The 1850s Redux (with Elwood Watson)

A historian sees similarities between our current period and the decade leading up to the Civil War.

In Evil Geniuses, Kurt Andersen discusses how the eponymous rightwing thought leaders, policy wonks, and obscenely wealthy libertarian activists sought to undo the myriad improvements to American life since the Great Depression—to wind the clock back to what they considered the Good Old Days. You know, to Make America Great Again.

“[B]ig business and the very rich and their political allies and enablers manage[d] to convince enough Americans in the 1970s and ‘80s that the comfortable economic rules and expectations we’d had in place for half of the twentieth century were obsolete and should be replaced by an older set of assumptions and protocols,” Andersen explains. Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of this retrograde movement, was basically the anti-FDR. “As it turned out, the 1980s were the ‘30s but in reverse: instead of a fast-acting New Deal, a time-release Raw Deal.”

I’ve thought about this a lot since reading that book a few years ago. While the evil geniuses clearly want to undo the New Deal, I don’t think a return to the roaring ‘20s is enough for them. After all, women won the right to vote in 1920; that’s too dangerous a threat to the white patriarchy. I think the bad guys would prefer to go back ever farther than that: to the 1890s, when William McKinley was president, American Empire was on the rise, big business ruled the day, workers had few rights, women were second-class citizens, and Black Americans were systematically denied their civil rights, in the North as well as the South.

I asked the historian, columnist, and author Elwood Watson, my guest on today’s PREVAIL podcast, about this. My question: What period of U.S. history does the present most remind you of? He did not hesitate: “The 1850s.”

“There are a lot of eerie things that are happening today that were happening in the 1850s,” Watson says. “Talk of secession. Strong hostility toward immigration. Xenophobia was rampant. You had a previous president who was inept: James Buchanan. . . . Attacks on the press. On the other hand, you have the press that is also somewhat unhinged in certain ways. So I think there are a lot of things that are happening [now] that remind me of the 1850s.”

This was, needless to say, the decade before the Civil War. Donald Trump did manage to combine the worst elements of the three men who held the presidency in that underwhelming decade: Millard Fillmore’s lack of accomplishments, the corruption and vanity of Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan’s stupendous ineptitude. And the nation is as divided as ever. Are we now, as we were then, on the precipice of open hostility?

“I think we’re headed toward a civil war of some sort in this country,” Watson tells me. “I think we’re kind of seeing it now.” And then he adds, ominously: “I’m not talking about a war between the states.”

Back then, the lines of demarcation were obvious: the economy of the South depended on slave labor, while the North’s economy did not. While there were abolitionists in Dixie and pro-slavery sympathizers in the Union—NYC under Mayor Fernando Wood wanted to secede and become a free city!—geography was prominently involved. This is not the case today. MAGA has completely infected the republic. Flag-waving Trump fascists are everywhere. Isolating the FJB element from the general population is like separating the hydrogen from the oxygen in a glass of water. Shit might explode.

“I think you’re going to see violence, unfortunately, begin to occur,” Watson says. “Like, the people, the white supremacists, who tried to attack the power grid in North Carolina. . . . Heaven forbid, I think you’re going to see buildings being blown up. I could see kids of prominent people, or prominent people, being the target of attack. I think there’s a lot of things that we’re kind of headed toward, if the tide don’t stem.”

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

S5 E10: Keepin’ It Real (with Elwood Watson)

Greg Olear is joined by the historian, columnist, and author Elwood Watson. They discuss Biden-Harris 2024, Biden’s place in history, how the 2020s are like the 1850s, the potential for a new civil war, creeping fascism, the word “woke,” and the current state of masculinity. Plus: Grateful.

Follow Elwood:
https://twitter.com/bleachbred

Buy his new book:
https://www.amazon.com/Keepin-Real-Essays-Contemorary-America/dp/1789380502/

Read his work:
https://muckrack.com/elwood-watson

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THE FIVE 8

There will be a live show and an Afterhours tonight. Please join us! Also, Chunk made this trailer for the show. We’d be grateful if you checked it out:

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Photo credit: Matthew Brady. Buchanan and his Cabinet, ca. 1859.