Don Wildman

As you say, there's so much good soil down there.

This Cretaceous soil, which is a black soil, should be worked by black people.

So God had made the soil of the southern states that way for the ease of using enslaved labor.

I don't get the connection between finding black soil and then justifying slavery.

That seems like a leap.

But the pulpit of deep time.

Well, that's the modern world, isn't it?

I'll be right back after this short break.

Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at ahh at historyhit.com.

We'd love to hear from you.

It all happens in the context of the Second Great Awakening, which was all throughout the 19th century, which was so much about reaching back to the Bible for strength in the face of this modern emerging world.

That group must have been very threatened by this idea for obvious reasons.

But how do they absorb it and, I imagine, use it to their own good?

I'm taken by your idea that there's two tracks for the average American citizen.

You can go to church, but then you can also make money.

That's the religion, other religion of the United States back then, the emerging mercantile era where making money is part of a spiritual existence where you can better yourself and the growth is tangible.

That's always been the balancer in American society.

I can't miss the chance to mention someone who doesn't get enough notice.

Louis Agassiz, the Harvard naturalist and geologist of that time who had so much to do with everything, didn't he?

Carol, how does deep time, all of which is in your book, the themes of deep time intersect with the idea of American exceptionalism, which was such a big part of the 19th century?