.
Westward expansion and the annexation of Texas, ironically championed by the South, combined with the Industrial Revolution, which increased the power of the North, sparked a recurring struggle between slave states and free states that would eventually undermine the sectional balance of power in the Senate and destroy the second party system’s intersectional alliances. Consequently, slavery was thrust onto the agenda and the country was forced to grapple with it. No longer able to ignore it, members of Congress from the North and the South turned to violence as a means to mediate their disputes precisely because they never had a mutually agreed upon space in which to bargain, negotiate, persuade, and compromise on how to deal with the issue. Violence did not cause political conflict over slavery to deepen. The issue was not susceptible to compromise (i.e., the sine qua non of politics). Only then does sustained violence in relation to the issue make an appearance.
When it became apparent that the numerically superior North would not back down, southerners concluded that they could no longer achieve their goals within the framework erected by the Constitution. So they left that framework, and the world of ordinary politics, choosing instead to take up arms against their erstwhile countrymen. Lying on his deathbed in 1850, John C. Calhoun perceived what was to come. “The Union is doomed…within twelve years,” observed Calhoun. “The probability is that it will explode in a presidential election.” Calhoun was right. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first president elected exclusively with the support of one section. Once the results were in, many in the South were out. Freeman’s poignant description of southern delegations bidding their colleagues goodbye as their states seceded underscores the reality that they knew they were leaving the world of politics.
When juxtaposed with today’s Congress, the unique nature of our present dysfunction becomes apparent. It results from the absence of conflict inside the House and Senate. In other words, the problem with Congress is that its members are apathetic. Unlike their counterparts for much of the antebellum era, they no longer see Congress as an important space over which they should fight. This is because the institution no longer plays a central role in making policy. Its members instead see administrative agencies and federal courts as more appropriate venues in which to make decisions, especially controversial ones.
Yet even now, political conflict does not inevitably turn into violence. There are three reasons for this. First, these are not violent times, comparatively speaking. Second, political conflict and violent conflict are not two sides of the same coin. They are separate phenomena. And third, members of Congress who are unwilling to expend the effort needed to legislate are also unlikely to fight.
Underlying all three reasons for today’s lack of violence, despite the crumbling space in which politics occurs, is the extraordinary growth of the administrative state. If, as Hannah Arendt observed, bureaucracy is the “rule of nobody,” violence is irrelevant. The American people can’t hold anonymous bureaucrats accountable in elections for the decisions they make. Related to that, frustrated members, much less the people they represent, can’t punch anybody.
The Field of Blood is an engaging account of an oft-ignored period in congressional history. And it underscores the importance of space to the practice of politics. However, it should be read with a firm understanding of the proper relationship between politics and violence, and the role conflict plays in both.
Congress does not need to relive the days of violence portrayed by Freeman. But it desperately needs more members willing to participate in politics; to legislate. That means more members who are willing to tolerate conflict—and not just the simulacrum of it we see on Sunday morning talk shows. And it means more members who, if push comes to shove, are willing to throw, or take, a punch on behalf of their ca