This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, March 12, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Civil War era still inspires spirited debate, Lending that time his eye for narrative historian

Walter A McDougal takes another look in throes of democracy, the American Civil War era

1829 to 1877.

McDougal won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1986.

He is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

We spoke yesterday.

You said in the forum today that Tocville's account of his travels through the United States

was one of the least authoritative.

Describe what you meant by that. I think that was that's probably a pretty

surprising comment. Yes it was it was certainly it was a surprise to me to learn

it but there has been a lot of excellent scholarship on

Tocville in recent decades and I learned quite a bit about how he reached his conclusions. He didn't travel widely in the

United States. He spent very little time in the South and when he was there he was

ill and didn't get out much. He didn't talkville refrained from ever visiting religious seminaries, military installations, colleges, whole parts of American

culture.

He just, he never even was exposed

exposed himself to and he also had a pension for jumping to conclusions.

So if he would hear some pithy remark or opinion by someone in New York

or Boston or Cincinnati, he just immediately decided that that must be right that must be true and he'd file that away and and

he might never challenge it unless someone else came up with a contrary opinion.

So his methods were decidedly someone else came up with a contrary opinion.

...