The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

In her path-breaking new book, Yale historian Joanne Freeman reveals Congress as we’ve never seen it.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, fistfights, knives, guns and mass melees were common enough to seem routine. Most of this mayhem was censored out of the period’s equivalent of the Congressional Record. After more than a decade of detective work, Freeman has uncovered this vein of violence—changing our understanding of the roots of civil warfare and the workings of democracy in the process.

A book signing follows the event.