Jill Lepore on the Long Sweep of American History

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode: Jill Lepore on the Long Sweep of American History
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Jill Lepore
Date: September 24, 2018

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Overview

This episode features David Remnick in conversation with Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore, on the occasion of her sweeping new book, These Truths: A History of the United States. The discussion uses Lepore’s book as a lens to examine America’s turbulent, often painful history, stretching from the 15th century to the Trump era, and tackles ongoing debates about identity, immigration, press freedom, and national narrative.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Ambitious Undertaking of These Truths

• Scope of the Book: Lepore’s book traces over 600 years of American history—from 1492 through the election of Donald Trump.

  • Quote:
    “You’ve decided to do a survey of over 600 years of American history from 1492 to last week.”
    — David Remnick (02:11)

• Motivation and Challenge: Inspired partially by a dare from her publisher, and a desire to write the comprehensive history she wished existed.

  • Quote:
    “Partly, I really can’t turn down a dare...I wish there was a book like that. And I decided someone should try.”
    — Jill Lepore (02:35)

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The Foundations of American Ideals and Historical Atrocities

• Beginning with Grim Truths: The nation was shaped by vast suffering—colonization, enslavement, decimation of Native populations.

  • Quote:
    “It is actually the assassination of worlds...that profound loss and suffering...that makes possible the ideas on which this nation is founded.”
    — Jill Lepore (03:30)

• The Role of the Powerless: Political ideals like equality and rights didn’t arise in a vacuum, but in reaction to oppression and protest by the marginalized—slaves, servants, Native peoples.

  • Quote:
    “It is that conversation that sparks all this political thought that makes possible...American independence...Their origins are darker and more complicated.”
    — Jill Lepore (04:27)

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Who Counts as an American? – History and Modern Immigration Debates

• Immigration’s Place in History: Restrictionist arguments are historically untenable—the founding era had, in effect, open borders for over a century.

  • Quote:
    “Importantly, there are no federal laws restricting immigration until the 1880s...Open borders are the most scandalous thing in American history. No...they’re actually the founding ideal.”
    — Jill Lepore (05:40)

• Present Context: Modern controversies over travel bans, detentions, and deportations echo longstanding anxieties over national identity and belonging.

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The Power and Dangers of Moral Crusades in Politics

• Rediscovering Mary E. Leese: Leese, once the most famous populist speaker before William Jennings Bryan, believed that empowering women was key to remedying political powerlessness and exposing corruption.
  • Quote:
    “She was very tall...She said, ‘Man is man, but woman is superwoman...’”
    — Jill Lepore (08:06)
• Legacy of the Moral Crusade: The tradition of using “moral crusades” in American political life is longstanding, wielded by both progressives (abolition, suffrage) and conservatives (prohibition, anti-feminism, McCarthyism, Goldwater, Reagan).
  • Quote:
    “Populism becomes a female crusade...and then it turns into prohibitionism...by now, the crusade...is just a great big giant wrench in the American political campaign toolbox.”
    — Jill Lepore (08:54)
• Trump and the Crusade Tradition: Trump uses the language of crusade but is chiefly anointed by figures from that tradition (e.g., Phyllis Schlafly), not a crusader himself.
  • Quote:
    “No, I wouldn’t think so, no. No. But he uses the language of a moral crusade and he...is anointed by people who are associated with the moral crusade.”
    — Jill Lepore (09:24)

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The Free Press and America’s Political Communication

• Roots of Press Freedom: The unique importance of a free press in the U.S.: democracy needs an informed citizenry to function.
  • Quote:
    “They do understand that if people are going to be able to vote for their representatives...the people need to have enough information to cast informed ballots.”
    — Jill Lepore (10:25)
• Conflict is Old, Not New: Fierce arguments, accusations, and anger toward the press are not new—even Jefferson was scathing about newspapers—but he still affirmed their necessity.
  • Quote:
    “This is the famous thing of Jefferson saying...every newspaper should be divided into four sections: truths, lies, improbabilities, and impossibilities.”
    — Jill Lepore (11:37)

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Assessing America’s National Mood: Is This the Worst It’s Been?

• Historical Perspective: Lepore provides scale—while the current political climate feels chaotic and anxious, previous eras (slavery, internment) were far worse for many Americans.
  • Quote:
    “If we are talking about...all of the American past...there is no day before the Emancipation Proclamation that isn’t worse than today, not a single day...”
    — Jill Lepore (12:39)
• Current Atrocities: Recent episodes, such as the detention of immigrant children, are “as great a moral travesty...as anything done in the name of the American people at any point in our history.”
  • Quote:
    “That...is as great a moral travesty and atrocity as anything done in the name of the American people at any point in our history.”
    — Jill Lepore (13:38)

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The Myth of Inevitable Progress

• Illusions of Moving Forward: The belief in continual American progress is itself an ideological stance, not an inevitable reality.
  • Quote:
    “That notion of the forward progression itself is the illusion...I don’t actually think it represents the real patterns to be discerned in [the] American past.”
    — Jill Lepore (14:47)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the Book’s Ambitious Scope:
  "You’ve decided to do a survey of over 600 years of American history from 1492 to last week."
  — David Remnick (02:11)
• On the Crucible of American Ideals:
  "It is that...crucible of violence that makes possible the ideas on which this nation is founded."
  — Jill Lepore (03:45)
• On Immigration’s Historical Reality:
  "Open borders are the most scandalous thing in American history. No, they're not. They're actually the founding ideal."
  — Jill Lepore (06:18)
• On Political Mythmaking:
  "That notion of the forward progression itself is the illusion."
  — Jill Lepore (14:47)
• On Moral Outrage and Atrocity:
  "That...is as great a moral travesty and atrocity as anything done in the name of the American people at any point in our history."
  — Jill Lepore (13:38)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• [02:25] — Why undertake a single-volume history of America?
• [03:30] — How the suffering of the powerless shapes American ideals
• [05:18] — What immigration debates reveal about American identity
• [06:37] — Mary E. Leese and the roots of the moral crusade in politics
• [09:19] — Is Trump a “moral crusader”?
• [10:25] — The origins and necessity of the free press in the U.S.
• [12:15] — Has America ever been as anxious as it is now?
• [14:24] — Illusions of historical progress and national mythmaking

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Style and Tone

Jill Lepore brings a blend of scholarly insight and engaging narrative style, frank about America’s tragedies but also its ideals and possibilities. David Remnick’s questions are direct, prompting Lepore to connect history to today’s most urgent debates.

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For listeners and readers: This episode distills centuries of American history into core themes of struggle, inclusion, myth, and the ambivalent arc of progress, all through Lepore’s clear-eyed, deeply-researched perspective.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

I'm Dorothy Wickenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with the historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Her new book, these Truths, is a history of the United states from the 15th to the election of Donald Trump.

[C]

In our political climate, arguments about the past are absolutely everywhere. Look at the turmoil over Confederate monuments or in the limits to immigration. Think about the President's call that we should make America great again versus the progressive view that we are always somehow trying to make America better. Jill Lepore has been writing for the New Yorker about our current political struggles, but always with the long view of a historian and in her day job, when she's not writing pieces for us. Jill's a professor of history at Harvard University, and in a brand new book called these Truths, she's tackled the entire American story, and it's a remarkable undertaking. Jill, let me start with the obvious. You've decided to do a survey of over 600 years of American history from 1492 to last week.

[D]

The obvious, but the inexplicable?

[C]

Well, that's It. That's it. What possessed you? Why did you tackle something so ultimately expansive?

[D]

Partly, I really can't turn down a dare. This is a bad thing to confess. A b.

[C]

What was a dare? Who dared you?

[D]

Norton, the publisher. Then I really, really, really thought, damn, I wish there was a book like that. And I decided someone should try.

[C]

Well, this book, which is filled with all kinds of triumphs and achievements and all the rest, but it opens with some really grim statistics. And you write between 1500 and 1800, roughly two and a half million Europeans moved to the Americas, and they carried 12 million Africans there by force. And as many as 50 million Native Americans died chiefly of disease. So I suppose it illustrates one of the unfortunate realities of history, which is that most of the people affected by major events didn't have much of a choice in them. How has powerlessness informed the study of America and the story of America?

[D]

What I argue, and this is actually something I came to believe on again, like kind of freshly reading the evidence, was that it is actually the assassination of worlds. It is that slaughter, those atrocities, that enslavement, that profound loss and suffering that is a crucible of violence that makes possible the ideas on which this nation is founded. As horrible as that, is the beauty of the idea that all humans are equal, that we are born with inalienably with natural rights, that the people are sovereign and they give their consent to be governed. These ideas are actually made possible by the protests made by the powerless during that, in the numbers that you cite there. So I give a lot of causal weight to slave insurrection, runaways, enslaved people who run away, wives and servants who flee to apprentices who run away, to native peoples who wage wars or in other ways resist the taking of their lands, that it is that sort of the ceaseless question in the ferment of that violent, that world of violence where people just keep saying again and again and again, by what right have you taken my labor and my life and my freedom? And it's that conversation that sparks all this political thought that makes possible, say, American independence. And that doesn't make American independence less magnificent. In terms of the power of those political ideas. Their origins are darker and more complicated. But then I think one reason that's useful to think about is then we all have ancestors in that story.

[C]

A lot of what the book is about is about who counts. Who counts as an American. And when you look at the contemporary headlines, say, about immigration, whether it's detention centers for kids or mass deportations or what's colloquially called a Muslim travel ban. How does that all fit into the American story that you're telling?

[D]

I think immigration restrictionists cannot find a lot of support for their position in the record of the American past. Their political forebears do not come out well in any fair assessment of the seeking of freedom and justice and equality in a democratic society in the American past. And I come out differently on that question than I do say about fundamentalism, with which I gained a lot of sympathy here, not being a fundamentalist myself. The immigration restrictionists have a very uncomfortable legacy to wrestle with. Importantly, there are no federal laws restricting immigration until the 1880s. I mean, fully a century after the founding of the country, you can just come into the country like, open borders are the most scandalous thing in American history. No, they're not. They're actually the founding ideal.

[C]

Jill, one of the figures you write about is a woman named Mary E. Leese, a woman I'd never heard about before. And you say that she helped bring the moral crusade into American politics. Who was she and how did she do that?

[D]

Yeah, she's pretty fascinating person. So she was a Kansas farmer. She was a farmer's wife. She had, I don't know, six kids. I think most of them died. She. There was like sod farmers in Kansas lost everything in the depression of 1873, as so many Americans did. Gave herself basically a college education by reading stuff that she pasted to the wall that she could read while she was doing chores. She eventually, you know, she studied the law. She ran for office. She eventually became a journalist and worked for Joseph Pulitzer. But she was probably the most famous speaker on the populist speaker circuit before William Jennings Bryan, the great populist demagogue of the late 19th and early 20th century. She, like many poor farmers in places like Kansas and Nebraska, looked at the economic development in the second half after the Civil War and said, this is just a conspiracy of the government and railroad companies. They've declared corporations to be people, and they're giving corporations all these benefits, and poor farmers can't make a living, and the people have lost all their political power. And one of the ways she thought that could be remedied was by giving women the right to vote. And we tend not to pay much attention to how much populism was aligned with a certain strain of suffrage in the 19th century. She was very tall, so people always describe her as an Amazon. And I love her because she said. She said, man is man, but woman is superwoman. She had this great 19th century idea about women's superiority. She's just very, very interesting and she's compelling. She was anti Semitic. She ended up writing this kind of crazy, insane manifesto about white supremacy at the end of her life. She's a much discredited character for many, many reasons, but you can't just scratch her off. So she comes out of that crusade that come that abolitionism is a female crusade. Temperance is a female crusade. Woman suffrage is a female crusade. Populism becomes a female crusade, and then it turns into prohibitionism. What happens after women get the right to vote? They don't need to crusade anymore. But by now, the crusade, like the moral crusade, is just a great big giant wrench in the American political campaign toolbox. And so other people are like, oh, I'll use that. So Joe McCarthy wages a moral crusade. Barry Goldwater wages a moral crusade. Ronald Reagan's campaign was a moral crusade. It becomes the kind of go to tool of conservatism.

[C]

Is Donald Trump a moral crusade?

[D]

No, no, I wouldn't think so, no. No. But he uses the language of a moral crusade and he, I mean, that's, that's one of the many perplexing things about that campaign. But he is anointed by people who are associated with the moral crusade. You know, Phyllis Schlafly, like her, the very, very end of her life in 2016 is to endorse Donald Trump.

[C]

That's actually Phyllis Schlafly, the great anti feminist.

[D]

The great anti feminist who stopped the ERA. Yeah. She supports McCarthy. She supports Goldwater. She's right out of the Mary Lees playbook.

[C]

One of the things that took me by surprise, although I know you've been obsessed with it in pieces, including for the New Yorker, is the presence of the media in this book. What is it about early America that made a free press so important? And it's enshrined in the First Amendment and it's right up there with the freedom of religion. What did that press in early America look like? And how is it radically different from anywhere else In Europe, for example?

[D]

Yeah, so this is to the extent that I have a specialty as a scholar. It really is the history of how we communicate politically. The idea of the freedom of speech and freedom of press has a 17th and 18th century, early 18th century history that really influenced, influences our Bill of Rights. But there is also a very particular cast on those ideas that the founders of the Republic make note of. They don't really see, have no idea where it's going, but they do understand that if people are going to be able to vote for their representatives who will make the laws that the people need to have enough information to cast informed ballots. And for the people to have enough information to cast informed ballots in this country that is actually quite big and by 18th century standards, just vast, huge, sprawling, monstrous. They need to have some way to receive ideas other than just the educated gentlemen writing letters to one another.

[C]

What was the relationship between leaders in the press early on? Is there any precedent to a president calling us us, meaning the press in public, the enemy of the people? Was there that kind of attack or vituperation?

[D]

You know, we know what things Andrew Jackson said privately, but the presidents all got pissed off at the press. This is the famous thing of Jefferson saying, is this maybe 1804? You know, every newspaper should be divided into four sections. Truths, lies, improbabilities and impossibilities. You know, like, it's not that he thought that the press was to be believed all the time, but he knew that it was essential that there. This is what he says, you know, in his first inaugural address, that the we are all federalists, we're all Republicans, and what we agree on is that there ought to be a contest of opinion and that the truth will be found by truth and error. Having a battle on a fair field.

[C]

I can't help but ask, has the national mood ever been this anxious? Obviously during the second World War, in times of great emergency, there's a different feeling among the people. But this sense of chaos, this sense of every day is going to bring some crazy piece of news. Is it comparable to anything in your mind?

[D]

So I guess the first corrective I always offer when I'm asked that question is, whose past are you talking about? Like, if we are talking about the American history and all of the American past and meaning everybody, there is no day before the Emancipation Proclamation that isn't worse than today, not a single day in all of those centuries. To be born as human chattel and die as human chattel is a worse political state of affairs than the fact that our politicians scream at one another and should never be holding office in the first place. This is a bad day. But if we want to think about the past as all of our pasts, then I think we need to have some sense of proportion. That's not to say we. We shouldn't be doing everything possible to make the world better now, but I'm.

[C]

Just saying, like, that's totally fair, Jill, and of course you're right. But does that give you. Does that calm you down as a citizen, as A human being.

[D]

You know what I think kind of did this for a lot of people who've been trying to sort of say, well, you know, there's been some bad stuff before was the detention of babies and toddlers this summer, undocumented immigrants. That. That in the long epic of the American story, that's not worse than Japanese imprisonment during the Second World War. That's pretty much up there with lynching like that is as great a moral travesty and atrocity as anything done in the name of the American people at any point in our history. And so it's hard to look at that and say, this is an okay time.

[C]

Well, there seems to be a push and pull constantly in this history between the forces of forward movement or seeming forward movement and the forces of persistence and regression. So is there always in the course of American history, the illusion that you can leave something entirely behind, where something has been entirely overcome?

[D]

I guess I think that notion of the forward progression itself is the illusion. And I don't mean that in a cynical sense. I mean it in the sense that it's quite important to one side of the argument to believe that the direction that the country is going into is sort of forward in time towards, in this kind of march of progress. And then it's quite important to the other side in the political argument often to say that the best times are in the past and we need to return to those. You know, the sort of change we can believe in versus make America great again. That just at the simplistic slogan term, we're talking about moving into the future versus turning to the past. And yet, as ideologically useful as that has been for narrow, partisan political battles, I don't actually think it represents the real patterns to be discerned in American past.

[C]

Jill, I just can't help but say this. First of all, thank you. And I just can't recommend these truths highly enough. It's the most extraordinary, all in one volume of American history that I could imagine and certainly that I've ever read and want to. Thank you.

[D]

Thank you, David.

[B]

That was Jill Lepore talking with David Rumnick.

[C]

Experience today's headlines live on stage at the New Yorker Festival, October 5th through October 7th. Sally Yates, Adam Schiff, Michael Avenatti, Jill Lepore, Carmen Perez and more will be in conversation with New Yorker editors and writers on the provocative topics that matter the most. See the festival lineup and buy [e-mail] festival. That's newyorker.com festival.

[E]

What the hell is going on right now. And why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are, too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview. Conversations are fun.

[D]

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[E]

That eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[D]

From. Prx.