Examines the status of the U.S. Congress in the decades leading up to the U.S. Civil War, arguing that while some feel like today's politics are hyperpolarized they are still nothing compared to those days--explores stories of congressmen who routinely made threats, flipped desks, some brandished pistols and knives, and one even killed another in a duel over issues as contentious as the legal status of slavery. Newspapers and reporters were no different, publishing outlandish conspiracy theories.