Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

One thing I think we can agree on is we shouldn't shut down the government over a dispute.

And you want to shut it down.

You keep talking about it.

The last time, Chuck, you shut it down.

No, no, no.

And then you open it down.

We live in a world of political polarization.

But the political polarization of yesteryear, by which I mean like 160 years ago, makes today's battles seem polite.

For example, as Nancy Pelosi, today's current Democratic leader in the House of Representatives,

seeks election as Speaker of the House amid infighting within her own party,

let's consider a similar battle for Speaker in 1859,

for which, alas, we have no audio.

The country's divisions were even more stark than today.

Slavery was the dominant issue, with Congress, led by Republicans, engaged in a daily

tug of war over abolition and slaveholder rights.

Just two years earlier, the Supreme Court had declared in the Dred Scott decision that people of color, whether free or enslaved, were not and could never be citizens.

Much like today, the political landscape was obviously in turmoil.

The Whig Party, which had sent two winning candidates to the White House in the 1840s, had

crumbled.

Its northern and southern factions irreparably at odds over slavery's expansion into territories and new states.

Into the vacuum had come the Republicans, born in 1854 as an anti-slavery party, but regarded

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