Joanne Freeman > Quotes

“The lessons of their time ring true today: when trust in their People's Branch shatters, part of the national "we" falls away. Nothing better testifies to the importance of Congress in preserving and defining the American nation than witnessing the impact of its systematic breakdown.”
― Joanne Freeman

“By portraying Congress as an institution of extremes--extreme rhetoric, extreme policies, extreme belligerence; a den of braggarts and brawlers; a place of sectional conflict waged by sectional champions--the press downplayed the appeal and even the possibility of compromise. Caught in the cross-fire with urgent decisions at hand, congressmen sided with their section more consistently and defiantly than ever before.”
― Joanne Freeman

“As inchoate as this new party was, the arrival of an explicitly Northern opposition had an enormous impact on Congress. Not only did the number of fights spike precipitously after 1855, but their dynamics fundamentally changed, Republicans promoted themselves as a new kind of Northerner who was willing to fight back, and they were true to their word. They fought to wrest control of Congress and the Union from the Slave Power.”
― Joanne Freeman

“The tobacco-juiced rugs of the House and Senate are an apt metaphor for Congress in the decades before the Civil War. Yes, there was soaring oratory on occassion. Yes, there were Union-shaking decisions being made. But underneath the speechifying, pontificating, and politicking was a spit-splattered rug. The antebellum Congress had its admirable moments, but it wasn't an assembly of demigods. It was a human institution with very human failings.”
― Joanne Freeman

“Democracy is an ongoing conversations between the governed and the governors; it should come as no surprise that dramatic changes in the modes of conversation cause dramatic changes in democracies themselves.”
― Joanne Freeman