Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Did you guys know that back in the day, boys
Speaker 2: used to share beds.
Speaker 1: Oh, but it's true.
Speaker 2: You know, today sometimes the boys don't want to share beds.
Speaker 2: Like I'm going on a trip soon and one of
Speaker 2: my friends was like, I don't want to share the
Speaker 2: bed with this other boy, and I said, fine, you
Speaker 2: guys can have the room with the bunk beds.
Speaker 1: So you know, if he was trying to not touch
Speaker 1: the other boy.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, technically in the bunk beds, they're still going to
Speaker 2: be on top of each other. But actually, back in
Speaker 2: the day, it was quite normal to be a man
Speaker 2: sharing your bed with another man, and sometimes not even
Speaker 2: with a man you knew, just like a random guy.
Speaker 1: Like maybe you're going.
Speaker 2: To a hostel, a motel, a hotel, and you're in
Speaker 2: one of the cheaper rooms. You might be sharing your
Speaker 2: bed with another guy, just a random yeah, just like
Speaker 2: you might be sleeping and then another man might be
Speaker 2: slipping into your bed and then might be slipping into
Speaker 2: something else, if you know what I mean. Yes, sometimes
Speaker 2: men would sleep in beds with other men just to
Speaker 2: be practical. But then sometimes they weren't just bedfellows. Oh no,
Speaker 2: sometimes they became headfellows.
Speaker 1: What a good joke.
Speaker 2: As we all know, puns are the most sophisticated type
Speaker 2: of humor. And sure, it's hard to like prove that,
Speaker 2: you know, these men were sleeping together. People weren't really
Speaker 2: talking about sexuality that much, whether hetero or homo, but
Speaker 2: there is plenty of conjecture and some evidence that some
Speaker 2: notable politicians in fact were headfellows. Again, that's men who
Speaker 2: share beds, who have sex. It's a term I just
Speaker 2: made up, but I am going to submit it to
Speaker 2: the official historical record as a new thing to say.
Speaker 2: And so American Filth we're having our first mini series.
Speaker 1: That's right. We're gonna be.
Speaker 2: Looking at several cases of headfellows. And first we're gonna
Speaker 2: start with a pair of spicy, zesty letters between two
Speaker 2: men who would go on to be some Southern and
Speaker 2: Confederate politicians. And these letters, well, they prove that some
Speaker 2: man on man hanky panky was occurring during the early
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. You know what to do? Cue the theme song.
Speaker 2: This is American Filth. I'm your host, Gabby Watts. Every
Speaker 2: week I tell you a filthy story from American history.
Speaker 2: Today's episode Bedfellows Headfellows Part one. Let's get into the
Speaker 2: meat of this episode and meet one of the worst
Speaker 2: men in American history, James H. Hammond ding ding ding
Speaker 2: Ding ding ding ding ding Ding introducing our first headfellow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy was a huge piece of shit, if not
Speaker 2: maybe one of the worst. One historian called him nothing
Speaker 2: less than a monster.
Speaker 1: So here's some of the horrendous stuff that he did.
Speaker 2: Ps huge trigger warning for sexual assault. Hammond was born
Speaker 2: in South Carolina in the early nineteenth century, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't born well off, but he managed to snag himself
Speaker 2: a wealthy lady named Catherine Fitzsimmons, and through her he
Speaker 2: was able.
Speaker 1: To enter the planter aristocracy.
Speaker 2: Catherine was a shy seventeen year old whose family was
Speaker 2: convinced that Hammond was just after her money, which he
Speaker 2: probably was. As her new husband, he got all her stuff,
Speaker 2: a ten thousand acre plantation, and he had two hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty enslaved people, and oh boy, did he love slavery.
Speaker 1: He's the one who coined the term cotton is King.
Speaker 2: And he was also really into states rights, and by
Speaker 2: the mid eighteen thirties he was making political moves He
Speaker 2: eventually went on to be the governor of South Carolina,
Speaker 2: a congressman, and a senator, And if you guys can
Speaker 2: believe it, he didn't have a great personality among the
Speaker 2: other planters. He had a pretty bad reputation. They thought
Speaker 2: of him as aloof and vain, willful, proud, moody, reactive,
Speaker 2: and he seemed to have a pretty heavy streak of sadism.
Speaker 2: He himself would frequently beat the enslaved people on his plantation,
Speaker 2: and then he would sometimes send them into malaria infested swamps. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy was absolutely horrendous. But the thing is, his
Speaker 2: bad behavior came to bite him in the back, in
Speaker 2: the leg, in the butt. It bit him somewhere, and
Speaker 2: his political career was interrupted.
Speaker 1: For fourteen years.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what happened is it was eighteen forty six.
Speaker 2: He was already well on his way into.
Speaker 1: His political career.
Speaker 2: He had served as the governor of South Carolina, and
Speaker 2: at this point, one of South Carolina's senators was about
Speaker 2: to step down and Hammond was going to take his place.
Speaker 2: But suddenly Hammond withdrew from the seat because Hammond's brother
Speaker 2: in law said to him, hey, if you become Senator,
Speaker 2: I am going to expose some revealing information about you.
Speaker 2: At the time, there were rumors of a sexual scandal
Speaker 2: going on at the Hammonds, but there is no documentation
Speaker 2: of what exactly happened.
Speaker 1: But some sneaky, sneaky.
Speaker 2: Historians published his diaries in the nineteen eighties and they
Speaker 2: revealed what that incident was.
Speaker 1: That his brother in law was referring to.
Speaker 2: What had happened is that Hammond had repeatedly sexually abused
Speaker 2: his four teenage nieces. And oh, do you think he
Speaker 2: was apologetic about it? Absolutely not. In his diaries, Hammond
Speaker 2: was like, I'm the victim. He's like, oh, goough, Why
Speaker 2: am I being punished like this? All I did was
Speaker 2: quote a little dalliance with the other sex. He also
Speaker 2: just blamed the girls who he abused over two years.
Speaker 2: He was like, oh, it's their fault. They were extremely
Speaker 2: affectionate with me. They were the ones who permitted my
Speaker 2: hands to stray unchecked, and they did not shrink from
Speaker 2: my touch.
Speaker 1: I fucking hate this guy.
Speaker 2: And it was even worse than that, because Hammond was
Speaker 2: also a frequent sexual abuser to the enslaved women on
Speaker 2: his plantation.
Speaker 1: He might have even.
Speaker 2: Sexually assaulted a girl who was his own daughter. After
Speaker 2: all of this sexual abuse, his wife left him and
Speaker 2: took their children with her. But as history has taught
Speaker 2: us again and again, it is literally impossible to cancel
Speaker 2: a powerful white man. So like thirteen fourteen years yars later,
Speaker 2: his wife had already come back to him, and then
Speaker 2: he won a seat in the Senate in eighteen fifty seven. Yay,
Speaker 2: nothing ever changes. So now that we really hate this guy,
Speaker 2: let's get to the Bedfellows stuff. Also, I do think
Speaker 2: this episode is slightly timely because Taylor Swift just put
Speaker 2: out her album where she had a weird line where
Speaker 2: she's like, I would live in the eighteen thirties without
Speaker 2: all the racists or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, this episode is.
Speaker 2: Mostly set in the eighteen twenties with all sorts of racists,
Speaker 2: so I guess Taylor watch out for the eighteen twenties
Speaker 2: as well. There were also racists then, so yeah, it's
Speaker 2: pretty relevant to the modern day. Also, I do kind
Speaker 2: of consider myself the Taylor Swift of podcasting, because sometimes
Speaker 2: I used too many words to describe a simpler point
Speaker 2: and could have been more thoughtful about what I said,
Speaker 2: but instead decided to do quantity words instead of quality words.
Speaker 1: Do you guys see what I'm saying?
Speaker 2: See I'm doing it right now. But anyway, let's get
Speaker 2: back to Hammond and start learning about this bedfellow's headfellow's stuff.
Speaker 2: Before he was married, had an established political career, and
Speaker 2: maybe before he was a complete pile of shit, he
Speaker 2: was a young guy and had a pretty interesting relationship
Speaker 2: with another young aspiring politician slash lawyer named Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 2: Withers or just Jeffrey Withers or just jeff. Around the
Speaker 2: time that Withers and Hammond became friends, Withers was studying
Speaker 2: the law and he freaking hated it. He was like
Speaker 2: the time one spends in college's time murdered. He's like,
Speaker 2: why do I have to learn all these stupid dead
Speaker 2: languages like Latin Ugh dumb? But Withers, through his own
Speaker 2: education and education of himself because school was stupid, he
Speaker 2: was like, I love States rights, national power boo. Like Hammond,
Speaker 2: Withers was pretty unlikable. Some people described him as irritable
Speaker 2: and moody and reactive, and maybe it's their general bad
Speaker 2: attitudes that drew these two South Carolinians together. And how
Speaker 2: they ended up being bedfellows. We don't know exactly when
Speaker 2: they were in the same bed when they were doing bedfellowing,
Speaker 2: but it seems that there was an opportunity where they
Speaker 2: were doing that, and they were doing a lot more
Speaker 2: than sleeping. Yeah, as they were two ambitious men who
Speaker 2: were hustling and grinding, they might have also brought that
Speaker 2: hustle and mostly that grind to the bedchamber. And how
Speaker 2: do we know this well, because those sneaky sneaky historians
Speaker 2: who love the hot goss they found a couple letters
Speaker 2: that Withers wrote to Hammond, and damn they are frickin'
Speaker 2: spicy as hell. And after these soothing advertisements, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Read those letters to you. Brb.
Speaker 2: Are you guys ready for this spice? Not like from Dune,
Speaker 2: but like from the Gossip? Okay, So this is one
Speaker 2: of the letters. On May fifteenth, eighteen twenty six. It
Speaker 2: was sent from one Jeff Withers, our second bedfellow, ding
Speaker 2: ding Ding, to our first bedfellow, Jim Hammond.
Speaker 1: Jeff and Jim how romantic.
Speaker 2: Pammond at the time would have been like nineteen and
Speaker 2: Withers was about twenty two.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the letter.
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to get into my best like
Speaker 2: saucy Southern man voice.
Speaker 1: Dear Jim.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not going to do that, Okay, Dear Jim.
Speaker 1: I got your.
Speaker 2: Letter this morning at about eight o'clock from the hands
Speaker 2: of the bearer. I was sick as the devil when
Speaker 2: the gentlemen entered the room, and have been so during
Speaker 2: most of the day. At about one o'clock I swallowed
Speaker 2: a huge mass of epsom salts, and it will not
Speaker 2: be hard to imagine that I have been at dirty work.
Speaker 2: Since I feel partially relieved enough to write a hasty,
Speaker 2: dull letter. MM so yeah, y'all are probably like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this isn't actually that spicy. I don't need to know
Speaker 2: about what he does when he doesn't feel good.
Speaker 1: But also Ebsen salts still using that shit.
Speaker 2: Okay, whatever, But it's about to get very spicy because
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm gonna write you a dull little letter,
Speaker 2: but actually he's gonna write him a spicy little sex note.
Speaker 2: I feel some inclination to learn whether you yet sleep
Speaker 2: in your shirt tail and whether you yet have the
Speaker 2: extravagant delight of poking and punching a writhing bedfellow with
Speaker 2: your long flesh and pull the exquisite touches of which
Speaker 2: I have often had the.
Speaker 1: Honor of feeling.
Speaker 2: Let me say unto THEE that unless thou changest former
Speaker 2: habits in this particular, thou wilt be represented by every
Speaker 2: future chum as.
Speaker 1: A news sense. And I pronounce it with good reason too.
Speaker 2: Sir, you roughen the downy slumbers of your bedfellow by
Speaker 2: such hostile, furious lunges as you are in the habit
Speaker 2: of making at him when he is least prepared for
Speaker 2: defense against the crushing force of a battering ram without reformation,
Speaker 2: My imagination depicts some awful results for which you will
Speaker 2: be held accountable, and therefore it is that I earnestly
Speaker 2: recommend it. Indeed, it is encouraging an assault and battery propensity.
Speaker 1: Which needs correction.
Speaker 2: An uncorrected threatens devastation, horror, and bloodshed.
Speaker 1: Did you guys get what he's saying. He's basically being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god.
Speaker 2: Your flesh and poll It's like a battering ram. And
Speaker 2: if you keep ramming it, baby, aUI, aUI, aUI, there's
Speaker 2: gonna be devastation and bloodshed.
Speaker 1: Daddy, like this is a real thing that they wrote
Speaker 1: in history.
Speaker 2: Isn't this amazing? And the rest of the letter it's
Speaker 2: not really that interesting. But they just have this very
Speaker 2: vulgar paragraph. But it ends with Jeff Withers saying, with
Speaker 2: great respect, I am the old stud Jeff. No warm regards,
Speaker 2: no best wishes, just I am the old stud Jeff. Also,
Speaker 2: what I'm getting from this letter is that mister Hammond
Speaker 2: was the top to mister Jeff Withers, unless that battering
Speaker 2: ram was a power bottom. Unfortunately, we do not know
Speaker 2: what Hammond said back to Withers, but Withers wrote again
Speaker 2: to Hammond a few months later, on September twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty six.
Speaker 1: It reads, my dear friend, your excellent letter.
Speaker 2: Of thirteen June arrived a few weeks since, and it's
Speaker 2: up to our imagination to imagine how excellent that letter was.
Speaker 2: But in this one that Withers is writing, he gets
Speaker 2: pretty saucy.
Speaker 1: Yet again, it.
Speaker 2: Seems that Weathers is trying to warn Hammond that Hammond's
Speaker 2: sexual appetite is maybe a little bit too much. I
Speaker 2: fancy Jim that your elongated protuberance, your flesh and pull,
Speaker 2: your two Latin words indecipherable, has captured complete mastery over you.
Speaker 2: And I really believe that you are charging over the
Speaker 2: pine barrens of your locality, braying like an ass at
Speaker 2: every she mail you can discover. I should lament to
Speaker 2: hear of you feeding upon the dross of the pasture
Speaker 2: and alarming the country with your vociferations. The day of
Speaker 2: miracles may not be passed, and the flaming excess of
Speaker 2: your lustful appetite may drag down the vengeance of supernal power.
Speaker 2: And you'll be damned if you don't marry.
Speaker 1: These horny guys, Jesus.
Speaker 2: The historian who found these letters is Martin Duberman, and
Speaker 2: apparently the archivists didn't want to give him these letters
Speaker 2: because they didn't want him to see how gay these
Speaker 2: guys were. He wrote a really excellent essay about these
Speaker 2: letters that he called writhing Bedfellows. What Duberman was trying
Speaker 2: to understand was are these letters representative of the cultural
Speaker 2: context and attitudes around homosexuality at the time, or was
Speaker 2: this just one specific case of homosexuality that occurred. So
Speaker 2: here's the tea. Back when these were written in the
Speaker 2: eighteen twenties, there was a more relaxed attitude towards sex.
Speaker 2: This was before the second grade Awakening, This was before
Speaker 2: there was a lot of evangelical sentiment in the South.
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't completely relaxed or anything, but it
Speaker 2: was pretty common that men, especially planters, were having lots
Speaker 2: of sex outside of marriage. Durroim was also like, well,
Speaker 2: if you look at the tone of these letters, it's
Speaker 2: very casual. It's very flirtatious. You know, Withers isn't ashamed
Speaker 2: of his behavior. He's like, murmurmur, your flesh and poll
Speaker 2: or whatever. And so Duberman's guy of suggesting, like, well,
Speaker 2: they're not trying to hide it. So maybe it was
Speaker 2: actually more common than we think that men would have
Speaker 2: homosexual relationships when they shared a bed, when they were bedfellows.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, maybe homosexual quality and that kind of
Speaker 2: behavior was casually tolerated at the time, meaning there might
Speaker 2: have been a lot more headfellow bedfellows out there. But
Speaker 2: the great thing about this is there's no real conclusion
Speaker 2: because there's just not enough evidence out there. But whether
Speaker 2: or not this was a larger trend, or whether this
Speaker 2: was an isolated incident. Withers and Hammond went on to
Speaker 2: have successful political careers despite their jaunt into homosexuality. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they got to be those eighteen thirties racists that Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift didn't want to have anything to do with. Hammond,
Speaker 2: as we said, was a huge piece of shit. He
Speaker 2: got canceled for like ten years, but then came back
Speaker 2: because again cancelation doesn't work. And his four nieces who
Speaker 2: he sexually abused, they.
Speaker 1: Were ruined and they never went on to marry.
Speaker 2: Hammond died shortly before the Civil War, while Weathers went
Speaker 2: on to be part of the Confederate government. But don't
Speaker 2: worry Whethers died shortly after the end of the Civil
Speaker 2: War as a.
Speaker 1: Big old loser. As always, we learn.
Speaker 2: A lesson from American filth, and I think today's lesson
Speaker 2: is that you can call your wee wee a flesh
Speaker 2: and poll. Also, I guess it just reiterates that no
Speaker 2: one can ever be canceled, and we are all alone and.
Speaker 1: There's nothing we can do. I know, I know that's
Speaker 1: not a good attitude.
Speaker 2: I am trying to work on my nihilism, I promise,
Speaker 2: But we are going to have another episode about bedfellows
Speaker 2: next week, and this time it's about none other than
Speaker 2: drum roll, drum roll, Abraham Lincoln. We cue the credits.
Speaker 2: American Field is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcast. It is produced, hosted, written by me Gabby Watts.
Speaker 2: I also sound designed this episode. Our theme song is
Speaker 2: by me and Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
Speaker 2: Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr. Please leave the show a
Speaker 2: review some stars you know, love it, hate it?
Speaker 1: Do whatever help the algorithm.
Speaker 2: Also, you can follow along with the show on Instagram
Speaker 2: at American filth Pod. And just as a special little treat,
Speaker 2: I am going to write a song that's gonna be
Speaker 2: like a parody Taylor Swift song, but the lyrics are
Speaker 2: going to be the words that we're in Wither's letter
Speaker 2: to Hammond.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's gonna be.
Speaker 2: Called Writhing Bedfellow or Flesh and Poll or something. But yeah,
Speaker 2: go to Instagram, go see it. Talk at you next time.
Speaker 1: School of Humans