A Brawl In Congress (1798) w/ Joanne Freeman
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2024
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s January 30th. This day in 1798, representatives Roger Lyon and Matthew Griswold get into a fight on the house floor — with spitting, wrestling, and even a caning.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie are joined by Yale history professor Joanne Freeman to talk about why Lyon and Griswold came to blows and what the incident says about the moments of extreme partisanship and violence in American politics.
Be sure to check out Joanne’s Friday morning series “History Matters and So Does Coffee.”
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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:09.0 | This day January 30th, 1798, one of the first instances of violent and, you know, men |
| 0:17.6 | behaving badly on the floor of the house. |
| 0:20.6 | Connecticut's Roger Griswold and Vermont's Matthew Lyon get into it throwing accusations |
| 0:25.7 | back and forth culminating with Matthew Lyon spitting into Roger Griswold's eye and then in |
| 0:31.0 | turn Griswold seeking justice against what he called the quote |
| 0:34.1 | gross indecency by caning lying on the house floor so quite the moment let's talk |
| 0:39.5 | about it what it says about political violence and heeded rhetoric then and now. |
| 0:44.9 | Here as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. |
| 0:48.8 | Hello there. |
| 0:49.9 | Hello Jody. |
| 0:51.4 | Hey there. And here with us as special guests, no better person for this episode. |
| 0:56.0 | Joanne Freeman, professor of history at Yale, who also has a weekly webcast on Friday mornings |
| 1:00.7 | called History Matters and so does Coffee. |
| 1:03.5 | She's done a ton of podcasts including backstory now and then. |
| 1:06.3 | You've probably seen her on a million documentaries talking about early American history |
| 1:09.6 | and political violence and so Joanne and has been on this show not for nothing Joanne thank you for |
| 1:14.9 | coming back it's great to see you my pleasure so I will ask the most important |
| 1:19.0 | question when you encounter a moment like this who started it? Well, that's actually kind of a difficult question. |
| 1:27.1 | I would say, and actually at the time I would say people didn't decide one way or another |
| 1:32.2 | who started it. |
... |
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