Podcast
Executive Decision
Hosted by Vic Bondi · EN
Executive Decision reviews the most significant presidential decisions in American history: why they happened; how they happened; and what they ultimately tell us about the process of decision making.
10episodes
Episodes
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation Part Six: The Last Best Hope on Earth
Dec 24, 202200:34:49Tap to summarizeIn this final part of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we review exactly how Lincoln made his decision--one that was forced upon him by circumstance, and the unwavering insistance of millions of Americans that slavery be abolished, forever. Audio Clips: Martin Luther King, Jr., excerpt from the "I Have a Dream" speech (1963): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs Musical Clips: "Let Jesus Lead You," The Jubilee Gospel Team (date unknown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pqx8bkCkL8 "I Be So Happy When The Sun Goes Down," Ed Lewis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zlSq4mWiE "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," Henry Burr (1911): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KQHU3wJq4o "Rock My Soul," The Heavenly Gospel Singers (1936?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSkkeceOtFg "We're Coming, Father Abraam" (date unknown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS5fDOiQJA0 "CC Rider Blues," Ma Rainey (1924): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trtxZgF3Dns "Battle Cry of Freedom," Vic Bondi (2022): https://vicbondi.bandcamp.com/track/battle-cry-of-freedom Bibliography: Hans L. Trefousse, Lincoln's Decision for Emancipation (Lippincott, 1975) C.Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955; Oxford, 2001) Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution - 1863-1877 (1989; Harper, 2014)
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation Part Five: The Emancipation Decision
Dec 24, 202200:40:17Tap to summarizeOn July 8, 1862, Abraham Lincoln journeyed to Harrison's Landing, Virginia, to confer with US General George McCellan on the conduct of the war against the southern insurrection. During the meeting, McCellan delivered Lincoln a memorandum that instructed him to abandon any effort to liberate the four million slaves in America. Lincoln responded by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, and by sacking McCellan. In part five of our analysis of the decision to deliver the Emancipation Proclamation, we review this meeting, and the other factors that went into delivering this most momentous decision in American history. Part 5: The Emancipation Decision Audio Clips: Christie S. Coleman, "The Civil War and The End of Slavery," R.H. Smith Center for the Constitution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4nh5ZeKWJY Musical Clips: "Garry Owen" Eastman Wind Ensemble, Frederick Fennell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM48Qzn1eGQ "Long John," Prisoners of Darrington State Prison Farm, Texas (1933/34?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Reinald Werrenrath (Viktor, 1917): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUPPr_AilTM "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," Henry Burr (1911): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KQHU3wJq4o Bibliography: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 1996) Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (Simon & Schuster, 2006) Todd Brewster, Lincoln's Gamble: How the Emancipation Proclamation Changed the Course of the Civil War (Scribner, 2014) Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (Norton, 2010) Richard Blackett, Divided Hearts. Britain and the American Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2001)
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation Part Four: The War to Expand Slavery
Dec 24, 202200:22:58Tap to summarizeIn part four of our episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation we review the causes of the Civil War, and the momentous events of the 1850s, especially the Fugutive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision, which rallied northern opinion against the expansion of slavery, and the southerners who insisted on that expansion--even into the North. Part 4: The War to Expand Slavery Audio Clips: Richard Blackett, "The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law," talk given to the The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkzMFXlyjqo&t=164s Musical Clips: "Early in the Mornin'," Prisoners of Parchman Farm, Louisiana (1947): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsiYfk5RV_Q Bibliography: David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis (Harper, 1976) Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (Oxford, 1970) Richard Blackett, The Captive's Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and Politics of Slavery (Cambridge Press, 2018) Andrew Delbanco,The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (Penguin, 2018)
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation Part Three: Slavery and Human Rights
Dec 24, 202200:58:40Tap to summarizeAmerican slavery may have been the most successful totalitarian system in history, lasting ten generations, far longer than comparable 20th century totalitarian regimes. In some ways, slavery's success as an economic and socio-political system was that it was just brutal enough to generate effective rates of return on investment. But it became even more brutal from the beginning of the 19th century to the Civil War, in part in response to slave rebellions, and to the attacks on the institution made by abolitionists. In part three of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we analyze the economic institution of slavery as practiced in the Antebellum South, and its consequences for the black and white people that lived in it. And borrowing from the American writer James Baldwin, we try and understand why this institution led to so many racial attitudes that informed Lincoln's time--and our own. Part 3: Slavery and Human Rights Audio Clips: James Baldwin, "You're the Nigger" (1963): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My5FLO50hNM Music Clips: "Long John," Prisoners of Darrington State Prison Farm, Texas (1933/34?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc "St. Louis Blues," Bessie Smith (1929): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bo3f_9hLkQ "I Be So Happy When The Sun Goes Down," Ed Lewis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-zlSq4mWiE "CC Rider Blues," Ma Rainey (1924): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trtxZgF3Dns "Early in the Mornin'," Prisoners of Parchman Farm, Louisiana (1947): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsiYfk5RV_Q "Berta, Berta," Prisoners of Parchman Farm, Louisiana (1947):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWWgN7837Tk "Stackolee," Woody Guthrie (1944): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccgyJQJEMsM Bibliography: Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (Vintage, 1976) Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, Slavery in Black and White: Race and Class in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order (Cambridge, 2008) Frederick Law Olmstead, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations On Cotton And Slavery In The American Slave States, 1853-1861 (1861; Bedford/St. Martin's 2014) Calvin Schermerhorn, The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860 (Yale, 2015) George Fitzhugh, Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters (1857; Kindle, 2015) Mary Chesnut, Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981; edited by C. Vann Woodward) J.H. Ingraham, The South-West By a Yankee. In Two Volumes. (1835; Kindle, 2017) Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Harvard University Press, 2001) Richard Blackett, Making Freedom: The Underground Railroad and the Politics of Slavery (University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, Part Two: Democracy, Perfectionism and Degradation
Dec 24, 202200:48:24Tap to summarizeIn the antebellum South, democracy was racialized; as the vote was extened to every white man, it was granted in return for the political support of forced labor slavery. In part two of our six part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we review this process, and the social context in which Lincoln made his emancipation decision. We probe attitudes towards democracy, the religious concept of perfectionism, and the idea of social degradation, especially in the context of slavery. We ask the question: How could so many people support an economic institution that was leading to dehumanization and social decline? Part 2: Democracy, Perfectionism and Degradation Audio Clips: Barack Obama, Speech on the Constitution, March 8, 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU Music Clips: "We're Coming Father Abraam" (date unknown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS5fDOiQJA0 "Tyler and Tippecanoe (1842), Sing Along with Millard Fillmore (1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XngBpgpAeQY "Draw Me Nearer," Rittersville Sunday School (1890?): https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?nq=1&query_type=call_number&query=cylinder13081 "Roll Jordan Roll," Fisk Jubilee Singers (1927): https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/detail.php?query_type=mms_id&query=990025338180203776&r=2&of=2 Bibliography Merle Curti, The Growth of American Thought (Harper, 1951) Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion (Vintage, 1957) Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 (Norton, 2013) Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (1973; Yale, 2004) Vernon Louis Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought: Volume 2 - The Romantic Revolution in America, 1800-1860 (1927; University of Oklahoma,1987) Joshua Rothman, Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in Jacksonian America (University of Georgia, 2012) Richard Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830-1860 (Louisiana State University Press, 1983) Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men who Made it (Vintage, 1973) Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Harper, 1981) Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1822-1845 (Harper, 1984)
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Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, Part One: Slavery and Capitalism
Dec 24, 202200:16:09Tap to summarizeIn part one of our six-part episode on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, we look at the evolution of historical thinking about the Civil War, slavery, and the emancipation proclamation. We discover why the moral objections to slavery held by ordinary people has become the chief driver in interpreting the war and emancipation. Part 1: Slavery and Capitalism Music Clips "Battle Hymn of the Republic," Reinald Werrenrath (Viktor, 1917): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUPPr_AilTM "Battle Cry of Freedom" (US Everlasting, date unknown): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRHdcn-bIb4 "Old Kentucky Home," Harry Macdonald (Victor Monarch,1901): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaNzDpLtWIo Bibliography Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, 2016) Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Knopf, 2014) Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, editors, Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (University of Pennsylvania, 2014) Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery (Harvard, 2018) Calvin Schmerhorn, Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
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FDR and the Decision to Intern the Japanese, Part Three
Jun 10, 202100:43:49Tap to summarizeIn 1941, Government agents seized Ewan Yoshida's father. He was never seen again. In this final part of our three part episode on FDR and the decision to intern the Japanese in WWII, we review the consequences of the internment decision for the people sent to the camps, and why Roosevelt made the decision in the first place. This episode uses the following archival sound files: "Goodbye, Mama, I'm Off to Yokohama" (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyOoJhqEzas Office of War Relocation explains the Internment, narrated by OWR director Milton Eisenhower (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_rk3RP5KQs Testimony by Martha Okamoto, Kuniko Okumura Sato, Teru Watanabe, Masaharu Tanibata, Ewan Yoshida, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians testimony (1981)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zTG6om6l0w&t=118s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdtqHokzEC0 Josh White and his Carolinians, "Trouble" (1940) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUdmP1T97iA Carson Robinson, "Remember Pearl Harbor" (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFKnkWvSJA4 Eddy Howard and His Orchestra, "Remember Pearl Harbor" (1942) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADJMnhJsZvE Sumiko Seki, testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (1981) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nca5BhM1XUc Richard E. Yamashiro, "Witnessing the Manzanar Riot" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFCDcGE-KTI Jim Tanimoto, "Internment – Time of Remembrance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hd_ADvIZ7k vromKTTnixUwJkJ16IMQ
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FDR and the Decision to Intern the Japanese, Part Two
Apr 10, 202100:32:11Tap to summarizeWhat happens when a strong person makes a weak decision and a weak person makes a strong one? In part two of our episode on FDR and the internment of the Japanese in WWII, we look at the anti-Japanese hysteria that seized the West Coast in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the bureaucratic infighting that resulted in the imprisonment of 120,000 people. This episode makes use of a variety of archival audio, including: WOR United Press Radio Announcement on the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD9PNkkq5Mc Akiko Kurose, "Hearing about the Bombing of Pearl Harbor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZoL-O9Y9Aw&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4CS9Ggr6IezvCHoIhYov-f Gordon Hirabayashi, "Worries about Issei parents after the bombing of Pearl Harbor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgBjYz0xn38&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4CS9Ggr6IezvCHoIhYov-f&index=8 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Fireside Chat on Fifth Columnists, May 27, 1940 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZZ2k5pXFOU&t=1s Excerpts from "All Through the Night" Warner Brothers, 1942 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64kxaXSj2tA Excerpts from "1941," Steven Spielberg, 1979 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPnwlNvwBLI Pearl Harbor attack newsreel, 1941 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2kSnlS4xX8 Kara Kondo, "The Day of Mass Removal" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am46ZQgfI3I&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4CS9Ggr6IezvCHoIhYov-f&index=10
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FDR and the Decision to Intern the Japanese, Part One
Apr 2, 202100:41:56Tap to summarizeThis is the story of one of the gravest injustices in American history, where over 120,000 people of Japanese descent were uprooted from their homes and placed into concentration camps without due process and in violation of their civil rights. Most lost everything; after the Second World World ended, they returned to homes and businesses that had been sold off, and sometimes stolen. The internment was put in motion on February 19, 1942, by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. How one of the most esteemed presidents, justly lauded for his leadership during the Depression and World War II, came to embrace such a draconian and unjust policy can tell us a lot about the process of decision making--both good and bad. Archival recordings Part 1 Rae Takegawa, "FBI Raid on Family's Home" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHWAXvNCYCc&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4CS9Ggr6IezvCHoIhYov-f&index=5&t=22s Rudy Tokiwa, "A visit from the FBI after the bombing of Pearl Harbor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMPWyLBNYew&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4CS9Ggr6IezvCHoIhYov-f&index=6 Classical Chinese song, "The General's Command" (1903) https://vimeo.com/100191126 Ray Matsumoto, "Father's Immigration Story" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf7F2z48S5Y&t=151s Masao Fujiwara, "Ano Onekoete" (1920s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOjsmhs7qik Eiichi Edward Sakauye, "Impact of the Alien Land Laws" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yjiEINoz_k&list=PL_txUBUpMcH4DfP8j9V92fFzgnA4gDtc0&index=12 Excerpts from "Confessions of a Nazi Spy," Warner Brothers, 1939 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBDW81R_xwg&t=4s Fritz Kuhn, excerpt from speech at Madison Square Garden, Feb 20, 1939 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gU9op16rjQ&t=98s
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Lend Lease and the Decision to Intervene in WWII: Part Three
Feb 15, 202100:57:14Tap to summarizeExecutive Decision is a podcast that looks at some of the most significant presidential decisions in American history: Why they happened; how they happened; and what they ultimately tell us about the process of decision making. This is Part Three, Episode Three: FDR and the Lend Lease Decision. It reviews how FDR moved the Lend Lease decision through Congress, and summarizes FDR's decision making process.
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