It was a tremendous pleasure to be a guest on my favorite podcast. Thanks to /u/400-Rabbits for having me.

I'll have further reading and a small errata document up shortly. It's all written, I'm just listening to the episode again (literally as I write this) to make sure I know where the cut is so I don't miss anything or drown out the stuff in this episode with corrections to things I haven't technically said yet.

However awkward it might be to bring visual aids to a podcast, a few political maps could help. Wikipedia has some decent ones. Here’s the United States after the Compromise of 1850, the status quo when we begin. And here’s after the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

In the course of speaking extemporaneously, with great and hands-flapping excitement, you make mistakes. Or at least I do. So here are some corrections:

I misspoke on my blog address, which is exquisitely professional of me. It’s here. I’ll take my Oscar for best self-promotion now.

I referred to Enabling Acts and Organic Acts as terms used inconsistently. I recall seeing primary sources do that, but the Congress was more careful. An organic act organizes a territory, hence the name. The Kansas-Nebraska Act is the organic act for Kansas and Nebraska. An enabling act is a later law passed by Congress to authorize a territorial government to write a constitution preparatory to statehood. While speaking I confused the two as I was focused on the Wisconsin Enabling Act, which reiterated the Northwest Ordinance’s slavery ban.

I mistakenly referred to the Washington Territory as including modern Idaho. It's just the top half of that. The bottom half is Oregon Territory.

The proposed amendment to emancipate Missouri would have kept those born after its enactment slaves until they turned twenty-five, not twenty-one.

I said that the sessions of Congress ran out in May. It’s actually the start of March. Slip of the tongue. I was probably thinking ahead to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act at the end of May, 1854.

And a few minor additions: The senators of the F Street Mess are David Rice Atchison, A.P. Butler (SC), R.M.T. Hunter (VA), and James M. Mason (VA, wrote the fugitive slave act of 1850). Their names were in my outline, but I couldn't find them in the moment.

I also blanked on the names of the two of the women who feature into the narrative, which is unfortunate. Archibald Dixon’s wife and memoirist is Susan Bullitt. Stephen Douglas’ southern wife (his first, she died in 1853 and he remarried) is Martha Martin.

But you really came here for Further Reading

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (the version that became law, anyway) itself is right here. As I said on the podcast, it's word-for-word the same for each territory except the names and boundary descriptions so you only have to read half of it if you're into that kind of thing.

The most recent book I know of on the Kansas-Nebraska Act itself, rather than Bleeding Kansas or sectional crises in general, is Wunder and Ross’s edited volume: The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854. It’s more about what the act meant than how it happened. If you want to know more about why we didn’t have a Bleeding Nebraska, Nichole Etcheson’s chapter is all about that.

The significance of the Kansas-Nebraska Act is appreciated in every antebellum survey that I’ve read, but the more recent ones often pass over the legislative maneuvers in a paragraph or two. I named McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom as doing just that in the podcast, but if you’re interested in sectional strife and coming in completely cold his antebellum chapters are still an ideal place to start. It's where I got into all this.

I drew my narrative of the Kansas-Nebraska Act’s passage from somewhat older antebellum surveys, primarily William Freehling’s Road to Disunion, Volume 1 (1990) and David Potter’s The Impending Crisis (1976), supplemented by Allan Nevins’ Ordeal of the Union, Volume Two (1947). Nevins is out of print, but when I got him copies were abundant in the online used book trade. The omnibus reprint of both volumes from the early 90s is thicker than a paperback really ought to be and mine was not held up well. I still use it for reference, but I got cheap (below $7 with shipping) first edition hardcovers in decent condition as a replacement. There is an ebook version on Amazon, but the reviewers say that the scan is very poor and riddled with scanning errors.

All three of these books show their age. Nevins occasionally gushes about politicians in ways would raise eyebrows today. He’s also very good for integrating foreign policy into the story, something often lost in more recent works. Potter is more up to date and includes important insights, but his take on Bleeding Kansas (that it was really all a fight over land claims) has since fallen out of favor. He and Nevins are both more hostile to antislavery politicians than one might expect today.

Freehling’s book is otherwise quite modern, but he makes some unfortunate choices in presentation which he admits were mistakes in his second volume. The one that sticks with me is the use of eye dialect to characterize slave speech. He’s also a whole lot more generous with the founders, Jefferson in particular, than I suspect many scholars would be today. If you like biographical sketches, though, Freehling is the historian for you. He’s great at them. Thomas Hart Benton's duel with Jackson hails from his pages.

The proof of Douglas’ railroad interest was found by James Malin and included in his paper here (PDF). Nevin’s account predates the letter’s discovery and consequently dismisses the railroad investments. The full text of the letter is at the end if you’d like to skip his prose, which I heartily recommend. Page 32 of the PDF or 352 of the images has the relevant line.

If you want to go deep background on all of this, the standard work on the Missouri Compromise is Robert Pierce Forbes’ The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath.

The Second Party System, which we meet as it falls apart, has been the subject of numerous books. Most of these valorize the Democratic Party, occasionally to the point of outright dishonesty, and largely neglect the Whigs. A Whig-leaning, but balanced version is in Howe’s agonizingly good What Hath God Wrought. You will have feelings about John Quincy Adams.

And, of course, if you have any questions or caught me messing up on something, the thread and my inbox are open.

Thanks, /u/freedmenspatrol, for this podcast. I wanted to ask one question.

Charles Robinson, one of the abolitionists in Lawrence and Kansas' first governor, indicates in his book that the east coast abolitionists had been boycotting the elections in the years leading up to the Kansas territorial elections, as they didn't want to participate in a government that condoned slavery. He believes that the Kansas elections, stolen by the Missourians, and the draconian anti-abolition laws passed by the pro-slavery territorial government were a wake-up call to the abolition movement. This spurred more involvement in politics and eventually led to their supporting Lincoln. Can you address that, and how influential was that reaction in the 1860 elections?

Hey podcast team, I'm a new listener, and just finished the two-parter on Zimbabwe. What a fantastic listen, you guys do a tremendous job and I wanted to offer my thanks!

It's time once again for the AskHistorians Book Giveaway! Our lucky winner this month is Will Raybould! The selection of books we have available this month are:

• John Nagl's Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, recommended by /u/Bernardito

• Richard White's The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, recommended by /u/Reedstilt

• Jeremy Brotton's A History of the World in 12 Maps, recommended by /u/Valkine

• James Lockhart's We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of The Conquest of Mexico, my recommendation

Want a chance to get a free book? Help support the podcast via Patreon!

I misspoke on my blog address, which is exquisitely professional of me. It’s here. I’ll take my Oscar for best self-promotion now. (https://freedmenspatrol.wordpress.com)

I've been a little surprised about how relatively thin a "history blogosphere" is (to use a term that went out of date 5+ years ago). Not really sure what my question is but do you have any thoughts on that general topic? How do you see it from your POV? how thick or thin is it?

Special thanks to /u/40kfreak, Eric Hacke, Will Raybould, Elm, Jonathan Wallace, Charles-Eric Lemelin, Andrew Stead, William Ryan, Stuart Gorman, Daniel Schmidt, Bill Rubin, Sarah Gilbert, Mark Katerberg, Vlad, and Max M. for their generous support of the podcast through the AskHistorians Patreon. And thanks to all our new supporters as well!

And a big big thanks to /u/freedmenspatrol for this epic look at a not exactly shining moment in American history.