ZadekpediaThe Civil War appears in these episodes not as a topic examined on its own terms but as a historical marker invoked in arguments about the Constitution, compulsory service, the Supreme Court and political polarization. No excerpt discusses the war’s causes, campaigns or conclusion; the sources treat it as a boundary — the point after which the number of Supreme Court justices settled, the event that produced the Reconstruction amendments, and a benchmark against which later developments are measured.
The Fourteenth Amendment and Dred Scott
In a discussion of birthright citizenship, Bob Zadek calls Dred Scott probably the worst Supreme Court decision in the Court’s history and attributes it to Chief Justice Taney, whom he describes as an avowed pro-slavery justice from Maryland. Zadek then moves to the war and the post-war amendments: “The Civil War occurs,” he says, and with it come the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the 14th being in his view perhaps one of the most important amendments ever in the history of the Constitution Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018).
Guest Sheldon Gilbert frames the post-war period as one of fracture and unanswered questions, foremost among them the status of former slaves in the South — whether they would be citizens or treated like Native Americans as dependent sovereigns. Out of that debate, he says, came the first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which he reads aloud: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Gilbert states that the purpose of that sentence was first and foremost to undo Dred Scott and wipe it off the books, and that it does more by creating a categorical rule for how one becomes a citizen Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018).
Conscription and the Draft Riots
The war supplies the earliest American example of conscription in a segment on compulsory national service. Zadek tells guest Warren Gibson that during the first system of draft, which was in the Civil War, there were draft riots in New York — brutal draft riots and fires — and asks why. His answer is that although people did not want to serve, the matter was more complicated: young men drafted by Lincoln had to serve, but a draftee could hire somebody else to serve in the military in his place, and if he did so he did not have to serve Conscription Gets a Face Lift (2020).
Zadek uses this to argue that conscription is nothing other than a tax. He compares the Civil War buy-out to medieval England, where taxes were assessed and paid not in money but in grain or livestock, concluding that taxes are never limited to money and that taking anything of value — including a year of an eighteen-year-old’s life — is the same thing. Gibson agrees that compulsory service is a compulsory extraction of value, while insisting that voluntary service is a good thing and not something that should be forced Conscription Gets a Face Lift (2020).
Court Packing and the Nine-Justice Court
In a conversation with law professor Philip Hamburger, Zadek notes that the Supreme Court has had nine justices since after the Civil War, for over 100 years, but that nine is not a magic number and that the number has changed perhaps five or six times in American history Philip Hamburger on Court Packing (2021).
Hamburger explains that the Court began with six justices because there were three circuits — Northern, Southern and Middle states — each needing two justices, and that the number was increased to nine in the middle of the 19th century as the number of circuits grew with the country’s expansion. He calls the Civil War-era enlargement the closest thing to successful court packing, when Congress increased the size of the Court both under Lincoln and afterwards for fear that Southern sympathizers might dominate it. That example, he says, was the only clear successful instance in American history and came in response to a civil war when the loyalties of the Court were uncertain; what he sees now is an attempt to pack the Court in response to mere politics Philip Hamburger on Court Packing (2021).
Zadek adds that the country felt vulnerable, having just survived a Civil War, and that the packing first supported Lincoln and then served as a slap down to his successor, Andrew Johnson, whom Zadek describes as far more sympathetic to slavery. Hamburger also remarks that until 1912 the only court packing had been in response to a Civil War, and warns that court packing will now invite civil war Philip Hamburger on Court Packing (2021).
Across episodes
The war recurs across four episodes, but the episodes show no development of a single question about it: the 2010 episode cites it only as one of the subjects a North Carolina curriculum would omit before 1877 Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010); the 2018 episode treats it as the setting for the Fourteenth Amendment Revenge of the Pen and the Phone (2018); the 2020 episode as the origin of American conscription Conscription Gets a Face Lift (2020); and the 2021 and 2022 episodes as a comparison point for court packing and polarization Philip Hamburger on Court Packing (2021) 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).