What happens when a political party implodes? One newspaperman in hindsight said, “The Whig party died of too much respectability and not enough people.” The decade before the Civil War saw politics as figurative and literal mayhem as parties splintered and fistfights broke out in Congress. Kansas became a battleground, the Supreme Court made the worst decision ever, and violence predicted the eve of full-out and open war. Was there a group or a person who could lead the country forward?

Recommended Booklist

In addition to all be books from previous episodes, take a look at these…

Delbanco, Andrew. The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the
Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

Downey, Arthur T. Civil War
Lawyers: Constitutional Questions, Courtroom Dramas, and the Men Behind Them. Chicago: ABA Publishing, 2010.

Freeman, Joanne B. The
Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Hay, John & John G. Nicolay. Abraham Lincoln: A History.
10 vols. New York: The Century Company, 1909.

Holt, Michael F. The Rise
and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the
Civil War. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999.

Meacham, Jon. And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the
American Struggle. New York:
Random House, 2022.

Season 1 Episode 4 – A Political Free-For-All

Breaking Nation: A Civil War Podcast is a production of Waveland Creative.
Host: Scott Holmgren
Check out our website at http://www.breakingnation.com