsible for the speculation often survive intact. Americans called it “hard times,” and their reactions exposed something deeper than economics: a new, bitter argument over who the market was for, and who it was allowed to crush. In this episode (Sellers, The Market Revolution, Chapter 5 — Part 1), we cover: The mechanics of the Panic: cotton prices, credit contraction, and the Second Bank’s reversal “Hard times” on the ground: unemployment, foreclosure, liquidation, debtors’ prison Why the West imploded hardest — and why the Bank of the U.S. became the era’s perfect villain The Missouri Crisis (Tallmadge Amendment → Compromise) reigniting sectional power conflict South Carolina’s turn toward radical states’ rights (and the early logic of nullification) The Marshall Court “offensive”: Cohens, Osborn, and Gibbons — and Virginia’s backlash Tariffs, taxes, and the hard-times Congress: who wants what from the federal government Internal improvements and implied powers: Monroe and Calhoun’s developmental pivot The cultural pressure of market life: time discipline, consumer goods, and strained authority The Second Great Awakening as democratic revolt — and moral protest against market values Popular politics gets sharper: debtor relief, anti-bank campaigns, and the rise of militant democracy Western experiments with relief banks and state paper — and the constitutional collision that follows Guiding question: How did Americans respond to the Panic of 1819 — and what did those responses reveal about regional identity, political power, and the emerging culture of market capitalism?

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-hell-did-we-get-here/id1765781522

Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: “hard times” and the first crash lesson 01:21 — Welcome + sources (Sellers / Howe / textbooks) 02:14 — Guiding question 03:13 — Howe explains the mechanics of the Panic (cotton, credit, the BUS) 06:36 — What “hard times” looked like: cities, unemployment, debtors’ prison 09:16 — The West collapses: “jaws of the monster” and the BUS as landlord 10:12 — The crash ends the “Era of Good Feelings” 10:28 — Missouri crisis erupts: Tallmadge Amendment and sectional realization 13:16 — Missouri Compromise and the “fire bell in the night” 14:34 — Fear of revolt + colonization logic (“wolf by the ears”) 16:06 — South Carolina distress → tariff anger → radicalization 18:34 — Marshall Court supremacy: Cohens, Osborn, Gibbons 20:57 — Virginia backlash: Roane (“Algernon Sidney”) + John Taylor of Caroline 21:49 — Hard-times Congress: tariffs, taxes, and competing demands 23:30 — Debtor relief + the Land Act of 1820 25:01 — Internal improvements + implied powers (Monroe/Calhoun pivot) 26:39 — General Survey Act and the infrastructure state 28:11 — Cultural pressure: time discipline, consumption, “keeping up” 30:17 — Second Great Awakening and democratic evangelicalism 32:01 — Evangelical protest against market values 34:36 — Popular discontent: banks, specie suspension, and “dictatorships” 35:54 — Debtor relief reforms: Branch, Snyder, Crockett 36:48 — Western radicalism: paper money, relief schemes, court crackdowns 38:16 — Democratic politics hardens: parties, populists, performance 39:51 — Crockett vs demagoguery 40:35 — Bank war politics in the West: relief banks and anti-BUS measures 43:44 — Closing + contact00:00 — Cold open: “hard times” and the first crash lesson