The field of blood : violence in Congress and the road to civil war
Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, Freeman shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Behind these fights is a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. She offers a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril. -- adapted from jacket
Print Book, English, 2018
First edition
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2018