Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 188 - The US Civil War
Episode Date: April 20, 2020The US Civil War. Fought over 150 years ago and still the bloodiest war the US has ever been involved in when it comes to the loss of American life. Well over 600,000 Americans died. A greater loss of... American life than those who died in WW1 and WW2 combined. A terrible war where tens of thousands of those who did live suffered gruesome field-hospital amputations. The fighting was beyond intense - tens of thousands of troops marching should-to-shoulder across a field in the face of rifle and cannon fire. Today, we explore not just how the war was fought but why. What events led up the Civil War? Slavery divided the North and the South - how did that divide begin? We cover a lot of information in under three hours in this week's giant, sprawling, historical suck. Listen to my new standup special "Get Outta Here, Devil" on Pandora right now for free: https://pandora.app.link/Az9xIdU6s5 Watch my Amazon special Don't Wake the Bear: https://amazon.com We've donated $5,000 this month to the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 response fund. Vulnerable seniors are at the greatest risk amid COVID-19. Local Meals on Wheels programs are on the front lines every day, focused on doing all they can to keep older Americans safe and nourished in communities across the country. To learn more or donate yourself, https://www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/take-action/covid-19-response2020 Toxic Thoughts Tour Is Currently On HOLD due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Listen to the best of my standup on Spotify! (for free!) https://spoti.fi/2Dyy41d Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2hv83scdN9UMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 7500 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.
Transcript
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The United States Civil War, also known as the war between the states, is among the most
important events in all of US history. Today, we take a good look into what factors led up to the
South, to seeding from the Union. It turns out that the issue of African slavery had divided the
United States long before it was even a nation. We'll also look a bit into the history of African
slavery, how and why it spread in the US. We're looking to how the war was fought how much blood was shed the US Civil War still America's bloodiest war the North alone lost almost
365,000 men in the fighting and the over
600,000 total American casualties
It clipses the number of US casualties in World War one and World War two combined the US Civil War consisted of roughly
10,500 battles, engagements and other military
actions, including nearly 50 major battles, and about a hundred others that had major
significance. So we're not going to be able to explore each and every one here today.
But this week's timeline is loaded with info. If you know quite a bit about the Civil
War, you'll know so much more about the time you're done with today's sucks. So let's get historical. Let's get academic. Let's also get goofy and
weird in a reverent and have a good old time learning about a lot of people having a terrible
time in the four year living hell that was one of the least civil periods in the history
of the United States today on Time Suck. Time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time suck.
You listening to Time suck?
Happy Monday and welcome to the Colt of the Curious.
I'm Dan Cummins, a suck master, domed a Luciferina sub.
The bearded bastard, wackadoodle troll, and you are listening to Time Suck.
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On demand, spectrum, dish, other cable providers,
that'll be on the 28th as well.
So lots of lots of stuff, lots of stuff still coming out,
thankfully, while we're sheltered in place.
And that is it for the top of the show announced,
we're real quick today.
Now let's travel to a different time.
Let's escape to the past when things were so much worse
than they are now.
Let's be glad we did not live during the US Civil War.
[♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
Let's kick this war suck off with some US Civil War basics.
Let's talk about some stuff that many of you US meat sacks probably learned in fifth grade
and then like myself, probably quickly forgot because you didn't become a civil war historians or reenactors.
Stuff that those of you living elsewhere around the world may never have learned.
Okay, so quick facts.
Abraham Lincoln, very tall man, he was six foot nine.
Jefferson Davis, very short, he was four foot six.
When the war ended, the South was just one to two weeks away from developing the world's
first atomic bomb.
There were only two million whites living in the South and 75 million African slaves. There were 460 million people
living in the North and also 30 million Polish monsters. The South's greatest weapon in
the war was the Roanoke recluse spider. It's psychologically intimidated Yankee aggressors
greatly. Infamous, this spider for working in teams or one spider opened your eyelid
when you're asleep. Let's let our spiders crawl in and burrow deep inside your head.
The Ronoke recluse was also known to go not just for the ice, but also the ears and the mouth.
A bite in those areas would send their venom straight to your brain, then the venom would
paralyze you in small amounts, killing in large amounts.
When one spider would bite you, in addition to venom, it would release a chemical compound
that would attract many other spiders.
And it'd swarm on you, and you'd end up covering hundreds, if not literally
thousands of spiders crawling into your mouth, crawling in your eyes, most of your eyes,
as you lay helpless and they would lay their eggs in your brain and they would build nests
in your sinus cavity and in your butt and in your vagina and all sorts of evil shit.
And they would keep you paralyzed and eventually they would kill you after they ate your
insides and controlled your mind and made you walk around and stuff like a zombie.
And it would take weeks for you to finally die.
And did I say quick facts earlier?
I meant I meant to say quick fake facts.
If you're new, Lister, know that sometimes I'm just going to say some weird crazy shit.
You got to pay attention if you want the real facts.
And if you don't like that, well, then you know what?
Why don't you fucking beat it, okay?
All right?
You color inside the lines all the time, walk and bummer.
Now for the real info.
US Civil War began in 1861.
So let's talk about what life was like
at that time in America compared to now.
Actually, we'll use figures from the year before
since an 1860 census info was actually taken.
Obviously life in 1860s America,
the year Abraham Lincoln was elected president,
nothing like it is today.
For instance, traveling, terrible compared to now.
They didn't have even one wetzel's pretzel
in any of their airports or Starbucks or espresso.
They didn't have airplanes at their airports.
They didn't have airports at their airports.
Clothing was comparatively terrible.
You couldn't find a decent pair of basketball
or skateboard shoes or cross trainers
because none of that shit existed.
You couldn't find comfortable swimsuits
to sit in the hot tub with.
You couldn't find any hot tub to sit in
or look at or a daydream about because those didn't exist.
Medical care, absolutely terrible, like scary, terrible.
You couldn't find a good dentist or doctor back in 1860,
because those people didn't exist yet.
Medical care was so bad during the Civil War
that for every one soldier who died in battle
and a lot of soldiers died in battle,
two would die of disease.
Check out this bit of 19th century doctrine info.
Whiskey, Lord, no, cha!
For bowel complaints like diarrhea,
doctors would give you some opium,
which actually surprisingly does kind of work. So the next time, you know, your poop gets a little
loose and ends up, you know, in a civil war with your butto, definitely do lots of heroin.
Seriously, the opioids can reduce gastrointestinal motility, propulsion, secretions,
and can increase gastrointestinal muscle tone, which can help control diarrhea. However, opium can also, and often,
does lead to more opium, very addictive.
And then once your diarrhea is gone,
now you have an addiction opium,
which is considerably worse than having diarrhea.
A constipation was treated with an infamous substance
called the blue mass, a mixture of mercury and chalk.
Mercury and chalk doesn't cure shit,
doesn't cure shit,
doesn't cure fucking anything.
Well, in large doses, it can cure being smart.
It can cure living.
It can give you mercury poisoning,
which can wreak havoc on your brain and other organs
and it can actually kill you.
Blood poisoning and septus other infections
were common back in 1860,
because doctors didn't do stuff like wash their hands.
Medical science was in the dark ages compared to now during the Civil War.
Life was worse in almost every way in 1860 compared to now. Modern sewer systems didn't exist.
Think about that. I mean, it wasn't like there was a bunch of outhouses cluttering up every city,
you know, wasn't quite like that, but there also weren't modern sewage treatment plants. And many cities life
stunk in 1860 literally. And many urban areas like Boston often smelled like shit because
modern plumbing wasn't consistently whisking away over 200,000 daily turds. And that number
is based on how many people live there and how often the average person does poo. It's
not a made up number. Over 200,000 turns a day.
It's a lot of poop and that shit adds up.
That shit literally adds up for a select field.
Life was probably better back then though.
Like if you were really, really into riding horses.
Like if you loved riding horses more than anything else,
then you may have liked life back in 1860 more than now.
You could ride your horse damn near anywhere back in 1860. Also easier to be super openly racist back then. If that's what you're into, you
could say overtly racist shit just about anywhere and receive little. If any public backlash,
definitely easier to access opium back then. He didn't even need a doctor to get it.
Lodnam widely available. Intains almost all of the opium alkaloids, including morphine
and coating. So if you love getting high on opium alkaloids, including morphine and coating.
So, if you love getting high on opium, being super racist and riding horses, more than
everything else, life was better than 1860.
If not, well, you'd probably rather throw yourself off a fucking building and have to live
back then.
Let's talk about numbers now.
How many meat sacks were around in 1860 in America compared to now?
According to Google, the US currently has 328.2 million people.
In 1860, the population of the US was 31 million.
Less than one tenth the size it is today, the country had an estimated 2.5 million when
it was founded, around four million by the time we took our first census in 1790.
So while there was less people than today, it had been growing at a very fast rate in
70 years,
the population had increased almost eight times over.
New York City had the nation's largest urban area
with under a million people around 813,600.
Philadelphia was second, 565,500 people.
Around 178,000 people lived in Boston,
which may not sound like a lot,
but the population was extremely concentrated.
Boston life was definitely urban living.
The largest city in the South was New Orleans. 168,675.
Chicago had 112,000 San Francisco, 56,800.
All of Idaho, not counting American Indians, less than 15,000 people.
So less to do in Idaho back in 186060 than, you know, and say Boston, but based on that
whole, you know, turd sewage situation probably smelled better.
Not a lot of people compared it now, but the young country was growing exponentially.
In 1800, there were 200 newspapers being published in the US by 1860.
There were 3000.
Now let's talk about mail.
I found this fascinating.
Think about how important mail is to your life today.
Much of my life revolves around the mail.
We might not be sending a lot of letters anymore,
a lot of handwritten notes, but what about Amazon packages?
What about literally anything and everything you buy online?
Huge companies like Amazon,
at least during normal times and many markets
were offering same-day shipping, if not next day shipping.
Giant warehouses, distribution staffs, complex supply chains, making that possible.
And again, before our current new don't go anywhere life, you could get just about anything
from a major retailer in no more than two days, you know, two day shipping.
In 1860, the best they had was the pony express, bunch of horses. That was the best. It was revolutionary and it had just barely arrived in 1860.
On April 3rd, 1860, the pony express made its first famous track from California to Missouri,
paving the way for future male delivery around the nation and working very hard right now
to hold off for the time being on any pony play jokes. I know
I went hard on those past two weeks and I didn't mean hard in the sexual sense. Where did
I easy sash braille ease of girl. Oh, oh girl. Johnny Fry was the first pony press,
pony express cross country writer. Great pony express writer named by the way Johnny Fry. Ride Johnny Fry, ride like a wind.
Ha ha ha.
He was 120 pounds of sinewy muscle and experienced writer at just 20 years old.
Fry's saddle was loaded with 50 pieces of mail, including a congratulatory message from
President Buchanan to Governor Downey of California.
Now to be clear, Fry didn't ride all the way to California by himself nonstop.
That would be insane.
He and his horse would both be dead long before they got there.
They tried that.
Friday took the mail on the first leg of the Westbound route, delivering it from the
stables in St. Joseph, Missouri to Santa Cacanzas, a distance of about 80 miles.
The entire journey from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California took a lot of riders,
even more horses, and it took about 10 days.
Took 10 days, and this was super fast.
People were pumped.
People were like, what?
I can ride a letter.
Are you serious?
In Missouri, on April 1st.
And maybe here back before May, holy shit.
What kind of dark sorcery makes such lightning fast
communication possible?
And now, many of us complain if we're trying to text someone
across the world, a video, and it takes more than 10 seconds to load and send. Come on!
What the fuck? I got five bars. I got 5G. Why is this working?
Poor Fry would be dead by 1863. He fought for the union, was killed in the Civil War by
Quantrill's Raiders in the Battle of Baxter Springs, legend has it that in hand, in a hand to hand fight
with Confederates, Fry killed five of his assailants before falling mortally wounded himself.
He was fast and tough. Hail, Nimrod. Hail, Johnny Fry. Now let's talk about how long
people lived back then compared to now. average life expectancy in 1860 was 39.4 years.
And it would drop further during the Civil War era, you know, due to all those killed in
battle. And 160 years since then, it has almost doubled to 78.9 years. The infant mortality
rate was absolutely horrific back then. Over 180 deaths per 1,000 live birds compared to 5.6 today.
My God.
To be clear, infant mortality rate is not the same as birth rate.
In 1860, just over 41 babies were born dead or died during the birthing process, but over
180 of every with 1,000 babies died before the age of one.
And if you go back just 10 years to 1850, 217 per 1,000 died before the age of one, And if you go back just 10 years to 1850, 217 per thousand
died before the age of one, compared again to 5.6 today. Roughly 40 times as many babies
died back then compared to now. So 1860 would also be a great time to be alive if you really
hated babies, right? Like if you go to your day, thinking stuff like, no, I'm sure online
porn hot tops are pretty cool,
but you know, what I'd really rather be doing
is just hearing about everybody's babies dying, you know.
And if that's you, then you would love 1860,
you unstable psychopath.
I feel like this infant mortality rate info alone
should shut up conspiratorial lunatics
who think nefarious forces work in behind the scenes
for centuries are trying to kill the world's working class and poor people who rant about chemtrails in the gender
21.
If the Illuminati has been conspiring against humanity for centuries, then they're really
bad at their jobs.
They're getting worse.
They're getting worse at killing this as time goes on, much worse.
They're getting worse as and slaving us.
We'll talk about slavery more in a bit, but I'd like to think of you,
rational person to understand slavery was a wee bit
more common in the 1960s than it is now.
At least in the sense of life long, shadow,
or I'm thinking of it, shadow, I have the word later.
In my notes later, I will talk way more in depth
about slavery, but in the sense of actually outright
owning people for life, owning their kids, less of that now than there was back in the sense of, you know, actually outright owning people for life, owning their
kids less of that now than it was back in 1860. Right now, half the world is sheltered in place,
schools are closed because the virus is killing by most logical estimates, maybe around 1% of the
people in effects. And yes, I know some places reported a mortality rate is higher, higher than
even 6.5%, but that is based on known cases. And experts seem to unanimously agree that way more people have been exposed to COVID-19
than those who have tested positive,
because there isn't enough tests.
So think about that.
The world's freaking the fuck out
that around 1% of those who catch this virus will die,
back in 1860, almost one in five humans
didn't make it to the age of one.
And millions of people were enslaved
in like plantation slavery.
Even as I record this podcast during the strangest time in my lifetime,
life is still immensely better now than it was in 1860.
Now a quick word about Northern life versus Southern life in 1860,
were there major differences between life of the North and life in the South?
There were actually. Obviously there were states that had slaves and states that did not.
That's a huge difference.
Also the southern states were much more rural than the North in 1860.
The economy in most places based upon plantations, agriculture, easily the primary industry,
while in the North the industrial revolution was beginning.
Factories were getting going.
The South relied heavily on slave labor to work in the fields while the North used wage
labor and machinery to fuel their factories.
Last thing about life then versus life now, education.
Few Americans and ires of the North or the South had more than a primary school education.
In 1870, the closest year I could find data for, roughly 20% of the 14 and older U.S. population
were illiterate.
Now, 99% of the population is at least somewhat illiterate.
Can read and write at least a remedial level.
Despite what a lot of people post on the internet
and how many people think that lizard illuminati
fearing David Ike is a visionary genius.
Overall, we actually are a lot smarter now
than we were in 1860.
Now that you have a little taste of what life
in the US was like, back then compared to now, let's go over the historical basics of the US Civil War
itself. We'll go over the war in greater detail in today's timeline. This is just a nice
little primer to get our brains around the basics. The war was fought between the Northern
and Southern states from 1861 to 1865. Okay, let's move into that timeline now.
Shrap on those boots.
Oh, JK, gosh dang.
That wasn't a primer.
That was a sense.
The Civil War was fought between the United States of America,
the North composed of 23 states and four border states
that had slaves that didn't initially succeed.
Delaware and Maryland never did join the Confederacy
despite being slave states.
And on the other side was the Confederate States of America,
a collection of 11 Southern states
that left the union between 1816 and 1861.
The first seven Confederate states were South Carolina,
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
And they were followed by Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
The conflict began, excuse me, primarily, wow, I don't know where.
Primarily as a result of the longstanding disagreement over the institution of slavery,
we'll get more into that later on.
On February 9th, 1861, Jefferson Davis, a former US Senator and Secretary of War, was
elected president of the Confederate States of America by america by the members of the confederate constitutional
convention uh... jefferson davis was not four foot six uh... he was five foot eleven
bummer i love thinking about a diminutive of jefferson fuming uh... about a giant link it
after four bloody years of conflict the united states defeated the south and in the end
the estates that were in rebellion were re admittedadmitted to the US and the institution of slavery was abolished nationwide.
You probably know who the president of the United States was that time, but in case you
don't, it was Abraham Lincoln.
He was not six foot nine.
He was six foot four.
Same height as Lyndon B. Jembo Johnson.
You know who's the third tallest who has president is?
I didn't expect this.
Donald Trump, six foot three.
Wouldn't have guessed that for whatever reason.
James Madison, the shortest at five foot four.
Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin in Kentucky.
He worked as a shopkeeper and a lawyer before entering politics in the 1840s.
He was lanky and for most of his youth actually did not have a sweet beard.
And a great jawline actually for real.
A beardless honest Abe was a stud.
And I have no idea what I'm talking about that
More relevant to today sucked and Lincoln's jawline was his slavery stance. He was against it
Alarm by Lincoln's anti-slavery stance the Southern States seceded soon after he was elected president in 1860. How about that?
A lot of US presidents have had to deal with some pretty serious shit while in office
But Lincoln may have started off his presidency with the most to deal with
before he was even sworn in. Damn near half the country was like, nope, uh, uh, uh, uh, fuck that guy. We're out of here.
Well, things are pretty polarized politically in America right now, but not like that.
Lincoln declared that he would do everything necessary to keep the United States united as one country.
It refused to recognize the Southern States as an independent nation and the Civil War
erupted in the spring of 1861.
The fighting would be very intense.
We'll delve into exactly how in today's timeline.
Now let's fast forward a bit and talk about Lincoln's emancipation proclamation.
On January 1st, 1863, Lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, which freed the slaves in the
areas of the country that shall then be in rebellion against the United States.
So despite not being the president of the Confederacy, he declared Southern slaves free, and
slave owners living in Southern States, reading about that in their newspaper, probably
did a lot of agitated paper russets, a lot of throat clearance.
Well, I never, I never let you
thank you fool.
Hup hub.
Well, the emancipation proclamation laid the groundwork for the eventual freedom of all
slaves across the country.
Lincoln won re-elections in 1864 against opponents who wanted to sign a peace treaty with
the Southern States and let them keep their slaves.
Lincoln was Republican and his primary Democratic opponent was Union General George
B. McClellan. Lincoln ended up winning 55% of the popular vote and he crushed George in
the electoral college vote, 212 to 21. McClellan wasn't just a Union general. For a while,
he was the Union general, the fourth commanding general of the US Army from November 1st,
1861 through March 11th, 1862, who led Union forces against
generally in the battle of Antium.
Battle most historians believe McClellan won despite his army taking on more casualties
and leases since lease army retreated to end that fighting.
McClellan had his critics, the man complained about him being that he was too hesitant in
the eyes of Lincoln and other politicians in DC of of engaging the Confederates in battle
and also pursuing them when they would begin to retreat. But he was a competent field commander.
McClellan ran his campaign on a platform of continuing the war effort and doing a better job
with it than Lincoln. He also was not as interested in Lincoln in abolition. He made it clear that he
quote, opposed, forcible abolition is an object of the wall or a necessary
condition of peace and reunion.
Interesting that had he won the election, the Civil War would have continued, but once
won by the Union, slavery in the South would have continued.
Would that have led to another Civil War down the road?
I have to think it would.
How long would it have taken to abolish slavery?
Had McClillin won. Um, McClillin would go on to be the 24th governor of New Jersey from 1878, 1881, dying unexpectedly
of a heart attack at age 58 in orange, New Jersey.
On April 14th, 1865, Lincoln was shot by assassin John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer.
He died at 7.22 a.m. the next morning.
For more on that, check out Suck98, where we devoted an entire episode to it.
When word reached McClellan that his former presidential campaign rival had died, he was rumored
to have said, who's winning now, huh?
All those electoral votes didn't help him plug that fucking hole in his head, did they?
Come on.
Am I right or am I right, guys?
Help top.
Anyone?
No? Oh, whatever. I thought it was pretty clever.
Obviously he did not say it.
Now we know a teeny bit about the Civil War.
The next big question is what caused it?
In a word, unicycles.
A lot of people don't know that.
The South was formed and North was against them.
Some insults were tossed about.
Some gaggling and finger pointing went down.
Some snickering insults were overheard. stuff like, get a bite like a real man.
Uh, no, that's nonsense.
Slavery.
Slavery is why it started.
We'll go into detail a bit later as to what specific events led up to the actual fighting,
but the issue that divided the nation was definitely predominantly slavery.
Slavery was concentrated mainly in the Southern states by the mid-19th century, where slaves were used as farm laborers, artisans, and house servants. There were various types of
slavery around the world and throughout history, the uh, chattel slavery, that's the word I was trying
to come up with earlier, uh, chattel was the most common form of slavery imposed in the US.
This system, which allows people considered legal property to be bought, sold, and owned forever,
was supported by the US and European powers and in various European territories in Vassal States, North America
and elsewhere around the world in the 16th through the 18th centuries.
Chattel slavery formed the backbone of the largely agrarian southern economy while the north,
again, was seen the benefit of wage labor and the economic boom of industrialization.
Many people in both the north and the south believed that slavery was immoral and wrong,
yet the institution remained, which created a large chasm on the political and social
landscape of the country.
Some southerners felt threatened by the pressure of northern politicians and abolitionists,
people like famed abolitionist hero John Brown, and they claimed that the federal government
had no power to end slavery, imposed certain taxes, forced infrastructure improvements, or influence Western expansion against the
wishes of state governments. And they were wrong. The federal government does have the right
to do all of that. In 1789, the Constitution granted the federal government the right to
collect taxes, raise an army, other rights. Since then, his overall authority has unquestionably
trumped state power. A lot
of states have disagreed ever since, but at the end of the day, we are the United States
of America. Not the will do as we please, and you can suck it if you don't like it, states
of America. Overall, the feds can throw their weight around a bit more than the states can
and the South didn't like that. So they left. And then the feds were like, nah, nah, nah,
you don't get to leave.
And they exerted federal power in the form of Northern aggression.
Before the South split, there were numerous attempts at avoiding separation and maintaining
the peace.
There was the Missouri Compromise, US Federal Legislation that admitted Maine to the United
States as a free state, simultaneously with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance
of power between North and South and the US Senate.
As part of the compromise,
the legislation prohibited slavery north of the 36
and 30 foot parallel, excluding Missouri,
the 16th United States Congress passed this legislation
on March 3rd, 1820,
and President James Monroe signed it on March 6th.
The results of the compromise of 1850.
The compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery
in new territories added to the U.S. and the wake of the Mexican-American War, the last
of from 1846 to 1848.
It admitted California into the Union as a free state, left Utah and New Mexico to decide
for themselves whether to be slave states or free states, defined a new Texas New Mexico
boundary.
Texas had already entered the U.S. as a slave state in 1845,
and made it easier for slave owners to recover runaways
under the fugitive slave act of 1850.
There was also the Kansas Nebraska Act in 1854 Bill
that mandated popular sovereignty,
allowing settlers of a territory to design
whether slavery would be allowed
within their new state states borders for themselves.
And there were many other pieces of legislation passed to steer the country away from secession, away from war, and they would all fail.
In the end, politicians on both sides of the aisle dug in their heels and the south seceded.
The issue that most divided the US for decades prior to the Civil War unquestionably slavery. A war regarding slavery had been in the making since the u.s. had first become a country.
Vermont abolished slavery the same year declared independence from Britain. 1777.
14 years before it became a state. Pennsylvania abolished it in 1780.
By the time the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Massachusetts and New Hampshire,
or New Hampshire, excuse me, had to abolish slavery.
Rhode Island, Connecticut, quickly followed in 1784.
The seeds for civil war were sewn years before the Constitution was signed in 1787.
As the pro and anti-slave factions moved towards an inevitable confrontation, the ability to
win the war appeared to tilt in the North's favor.
The North had a lot more men, a lot more war material than the South.
At the beginning of the Civil War, 22 million people lived in the North, 9 million people,
nearly 4 million of whom were slaves, so really 5 million possibly pro-slavery people lived
in the South.
Huge difference.
Had the South had a larger population, the war could have went in a very different direction.
The North also had more money, more factories, more horses, more railroads, more farmland.
On paper, all of these advantages made the US much more powerful than the Confederate
states.
The main advantage the South had was fighting the war on their home court.
They were fighting defensively on territory.
They knew very well.
They also had the advantage of sheer geographical size of the Southern Confederacy.
This meant that northern armies would have to capture and hold vast quantities of land
across the South to win, and that would create supply chain problems for the Union.
If the South would have also been located in a much colder climate with more rugged
geography, that also could have tilted the war in the Confederates' favor. Since they
weren't, Union soldiers didn't have to face unforgiving winters like the Nazis
did in Russian World War II as they pushed further south.
They also didn't have to navigate past steep mountain passes where they and their supplies
could be easily ambushed.
And yes, Southern meat sacks, I do know you have mountains.
Beautiful mountains like the Appalachians, but the Appalachians, the Antiappes, but not
the Rockies.
An important geographical advantage in favor of the Confederacy also was its Atlantic like the Appalachians, but the Appalachians, the Antiappes, but not the Rockies.
An important geographical advantage and favor of the Confederacy also was its Atlantic coastline.
So many ports, so many places to get needed goods for the war efforts from overseas merchants.
The South maintained some of the best ports in North America, New Orleans, Charleston,
Mobile, Norfolk, Wilmington.
This helped the Confederacy immensely in his efforts to mount a stubborn resistance.
Despite most military advantages facing the North two years into the war, it was still anybody's ballgame.
The North were probably up a couple runs, points, touchdowns, goals,
whatever other sports scoring reference you want to envision for sure,
but people weren't leaving the stands just yet. And then Gettysburg happened.
We'll go over plenty of battles today, maybe none were as pivotal as the Battle of Gettysburg happened. We'll go over plenty of battles today, maybe none
were as pivotal as the Battle of Gettysburg. It was the bloodiest battle of the war. By the time
the battle began on July 1st, 1863, the war had already fucked up the Confederate landscape
and life in general pretty bad in the South. The presence of vast armies throughout the
countryside meant that livestock, crops, other staples were being consumed quickly.
In an effort to gather fresh supplies and relieve the pressure on the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg, Mississippi, Confederate
General Robert Lee launched a daring invasion of the North in the summer of 63. He was defeated
by Union General George G. Mead in a three day battle near Gatesburg that left nearly
51,000 men killed, wounded or missing an action. Lee's men were able to gather the vital supplies.
They also did little to draw Union forces away from Bixburg, which fell to federal troops
on July 4, 1863.
And many historians marked the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Bixburg, Mississippi,
as a major turning point in the Civil War.
In November of 1863, President Lincoln traveled to the small Pennsylvania town and delivered
the Gettysburg address on the 19th, which expressed firm commitment to preserving the
Union and went on to become one of the most iconic speeches in American history.
I would like to recite it here.
It's not that long.
And it's brief entirety, taking a few liberties to clarify.
I think what Lincoln must have really meant, based on the laws of both his time and the laws of the founding father's
time he referred to.
Four skulls and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
And by all men, of course, I am speaking of
just white men who own land and pay taxes since originally when this great nation was conceived,
this small 6% of the overall population were the only citizens allowed to vote for many,
many years. But that's neither here nor there or today.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation,
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate.
We cannot consecrate.
We cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men living in dead who struggled here have consecrated it.
Far above our poor power to add to detract.
The world will little note, no longer remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us to live in, rather, to be dedicated here to the the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government
of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.
And by people, I hope you do understand, I again mean men, since all those black men
will technically legally be allowed to vote in many places, when this is all said and done, women, white, black and otherwise, will
have to wait until 1920, another 57 years before they can vote.
My wife Mary Todd is greatly displeased by this notion, but she doesn't run my home.
I do.
I'm the man and she will do it.
She's told.
And also when I said men a moment to go, I again really meant only white men since segregation won't legally end for another 101 years. And there will be
a whole heap of violent discrimination perpetrated against a variety of non white ethnicities
in the interim. Yes, they're going to have to wait over 100 years for that shit. But
you get the gist of what I'm saying. This battle was important and we're making some progress
damage. And I'm doing my fucking best up here. I don't know why he was so southern there.
It was more fun for me.
Okay, now let's meet the civil war.
It's two most important historical figures outside of Lincoln.
Ulysses says Grant and Robert E. Lee, arguably the two most famous military personalities to
emerge from the American Civil War.
A high-o-born Grant for Virginia born Lee.
They wouldn't actually meet in the battlefield until well into the war in may of 1864.
Two men had very little in common. Lee was from a well-respected first family of Virginia with ties to the continental army and the founding fathers of the nation.
Graham was a dirt bag. He's from a middle-class family with no political or family connections.
Both men graduated from the US military academy at West Point served in the.s army prior to the civil war both also fighting in the mexican
american war
lee was offered command of the federal army
amassing a washington eighteen sixty one but he declined the command and
through in his hat with the confederacy
he basically said that he couldn't fight against his people the people of
virginia
so i find that very interesting he was he was offered control of the the union
army
and then he ended up with control to southern i'm
southern army uh... so clearly he had a he had a great military mind respected by many He was offered control of the Union Army, and then he ended up with control of the Southern Army. Southern Army.
So clearly he had a great military mind, respected by many.
Interesting fact about Lee, he would every battle he fought in the Civil War, he went up
against a larger force, and he won a lot of those battles.
Lee's early war career got off to a rocky start, but he found his stride in June of 1862,
and for the assumed command of what he dubbed the army of Northern Virginia.
Grant, on the other hand, found early success in the war, but then was haunted by rumors of alcoholism later in
the war. A famous Abraham Lincoln quote published as early as October 30th 1863, and the New
York Times about this said, when someone charged General Grant and the president's here, oh,
this is, sorry, it's good in my voice again. When someone charged General Grant and the
president's hearing with drinking too much liquor,
Mr. Lincoln, recalling general grant's successes,
said that if he could find out what brand of whiskey grant drank,
he would send a barrel of it to all the other commanders.
I love it.
Who gives a shit how much he's drinking?
Student great goddamn job.
If you need to cover more sips of whiskey
than the average fellow in order to lead his men
properly into battle, then let him have his fucking whiskey.
Hey, I lose to Fina, I think.
Maybe Praise Bojangles for good measure.
By 1863, these two men were the best generals on the respective sides in March of 1864.
Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General and brought to the Eastern Theor of the war where
he and Lee engaged in a relentless campaign from May of 1864 to Lee's surrender at a Appomattox courthouse 11 months
later.
Both these men suck worthy.
So we won't dig into their lives a tremendous amount today.
Would love to do a Ulysses S grant suck or a Robert E. Lee suck at some point.
After four years of conflict, Grant's Union Army took home the trophy, the major Confederate
Army surrendered to the U.S. in April of 1865, the North one, the war bankrupted
much as a South leaving its roads, farms and factories and ruins, and all but wiped out
a generation of men who wore the blue and gray. The Southern states were occupied by
Union soldiers rebuilt, gradually re-admitted to the U.S. over the course of 20 very difficult
years known as the Reconstruction Era. After the war was over, the Constitution was amended
to free American slaves,
assure equal protection under the law for American citizens,
and to grant black men the right to vote.
During the war, Abraham Lincoln's forces freed many slaves
and allowed freedmen to join the Union Army as the US-colored troops.
As the war drew to a close, but before the southern states were re-admitted to the US,
the Northern states added the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment amendments
to the U.S. Constitution. These amendments, also known as the Civil War Amendments. The
13th Amendment abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment guaranteed the citizens would receive
equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment granted black men the right to vote.
Okay, so now we have an overview of the war, you know, and at least mention what caused
the war slavery. Now let's look at some and at least mention what caused the war slavery.
Now let's look at some of the myths around what caused the Civil War.
Surprisingly, a lot of meat sacks don't think the Civil War was primarily about slavery.
Many believe in the lost cause myth.
In 1866, a year after the war ended, an ex-confederate named Edward A. Pollard published the first
pro-Southern history version of the Civil War called the Lost Cause, a new Southern history of the war of the Confederates.
And Pollard's book was followed by a torrent of similar propaganda. Soon the term Lost
Cause perfectly described the South's collective memory of the war. All these works promoting
the Lost Cause consoled Southern pride by echoing similar themes. The South's leaders had been
noble. The South was not outfought, but merely overwhelmed. Southerners were united in support of the Confederate
cause. And slavery was a benign institution overseen by benevolent peaceful masters.
Of chief tenant of the lost cause was that succession had been forced on the South to
protect States rights. It wasn't about keeping slavery alive. Heavens no. It was about standing
up to a tyrannical power hungry federal government trying to squash
states rights down the fence by 1890.
The lost cause belief was extremely popular and it grew even more popular until about
1950.
And then advocates of the lost cause ran into a bit of a logic problem with their belief
that the Civil War was mostly about standing up for states rights in the 50s when a lot
of historical records were uncovered that exposed the truth.
Damn facts.
Oh man, sucks when they get in the way.
The civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s prompted historians and teachers to review
a ton of civil war and pre-civil war records and challenge the lost cause notion.
And they came to the conclusion that the South's secession went against states' rights, not
for them.
On Christmas Eve 1860, South Carolina, the first to leave the Union, adopted a declaration
of the immediate causes which induce and justify the succession of South Carolina from the Federal
Union.
It listed South Carolina's grievances, including the exercise of Northern States rights,
saying we assert that 14 of the states have deliberately refused for years past
to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own statutes for the proof.
The phrase constitutional obligation sounds vague, but delegates went on to quote the part of
the Constitution that concerned them, the fugitive slave clause. They then noted an increasing
hostility on the part of the non-slave-holding states to
the institution of slavery.
And many of these states, the fugitive, is discharged from service or labor claimed.
South Carolina also attacked New York for no longer allowing temporary slavery.
In the past, Charleston Gentry wanted to spend a cool August in the North could bring
there the slaves along.
I by 1860, New York made it clear that it was a free state and any slave brought there
will become free.
South Carolina was fucking pissed.
Delegates were further upset at a handful of Northern states for letting African-American
men vote.
How dare they?
How dare they exercise their own rights?
Voting was a state matter at the time, so this should have followed under the purview
of states' rights.
Nevertheless, southerners outraged they didn't like that the northern states
weren't doing what they wanted to do uh... in their states on their own land so they weren't
in favor of states rights they were in favor of what they wanted slavery if they were in
favor of states rights they would have been pissed in New York for not exact you know
not allowing slavery inside his borders but they would have understood. I get it. It's their right. It's their state. It's their choice. We do it on here and they
do it on there. Hoorayful state rats. Delegates also took offence that northern states had
denounced as sinful, the institution of slavery, and permitted open establishment among them
of abolitionist societies. In other words, northern and western states should not have the
right to let people assemble and speak freely.
Not if what they say might threaten slavery.
Other Secedon States echoed South Carolina.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world.
Proclaim Mississippi. A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
Northern abolitionist Mississippi went on to complain, have nullified
the fugitive slave law, broken every compact, and invested with the honours of Mottodom,
regarding John Brown. The radical abolitionists who tried to lead a slave uprising in Virginia
in 1859. Once the Confederacy formed, its leaders wrote a new constitution that protected
the institution of slavery at the national level. Right?
Give me more power to their own version of the federal government.
So the South was, uh, wasn't pissed about states rights.
It was pissed about slavery.
Uh, as noted civil war historian and the former director of programs at Virginia
text, Virginia Center for Civil War studies, William C. Davis has said this all
showed how little Confederates cared about states rights, how much they cared about
slavery. To the old union, they had said that the federal power had no authority to interfere with
slavery issues in a state.
To their new nation, they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with
the federal protection of slavery.
Others appointed to additional alleged causes of the Civil War, and they all can be dispensed
with pretty fairly, pretty quickly.
Like the argument that tariffs and taxes also led to succession, right? It was these damn federal taxes that the South had to leave to
protect its economic interests. High tariffs had been the issue in the 1831 notification
controversy, but not in 1860. I'm about tariffs and taxes, the declaration of the immediate
causes said nothing when the South seceded, because tariffs had been steadily decreasing
for an entire generation.
The tariff of 1857 under which the nation was functioning
had been written by a Virginia slave owner
and was warmly approved by Southern members of Congress.
Its rates were lower than at any point prior in the century.
So just prior to the Civil War, taxes weren't a great place.
Some say the election of Lincoln was the reason for secession
and that is true, but why?
Because he was against slavery.
So again, we come back to slavery.
The South definitely went to war to keep slavery going, but did the North actually go to
the war to end slavery?
No, no, they did not.
This is another common myth.
The North went to war initially and primarily to just hold the nation together, not to free
Southern slaves.
That's an important difference.
You know, so get off your hot horse, Yankees.
Oh, wait, I mean Yankee, I gotta get off my hot horse.
Evidence shows that abolition became
a bigger and bigger motivation as the war went on,
but not in its early years.
And there's proof, August 22, 1962,
President Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley,
abolitionist editor of the New York Tribune, and it stated, if I could save the union without freeing any slave,
I would do it.
And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.
And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save
the union.
And what I forbear, I forbear, because I do not believe it, I do not believe it would
help to save the union. So Lincoln's own anti slavery sentiment was widely known this time.
So widely known that it helped prompt the Southern States to rebel in that same letter
he wrote, I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty and I attend no modification
of my off express personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
So Lincoln was concerned, you know, uh, that making the war about abolition would anger
Northern Unionists, many of whom cared little about African-Americans.
He wanted to free them personally, but that wasn't his primary political motivation for
the war.
The whole notion of the North, you know, where the obvious good guys, nobly fighting against
slavery in the South, where the obvious villains hoping to keep Africans enslaved forever
is overly simplistic and just not true.
Not all southerners wanted to hold on to the institution of slavery, not all northerners
gave a shit about the rights of African Americans.
Just like we can't all agree on political candidates and political issues now, we couldn't
back then either.
Wealthy Southern landowners were in favor of slavery, of course.
It helped them build their wealth, it helped keep them rich.
But if you were some poor Southern white sharecropper, why the hell would you be in favor of
slavery?
The plantations are helping to keep you poor by not having to pay you a fair wage to
farm because they're having someone else do it who doesn't get any wage.
Some in the South didn't care about keeping slavery live and they were planning the North
who didn't care about ending it.
Segregation following the Civil War not stopping at the Mason Dixon line proves that.
Schools in the North were openly segregated.
Shopkeepers and theaters displayed white's only signs after the war, even celebrities such
as former Sucks subject Josephine Baker, right? Decades after had a hard time finding hotel rooms and faced Jim Crow treatment in restaurants
when they toured the North.
So why did Lincoln push to free slaves towards the end of the war?
Well, because by late 1862 it became clear that ending slavery in the rebelling state would
definitely help the war effort.
Whenever US forces drew near African Americans flocked to their lines to help the war effort
to make a living, most of all to be free.
Some of Lincoln's generals helped him see early on that sending them back into slavery
would just help the Confederate war cause. When it became obvious that freeing the slaves
would help the Union win the war, unite the nation, then abolition became a primary motivation
for the war of the North. For the North. Another important myth to squash regarding the
Civil War was that
thousands of African Americans, both free and slaves, fought on the side of the Confederacy.
Neo Confederates have been making this argument since about 1980 and outside of a very small
group of soldiers in their final weeks of the war, it's bullshit. One reason we know
it's bullshit is the Confederate policy flatly did not let blacks become soldiers until March of 1865.
No documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate
soldier.
There are some altered photos floating around that propelled this myth.
I looked into one altered photograph, considered by many to be evidence of black Confederate
soldiers.
However, University of Virginia researchers
found out it had been intentionally cropped and mislabeled. The photograph was of Union
soldiers, not Confederate ones. White officers did bring slaves to the front, you know, for
the Confederacy, where they were pressed into service, but doing laundry and cooking.
Some Confederate leaders did try to enlist African Americans, but it was shot down. In January 1864, Confederate General Patrick Claiburn, or Claiburn, proposed filling the
ranks with black men.
When Jefferson Davis reported they heard that suggestion, he rejected the idea, ordered
as a subject to be dropped and never brought up again.
And the war's closing week, General Robert Lee was desperate for men.
He asked the Confederate government to approve allowing the slave men to serve in exchange
for some form of post war freedom.
This time, the government gave in, but very few black signed up in the war with soon
over.
And of course, very few signed up.
I can't imagine any signing up who weren't either forced to do so by their owners or
mentally ill.
Why would you do that?
I'm signing up for the war, baby.
If those Northern bastards win, we'll be free.
Not on my watch. No, sir. When we supposed to do with that freedom, enjoy it.
Go to bed. When we decide, try and do something. We actually might enjoy for work. No, thank you.
You can take all that personal fulfillment and destiny ownership and show it up. You're well intentioned. Yankee-ass.
Uh, another mischreigning of Civil War is that slavery was on its way out and had the war not
been fought.
It would have just soon ended anyway.
Uh, no.
Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1816 to South.
That year the South produced almost 75% of all US exports on the labor of nearly four
million slaves.
According to some historian slaves were valued as being worth more than all of the manufacturing
companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has
ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily. In 1860, slavery was actually growing more entrenched
in the South, not going away. Unpaid labor made for big profits, and the Southern elite
were growing ever richer. Slavery's institutional nature essentially crowded out other economic development and left
the South dependent on agricultural society.
Okay, so now we're almost at the timeline that will take us through key events leading
directly to the Civil War.
And through the war itself, including Osemini battles, before we do that, since we now know
that the issue of slavery was the primary reason for the war, let's take a look at the history
of slavery in America and a little bit elsewhere, a
little many timeline, slash overview, for today's big timeline.
The history of African shadow slavery in America complicated and tied to the larger transatlantic
slave trade and requires a suck unto itself to properly understand.
But we can learn a lot today here in a little bit.
Racial slavery didn't happen in the colonies overnight.
It wasn't limited to the South.
It was a slow gradual process that started out with non-racial indentured servitude and
through a little law here, a little legal precedent there.
It morphed solidly into racial slavery directed towards Africans over roughly a century's
time.
Slavery in America started in 1619, the year before the Mayflower
brought the pilgrims when the privateer of the white lion brought 20 African slaves ashore
in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. The crew had seized the Africans from the Portuguese
slave slip, slave ship, Cao, Zhao, Batista. They were the first African seized by slave traders to
arrive in one of the American colonies. But they would be indentured servitudes.
They wouldn't be lifelong slaves.
The African slave trade had started over 150 years earlier in 1444, with the first public
sale of African slaves occurring in Lagos or Lagos, Portugal.
Portuguese way into slavery.
They also soon had Japanese and Chinese slaves with the began trading with those nations.
Also in the early years,
most of their slavery was indentured servitude
and it was not limited to foreigners.
A wealthy Portuguese landowner
could have white, Asian, and black and dendred servants.
The only group they wouldn't slave was,
you guessed it, Polish people.
Sometimes Polish would try to sneak themselves
into slavery situations
and they would pretend to be some kind of white human.
But the Portuguese would always be able
to spot them, you know, because they'd be doing stuff like like sweeping the floor, using
the handle end of the broom, or digging up seeds out of the ground instead of, you know,
instead of planting them, you know, that kind of stuff.
You get it.
Okay.
1455 Pope Nicholas V gave Portugal the rights to continue to slave trade in West Africa
under the provision that they convert all people who are enslaved.
Good job, Pope.
Very godly.
The Pope just wants to let the hour know that the God is in favor of slavery, but the
slaves must be Christian.
If there's one thing that really chaps the God's ass, it is a pagan slave.
Amen.
And carry on and so forth.
Yeah, but weird.
The Pope's like, yeah, yeah, I fucking go for it.
1482, the Portuguese start building, you know, their first permanent slave trading post
at El Mena Gold Coast, now Ghana.
1483, the Portuguese, first forged relationship with the African Kingdom of Congo.
This relationship would soon lead to the large scale slave trading of the transatlantic slave
trade after Columbus discovered the Americas
in 1492. Portuguese explorers aimed to spread Catholicism in Africa, colonized both people
land and grow rich upon developing a trade deal with the Portuguese decongo king Nacool converted
to Catholicism. After his death his son and heir King Nazinga Mbimba took the name King
Afonzo I and declared his kingdom a Catholic state firmly
bonding the two nations.
And then in 1512, King Afonzo the first negotiated an agreement with the Portuguese, giving
them rights to African land and direct access to Congo's prisoners of war, who would be the
first slave sold specifically into the transatlantic slave trade.
Also fair to point out the slavery was not new to Africa when the Portuguese began doing
what they did in African kingdom. Slavery had been around for centuries before this
agreement, but it wasn't like what it would be in the American South a few centuries later.
It was not permanent and it was not inherited. Children of slaves were not automatically
enslaved. King of Fonzoles arrangement provided a model that other European nations in Western
and Central African kingdoms would follow for centuries. The first people sold, again, mostly prisoners of war, African kings at this time, often
in conflict, often absorbing smaller nations or other groups into themselves.
The vast ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity in these kingdoms allowed for easily
identifiable differences among groups, making it easier for kingdoms to sell their enemies
in exchange for weapons and goods, to expand and protect their territories.
Grand empires such as the Congo, Uruba, a Benin, a Sante, were vying for wealth and power
in their regions and Europeans were in need of laborers to build their colonies.
So they made deals, goods traded for people.
And that wasn't new to Africa.
People have been traded in the Middle East, in the Roman and Egyptian empires, and many
other civilizations going back to the earliest kingdoms we have records for.
By 1619 again, when those first African slaves made it to Virginia, the transatlantic slave
trade had been in existence for more than a century.
As early as 1501, both Portugal and Spain began building up their young colonies in Brazil
in Uruguay through slave labor, other European colonizers soon followed, Britain in the 1550s, France in the 1570s,
the Netherlands in the 1590s, and Denmark in the 1640s.
In the 1500s, the Spanish were the first to bring
enslaved Africans to North America as part of
their colonization efforts in Florida and the Carolinas.
By 1620, close to 520,000 captured and enslaved African men,
women, and children had already been sold into
shadow slavery
by several European nations.
The Spanish and Portuguese colonies alone
accounted for approximately 475,000 enslaved people.
By March 1620, 32 Africans were documented living in Virginia,
15 men and 17 women.
The first American-born African likely was either
at Flower Doe hundred plantation or at
Kikotan both nearby settlements on the James River and
1624 the small African population shrunk to only
21 there is no record stating the official legal status of these first Africans in Virginia by this time a racial caste system had formed in the Portuguese and
Spanish colonies it's fair to presume that the English followed his custom
formed in the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, it's fair to presume that the English followed this custom.
They most likely already saw these Africans as something more or less than indentured servants.
The early 17th century is an odd period in the history of American slavery.
The colonies were new, still trying to figure out how they wanted to be governed, how they
would be different than other nation's colonies.
Hard to ascertain exactly how racist they may have been, because
there were racially mixed unions.
It seems that in many parts of Ploney America and early in mid-1600s, people of many different
races did get along pretty well.
Yes, there were battles with American Indians, but there was also peace and marriages with
them as well.
For many colonists, it was more about religion.
If you were Christian, you were equal mostly, just like now, racist ideals varied from person to person.
So why did racism tilt so hard in many areas that had eventually turned into widespread
plantation slavery?
Money, greed.
The South grew into a plantation culture due to its soil and climate, and it was just
cheaper to use slaves than it was to pay farmers.
An African slave was cheaper than European and dentured servants,
and due to the different color of their skin, easier to identify.
But initially, again, the South didn't jump right into widespread African slavery.
While racial slavery for sure already existed in other colonial territories,
it did not exist the same way in American colonies.
The first Africans were actually not seen as property.
They didn't belong to white slave masters.
They were in dentured, no different than white
indentured servants.
There's a lot of proof of this.
A woman named Angela was one of the captured
and golands who arrived in Virginia in 1619.
She was listed in the 1624 census,
living in Lieutenant William Pierce's home in Jamestown,
along with three white indentured servants.
In 1624, the first African baby was likely
born in the American colonies, William Tucker. Some of these first indentured servants worked on the
Shirley plantation, one of the oldest Virginia plantations established in 1613 on the banks of
the James upriver from Point Comfort. The first enslaved Africans were documented there in 1622,
the last in 1865.
And some of those first slaves went on to become landowners
in Virginia, right?
And have their own indentured servants.
Slavery wasn't yet racial in the colonies.
Take the case of early colonists, Anthony Johnson.
This is super interesting.
Johnson arrived in the colony of Virginia
as Angolin, Slave, AKA indentured servant,
or, you know, as an in, as in Angolin, slave. Born in Portuguese, Angolin, Slave, aka indentured servant, or, you know, as an in, as in Angolin, slave,
born in Portuguese Angola, initially referred to in historical records as Antonio de Negro.
In 1623, he met and married another African indentured servant named Mary, who have been brought
to the same plantation as Anthony.
Shortly after 1635, after working on a plantation, also as a merchant for many
years at the Virginia company, he earned his freedom, legally changed his name to Anthony
Johnson. In 1647, he first entered the legal record as a free man when he purchased a
calf. Johnson was granted a large plot of farmland by the colonial government after he paid
off his indentured contract by labor, by 1650, and he was one of only 400 Africans in the colony
amongst nearly 19,000 settlers.
And Johnson's own county, at least 20 African men
and women were free, and 13 owned their homes.
On July 24, 1651, he acquired 250 acres of land
under the head right system.
By buying the contracts of five indentured servants,
one of whom was his own son, Richard Johnson. The head right system by buying the contracts of five indentured servants, one of whom was his own son, Richard Johnson.
The head right system that would eventually lead to widespread plantation slavery worked
in a way that if a man were to bring indentured servants over to America, in this particular
case, Johnson brought five.
He was owed 50 acres ahead, 50 acres of servant.
The land was located on the great Nasswater Creek in North Hampton County, Virginia with
his own indentured servants.son ran his own tobacco farm
randomly one of his servants john casser would later become the first african man
to be declared indentured for life
by virginia court in sixteen fifty five
this was the first time in the young history of the thirteen colonies
that a man who had committed no crime was legally bound to servitude for life
fifteen years earlier in sixteen40, an African man named
John Punch, who would fled a Virginia plantation before his period of servitude, was up, actually
fled with a couple of white dudes, had been made a servant for life as punishment.
By the mid-17th century in Virginia, racism was settling in and slavery was changing. In
1662, the Virginia colony passed a law that children in the colony were born with the
social status of their mother.
If mom was a servant, baby was a servant.
Two decades earlier in 1641, Massachusetts had become the first colony to legally recognize
slavery as a lifelong condition.
1665 Anthony Johnson moved to Maryland, at least a 300 acre plantation where he died five
years later.
His widow Mary in her will of 1672 distributed a cow to each of her grandsons,
including John Jr. the son of John and Susanna Johnson. Five years later, when John Jr.
purchased a 44 acre farm for himself, he named the homestead Angola, which suggests that his
grandparents have been born in Africa and they had kept alive stories of their homeland.
Within 30 years, John Jr. died without an heir,
and the entire Johnson family disappeared
from colonial records.
Back in Virginia that same year,
a jury decided that land Johnson had left behind
could be seized by the government
because he was, quote, a Negro.
A few decades later, in 1705, Virginia declared
that all servants imported and brought in this country
who are not Christians in their native country,
Shelby Slaves, a Negro, Milado, Indian Slaves, Shelby Helders real estate.
In the decades before the turn of the 18th century, therefore, the number of African arrivals
began to increase.
The situation of African Americans became increasingly precarious and bleak.
Sarah Dregus, an African American woman who had been born free during the middle of the
17th century in Maryland, protested to
a Maryland court in 1688, that she was now being regarded as a slave.
The head right system began to increase slavery numbers immensely in parts of the colonies,
the more slaves you had, the more land you received, and then when you had all that land,
you needed more slaves to work it.
And this system, you know, really entrenched African slavery in America over several decades.
And then the late 18th century slavery went away in the North and the American cultural
divide began.
Between 1774 and 1804, all of the Northern states abolished slavery, but the so-called
peculiar institution of slavery remained absolutely vital to the Southern economy.
Also while the transatlantic slave reaches peak in the 1780s, a lot of educated people,
not making lots of money
off slavery started to think, hey, I'm in a minute.
It is wrong.
Hey, it's actually not a good thing to force
a human being to do whatever you fucking tell them
and beat them when they don't do that for their whole life.
Okay, I get it.
Soon enough, people started to realize,
more and more how morally wrong slavery was,
and they were able to convince their governments to abolish it.
1787, the society for the abolition of the slave trade founded in Britain, 1792 Denmark
Bands imports of its slave to the West Indies colonies, 1807, Britain passes abolition
of the slave trade act, outlaw in British Atlantic slave trade, the US passes legislation
banning it in a 1808,
or it's effective in a 28,
don't think it was noble though, the US banned the slave trade mostly because it didn't need to import slaves anymore
because there were so many slaves in the states that anyone who had the money to buy one could do so because they were being bred by their owners and growing in numbers
exponentially. The enslaved population in the US nearly tripled over the next 50 years after the ban. In 1811, Spain abolished slavery, including in its colonies. Cuba rejects
the ban, continues to deal in slaves. Sweden banned slave trading in 1813. The Netherlands
followed suit in 1814. Portugal kind of bans it in 1819. They ban it north of the equator.
But when it came to the South American colonies, they were like, nah, fuck it.
Let's give it going.
Come on, let's give it going.
Britain's anti-slavery society formed in 1823.
10 years later, Britain passes Abolation of Slavery Act, ordering gradual abolition of
slavery in all British colonies.
Great Britain and Spain signed a treaty prohibiting the slave trade.
France bans it in 1826.
1846, the Danish governor proclaim claims emancipation of slaves.
Two years later, France does the same in 1851, Brazil, largest importer of slaves, abolish
slave trading.
1858, Portugal abolishes slavery of those colonies.
Kind of, again, they subject slaves to a 20-year apprenticeship after the band.
So really they don't.
Really they're like, ah, slavery's over.
You guys are free in 20 years. Ah, just stay where you are. 1861, the Netherlands abolished
slavery and the Dutch Caribbean colonies, slavery in the US, I guess, you know, would of course
end with the Civil War 1865. It wouldn't end in Cuba until 1886, wouldn't end in Brazil
until 1888. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopts universal declaration of human
rights stating no one shall be held in slavery or servitude, slavery in the slave trade shall
be prohibited in all their forms. And now today, 2020, while plantation slavery has been
dead and gone for well over a century around the world, there are actually more slaves in
the world now
than there were in the 1850s and 1860s.
How crazy is that?
Modern slavery actually has more slaves
currently working than at any time
during the transatlantic era.
An estimated 40.3 million people,
victims of modern slavery,
according to a study in 2016,
a quarter of them children.
The figures from the UN's International Labor Organization
and the
Walk Free Foundation shows 24.9 million people across the world trapped in forest labor,
15.4 million in forest marriages last year. Children account for 10 million of the overall
40.3 million total. And I say last year this was going back to 2015. The 2017 estimates of modern slavery report calculates that of 24.9 million victims of
forest labor, 16 million are thought to be in the private economy, 4.8 million in forest
sexual exploitation, 4.1 million state-sponsored forest labor, including mandatory military
conscription, agricultural work.
According to the new global estimates, modern slavery is most prevalent in Africa, followed by Asia and the Pacific. Women and girls account for
71% or 29 million of all modern slavery victims in 2016. Researchers found that more than
70% of the 4.8 million victims of sex trafficking were in the Asia and Pacific region, while
forced marriage was found to be known as prevalent across African countries. So still different kinds of slavery happening. Not as severe as plantations slavery
usually, thank God, but still a major problem. Now back to the trans-Atlantic slave trade for
just a quick few more facts, and then we head to the timeline. Between 1525, 1866, and the entire
history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the transatlantic slave trade database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the new world. Some records go as high as 25 to
30 million. 10.7 million survived the dreaded middle passage, disembarking in North America,
the Caribbean and South America. Slaves brought to the United States represented about 3.6% of the total number. 388 to 600,000 people
considerably less than the number transported to colonies in the Caribbean, including more
than 1.2 million to Jamaica alone or to Brazil, which had almost 5 million fucking Portuguese.
Of those Africans who arrived in the US nearly half came from two regions, Senegal, the
area comprising the Senegal and Gambia rivers and the land between from two regions, Senegal, the area comprising the Senegal
and Gambia rivers and the land between them or today Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Baso,
Mali, the West Central Africa region of now Angola, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
and Gabon, the Gambia river running from the Atlantic into Africa was a key waterway for
the slave trade at its height, about one out of every six West African slaves came from that area.
In addition to nearly 50% of the total number of enslaved Africans in the US from these
two regions, a considerable number of slaves had their origins in the so-called slave coast
now the West African nation of Ghana, as well as neighboring parts of the winward coast
now ivory coast.
Others originated in the bite of Biafra, including parts of present day Eastern Nigeria and
Cameroon and inlet of the Atlantic on Africa's western coast.
Okay, okay, I think that is enough for today on the slave trade.
Probably stayed on it too long.
It needs to own suck so much history.
Just wanted to give a good overview today of what happens in slavery was why the Civil
War was fought. Now we know how slavery arrived in North America alongside the Spanish and English colonists of the 17th and 18th centuries.
We also know that slavery didn't show up immediately with the colonists,
not in lifelong form. No, it slowly sunk in.
Support Ford actually went back and forth in the early years. The British colony of Georgia actually banned slavery from 1735 to 1750, although it remained legal in the other 12 colonies.
And then as the American colonies became a nation, slavery divided that nation. After the
American Revolution, Northern states, one by one, passed to man's and the patient laws,
and the sectional divide began. Began to open as the South became increasingly committed
to slavery.
Once called a necessary evil by Thomas Jefferson, proponents of slavery seeking to morally justify
their economic interest in it, switch their rhetoric to one that describes slavery as a benevolent
Christian institution that benefited all parties involved, slaves, slave owners, and non-slave
holding whites.
Uh-huh.
Benevolent, my ass.
Good old rationalization.
Man, we meat stacks are really good at rationalizing a lot of terrible shit.
Okay, now let's take into the timeline, going over a few key events that lead directly to the war,
and then we'll spend a good long while on the war itself,
right after a very quick sponsor break here. Today's episode of TimeSuck is brought to you once again
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And now let's get to that time suck timeline.
Yeah, yeah.
Shrap on those boots soldier.
We're marching down a time suck timeline.
Let's start an 1803.
That's how good.
And the growth years following the 1803 Louisiana purchase, Congress was compelled to
establish a policy to guide the expansion of slavery into the new Western territory.
Missouri's application for statehood as a slave state sparked a bitter national debate.
In addition to the deeper moral issue posed by the growth of slavery, the addition of pro-slavery
Missouri legislators would give the pro-slavery faction a congressional majority in Washington DC
and an abolitionist fear that it would turn all of America into a slave nation.
And can you imagine the stress of being an African-American citizen living in a Northern state?
Thinking about that shit. Wait, wait, wait, what do you say? This could be a pro-slavery majority in Congress.
The whole country could be pro-slavery, majority in Congress.
The whole country could be pro-slavery.
Hey, how far away is Canada?
Is it gonna mind you to explore some additional options
right now?
Truly can't imagine that.
It feels strange to be told right now
to shelter in this place.
I can't imagine how it would feel if it looked like
your government might soon pass legislation
that would make you and your family slaves.
That shit is insane.
I mean, imagine if Trump during one of his press conferences just snuck that in there.
So I'm gonna let the governor decide when his best reopen this state.
They're very talented people, very capable.
We have the best governors, if any governors in the world.
And also thinking about legalizing slavery.
No more questions.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what was that?
Hey, hey, hey, what was that last part?
What was that last thing you said? Uh, know I do a shitty Trump action. Uh,
impression. Ultimately, Congress reached a series of agreements that became known as the
Missouri Confirmize in 1820. I mentioned that a bit, you know, earlier. Missouri was
admitted as a slave state, main admitted as a free state, preserving the congressional
balance. Line was drawn to the unincorporated Western territories along the 36 and 30
foot parallel parallel dividing North
and South as free and slave. A 77-year-old Thomas Jefferson, when he heard about this deal, said that
he considered it at once as the Nell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment, but this
is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line coincided with a marked principle,
moral and political, once conceived
and held up to the angry passions of men will never be obliterated.
And every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.
Back in 1820 Jefferson knew that the Civil War was coming.
Now let's talk about Nat Turner's rebellion.
August of 1831, a slave named Nat Turner incited an uprising that spread through
several plantations in Southern Virginia.
Turner and approximately 70 cohorts killed around 60 white people.
The deployment of military infantry in artillery suppressed the rebellion after two days of
terror.
55 slaves, including Turner were tried and executed for their role in the insure in the insurrection.
Turner himself voted capture for six weeks before being hanged.
He was asked if he regretted what he had done.
And he said, was Christ not crucified?
Dude was a fucking badass.
Fought and died for what he thought was right.
What he knew was right.
What was right?
Nearly 200 more slaves were lynched by frenzied mobs in the aftermath of this rebellion.
Although small scale slave uprising were fairly common in the American South, and that
Turner's Rebellion was the biggest in the bloodiest.
Virginia lawmakers reacted to the crisis by rolling back what few civil rights slaves
in the odd black free person had, you know, someone freed by their honor.
Education was now prohibited, and the right to assemble was severely limited.
This restrictive laws further angered northern abolitionists who would now fight harder
to freeze other slaves.
In 1840-60, Wilmot Proviso was a piece of legislation proposed by Pennsylvania Congressman David
Wilmot at the close with the Mexican-American War.
If passed, the Proviso would have outlawed slavery in territories acquired by the United
States as a result of the war, which included most of the southwest and extended all the way to California.
A Wilmot spent two years fighting for this plan.
He offered his a writer on existing bills.
He introduced it to Congress as his own bill, tried to attach it to the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, all attempts failed.
Nevertheless, the intensity of the debate surrounding the proviso prompted the very first
series discussion of succession. With national relations soured by the debate over the Wilmot proviso prompted the very first series discussion of succession.
With national relations soured by the debate over the Wilmot proviso senators Harry Henry
Clay and Stephen Douglas managed to broker a shaky accord with the compromise of 1850.
Mentioned that one earlier as well.
That compromise admitted California's a free state did not regulate slavery in the remainder
of the Mexican session, all while strengthening the fugitive slave act, a law which compelled
Northerners to seize and return escape slaves to the South. While the agreement succeeded
in postponing outright hostilities between the North and South, it did little to address
it in some ways even reinforced the disparity that divided the nation. The new Fugitive Slave
Act by essentially forcing non-slaveholders to participate in the institution of slavery
led to increased tension among citizens.
Another piece of the Sassation puzzle came from a book. In 1852, Connecticut abolitionist Harriet
Beacher Stowe's fictional exploration of slave life, Uncle Tom's cabin, was a cultural sensation.
Northerners felt as if their eyes had been open to the true horrors of slavery while southerners
protested at Stowe's work with slanderers.
Uncle Tom's cabin was the second best-selling book in all of America in the 19th century,
second only to the Bible.
Right outside of the Bible, no book sold more copies than Uncle Tom's cabin during the
19th century in all of the United States.
His popularity brought the issue of slavery to life for those few who remained unmoved after decades of legislative conflict and further widened the division
between the North and South.
By the mid 1850s, the tensions between the two were reaching a bowling point.
On March 20th, 1854, the Republican Party was founded, a new party with strong abolitionist
leanings.
John C. Fremont, American explorer, military officer and senator, ran as the first
Republican nominee for president in 1856. Behind the slogan, free soil, free silver,
free men, Fremont and victory. It's pretty good fucking slogan. Although Fremont's bid was
unsuccessful, the party showed a strong base. Also in 1854, the Kansas and Nebraska Act established
Kansas and Nebraska as territories set the stage for bleeding Kansas.
Might's adoption of popular sovereignty. Under popular sovereignty, it is the residents of the territories who decide by popular referendum if the state is to be freer enslaved.
Settlers from both the north and the south poured into Kansas, hoping to swell the numbers on their side of the debate. Passions were inflamed, violence raged.
In the fall of 1855, abolitionist John Brown came to Kansas to fight the forces of slavery.
In response to the sacking of Lawrence by border ruffians from Missouri, who sold victim
was an abolitionist printing press, Brown and his supporters killed five pro-slavery settlers
in Kansas in May 1856.
This attacked large to guerrilla war between pro slavery and anti-slavery
forces. Although the violence was often sporadic and unorganized, mass feelings of terror
now existed in that territory. President Buchanan tried to calm the violence by supporting
the Leccompton Constitution in 1857, one of four proposed constitutions for the state of
Kansas. It was drafted by pro-slavery advocates, included provisions to protect slaveholding
in the state, and to exclude free blacks from its bill of rights. And this pissed off, obviously anyone in America
who was against slavery. The violence in Kansas has presided in 1859 when warring parties forged
a fragile peace, but not before more than 50 settlers had been killed. In 1857, another important part
of the lead up to the Civil War occurred, the case of Dred Scott versus Sanford.
Dred Scott was a Virginia slave who tried to sue for his freedom in court.
The case eventually rose to the level of Supreme Court, where the justice has found that as
a slave, Dred Scott was a piece of property that had no legal rights or recognitions normally
afforded to a human being.
The Dred Scott decision threatened to entirely recast the political landscape and had that
had thus far managed to prevent civil war.
The Supreme Court of holding the view of slaves as mere property made the federal government's
authority to regulate the institution much more ambiguous.
Then came the Lincoln Douglass debates of 1858.
Southerners renewed their challenges to the agreed upon territorial limitations on slavery
and polarization intensified.
In 1858, Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas faced a challenge for his seat from a relatively
unknown one-term former congressman and Prairie lawyer Abraham Lincoln.
The campaign that followed Lincoln and Douglas engaged in seven public debates across the
state of Illinois where they debated the most controversial issue of the anti-bellum era owning people. Although Douglas won the center race, these debates
propelled Lincoln to the national spotlight, enabled his nomination for president in 1860.
In contrast, these debates further alienated Douglas from the Southern wing of the Democratic
Party and the pro-slavery arguments Douglas made in these debates came back to haunt him in 1860,
destroying his presidential
chances.
Douglas had argued that the US should and could continue to be a nation of both slave states
and non-slave states and then came John Brown's raid in 1859.
Ambulitionist John Brown supported violent action against the South to end slavery and played
a major role in starting the Civil War.
After the Potta Watome massacre during bleeding Kansas when those five settlers were killed,
Brown returned to the North, plotted a far more threatening act.
On October 1859, he and 19 supporters armed with beechers, Bibles, led a raid on the
federal armony, Armory, and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in an effort to capture and
confiscate the arms located there, then distribute them amongst local slaves and begin an armed insurrection.
Wolverines!
We talked about this raid in the Harriet Motherfuck and Tub and Suck.
John Brown doing this shit at the age of 59.
It's like he was one of the expendables long before that action movie franchise obviously
came out.
A small force of US Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee put down John Brown's uprising.
There were casualties on both sides.
Seven people were killed and at least 10 more were injured before Brown and seven of his remaining
men were captured.
And then on October 27, Brown was tried for treason against the state of Virginia, convicted
and hanged in Charlestown on December 2.
This was big front page headline, National News.
And once again, kept the notion of slavery on everyone's minds, a white man from the
North willing to die, willing to kill to free black slaves.
John wrote a note in his cell before leaving for the gallows.
It said, I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never
be purged away, but with blood.
On his way to the gallows, he paused to kiss a black baby. More than a thousand troops lied in the
field where Brown was hanging to protect the gallows from people trying to free him. There was fear
that rebels might rush into the last minute and try and rescue him before his execution.
Confederate General Thomas Stonewall Jackson, then a philosophy professor, was standing near the
gallows and wrote a letter to his wife about Brown's final moments.
This is intense.
He wrote, he behaved with unflinching firmness.
Brown had his arms tied behind him and his send to the scaffold with apparent cheerfulness.
After reaching the top of the platform, he shook hands with several who was standing around
him.
The sheriff placed the rope around his neck, Then threw a white cap over his head and asked him if he wished a signal when all should be ready to which he replied that it made no
Difference provided he was not kept waiting too long mother fucker died with dignity
With integrity man, I teared up reading Jackson's letter the first time so brave my god in the face of his own death
Hope I can face my own death somebody like that.
Man, hail Nimrod, John Brown of heaven is real
and ain't worth a shit if you're not in it.
Hope you're having a drink up there with Nat Turner.
Few months later, 1860, the Republicans ran
their second candidate for president, Honest Abe.
His election would directly push the South to succeed.
Abraham Lincoln was elected by considerable margin
in 1860 despite not even being included
on many Southern ballots.
That's how much he was despised down South.
As a Republican, his party's anti-slavery outlook of course struck fear into many Southerners.
On December 20th, 1860, a little over a month after the polls closed, after many long
talks by state politicians, South Carolina seceded from the union, started the secession into
the Confederacy.
With secession, several federal forts, including Fort Summoner and South Carolina seceded from the Union, started the secession into the Confederacy. With secession, several federal forts,
including Fort Summoner and South Carolina,
became outposted of foreign land, how strange.
Abraham Lincoln made the decision to send fresh supplies
to the beleaguered garrisons,
which now lay technically on foreign soil.
And then on April 12th, 1861,
the first shots of the war are fired,
Confederate warships.
Turn back the supply convoy to Fort Sumner and opened a 34-hour bombardment on the stronghold.
The garrison surrendered on April 14th, the Battle of Fort Sumner.
Least bloody battle of the war, no one was killed, but the Civil War was now underway.
On April 15th, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to join the Northern Army, unwilling to contribute
troops for Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee dissolve their ties to the
federal government.
Now it's back up to the tiny bit before jumping back to April 15th.
February 18th, 1861, Jefferson Davis is appointed the first president of the Confederate States
of America in Montgomery, Alabama, a position he will hold throughout the war. There'll be
elections, but then he's just still in charge. Davis, 53 had previously been a US Senator
from Mississippi, a US congerman from Mississippi, and the Secretary of War under President
Franklin Pierce. He also fought the Mexican American War and in battles against American
Indians, achieving the rank of first lieutenant colonel. Davis would be pardoned in his involvement
in the war after the civil war was over
and although he would live until eighteen eighty nine
he never changed his staunch
pro-slavery beliefs
he became a big supporter of the lost cause movement we talked about earlier
he held on to the belief that southern secession was constitutional that the white
man was the natural master to the black man until his dying day
which i guess isn't surprising
you don't become the president of the Confederacy
by being kind of racist, right? Right? All right, everyone's down to the Jefferson and Tommy,
who's going to be the president of the Confederacy. Jefferson at this very moment has many a slave
working on his Mississippi plantation and he has no plans to give any of them a vacation anytime soon.
If you hear what I'm, damn, he believes to the depths of his
soul that God Almighty wants the white man to have total dominion over the black man's mind,
body and their soul. He loves the south. He hates the Yankees. And everyone in his family is as
white as freshly clean sheets. Now we have Tommy. Tommy also loves the south. Born and raised
Alabama loves Hawkehren. Loves a good good squirrel stew He goes six generations deep down in his parts and he hates anchors
He doesn't have any slaves though. He has two children who skin remains a little more tan during the winter months
Then is normal for folks of European descent if he take my meaning
He doesn't understand why we can't just pay people to work on the plantations and let people live their own lives on their own time
When he's rumored to have a secret common law wife as a doc is midnight.
Uh, I made up the stuff about Tommy did not make up the stuff about Jefferson Davis.
He was weighing his slavery.
Uh, he must have been at least half Portuguese.
Now we're back to April 15th.
This is when President Lincoln issues a public declaration that an insurrection exists,
you know, calls for those 75,000 militia, militia troops on May 3rd Lincoln puts out an additional
call for 43,000 more volunteers to serve for three years, expanding the size of the regular
army. May 24th Union forces crossed the Potomac River, occupy Arlington Heights, the home
of future Confederate general Robert E Lee. Robert E Lee lived less than five miles from
DC. And in some ways ways he might as well have lived
on another planet.
How strange.
I had to be a slave living across the river from a free land.
One of that would be better or worse than living deep in the South, where it would be
harder to realistically entertain the possibility of escaping.
As during the occupation nearby Alexandria when Colonel Elmer Ellsworth, 24 year old commander
of the 11th New York Infantry and close friend of the Lincoln's, he shot dead by the owner of the Marshall House,
just after removing a Confederate flag from its roof.
Very early casualty of the war if not the first.
A skirmish near Philippi.
Philippi?
I didn't get pronunciation guides for all these.
I thought I did.
There's just so many of these words.
I'm like, yeah.
A skirmish near Phil, I, PPI, in Western Virginia
on June 3rd is the second clash of union and Confederate forces.
The union would later refer to this as the, again,
how have you say this word, Philippi, Philippi races.
Fucking stupid town names, fucking hate them.
Due to the largely untrained Confederates
fleeing the battlefield after a little resistance,
why can't more towns be named like Idaho towns?
New Meadows, McCall, Riggins, right? Easy to say. Well,
I guess Kortelain's not easy, never mind.
Take it.
To be fair to the Confederates, they were outnumbered 3,800 in this battle. Four Union
soldiers were either killed or wounded compared to 26 Confederates. June 10th, 1861, there
was the Battle of Big Bethel, the first land, a Battle of the War
in Virginia, 3500 Union troops versus 1400 Confederates.
Union forces suffered 76 casualties with 18 killed, including major wind-thrip and Lieutenant
John T. Grebel, first regular Army officer killed in the war.
June 20th, West Virginia became the only state to form because of the Civil War, faced
with they considered an overbearing and neglectful state government, after years of
simmering resentment towards their eastern neighbors, citizens in the mountainous western
regions of Virginia refused to take part in succession.
Most people in West Virginia were poor, lived in the mountains, weren't living on plantations,
and they weren't interested in fighting for wealthy plantation owners who had never
done anything for them, so they formed their own state, they bounced.
July 21st, the Battle of Bull Run fought near a manassas, Virginia, the Union Army for
approximately 28,400 troops under General Irwin McDowell, initially succeeds in driving
back Confederate forces under General Pierre Beauregard and his 21,900 men.
With the arrival of 8,900 troops under General Joseph
E. Johnston initiates a series of reverses that send McDowell's army in a panic retreat
to the defenses of Washington. It is here that Thomas Jonathan Jackson receives everlasting
fame as Stonewall Jackson. Jackson had organized a defense of a battlefield position known
as Henry Hill, boasted by artillery. McDowell had also ordered more infantry in artillery to Henry Hill where the fiercest fighting of the new war occurred.
McDowell's men couldn't take the hill because Jackson held his ground on it, quote, like a
stone wall.
So now you know that McDowell's 28,400 men suffered 480 killed, 1,000 wounded, 1,200 missing
for a total loss of 2,680 casualties, approximately 9.5%.
Bull regard and Johnson's combined force of 30,800 had 390 killed, 1600 wounded, but a dozen
missing, a total of approximately 2,000 or 6.5%.
It's the first major battle of the war and the first that the South wins.
And it had to have made it on a stable bit nervous, right?
This wasn't going to be easy, nor it might have more numbers, but the South was going to put up a hell
of a fight. After this battle, worried the Confederates will storm and sack DC a series
of earthworks and forts are engineered to surround the Capitol, adding protection already
offered by active posts such as Fort Washington on the, uh, Potomac River. I hope I'm saying
that one right. I'm nervous in my head. Is it Potomac? I think it's Potomac.
August 10th marks the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri.
This battle is sometimes called the Bull Run of the West.
The Union Army and their general Nathaniel Lyon attack Confederate troops in state militia
southwest of Springfield, Missouri after a disastrous day that included the death of Lyon
that were thrown back.
In this battle, it is the Union Army that is seriously outnumbered.
12,120 to 5,430.
Casualties for both sides would be about the same, just over 1,300 for the Union,
just over 1,200 for the Confederates.
Now, Abe really worried his forces are O and two.
On August 28th, 29th, the Union punches back.
Fort Hatteras at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina falls to Union Naval Forces.
This begins the first Union efforts to close Southern ports
along the Carolina coast.
There are less than 30 casualties in the skirmish total,
but the North takes almost 700 southerners as prisoners of war.
On September 13th, the week-long first battle of Lexington,
Missouri, also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales,
where the siege of Lexington begins.
15,000 Confederates completely overwhelmed
3500 Union soldiers, killing, wounding,
or capturing them all. Another major Confederate victory in the South takes Lexington.
October 21st, the Battle of Balls Bluff, Virginia happens. 50-year-old Colonel Edward D. Baker,
Senator from Oregon, Friend of President Lincoln, leads troops across the Potomac River only to
be forced back at the river's edge where he has killed
It's unreal to me. I love all these guys, you know, they're a little older 50-year-old senator leading troops into battle on the trenches
You know not a member of the military while he's in the Senate, you know
He's shot down waiting for a boat to cross the river can you imagine like a any 50 plus year old U.S. Senator grabbing a gun
Just heading into battle anywhere today
Imagine like a any 50 plus year old US Senator grabbing a gun and just heading into battle anywhere today.
The average person had to be so much tougher back then.
Senator working on legislation one day, you know, sending a comfy office is out getting
shot, you know, shot out by the river the next day.
Getting shot hit.
Now, the ensuing union withdrawal turns into a route with many soldiers drowning while
trying to recross the icy waters of the Potomac River.
More than half the union force becomes casualties.
The Confederates, you know, suffer only 36 killed,
117 wounded, three captured.
And that'll be the last major fight in the 1861.
And the first year of the war,
South kickin' the Union's ass.
I wonder if Abraham Lincoln ever thought something
the first year like,
holy shit this sucks!
Could not have had a worse your first year in office.
If fucking shoot me already, you get it.
On January 9th, 1862, the Battle of Mill Springs
is fought in Kentucky.
It's the first significant Union victory of the war.
The Union victory weakens the Confederate hold in the state.
Union losses 39 killed, 207 wounded,
Confederates 125 killed, 404 wounded, or missing.
The Battle of Mill Springs along with the Battle of Middle Creek on January
10th, break the main Confederate defensive line that had anchored in Eastern Kentucky. And yes,
another battle had been fought a few days before, not going to list all of the battles again.
This time, I'm way too many. The Civil War again consisted of nearly 10,500 battles,
way too many numbers to go over one podcast and still keep it interesting.
February 6th, the South Surrenders Fort Henry, Tennessee, the loss of the Southern Fort on the
Tennessee River opens the door to Union control of the river, South of the Alabama border.
In the days following the Fort Surrender from February 6th to February 12th,
Union raids use iron clad boats to destroy Confederate shipping and railroad bridges along the river.
Iron clad boats, big deal. They were steam propelled warships protected
by iron or steel armor plates, making them a hell of a lot harder to sink and wooden warships,
and they'd only been around for a little over two years. The first one launched by the French
Navy in November of 1859, and early civil war skirmishes were the very first time they were
used in battle. Two days later, the battle of Rowanoke Island, North Carolina has fought and
unfortunately has nothing to do with very you know, very creepy fictional spiders.
A Confederate defeat, the battle results in union occupation of Eastern North Carolina
and control of Pamela Kosant to be used as a Northern base for further operations against
the Southern coast.
The official Union losses were tallied at 37 killed,4 wounded 13 missing. Confederate losses just 22 killed 58 wounded.
However, 2500 Confederates surrender. Things have definitely tilted back in the Union's favor
to kick off 1862. Just a week after capturing Tennessee's Ford Henry on February 16th,
Union Brigadier General Ulysses Grant begins his assault on nearby Fort Donaldson on the
Comberland River, key gateway to the Confederacy. More ironclad boats dude had a secret weapon to be on the Confederates
with the Union would use over 50 of these ironclads of the war almost twice as many as the
Confederacy at any given time. After Confederate forces under Brigidier General John Floyd
failed to break through Grand Slides to Confederate surrender the fort, giving the Union another
major victory. The Chicago Tribune proclaims
the battle as one of the most complete and signal victories in the annals of the world's
warfare. So they're pretty pumped about it. You know, they are northern paper. I was
here that union general, you list assess grant gained his nickname unconditional surrender.
General Floyd, it turned over his command to general Simon Boulevard Buckner before the
end of the battle and he and other Confederate officers escaped and then General Buckner
Hope for a negotiated surrender. You know where he gets to negotiate terms kind of a plea deal. You know, maybe you hand over all your arms
But you get to avoid being taken as a prisoner of war you get to go home something like that
General Buckner expected to get this from Grant because it was a custom and they had known each other for decades
This this war was so weird that way
right was friends fighting friends they were a year apart in age buckner was thirty eight
grand was thirty nine
they went to west point together they served together in the u.s. army during the
mexican american war
when grand was struggling in this post-armory pre-savard a buckner had actually
loaned him money once
uh... during a particularly low period in grand's life
and then grant refused
to negotiate a surrender
forced buckner to either fight and die
or surrender unconditionally with no assurances
of what would happen to him and his men and buckner never forgave him for it
and interestingly it for donalds and tenels tenancy
buckner became the first confederate general of the war to surrender an army
and then a few years later
after became a prisoner war and the south traded another prisoner war for his
release and fought again. In New Orleans, in 1865, he became the last Confederate
general of the war, the surrender and army. I'm sure he loved having that kind of trivia associated
with him. Dude would live all the way until 1914. They have near 50 years after the war, 50 years
of hearing people say she's like, hey, hey, wait a minute. Aren't you the guy that lost, uh, wait, wait, no, no, you, you surrendered an army for
the first time this award.
Oh, and the last time, no way, you're like the king of surrenders.
That's too funny.
You know, growing up when one of my friends and I were roughhousing and one of us would
give up, we would yell, ah, Buckner, ah, I buckner, I buckner, haha, isn't that funny?
Grant's victory made him famous. It insured that Kentucky would remain in the Union helped open Tennessee to future Union advances.
February 22nd Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as president of the Confederate States of America.
Portami is devastated. Gostang. I want my good old gosh dang gosh darn Southern Predator.
On March 7th and 8th of the Battle of P Ridge Arkansas happens. Union victory,
loosened the Confederate hold of Missouri, disrupted the Southern control of a portion of the
Mississippi River. The battle was one of the bloodiest west of the Mississippi. The Confederates
suffered about 2,000 casualties. The Union had 1,384 casualties. And then on March 9th,
another big Navy battle, big naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia's
fought the first naval battle in the history of the world between two iron clats fought
in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
Yes March 9th, 1862 was actually a Sunday.
The USS Monitor versus the CSS Virginia, a new metal era of naval warfare.
The Virginia decimated a Union fleet of wooden warships the day before, and it was just
getting started!
With crowds watching from the shores, the Virginia cannonball demolished pilot house, and
it limped away totally Fubard.
The South wins the day.
So that happened, you know, Battle of Hatter Roads.
Months later on April 6 and 7, the Battle of Shiloh, aka Pittsburgh landing, first
major battle of the war fought in Tennessee.
Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnson, veteran of the Texas War of Independence and the
War of Mexico, or with Mexico, considered to be one of the finest officers the South
has is killed on the very first day of fighting.
The Union victory further secures the career and fame of Union general, uh, Ulysses, unconditional surrender grant. It was an extremely bloody battle. More
than 13,000 of grants, approximately 62,000 troops were killed, wounded, captured or missing
of 45,000 Confederates engaged. There were more than 10,000 casualties. And I feel like
now is a good time to talk about how these battles were fought. Because I keep doing all
these numbers, but, but how are these battles actually fought?
First an overview of this particular battle.
On the morning of April 6, 1862, 40,000 Confederate soldiers, 40,000 dudes under General
Albert Sidney Johnson struck the encampdivations of Union soldiers near Pittsburgh landing
on the Tennessee River.
The overpowering Confederate attack drove the unprepared federal soldiers back, threatened to overwhelm
major general Ulysses Grants, Army of the Tennessee.
Some federal units made determined stands and by afternoon, they established a battle line
as he horned its nest.
Repeated rebel attack supported by massed artillery, killed or wounded many of the defending
Yankees, pushed their lines back further.
Johnson was mortally wounded, replaced by general Pierre Beauregard fighting continues to
laughter dark.
And then the union army held by the next morning, Grant had been reinforced by the army
of the Ohio under major general Don Carlos Bwell and heavily outnumbered Beauregard.
Grant then launches a counteroffensive along the entire line overpowering the weekend Confederate
forces, driving Beauregard, darming from the field, the Confederate defeat and any hopes of blocking the Union
advance into northern Mississippi.
But how did this go down?
Like these lines are talking about, these battles were brutal.
The main weapon of the Civil War was the Springfield, a 58 caliber black powder,
muzzle loader rifle with a a 40-inch barrel firing ammo called
mini balls.
They could fire two to four loads per minute depending on the skill of the soldier.
Because of the relatively inaccurate weapon, this weapon is pretty inaccurate, and the
lack of marksmanship training for most soldiers, it was usually used in mass fire tactics.
It would be large numbers of soldiers standing in long line shoulder to shoulder firing
simultaneously to saturate a target area.
Most of this fighting was done in open fields.
The shooting often started when soldiers were 250 to 350 yards out, you know,
from their opponents, because they could fire so far out, but they weren't that
accurate, but could be they could reload so far out, but they weren't that accurate, but they could reload faster
than earlier rifles.
The best battle tactic was just to have waves of hundreds of men hold their lines, right?
So just be these long lines of dudes and then rows of them, shoulder to shoulder, marching
and firing directly at a line of enemy soldiers, you know, directly multiple lines.
That's these lines they talked about.
If you tried to crawl toward Jeremy, right, they would just have more time to shoot you. So that was out. If you tried to run wildly,
haphazardly across the battlefield and lose formations, then you weren't going to hit enough
enemy soldiers to overtake their position. And they would pick you off. So that was out.
So the best plan was just to march and broad fucking daylight straight into enemy fire,
knowing there was a very good chance you would be shot. Imagine being commanded to be amongst the first wave of soldiers walking into that.
Man, but those guys were saying their prayers trying to make peace with God before they
started walking.
You often tried to flank your opponent.
You wanted to march to the end of their line, put their line perpendicular to yours that
way when they're trying to show you their friends are in their way.
Then there was artillery to consider while you're marching directly into enemy fire,
there was cannons, big metal tubes on wheels,
a 10 or 12 pound piece of iron or lead
would be stuffed into these cannons
with a bag of black gunpowder,
and then they would light the powder
and then they would get the hell out of the way
because the recoil on these cannons
would kick the cannon back up to eight feet.
The cannon would send a piece of metal
half mile to a mile and a half away. Some
shells were rigged to explode over the heads of troops and rain strapped on them. Others
exploded on impact. When troops got close, cannons could fire grape shot, coffee cans full
of 12 to 27 metal balls shooting out like a gigantic shotgun blast. You know, they would
you know, just rip holes through multiple men oftentimes. It was brutal. And then there
was the cavalry soldiers carrying rifles while on horseback.
The roles of the cavalry were in rough priority, reconnaissance, counter reconnaissance, defensive
delaying actions, pursuit and harassment of defeated enemy forces.
Some limited offensive actions, long distance raiding against enemy lines of communications,
supply depots, railroads, that kind of thing.
So think about all this going down to one battle.
You're walking across a huge field, you're carrying your rifle, you're walking briskly,
lightly running depending on what point the battle it is, shoulder to shoulder, as artillery
fire rains down on you for hundreds of yards before your enemy is even in firing range,
then they're starting to shoot at you.
You're pausing to shoot, then load an advance, then shoot, then load an advance over and
over at a line of soldiers directly in front of you. If you get close enough, now you're baying at them,
now it's hand-to-hand fighting. If you can overpower them or flank them, when you get close,
you have grape shot ripping through your line oftentimes. If you get overpowered and you start to retreat,
then sometimes the cavalry can rush in and pick you when you're remaining fellow soldiers apart.
Maybe you get cut down with the cavalry officers soared.
If you're wounded but live, you might be carried away to a field hospital where if you've
been shot in any of your extremities and the bullet or shrapnel didn't pass very cleanly
through your limb, you are now having that limb crudely and quickly amputated.
Amputations are extremely common, although the exact number is not known to approximately
60,000 surgeries,
about three quarters of all operations performed during the war were amputations. Right? Roughly
75% of every operation of every operation is just cutting off a limb. Doctors often took over
houses, churches, schools, barns for hospitals. The field hospital was located near the front lines,
sometimes only about a mile back. Annesesia's first recorded use was in 1846.
It wasn't used during the Civil War, thank God.
Chloriform was the most common anesthetic
used in 75% of operations.
Usually applied to a cloth and held over the patient's mouth
and nose and then was withdrawn after the patient
was unconscious.
If chloriform wasn't available,
you had your arm or leg amputated after taking nothing more
than a swig of whiskey, while other soldiers held you down.
And then sometimes you would wake up because you weren't given enough chloroform mid amputation.
Luckily this was somewhat rare, but it did happen fairly often.
A capable surgeon could amputate a limb in 10 minutes.
If you were somehow conscious, I bet that 10 minutes didn't feel very fucking quick.
Surgeons would work all day and night with piles of limbs, reportedly
reaching four or five feet high in major battles, a fucking pile of arms and legs, five
feet high. The hospitals were filled with the screams of the dying and the smell of blood
and gourd, just whiskey, loud and them saw. Lack of water and time meant the doctors didn't
have time to wash off their hands or wash off their instruments. It was bloody fingers
being used as probes, bloody knives for scalpils, doctors operating
covered in blood and, you know, pustain coats, surgical fevers in gangrene were constant threats.
One witness describes a civil war, a civil war field hospital like this.
Tables about breast higher had been erected upon which the screaming victims were having
legs and arms cut off.
So clearly they're feeling it. The surgeons and their assistants stripped of the wastes
and bespatted with blood stood around some holding the porcelain as well others armed with long
bloody knives and saws cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity throwing the mangle limbs on a
pile nearby as soon as removed. If a soldier survived the table,
he faced awful surgical fevers oftentimes. It was hell. Everything about fighting that
war sounds absolutely horrific. And these men were butchering and being butchered by other
Americans. Sometimes they were fighting people they got to school with. Sometimes they
were fighting people they've been friends with. Some cases they fought their own neighbors,
brothers, sons, fathers and families, you know,
where some members chose to fight for one side and other members chose to fight for the
other.
I understand that all wars are messy, but this, especially messy.
Now back to the timeline, April 24th, 1862, a union fleet of gunships under Admiral David
Farregat, passes Confederate force guard in the mouth of the Mississippi.
On April 25th, the fleet arrives in New Orleans where they demand the surrender of the city.
Within two days, the fort falls into Union hands and the mouth of the Great River is under Union
control. Big Union win. The Battle of Seven Pines is fought near Richmond, Virginia on May 31st
in June 1st, 1862. General Joseph Johnson, Commander of the Confederate Army, in Virginia,
is wounded and replaced by Robert E. Lee. I think I've heard of the Confederate Army in Virginia, is wounded
and replaced by Robert E. Lee. I think I've heard of him. Lee renames his command, the Army of Northern
Virginia, Union casualties, were 5,031, Confederates, 6,134. It was the largest and bloodiest battle of
the war to date after Shiloh eight weeks earlier, both sides with claim victory. June 6th, the battle
of Memphis, Tennessee, is waged, a Union flattilla under Commodore Charles Davis, successfully
defeated Confederate River Force on the Mississippi River, the city and Memphis
surrenders. The Mississippi River is now in union control except for its course
west of Mississippi where the city of Vicksburg stands as the last southern
stronghold on the Great River. In the fighting Union casualty, it
limited to Colonel Charles Ellett, the Colonel later died of measles, which he contracted while recovering from his wound.
I can disease all those weapons I spoke of earlier, all the saw-happy doctors, and then also so much
disease. A precise Confederate casualty is not known but likely around 200. August 30, 31st,
the Battle of Second Bull Run is fought on the same ground where one year before the Union Army was
defeated, sent Reeling and Retreat to Washingtonhington and again the union army is defeated total casualties
for the battle top twenty two thousand union losses numbering almost fourteen thousand
just two weeks later the battle of uh... and teetam marlin becomes the bloodiest single day of
the civil war the loss ends general east first attempt to invade the North. The Union suffers 12,401 casualties to Confederates 10,316.
Following the Union victory, President Lincoln will introduce the Emancipation Proclamation.
On December 13, 1860, the major Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia's fought.
In this battle, the huge Union Army of the Potomac under General Ambrose Burnside is soundly defeated by Lee's forces after a risky river crossing and sacking of the city.
And to remember, it's one of the most one-sided battles of the war with Union casualties more
than twice as heavy as the Confederates.
A visitor to the battlefield described the battle to U.S. President Lincoln as Butchery.
The Union Army suffered 12,653 casualties out of 122,000 troops, while the South lost
5,377 out of over 78,000 troops.
Over 200,000 troops clashing to that battle.
Imagine drone footage of that.
Imagine being in the middle of that after what I described earlier.
That must have felt like you literally descended into the bowels of hell. Check out these
two letters. Two short letters sent back home from soldiers who fought in that battle.
This one's from a battleground near Fredericksburg is where it was sent December 14th, 1862.
Dear brother John, thank God I've escaped one of the most terrible charges of the war. Saturday
was the awful day which none of us will ever forget.
Our division had to charge uphill in the face of batteries which were pouring death and
destruction into our ranks.
How I happen to escape is more than I can account for as the boys fell all around me.
We lost out of our company killed wounded and missing 42.
Albert Inc. is missing.
I presume he is on the field, either killed or wounded.
Cyrus Campbell was wounded.
Major Bradley had his leg taken off.
The worst of all is we had to fall back.
The reinforcements on the left wing did not come in time.
We have but 21 men left.
Today we expect to give them another trial.
I pray God that he will preserve us from their deadly missiles.
I never want to be under such terrible fire again, such sights sicken the heart.
My health is poor, which makes it worse for me.
I cannot stand double quickening.
I came very near, taken prisoner when we fell back.
I was so weak that I could scarcely stand, but I managed to get out,
although the balls were whistled all around me.
I only hope is in God, Joshua House.
And one more from Fredersburg, December 14,
1862, dear wife, we took the city without much loss, but yesterday told heavy on us and we gain
nothing. The loss in our regiment is terrible. We went in the fight with 72 men and came out with
21. I am slightly wounded in the fingers on the left hand and I am detailed to take care of
major Bradley.
The poor fellow had his leg taken off below the knee.
Many are only hurt a little and few are killed, but thank God I still live.
One would have thought it impossible for a single man to escape to the shower of shell,
grape and ball in which we were caught.
Charlie Steel got hurt a little, the ball ended his have a sack and was stopped by his plate.
I got five balls in my clothes, one in my have a sack, one in my cartridge box, one
got blood drawn on my fingers.
William Kendall was killed instantly by a grape shot in the head.
Buzz Cook has not hurt Martin Birch.
Man, letters like that makes it all so much more real to me.
So personal letters written by guys who are there who fought to witness the horrors I was talking about moments ago. They saw that shit.
Another major battle major battles fought on New Year's Eve last until January 13, 1863.
The Battle of Stones River, Tennessee, fought between the Union Army of the Comberland under
General William Rosencrantz, the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton
Bragg, the costly Union victory fre's middle Tennessee from Confederate control and boost north of morale.
Stone's river was a hard-fought bloody engagement with some of the highest casualties of the
war.
The Union suffered approximately 13,000 troops killed.
The Confederates, roughly 10,000.
On March 3rd, 1863, the North began to draft soldiers due to not enough volunteers.
Conscription had begun in the south already the year before.
On May 1st to the 4th, the Battle of Chancellor'sville, Virginia, is fought one by the south,
general leads greatest victory is marred by the mortal wounding of Stonewall Jackson, who
dies on May 10th.
Of 130,000 Union soldiers engaged in Chancellor'sville, more than 17,000 casualties.
Of 60,000 Confederates, more than 12,000
were casualties. Holy shit. That is fucking crazy. That many people, 190,000 soldiers, and
generally one with 60,000 soldiers fighting a force of 130,000. Soon after Lee asked
Jefferson Davis for permission to invade the North, take the war out of Virginia. May 18,
the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi begins.
Union forces under general grant attack Confederate defenses outside the city. On May 19th to
the 22nd of Vicksburg falls, the Mississippi River will be completely controlled by the
Union. Vicksburg will surrender on July 4th, the Union victory, a major defeat for the
South. It completed the North's Anaconda plan, a plan focused on a union blockade of the southern ports that called for an advance down the Mississippi
River to cut the South in two.
The Battle of Brandy Station, Virginia, fought on June 9th, Union cavalry forces across
the Rapidand River, are they cross it to attack General J.E.B. Stewart's cavalry and discover
that these men are moving west towards the Shenandoah Valley.
The largest cavalry battle of the Civil War also marks the beginning of the Gettysburg
campaign.
The Salis plan to invade Pennsylvania.
They wanted to take the war to the north, demoralized the union by taking the war to their
soil.
This is the first major battle fought on Union soil of the Union, 11,000 men, 81 are killed,
403 are wounded, 382 missing are captured, of the 9,500 Confederates 51 are
killed, 250 are wounded, 132 missing are captured, not clear who won.
The Gettysburg campaign continues on June 28th, Confederates passed to York, Pennsylvania,
reached the bridge over the Susquehanna River at Columbia, but Union militia set fire to
the bridge to nine access to the east shore. Southern cavalry scrimmages with Union Militia near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
And then on July 1st, the great big battle begins that will last until July 3rd, the Battle
of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War Someday, Sunday, Sunday!
But actually a Wednesday, Thursday and a Friday.
Robert E. Lee, the mouth of the South.
He rides a horse name, Traveler!
He takes on George G. Mead in the Battle of the Gettysburg.
The old snapping turtle. Seriously, I didn't even make up that nickname.
He rides a horse name, Old Volody!
Also, seriously, his nickname suck.
We're gonna sell you the whole seat. But you'll only need the edge. He rides a horse named Old Baldi. Also seriously, his nickname suck.
We're gonna sell you the whole seat,
but you'll only need the edge.
This battle involves around 85,000 men in the union's army
of the Potomac under major general George Gordon Mead,
approximately 75,000 in the Confederate army
of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Lee.
Casualties at Gettysburg total 23,049 for the union,
28,063 for the Confederacy, more
than a third of Lee's army.
These largely irreplaceable losses to the South's largest army combined with the Confederate
surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi marked what is widely regarded as a huge turning point,
perhaps the turning point in the war against the South, although the conflict will continue
for nearly two more years.
Union Naval and land forces attack and federal defenses near Charleston, South Carolina,
July 10th and 11th, among the Union troops is the 54th Massachusetts colored infantry,
the first African-American regiment of volunteers to see combat.
Hail them, not how those men must have fucking loved to fire a confederate.
I mean, how could he not?
However, victory would not be there as a confederates would fend off the attack. On July 13th, draft riots
began in New York City and elsewhere. As disgruntled workers and laborers see the over the draft
system, the seemingly favors the rich, attack the draft office and African American churches.
Holy shit. The riots continued through July 16th, attacking the churches. See, like I said
earlier, not everyone in the North really gave a shit about the plight,
the plight of the Black Southern's life.
Near Fallen Waters, Maryland, in July 13th and 14th, Union troops skirmished with Lee's
rear guard.
That night, the Army of the Northern Virginia crosses the Potomac River and the Gettysburg
campaign ends.
July 18th marks the second assault on battery Wagner, South Carolina, leading
the Union infantry charges to 54th Massachusetts colored infantry commanded by Colonel Robert
Goudshaugh who's killed and buried with the dead of his regiment. The South again fends
off Union soldiers. On September 19th and 20th, the Battle of Chica Magua, Georgia is fought.
I had not heard of this one. The Union Army of the Comberland under General William
Rosencrantz defeated nearly routed
by the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by General Braxton Bragg.
Rosencrantz Army retrieved the supply base at Chetanoga, Tennessee, with 16,78,454 Confederate
casualties.
The Battle of Chikamaga, or Chikamaga, was the second costiest battle of the Civil War,
ranking only behind Gettysburg. By was the second costiest battle of the Civil War, ranking only behind
Gettysburg. By far, the deadliest battle fought in the West, crazy how much more well-known
the battle of Gettysburg is. I'm guessing partly because no one cares about second place.
And also, Chikamaga, not as catchy as Gettysburg. A lot more fighting happens over the next
few months. November 19th, President Abraham Lincoln delivers that Gettysburg address. Lot more fighting happens for another month.
December 8th, 1863, Lincoln issues his proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, which would
pardon those who participated in the existing rebellion.
South for the most part doesn't give a shit.
Keeps fighting.
February 9th, 1864, after weeks to dig in 109 union officers escaped from the notorious
Libby prison in Richmond, Virginia
Largest most sensational escape of the war though 48 of the escapees were later captured two drown 59 made their way back to union lines
How bad ass civil war jailbreak? Why isn't there a movie about that?
I hope some of the 59 survivors lived long lives
February 17th 1864 fucking submarines shows up. What the hell is
a submarine doing here? In the first successful submarine attack of the Civil War, the CSS
HL Hunley, a seven man submersible craft, attacks the USS Houstonic outside of Charleston,
South Carolina, struck by the submarines torpedo. I think it's Houstonic, I missed that
in a. The Houstonic broke apart and sank, taking all but five of her crew with her.
Unfortunately, because it was 1864, and submarines really sucked, the Hunley also lost, never
heard from again until discovered in 1995.
Those poor bastards inside.
What a quick roller coaster of emotions for them.
Hurray, we did it!
We just sunk their battleship!
Ah shit!
Why are we thinking?
Because it's 1864, this is a fucking submarine.
What are we thinking doing this?
March 3rd, in 1864, Ulysses Grant assumes command
of all Union armies in the field.
He immediately celebrates by getting shit faced.
Over the next four weeks, the Confederates lose several times
in Louisiana, then on April 12th they win in Tennessee
that day they capture for pillow Tennessee after a rapid raid through central and western
Tennessee Confederate cavalry
underneath in Bedford Forest attacking over one of the union garrisoned for pillow
among those garrisoning the for it were African-American troops many of whom were murdered
by forest angered troops after they had surrendered
the affair was investigated and no charges of an atrocity were denied by Confederate
authorities, of course, the events at Fort Pillo cast a pall over forest's reputation
and remained an emotional issue for the rest of the war.
On May 4 and 5, General's Grant and Lee clashed in Virginia in the Battle of the Wilderness,
the opening battle of the Overland Campaign or Wilderness Campaign, General Grant accompanying
the Army of the Potomac under wilderness campaign general grant accompanying the army of the
Potomac under general mead issued orders for the campaign to begin on May 3rd
Lee responded by attacking a union column in dense woods and underbrush
In an area known as the wilderness west of Frederickburg, Virginia
Most agreed that union casualties were around
17,000 18,000
Confederate casualties were as high as around 11,400, based on the
numbers. The Battle of the Wilderness was the fourth bloodiest battle to civil war ranking
behind Gettysburg in Spotsylvania. The Union's Atlanta campaign begins on May 7th with three
Union armies under his command, General William T. Sherman marches south from Tennessee
into Georgia against the Confederate army of Tennessee under General Joseph Johnston, the objective being the capture of Atlanta. The Atlanta
campaign would run from May to September directly precede Sherman's infamous march to the sea.
The number of Union soldiers engaged in Atlanta campaign varied from about 98,000 to 112,000,
while the number of Confederate soldiers was around 50,000. On May 4th and 15th, as part of Atlanta, that campaign, the Battle of Rosaka, Georgia
raged.
This massive battle featured over 158,000 total troops.
99,000 with a union, 60 for the south.
General Sherman's armies are blocked by Rosaka, by General Johnson's army of Tennessee
or blocked at Rosaka.
After two days of maneuvering and intense fighting johnson withdrawals
german advances but takes precautions against order any further mass assaults where high casualties
may occur
both sides lost around twenty eight hundred
on june fort first through the third general uh... lee
gets his last major victory the civil war in the battle of cold harbor virginia
was a sprawling to we can gauge the left more than 18,000 soldiers killed, wounded or captured.
The South winds again on June 10th,
and the Battle of Bryce's Crossroads, Mississippi,
and despite it being outnumbered almost two to one, Confederate General Nathan Bedford
Forest, the tax and routes, the Union Command under General Samuel Sturgis.
There are 2,600 Union casualties at 8,500 troops, compared with less than 500 Confederate
casualties out of 3,500.
On July 9th, the Confederates damn near, you create an opportunity for themselves to
attack the Capitol.
This is when the Battle of Monocacy, Maryland, goes the South's way.
In an attempt to draw union troops away from the ongoing siege of Petersburg and Richmond,
a Confederate force under Jubal early quietly moves north into Maryland. Early had made excellent progress
until he reaches Frederick, where a force of 6,000 federal troops under General Wallace
is arrayed to delay his advance. Though the battle was a union defeat, it also touted
was touted as the battle that saved Washington for it succeeded in holding back early's march
until troops could be sent to the capital's defense. During the fighting roughly 22 men, 2200 men were killed wounded
or captured or listed as missing from the from the union 900 Confederate, oh, I'm sorry,
2200 total Confederate onion Jesus Christ. So many numbers is Medesii sometimes July 11th
and 12th the Confederates attack Washington in the battle of Fort Stevens.
Jubal early troops arrived in the outskirts of Washington DC, trade cannon fire with the
token Union force remaining in the forts around the city.
President Lincoln is able to see the fighting right from the Capitol.
He's observing the skirmishine from Fort Stevens is reinforcements from the army of the
Potomac arrive and quickly fill in the works early withdraws that evening. Luckily the south over three years into the war pretty crazy three years of union force
attacking them and three years of you know the union mostly winning the war on southern
soil and they're still not ready to raise the white flag and they almost take DC.
July 21st and 22nd is the battle of Atlanta.
General James McPherson commander of the the Union Army of Tennessee, killed during the fighting of the 34,863 union troops engaged in the battle, 3,722 killed wounded captured
or missing Confederate forces, suffered estimated 55,500 casualties out of over 40,000 soldiers.
Despite losing General McPherson, the union, or two General McPherson, or excuse me,
despite losing the union with this battle, despite losing the general, the union, or two General McPherson, or excuse me, despite losing the Union wins this battle.
Despite losing the general, Jesus Christ.
Despite losing General McPherson, there we go.
The Union wins this battle,
and it sets the stage for the Union
taking the city on September 1st.
Didn't understand my own notes there.
And then that pave is the way for Sherman's march to the sea.
Lot more fighting occurs over the rest of the summer.
On September 1st, Atlanta falls completely, Confederate troops under general hood evacuate
the city.
General Sherman's army occupy the city and his defenses the following day.
Union casualties, about 31,600.
Man, a lot of casualties to take that city.
Confederate casualties, about 35,000.
Inestimated 4,423 union soldiers died during the Atlanta campaign, an estimated
3,044 Confederate soldiers died. So much more fighting happens over the next few months.
My heck gosh dang. On November 8th, 1864, Abraham Lincoln is reelected president of the
United States and he starts his second term famously by holding a press conference and telling the South to and I quote suck his big black dick.
No, he doesn't.
But that would be fucking awesome.
If you would have said those exact words, you'd fucking suck my big black dick.
Wait, wait, what?
So confusing on so many levels.
On November 16th, General Sherman's army of Georgia begins the infamous March to the
sea, which includes some 60,000 soldiers on a 285 mile march from Atlanta to Savannah.
The purpose of Sherman's march to the sea is to frighten Georgia's civilian population
into abandoning the Confederate war effort.
And it works.
Sherman's troops march south towards Savannah in two wings, about 30 miles apart.
On November 22nd, 3,500 Confederate cavalry started skirmish with the Union soldiers at
Griswaldville.
But that ends so badly, 650 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded compared to 62 Yankee casualties
that Southern troops initiate no more battles with Sherman.
Instead they flee south ahead of Sherman's troops, wreaking havoc as they go.
They wreck bridges, chop down trees, burn barns, filled with provisions before the Union Army
can reach them.
They're burning down their own stuff.
The Union soldiers are just as terrible.
They raid farms, plantations, steel and slaughter cows, chickens, turkey, sheep hogs, taking
no food, especially bread and potatoes as much as they can carry.
These groups of foraging soldiers are nicknamed bummers as they burn whatever they couldn't
carry.
The marauding Yankees needed the supplies
and they also wanted to teach the Georgians a lesson.
It isn't so sweet to succeed is what one soldier wrote in the letter home as they thought
it would be.
Sherman's troops arrived in Savannah on December 21, 1864, about three weeks after they
left Atlanta, the city was undefended when they get there.
The 10,000 in federal to were supposed to be guarding it had already fled.
Sherman presented the city of Savannah and his 25,000 bails of cotton to President Lincoln
as a Christmas gift.
Uh, hilarious that he presented that way.
Hey, look, I got you.
I gave you a city and 25,000 bails of cotton.
What'd you give me?
Oh, a card and a tie.
That's nice.
Uh, February 1st Sherman's army leaves Savannah to march through
the Carolinas. February 7th Sherman's army captures Columbia, South Carolina while Confederate
defenders evacuate Charleston. February 22nd will meet in will meet in North Carolina
falls to Union troops closing the last important southern port on these coast. President Abraham
Lincoln inaugurated for a second term as president in Washington DC on March 4th. And with the confederate's chance at victory, looking extremely slim now, he says, and I quote,
but seriously, you guys, South could suck my big black dick.
Am I right or am I right?
I wish.
March 11th, Sherman's Army occupies Fade Bill, North Carolina.
A few days later on March 16th, and then on March 19th to the 21st, the battles of
Avers, I tried with this one. I hate this word so much.
Avers, Avers Pro, Avers Pro, AV, AVER, AS, B-O-R-O-U-G-H. Avers Pro. I think it's how you do it.
In Bentonville, North Carolina go down. Sherman's army is stalled in his drive northward from Fayetteville, but succeeds in passing
around the Confederate forces towards its object of rally.
Love Raleigh.
Easy word to say.
One of my faves.
On March 25th, General Lee attacks Fort Steadman in Petersburg, Virginia, Petersburg.
Another great one.
Toward of this Lee's last offensive, Confederate troops under General John B. Gordon briefly
capture the Union Fort and the Petersburg siege, you know, in an attempt to thwart Union plans for a late March assault,
but by the end of the day, the southerners have been thrown back out.
The Confederate casualty count, 2900 to the Union's 950.
Southern morale plummeting, soldiers starting to desert.
The war is unquestionably lost for the Confederacy, but the fighting continues.
Soldiers have been deserted on both sides throughout the war, but it's starting more now.
April 2nd, 1865 marks the end of a series of battles in Petersburg, Virginia.
It will be the fall of Petersburg, enrichment, generally abandons both cities and moves
his army west in hopes of joining Confederate forces under General Johnston in North Carolina.
His journey does not go well.
The Battle of Sailors Creek, Virginia, occurs in April 6th. A huge
portion of Lee's remaining army, almost a third, is cornered along the banks of Sailors
Creek and annihilated. When the dust settles, more than 8,800 Confederates had become casualties
in the last major battle in the war in Virginia. Of those roughly 7,700 captors surrendered.
One of the largest surrenders of any army without proper terms during the whole war, a substantial blow to Lee's already crippled army, which that morning had numbered
scarcity 30,000. On April 9, 1865, the South Surrenderds after the battle of Appomattox Courthouse
in Virginia. After an early morning attempt to break through Union forces blocking the
route west to Danville, Virginia, Lee seeks Seaks, and audience, which general grant to discuss surrender terms. Casualties for the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse were comparatively light, 260 for the
Union, 440 for the Confederacy. That afternoon in the parlor of one Wilmer McLean, Lee signs
documents of surrender. Random trivia about Wilmer, dude was a grocer, and his house near
Manassas, Virginia was involved in the first battle of Bull Run in 1861.
As the house gets fucked up, after the battle, he moves to Appomattox, Virginia, specifically
to escape the war, thinking it would be safe there.
Then General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Lysis S. Grant in his house.
His houses were involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American
Civil War.
Then two years later, due to his business being crippled because of the first and one of the last encounters the american civil war and then two years later
due to his business being crippled because of the war
he couldn't pay his mortgage and lost his second home
poor son of a bitch
you must have hated Lincoln so much
uh... apal twelve the army of northern virginia formally surrenders and disbands
two days later in apal 14th president abraham link in his assassin by john wilkes
both
at four cedar dc that in April 14th, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's theater and DC.
That's suck.
Ain't that a bitch?
He just won.
He just barely won.
And he just shot in the head.
I guess at least he died knowing he'd done what he set out to do and slavery and unify
the nation.
And again, listen to suck 98.
If you want to learn more about that assassination.
And since they didn't have emails or text back then and word travel slow, it would take
until June 2nd for all of the Confederate armies to understand that the war was for sure over and surrender and that
takes us out of today's time stock timeline.
Good job soldier, you've made it back barely.
What a suck so much info. Sorry about some mispronunciations I'm sure but I really did in the time provided it my best. And you know I will say on the pronunciations I haven't got too many emails about that
for a while. I think I'm doing a little better than I used to. And also just know that I air on the
side of trying to keep it moving, trying to keep it engaging. If I, I could pronounce
more effectively if I slowed everything way down, but then it would be something I wouldn't
want to listen to. But that being said, I don't want that to be an excuse for laziness
either. So, man, but this one, so many random little like towns and sites from like, fuck
and what? Who came up with that word? With roughly 10,500 battles, engagements, other
military actions, one of the most staggering
parts of the US Civil War was just how uncivil it was. Man, 623 soldiers died in the war,
a number that would equate to around 6.2 million today. If the same percentage was applied
to our modern population. The North lost 360,222 men, according to battlefield reports,
to muster out roles and applications by widows and orphans for pensions and survivors benefits
Which can be claimed whether a soldier had been killed in battle so come to his injuries later or died of disease huge number
South lost roughly
258,000 men in comparison to 620,000 American lives lost in the Civil War
25,000 died in the Revolutionary War
116,516 died in World War I
died in the Revolutionary War. 116,516 died in World War One.
405,000 died in World War Two.
58,220 died in Vietnam.
36,516 in the Korean War,
and 4,497 in the Iraq War.
More died in the Civil War than the Revolutionary War,
World War One, World War Two, and Vietnam combined.
And last, it's four years. four years of millions of people not knowing when the war would reach
their town or city if it hadn't already, and check this out about 2.75 million soldiers
fought in the Civil War, two million for the North, 750,000 for the South, millions and
millions of families affected.
So much blood, but I do think it was worth it. Easy for me to say I know, but I do believe that slavery was over. Horrible racism, the KKK,
Jim Crow laws, lynching, segregation, so much more idiotic and needless evil ignorance that was
racially motivated would follow. But all of that was better than widespread plantation slavery.
And slavery had to end before other types of rac racist shit could be fought against that eventually defeated.
And now we still have a lot to work on, but not nearly as much as we did in 1861.
All of us meat sacks will have to forever work on keeping our us versus them tribalism
in check.
Sometimes I think it's hardwired into our DNA.
I also think if we can just keep chipping away at it, we can rewire ourselves slowly but
surely, you know, if we don't start moving backwards, so let's keep moving forward.
Don't be a dumb shit racist, please.
Whatever color you are, it's always down to think any other color is inferior to yours.
Always remember that if you experienced a lot of assholes and one particular color, and
you start to think that entire color is assholes, well, you've just met the wrong ambassadors.
You've been unlucky.
Then think about how many assholes you've met that share your color.
And then go, yeah, that's right.
Every tribe has some assholes in it.
And then think of the good people you've met of each color.
That's right.
Every tribe has some not assholes too.
Fucking Nimrod.
Let's hope we never get that divided again.
Let's hope we never have to experience looking at our front windows and witnessing war
on our front lawns.
We American so lucky to have avoided that for so long now.
Sheldon in place, not fun.
Kits old real quick, sucks in a lot of ways, but it beats dodging bullets and bombs.
Hope you enjoyed this topic.
If you're a civil war reenact or historian, I'm sure you wish I would have gone into more
detail in places.
I'm sure, okay, some emails about some things, but I'm also sure that 90% of my audience would have probably bailed in this episode.
If I did an extremely detailed late in 12 hour methodical suck and I'd lose my mind completely
from sleep deprivation.
For everyone but the die hard civil war buff, I hope you know a lot more than you did
a couple hours ago about the civil war.
Hail Nimrod time now for top five takeaways.
Number one, it is unbelievable, just the amount of casualties, 620,000, which again, if
the Civil War was fought today, and the ratio was the same with our current population,
that would be 6.2 million dead.
You know, there are 1,347,106 active members of the military today.
The Civil War would have killed all of our active military members almost five times over
if you carry over that ratio.
Number two, the Civil War was primarily about slavery not states rights as we showed the
Confederacy actually stood against state rights over the course of their rebellion.
The evidence is very clear that slavery was the major root of it all.
Number three, the Civil War began and ended in the same dude's home.
Right?
Or homes, plural.
Wilmer McLean had his house fire bombed as part of the start of the Civil War and then
was also the owner of the living room in which the surrender treaty to end the Civil War
was signed with his side of the war surrendering, then he looses that home to the bank a few years
later.
Wilmer, not a lucky dude. Number four, remember when Abraham Lincoln told the
South to suck his big black dick? I love that. That was my favorite part of the Civil War that never
happened. Number five, something new. A lot of Civil War reenactors are currently sad and it has
nothing to do with social distancing and not been able to run around on the weekends and pretend
to shoot each other with 19th century muzzleloaders.
Many civil war battlefields are threatened by development.
The US government has identified 384 battles that had a significant impact on the large
war.
Many of these battlefields have been developed, turned into shopping malls, pizza parlors,
housing developments, etc.
Many more threatened by future development.
Since the end of the civil war, veterans and other citizens have struggled to preserve the
fields in which Americans fought and died, the American Battlefield Trust
and his partners have preserved tens of thousands of acres of battlefield land. You can join
the American Battlefield Trust and give them some cash to preserve a U.S. Civil War
battlefields by mail. You can send your check made out to the American Battlefield Trust
to 1140 professional court, Hagerstown, Maryland 21740. If you're interested to make a gift by phone or to put in a, you know, a cruel crank
call while you're bored, maybe drunk and sheltered in place, you can call 1-8-8-606-1400 and
you can ask for Wilmer McLean.
Or you can just be nice and, you know, you can just donate.
Time suck, tough, five takeaways. Civil war has been sucked. What a crazy war, man.
I'm going to think about that shoulder to shoulder march into a field of rifle and cannon
fire for a long time, I think. So much, no, thank you. So much, no make use of. Thank
you, Nimrod for letting me live now. Way less cannon fire. Way more online content.
Big thank you to the time suck team. Queen of the suck Lindsey Cummins, Reverend Dr.
Paisley, the Middle-Lixer app designed crew Logan and Kate at Spicy Club Run and BadmagicMarch.com
and the ScriptKeeper Zach Flannery, and also a big team transition announcement, high
priestess of the suck Harmony Valley Camp no longer with the team here at Badmagic Productions.
It was a friendly party and it had nothing to do
with COVID-19. I will always be thankful for Harmony for taking the initiative to launch the
Colt Decurious Facebook group, just a tick under 20, actually now, sorry, just over 20,000 members.
Also, the Discord group, just around 6,000 members in there, she helped organize the first
ever gathering as well, so thank you Harmony. The job she was doing here, it's just,
you know, it's a tough job.
It's not for everybody.
Working on a lot of content, a lot of emails and messages
to reply to that just never end.
A lot of topic that we're so thankful for.
Lots of topic entries to add to the voting board
that we're thankful for.
A lot of posts to make an IG and Facebook every week.
It's a, every week, excuse me.
It's a big grind game.
I like the grind game.
I like the pressure of having to prep and put out content every week, but it, it's a big grind game. I like the grind game. I like the pressure of having to prep and put out content
every week, but it is not for everyone.
I've talked to so many comics about what we do here
behind the scenes and they're just like,
what the fuck, no thank you.
Yeah, and so this job just didn't work out
and that's okay and we wish her the best going forward.
So going forward, long time sucker Liz Hernandez
will be handling the Facebook group,
managing emails, thank you Liz, Kate will be handling the Facebook group, managing emails. Thank you, Liz.
Kate and Logan from the Spice Club, our merch managers, designers at BadMagicMurch.com,
will be handling many of Harmony's other former responsibilities.
They've been small business managers, basically their entire adult lives, professional creative
grinders, putting out content over and over every day for years.
We're partnering with them behind the scenes
to keep continually not just improving merch,
but improve social media content.
Also, when the shelter in place shit is over,
use Kate's background and event planning
to build future gatherings,
build the community aspect of this podcast further.
So much more I want to do with this podcast in this community.
I want five years into look back
with so much pride in what we've done.
Look at a see a content, six figures of donation, so many friendships built on dark
humor, a thirst for learning, thinking critically about this weird world we all live in.
And I really think that Kate and Logan have the tools, skill sets, to take us where I
want to take this.
So hail, them, not excited for the future.
And again, thank you, high priestess, for helping us get this far.
Best of luck, truly to you going forward. And now next week we go cult cult cult cult sucks are maybe my favorites.
In August 2000, discovery of two people shot to death in a secluded Marin County California
studio apartment said police on a scramble to find who killed him. The apartment belonged to
Selena Bishop daughter of blues rocker Elvin. One victim was Selena's mother, Jenny Valaren, 45-year-old bartender. The other was Valaren's
longtime friend, 54-year-old Jim Gamble. Same morning, authorities learned of a missing elderly
couple. The daughter of Ivan, 85, and Annette Steinman, 88, hadn't heard from her parents in
several days and found things amiss when she arrived at her parents home.
There are many vans would soon be reported abandoned soon after nine double bags with
the dismembered remains of several humans would be recovered.
In a 30 year old former stockbroker and self pro claim profit was behind it all.
Next week we examine the children of thunder cult and their insane plot to overtake the
Mormon church.
Cult, cult, cult.
So get your fucking robes ready.
Now let's check in with the always great, various voices of this community in this week's
time, sucker updates.
First up, we got a Kansas City butcher update coming in from Super Sucker Mark Kerns.
Mark writes, Hey Suck Master Supreme.
So list into the episode, I thought I'd send you something that I thought was pretty
cool since I can relate to this one pretty well.
I was raised in a town of about 10,000 people, about 45 minutes south of Can Relates
this city called Harrisonville, Missouri.
And there was this old man called Del Dunmeyer.
He once robbed a bank to pay off his gambling debts,
and he ended up hiding the money.
Once he got out of jail, he actually bought
Bob Bordella's home in Kansas City,
took the things out of it and demolished it.
He then collected things much like Bordella did.
He even bought the old Walmart around here,
named it his toy box, then did something crazy
and called it the bizarre bizarre picture included.
I've been inside once before they sold it in its contents when he passed and it was
filled wall to wall with furniture and all sorts of other things.
Just how you get a kick from this keep on sucking those serial killers and true crime could
give you shout out to my could you give a shout out to my mom Stacy and wife Kayley as they
help me put all this together so you can enjoy it because we talk about it to this day since silly mark agent of the suck and then Mark provided some some web links that'll be in the episode notes
that are on the time stock app
and said yes, so thank you mark I check out the picture in the links and it is so weird that he named it bizarre bizarre
and a good thing demolished you know Bob Bridalist house, I house I guess but why why do you take all the stuff out of there?
Was it because he hated the guy or was he ever at one of Bob's rapesex parties?
Did he want to maybe destroy old evidence? That's where my brain goes. I've this is all speculation
We're dude for sure
We got other emails about Dell and his obsession with Pradella hail Nimrod. Thanks for sending that in
Another update about Bob Bridella coming in from Top Notch Sacks, Scott Myers, who writes,
uh, Bobbert, piece of shit, Pradella, was not the only psycho fuck to be
influenced by the book, The Collector. Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, who you
spoke about in your standout, were also big fans of the book, The Collector,
uh, that, you know, that the movie is based on. I remember seeing an episode,
uh, one of those true crime TV shows about those two bastards
back in the 90s and the book was found in their home
and it was talked about in their confessions
as being a big influence on them.
I bought the book after seeing the story
and honestly, it's fucking boring.
Hey, you'll never know what it's got, Myrish.
Well, thank you Scott.
Yeah, funny that the book isn't that good.
And so crazy the book or the movie based on the book
influenced at least three serial killers.
And yeah, I talked about Charles on my don't wake the bear special and messed up his name.
I was so annoyed. Of course I did. But that is a suck. I keep forgetting to do. Leonard and Charles
in their crazy crimes. Thanks for reminding me that will be a fascinating true time true crime
topic and keep on sucking. Now for a super nerdy update that I loved. On my assessment of
Bob Bredella's ability to buy a home in 1969, coming in, you know, compared to now,
coming in from longtime sucker and brainiac Tomics fog. I love this. Thomas writes, greetings
oh, he who sucks on high. I was listening to the Kansas City butcher suck at work today,
sitting maybe 20 minutes from where this piece of shit Robert Bredella grew up. I work
at a bank, which is considered an essential industry during these times.
All of our lobbies are closed nationwide, except by appointment.
I've recently been promoted to personal banker, so I tend to do the majority of our daily
interactions now, which consists mostly of drive through transactions.
As I have a bit more free time than usual at work, I've started to listen to the suck at work and I'm working on catching up with the secret suck.
So behind the well back didn't have enough free time to keep up. Still loyal spaces are
to love the charity donations will continue to be as long as I'm able to do so. While I was
listing you through and thank you. While I was listing you through some mortgage numbers out,
it sounded a bit off to me. My mom has been a banking for 40 years now, loves to hear older people complain
about CD rates, or at least before COVID-19. People in the baby boomer generation and older were
complaining that CD rates were still under 3% and were remembering when they were much higher.
My mom happily points out that maybe true, but you were paying way more interest for your home
back then. Based on the department of labor, minimum wage didn't go to $1.16 hour until 71, but even accounting for that, let's say this piece of garbage made what you estimated
based on national averages of $306 a month because he was making 30% over minimum wage.
Assuming he got the best possible rate at the best possible time, which would have been
January or February of 1969, he'd have a rate of 7.5%. I love these details, Thomas.
Yes, I did not look into interest rates at the time, which definitely devalued my
comparison.
I'm glad you caught me.
Uh, Thomas writes his payment before H.O.I. and property tax would be 112th, accounting
for a down payment of 4,000.
That's before closing costs and fees, which I wouldn't begin to guess due to the change
in nature of banking over the decades.
That would mean absolute best case scenario.
His mortgage would be about 31% of his gross income, not accounting for taxes, other
deductions from his paycheck.
Still doesn't sound too bad, right?
And again, this is referring to my argument that it was so much easier to buy a homeback
then than it is now.
But consider he's a convicted felon at this point.
He's already been convicted of selling drugs, possible to likely that his credit isn't
exactly perfect.
Also if he bought his home in March of 1970, the prime rate was at a whopping 9.29 percent. On top of that, the minimum wage was $1.45 an hour
in 1970 or 251 a month, which accounting for a 30 percent salary increase would put him at
326. Assuming he put 4,000 down, got a prime rate of 9.29 percent. He did a monthly payment of
$132. Now we're talking about 40% of his gross monthly income.
And that's at prime, which is probably unlikely before property tax, before potential
H.O.I. cost.
Assuming he didn't have other legal fees at the time.
Now, that's assuming best case scenario at the worst possible time.
I'm just putting into context that it wasn't quite as doable.
Granted to your point, there's no way in hell someone earning 30% more than minimum
wage today, earning 16, 34 a month can A, save up the roughly $27,000 to pay 20% on $136,000 house, just accounting for inflation
and not the crazy spike in the housing market. And B, still afford to pay the multi payments
of 900 on a mortgage, that same 9.29% rate as that would be a debt to income ratio of more
than 55% of their gross income.
Luckily, now interest rates are closer to the 3.5% range.
That same minimum wage earner getting a mortgage at 3.5% interest, bringing that same 20% down payment,
would have a monthly payment of 490 before everything is included, bringing it to a much more
manageable total debt to income ratio of 30%. Super long, rambling, socioeconomic, math problems short, all of the dollar amounts are about
the same, even with the lower interest rates.
Basically, even though it was less money back in 1970 to buy a house with those interest
rates, you're in pretty much the same boat right now, assuming he bought during the best possible
time.
Also keep in mind, consumer protections like Dodd-Frank were in place.
Ultimately, even though proportionally less of the lower education jobs are available
in comparison, you're better off being in the present, even for the purpose of buying
a home.
Just a different perspective on the times where better ideology and which I know you are
adamantly against anyway, like the classic people are sick now.
When I was a kid, you go for a bike ride.
You never heard about someone getting kidnapped, rape or torture, etc.
It may be true, but that's because we didn't have amber alert, social media, the internet,
and probably most importantly, police departments that communicated information instantly.
See the Ted Bundy's suck.
People have always been terrible to each other, see as far back as the gang is con or Vlad
the impeder sucks.
It's just that we recently started paying more attention.
Your loyal space lizard and an essential and an essential employee, Thomas Vogue, aka
the nerd with too much time on his hands now. Man, fuck, Thomas, that was so good, man.
Great facts, great analogy. You laid out so well, holy shit. That doesn't make me feel better
about the current housing situation truly. Maybe it really wasn't that much easier to get
a house back in 1969, 1970 than it is now, at least in places like Kansas City. I told you before that, I love your mind, Thomas,
keep an eye on me, right?
I'm gonna need future corrections, watch my math,
and stay safe at that bank and hail Nimrod.
Quick and kind message now, from Fabulous Sack, Eric Wester,
Eric writes, hey, Suck Master, just wanted to say thank you.
You keep putting a ton of effort into time,
so keeping us entertained and continuing to push us
to think critically in this uncertain time, critical thinking seems to be in short supply as toilet paper and
medical equipment. I'm especially impressed with your ability to pump out great episodes
even during the time of social distancing. It occurred to me that a lot of your income
and lifestyle comes from doing stand-up shows and traveling around the country and
entertaining with state home orders in place. Comedy shows seem to be a bit dormant. Just
know that there is at least one fan, probably
many more. Think about you and your family during this time. Stay safe. Hopefully, when this
is all over, you can make it back out to Colorado soon. May you forever be COVID-19s. Huckleberry.
Well, thank you, Eric. It's very nice. Yes, comedy tours are done. Until further notice,
pretty weird. Very thankful. I still have this and very glad that you and others continue to enjoy.
Plea- uh, you know, uh, please name Rod, uh, you know, may you keep enjoying it.
So thank you very much.
Now a hilarious Cummins Law message from the sex suck, uh, I was dying this morning.
Super sucker Mallory Hay.
Excuse me.
Got Cummins Law.
It's so hard.
She writes, Dan, you son of a bitch,
I got Cummins Lodge hard, really hard, like bite the pillow hard.
That's a fucking great reference.
Context, I run a small horse farm with a small breeding and training operation, real horses,
not that pony place shit.
Anyway, we have a mayor that's about a month out from being able to have her baby, which
is really exciting.
It also means visits from the vet to make sure everything is progressing normally.
The other day I was tidying in the barn while waiting for the regular vet to arrive to
do a routine check on the mayor.
The mayor was in the stall.
I was tidying around the barn.
Wasn't expecting him for another 15, 20 minutes.
The barn is where I tend to listen to time suck over speakers fairly loudly because generally,
I know when people are coming and going.
I've yet to be commons law there, not today.
Well, not today though. The universe had other devious plans. Just as you're talking about
fucking that sexy sex pony at nearly full blast, my beloved loyal vet walks into the barn
very early. I'm laughing my ass off, not noticing he's there yelling, oh my god, damn sex
ponies. Lately to the sound of you joking about fucking sexy ponies.
All of a sudden, my poor kind of timid vet calls my name
with a tone I can't unhear.
I walk out of the stall with all the blood rushing to my face
that I could probably handle, confront my vet,
quickly fumbling with my phone deposit episode
from playing any more incriminating shit
over the Bluetooth speakers.
I try to explain to my vet that it's just a podcast,
it's an episode about sex,
and then you're talking about weird fetishes and pony play and
then it's hilarious.
But honestly, I'm fondly with my words so hard.
Read and bearish this fuck because this guy is a guy I grew up with.
He played football with my brother and his parents babysat me.
Since I was a kid, I also had kind of a crush on him.
He also happens to be one of the only vets in the area that I trust with my horses.
Oh man, so fucking awkward.
Anyway, he too looks embarrassed.
I can tell he's weirded out.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Oh, he received what's checking on the horse awkwardly,
pretending like nothing's completely just happened.
Nothing completely fucked is just happened.
It's also doubly weird seen as he is there
to do checkups in and around a horse.
It's ladybits.
After he leaves, I am convinced I'm gonna need to find a new vet
or at least the next
time I book an appointment someone else from the practice will have to come out.
Or they just charge me, or that they're going to charge me a danger rate, crazy client
rate on my bill.
Who knows, I felt horrible about it.
I spent the rest of my day feeling awkward and embarrassed, wondering if my vet thinks I'm
into horses in a weird way.
Or that I'm just entirely deranged.
Later, he texts me.
What's the name of that podcast?
I need a laugh, sounds like it's got a lot of them.
Crisis averted, and you may have a new listener
who's an actual horse vet, not just a weird opportunity
to check sexy pony play ponies.
Apparently the rest of his day was filled
with some pretty shitty emergencies,
and I'd give him a laugh with my insane moment of commons loss.
So here's to that, thanks Dan and the crew for all you do.
I really needed a laughter in this Corona craziness
and you delivered. You also nearly delivered it.
Hard attack to me, but that's okay.
It makes me feel alive.
Stay healthy, stay safe and get it up, Shotsprilla.
Yeah, yeah.
Holy shit Mallory, that message fucking killed me so funny.
You painted that picture so well.
I feel like I was there.
Gagelin and one of the stalls, watch this unfold.
I love it.
I hope we like this show.
Hope the two of you can laugh about this
for years to come.
Hail Nimrod.
And last up now.
Really cool message about the sex suck
from a very cool meat sack, Pat.
Wants to keep his last name out of this.
And Pat writes,
Do he who suck is most on high?
Hey, Dan,
just wanted to send you my heart
filled appreciation for your sex suck.
I know how weird that sounds. Now having written that out, but you get it.
Like you, Delvin and the subject definitely gave me new insight on kink,
communication, and experimenting with things in the bedroom.
It was a wonderful experience to become more comfortable with my sex life.
I write this message because I wanted to ask your thoughts on a particular part of sex
that has definitely had an impact on me and I'm certain many others,
cards on the table, sex ed really fucked me up. Took me a very long time to get over the fear
mongering tactics used by my elementary and middle school programs to keep us youngins from being
too promiscuous. It was always that absence was the only way. Condoms failed, birth control failed,
STIs were rampant. For years, I would have an overwhelming fear
of pregnancy or STIs,
and it would greatly inhibit my sex life.
This was made worse by the fact that I had a healthy libido,
resulting in me literally shaking to the point of discomfort
whenever the prospect of sex came up.
Even practicing the safest sex possible
would leave me anxious for weeks.
I would constantly ruin interactions with this behavior
and I felt helpless.
This isn't to say that I believe that teens
should be just let loose to figure these sort of things out,
but there are sex head programs out there
that are far more militant in their abstinence,
advocation than those I experienced.
And I was living proof for a while
as to how that can be detrimental
to a young person's mental health.
I'm in a far better place, thankfully now.
I now embrace sex as a healthy part of my life
and no longer am crippled by years of indoctrination.
Safe, consensual sex is the sexiest sex.
Hailu's to Fina.
So suck master, I was wondering if you had an opinion on sexhead.
What do you believe would be a healthy, informative way to approach the subject with the use of
the world?
Also, did this new deep dive into the world of sex and kingshape any new opinions in
regards to sexhead for you?
Would love your input.
So I are for the babbling, hoping I made sense.
Just kind of tough being honest about something that embarrass me for such a long time.
You and your team are the best.
Time suck is the highlight of my life, especially in these bachelors crazy times.
Hail Nimrod, Pat.
PSFU do end up reading this on the suck.
I'd ask you please omit my last name.
I have some friends who are fellow suckers.
Not sure if listing to our favorite podcast is the best way to expose them to my sex life.
Great message Pat, yes, I took your last name out,
as you know now.
I honestly don't remember much about my sex ed classes,
but I do remember neither of my parents
or step parents having a healthy discussion about sex with me,
especially with my mom.
My mom's super neurotic, anxious to the level of being just paranoid,
a warrior who was convinced if I had sex with anyone, I would get AIDS or someone pregnant, like for sure.
And so then I became super worried about both.
And it definitely fucked my head up about sex.
I think sex to be promoted as a positive human activity will also be, you know, teachers,
parents should be very honest about the consequences.
I think sex ed should talk about economics.
You know, teach kids how much harder it is to buy a house, to retire comfortably, just
to live a comfortable life if you have, you know, a lot of kids early on.
You know, if you have three kids by the age of 21, it's going to affect your life dramatically.
It's going to be a lot harder to go to college.
You know, show them the numbers.
How expensive is it to have a baby?
How much time does it take to raise a child?
Also give some real stats about STIs, youIs, pregnancy rates with various forms of birth control,
and give a solid explanation of birth control options.
But then also talk about the proven psychological benefits of being in a positive sexual relationship.
We are sexual creatures, right?
Take away the shame associated with sex.
That comes from almost entirely religion.
Stop teaching kids that sex is evil, or that it's wrong to have sexual thoughts.
Lust is not a sin, it's human nature.
I think.
And if I'm wrong, well, then hail fucking Satan.
And if you can't fucking heaven, what's the point going?
Love your message, Pat.
Now go enjoy that dick that God gave you
and hail Lucifina.
Thanks, time suckers. I need a net.
We all did.
Have a great week, Meat Sacks.
Don't line up with your buddy, shoulder to shoulder, and walk into a field of bullets.
And keep on sucking.
Hey, I know I wasn't able to get to everything in the Civil War sucked.
There's a lot of info to kind of go through.
And one area I missed was bugleers.
There were the bugleers.
They definitely were part of the war.
And I decided not to talk to them just because I kind of like today.
No one gave me shit about them because it's fucking dumb.
So there's that.
just because kind of like today, no one gave me shit about him
because it's fucking dumb.
So there's that.