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Speaker 1: I don't have an introduction. I'm I'm Robert Evans, is

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Speaker 1: behind the Bastards podcast about the worst people in history.

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Speaker 1: And we have as our as our national ventilator stockpile

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Speaker 1: runs out. My national introduction stockpile has been completely exhausted.

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Speaker 1: So these are these are desperate and dire times, and

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Speaker 1: I thank you all for tuning in. My guest today

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Speaker 1: to help me navigate these troubled waters is Mr Sower

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Speaker 1: and Booey Airhorn airhorn airhorne. Yeah, we have to do

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Speaker 1: the airhorns manually because then the airhorn stockpiles out as well.

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Speaker 1: They're gone. They're gone. We used them all up. We

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Speaker 1: use them. Hospitals need them. That's that's the new charity

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Speaker 1: is airhorns for hospitals. Really, honestly, if you have an airhorner,

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Speaker 1: you have azla at home to the hospital, donate it today.

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Speaker 1: They need it more than you do. Just drive past

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Speaker 1: the hospital and throw it at them as hard as

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Speaker 1: you can. They will thank you. Ye drive past the

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Speaker 1: hospital and kick it out of your car like your

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Speaker 1: O ding friend Saren. How are you doing today? I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah, I feel good. I mean I want

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Speaker 1: to make sure my levels are okay and everything. I

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Speaker 1: guess there's no way to even know that there there

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Speaker 1: there is, but we'll just move right past that and

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Speaker 1: our listeners will know if we got it right. You

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Speaker 1: are one of the writers on the TV show American Dad,

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Speaker 1: which I love and have loved for years. You are

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Speaker 1: my former uh co worker at at cracked dot Internet. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and you also host a podcast now with with my

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Speaker 1: old boss and our mutual friend, Daniel O'Brien. That's right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Daniel and I have a podcast called Quick Question with

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Speaker 1: sore and Dan I get front. Bill. That makes sense.

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Speaker 1: You want to put the face up front? I think yeah, now,

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Speaker 1: Sar you you guys did an episode of your show

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Speaker 1: recently where you talked about the old days at Cracked

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Speaker 1: um and you were talking particularly about some like old

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Speaker 1: sketches that uh, we're glad we didn't get to make

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Speaker 1: or you're glad that you didn't get to make, and

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Speaker 1: during one of them, you brought up a guy that

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Speaker 1: you had as a character in one of those sketches,

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Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley. Yeah. Weird that we wouldn't have done

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Speaker 1: a sketch about Henry Morton Stanley, Yeah, especially because he

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Speaker 1: was the hero in the sketch. So you want to

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Speaker 1: talk about who you know Henry Morton Stanley as like,

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Speaker 1: what you what you know about this dude? I hope

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Speaker 1: you didn't. No, I have a very cursory knowledge of

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Speaker 1: of Henry Morton Stanley, or as I like to call him,

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Speaker 1: h MS. That's why British ships are named that. By

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Speaker 1: the way, don't look at us. I know that he's

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Speaker 1: a knight. He's been knighted. He was famous for going

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Speaker 1: and fine. He's the guy who says Dr Livingston, I

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Speaker 1: presume yes, yes, that's his most famous line, Dr Livingston

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Speaker 1: and then Dr Livingston at the time was like trying

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Speaker 1: to find the source of the nile. He went to

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Speaker 1: go try and find Livingstone, found him, and then Henry

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Speaker 1: Morton Stanley spent a bunch of time trying to find

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Speaker 1: the source of the nile. Uh. And then during all

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Speaker 1: that time he also got very involved with the slave

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Speaker 1: trade as far as I know, and let kind of

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Speaker 1: everybody on his everyone of his voyages die. Yeah, everyone

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Speaker 1: on all of his voyages dies. He is the guy

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Speaker 1: who actually finds the source of the Congo River um

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Speaker 1: or at least I should say he is the white

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Speaker 1: guy who who finds the source of the Congo River

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Speaker 1: and informs all the other white guys where it is

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Speaker 1: um and he is uh. He actually was very anti slavery.

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Speaker 1: He was an abolitionist, but also in a way that

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Speaker 1: morally doesn't really matter. We'll we'll be talking about that

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Speaker 1: a lot this episode. This is a fun one, So

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Speaker 1: we're gonna we are gonna have us a motherfucking time

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Speaker 1: if you can hear it. But I'm rubbing my hands together, like,

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Speaker 1: oh delicious, this hot dish in front of me. I

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Speaker 1: can't wait to eat it. One of the reasons I'm

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Speaker 1: excited to talk about this sor And it's something else

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Speaker 1: that came up in that episode. You and Dan did

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Speaker 1: of quick question where you were talking about how you know,

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Speaker 1: when we all when you you had to call him

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Speaker 1: at cracked you or not just when you had a calm.

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Speaker 1: When you were on a show that we did called

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Speaker 1: After Hours, which was like a very popular show, and

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Speaker 1: you were one of the characters and you guys discussed

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Speaker 1: pop culture, and your character was kind of like a

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Speaker 1: caricature of I think, how how like you appear, because

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Speaker 1: you're you're a very uh, handsome all American looking fellow.

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Speaker 1: And so your character is like the archetype of like

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Speaker 1: the the high school quarterback kind of guy, right, and

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Speaker 1: and yeah, sort of like monotonously handsome. Yeah, and and

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Speaker 1: you're you're you're concerned with that, you know, looking back

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Speaker 1: in eight years later, is that it kind of contributed

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Speaker 1: to some some people's like unrealistic attitudes about masculinity. And

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Speaker 1: one of the fun things about this story is that

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Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley did that in like the most dangerous

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Speaker 1: way you possibly can. And now there's like a because

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Speaker 1: of the lies he told. He wasn't like he wasn't

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Speaker 1: he didn't kill nearly as many people as he lied

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Speaker 1: about killing, and as a result, a bunch of other

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Speaker 1: people committed a lot of murder. And now there is

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Speaker 1: a whole industry devoted to actually saying that Henry Morton

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Speaker 1: Stanley was a good guy because he lied about how

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Speaker 1: many people he killed. It's a fun story. We're really

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Speaker 1: gonna yeah, yeah, there will be a lot of fun

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Speaker 1: opportunities for conversations about toxic masculinity in this. But let's

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Speaker 1: let's let's let's dig into this. The son of a

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Speaker 1: bit so I love people who lie in the wrong direction.

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Speaker 1: That's wonderful. Yeah, it's really interesting. This is such a

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Speaker 1: such a wild tale. So uh. We talked about Henry

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Speaker 1: Morton Stanley on my show a little bit earlier, and

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Speaker 1: we talked about King Leopold the Second of Belgium, who's

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Speaker 1: like the king who conquered Central Africa and killed thirteen

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Speaker 1: million people making a rubber factory. Very ambitious, very ambitious. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: wrote a tricycle a lot weird dude, um, And Stanley

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Speaker 1: was like we talked about Stanley a bit in that

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Speaker 1: and I one of my sources King Leopold's Ghost, which

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Speaker 1: is a really big, a really good book by Adam

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Speaker 1: hoss Child, and the Stanley that Adam describes as a

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Speaker 1: monster who shot his way through the Congo to discover

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Speaker 1: the source of the river, shot his way back out,

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Speaker 1: and then connived a bunch of African chiefs to hand

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Speaker 1: over their land by making them sign treaties they couldn't

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Speaker 1: read and giving them cloth in return. Um. And like

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Speaker 1: I said in the in the that was kind of

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Speaker 1: most people's interpretation of Stanley for most of the last

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Speaker 1: hundred years, right, Like, he was popular during his lifetime

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Speaker 1: and pretty quickly afterwards, people were like, Oh, this was

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Speaker 1: a real This guy was a bad dude. But now

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Speaker 1: there's a whole industry that sort of cropped up about

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Speaker 1: rehabilitating not just him, but a lot of other British

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Speaker 1: colonial figures. And one of my sources for today's episode

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Speaker 1: is a book written by one of those people in

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Speaker 1: two thousands seven agoin named Tim Jeal published Stanley, The

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Speaker 1: Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. Um and Jill was

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Speaker 1: able to get access to a never before open trove

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Speaker 1: of Stanley's private letters and journal entries, which is how

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Speaker 1: he learned about stuff like Stanley lying about how many

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Speaker 1: people he'd killed. Um and Gil is the guy who

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Speaker 1: really starts trying to rehabilitate Stanley by like saying that

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Speaker 1: he was a much better guy than people think he is.

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Speaker 1: Um and It's Yeah. I'm gonna quote a little bit

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Speaker 1: from a two thousand eleven Smithsonian magazine article that gives

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Speaker 1: you an idea of how this is generally sold. Quote

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Speaker 1: another Stanley has recently emerged. Neither a dauntless hero nor

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Speaker 1: a ruthless control freak. This explorer prevailed in the wilderness

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Speaker 1: not because his will was indomitable, but because he appreciated

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Speaker 1: its limitations and used long term strategies that social scientists

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Speaker 1: are only now beginning to understand. This new version of

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Speaker 1: Stanley was found appropriately enough by Livingstone's biographer Tim Geil,

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Speaker 1: a British novelist and expert on Victorian obsessives. Gild drew

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Speaker 1: on thousands of Stanley's letters, YadA, YadA, YadA. It depicts

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Speaker 1: a flawed character who seems all the more brave and

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Speaker 1: humane for his ambition and insecurity, virtue and fraud. So

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Speaker 1: and I should say this, This article in Smithsonian is

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Speaker 1: arguing that Stanley should be like a productivity guru that

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Speaker 1: we take advice on. It's fun, Like where this all

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Speaker 1: has gone is real interesting. Oh that's what I want

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Speaker 1: those like Columbus apologists to do, something like this, just like, hey,

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Speaker 1: you know what, we Columbus maybe got a bad rap everybody.

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Speaker 1: Maybe he got it didn't get a fair shape. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this this is gonna be full of a lot of

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Speaker 1: that stuff. So I read Jeal's book, and I also

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Speaker 1: went through um King Leopold's Ghost again, and they did

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Speaker 1: a bunch of other research. And we're gonna have a

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Speaker 1: fun time here. Saron, We're just gonna have us a

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Speaker 1: good ass time. So, Sir Henry Morton Stanley was born

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Speaker 1: on January one under the name John Rowlands. Uh. He

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Speaker 1: was born a bastard in the literal sense of the word.

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Speaker 1: So that's convenient for the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: don't really know who his dad was. His mom was

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Speaker 1: a woman named Betsy Perry who was by all accounts,

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Speaker 1: a very promiscuous housemaid. Um, she got around historically. That

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Speaker 1: is that is the that that is uh widely discussed. Um,

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Speaker 1: and it has an impact on on on Stanley later.

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Speaker 1: So his father was probably a guy named John Rowlands

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Speaker 1: who was a local town drunk who died from being

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Speaker 1: the town drunk. Um. But we don't really know. And

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Speaker 1: other stories say his dad was a wealthy law or

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Speaker 1: who was shoot all connection with his illegitimate child. Um.

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Speaker 1: The important thing is that absolutely nobody wanted this kid

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Speaker 1: around when he was born, like wildly unwanted to an extent.

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Speaker 1: That is just heartbreaking, actually, like yeah, it's it's a bummer. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, I got a kid never around a

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Speaker 1: lot of other kids and sometimes you can just tell

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Speaker 1: yeah some of them, some of them, Yes, yes, yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: something like nah, we don't want nobody wants that kid.

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Speaker 1: That is sore and Bowie's official stance, it's okay if

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Speaker 1: some kids are unwanted. Yeah, it's if kids not wanted.

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Speaker 1: That's your internal cluck and your internal compass telling you

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Speaker 1: that's not a good kid. That's not that's a bad one.

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Speaker 1: That kid's going to be a problem. Shouldn't have that kid.

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Speaker 1: So his mother abandoned him basically immediately and left him

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Speaker 1: in the care of his uncle's and his grandfather, Moses Perry.

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Speaker 1: Uh and Adam hoss Child describes Moses Perry as quote

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Speaker 1: a man who believed a boy needed a sound whipping

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Speaker 1: if he missed the saved uh and kind of describes

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Speaker 1: it as sort of an abusive relationship. Geal takes the

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Speaker 1: completely opposite task and and argues that the two had

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Speaker 1: a good relationship until Moses Perry fell down dead in

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Speaker 1: the middle of a potato field on June forty six,

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Speaker 1: when John was five and a half years old. Um

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Speaker 1: So John was left fully in the care of his

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Speaker 1: two uncles, who did not, in fact care very much

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Speaker 1: about him. They subcontracted the gig and paid a poor

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Speaker 1: family to take him in. But eventually that family started

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Speaker 1: asking for more money, and the uncles refused, And so

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Speaker 1: they told John that his older cousin, Dick, was going

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Speaker 1: to take him to another aunt in a town nearby.

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Speaker 1: And so John and Dick went on an eight mile

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Speaker 1: walked together, and it was it was tragically sore, and

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Speaker 1: it was a walk of lies. Uh. As John later wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: the way seemed determinable and tedious. At last, Dick set

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Speaker 1: me down from his shoulders before an immense stone building,

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Speaker 1: and passing through tall iron gates, he pulled it a bell,

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Speaker 1: which I could hear clinging noisily in the distant in tier.

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Speaker 1: Here a somber face stranger appeared at the door, who,

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Speaker 1: despite my remonstrances, seized me by the hand and drew

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Speaker 1: me within. Now, as John was being pulled away, his

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Speaker 1: cousin assured him that he would be right back. He

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Speaker 1: was going to get him both cakes. But this was

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Speaker 1: also a lie. In reality, Dick had abandoned his stone

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Speaker 1: building cakes. Yeah, as you do, you go into the woods,

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Speaker 1: you find the nearest stone building. It's like, I bet

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Speaker 1: they got cake in there. So John just abandons his

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Speaker 1: cousin to a workhouse. That was the plan from the beginning. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Geal writes, quote the false cajolings and treacherous endearments lavished

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Speaker 1: upon him during that journey would live forever at Henry

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Speaker 1: Stanley's memory. Since that dreadful evening, Stanley would right in

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Speaker 1: his fifties. My resentment has not a wit abated. It

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Speaker 1: would have been far better for me if Dick, being

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Speaker 1: stronger than I, had employed compulsion instead of shattering my

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Speaker 1: confidence and planting the first seeds of distrust in a

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Speaker 1: child's heart. Um, this is a bad thing that happens.

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Speaker 1: And I'm gonna guess you've heard of workhouses right sore in. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm familiar. Yeah, now most people probably have, if only

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Speaker 1: from the Christmas Carol. You know, there's a bit where

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Speaker 1: Ebenezer Scrooges asked to donate money to the poor, and

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Speaker 1: he asks, are there no prisons? Are there are no workhouses?

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Speaker 1: And this is this is the kind of place that

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Speaker 1: John Rowlands at age six, gets put into the St

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Speaker 1: Asaf Union workhouse. So the British government, which was at

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Speaker 1: the time conquering big chunks of the world and stealing

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Speaker 1: their ship, did not like the the idea of taking

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Speaker 1: care of their own poor people, and in fact, the

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Speaker 1: powers that be found it disgusting, uh, the idea that

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Speaker 1: they would provide good care for the poor. So they

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Speaker 1: had workhouses and these provided basic necessities. But they did

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Speaker 1: so while treating the inmates as if they are prisoners,

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Speaker 1: because they were considered to be basically criminal for needing assistance. Um,

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Speaker 1: so it's it's a child prison for poor kids. That's wonderful.

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Speaker 1: It's awesome. You. Um, it's kind of hard to exaggerate

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Speaker 1: how bad England sucks in this period of time. It's

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Speaker 1: just so bleak. It's so bleak. It's like this factory benighted,

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Speaker 1: cold drenched hell, escape of of of dying kids and uh,

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Speaker 1: fancy people. It's it's the best. But like the kids

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Speaker 1: are the working class, Like that's your those those who

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Speaker 1: are doing all of the jobs. For some reason, they

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Speaker 1: only made jobs available to children. Well, their little hands

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Speaker 1: can reach all sorts of things, aren't They make very

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Speaker 1: good chimney sweeps, I'll say, incredible chimney sweeps. So inmates

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Speaker 1: at the workhouse, and again a lot of them are children,

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Speaker 1: are required to wake up at six am and they're

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Speaker 1: locked in their dorms at eight pm. They received only

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Speaker 1: bread and gruel for food. Husbands and wives were separated

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Speaker 1: as we're parents and children. If you were poor enough

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Speaker 1: to need state assistance, the state decided that you no

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Speaker 1: longer deserve to have a family. Even siblings were kept apart.

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Speaker 1: Poor children were seen as wholly to blame for their circumstances.

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Speaker 1: As an adult, Stanley would write, it is a fearful

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Speaker 1: fate that of a British outcast, because the punishment afflicts

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Speaker 1: the mind and breaks the heart, which is certainly truthful.

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Speaker 1: It is you read about this guy's background and it's

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Speaker 1: like not that this makes his crime is okay, but

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Speaker 1: like hard to imagine this ending. Well, yeah, it does

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Speaker 1: feel like a lot of these And I've listened to

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Speaker 1: a few of your podcasts, I'll say, and it seems

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Speaker 1: like a lot of them. You kind of have to

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Speaker 1: get on a dark bus for the beginning of it

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Speaker 1: because you have to see where the where all this originated.

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Speaker 1: And every single time, like somebody teaches these people how

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Speaker 1: to hate really well, like how to be really good

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Speaker 1: at hating. Yeah, it's Saddam Hussein giant monsters, like oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he was threatening his teachers with a gun when

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Speaker 1: he was like fourteen. Yeah, that kind of scance. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I see where this evolution happens. Stalin was getting beat

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Speaker 1: so bad that he was peeing blood, and you're like, okay,

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Speaker 1: I get it. Yeah, okay, it's not so hard to

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Speaker 1: draw these lines together. Um. So it's and it's interesting,

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Speaker 1: Like that line that I just read above is certainly truthful.

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Speaker 1: We have a lot of other accounts from work houses

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Speaker 1: and they sucked. Um. But it's hard to trust Stanley

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Speaker 1: on anything because he lied about everything, including his time

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Speaker 1: at St. Asaph's. He would go on a claim later

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Speaker 1: in his writings that he saw a boy beaten to

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Speaker 1: death by James Francis, the school teacher. And the general

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Speaker 1: consensus of historians, based on workhouse records and other people

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Speaker 1: who are in that workhouse at the time, is that

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Speaker 1: nothing like this happened while Stanley was at the school. Um,

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Speaker 1: and in fact, most people who recalled their time there

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Speaker 1: seemed to think pretty fondly of this teacher. And so yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's it's interesting. And Stanley would later

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Speaker 1: tell lies about like getting into a fight with this

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Speaker 1: teacher himself and like beating him up and like being

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Speaker 1: cheered on by the rest of the school. And these

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Speaker 1: are almost certainly lies, but they were also probably a

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Speaker 1: cover for something very sad, which is childhood's sexual abuse. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The year that Stanley was admitted to st assets, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we don't really know, but like the year he was admitted,

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Speaker 1: nineteen of the girls at the poorhouse were turned out

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Speaker 1: as prostitutes and pimped by some of the male employees.

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Speaker 1: Um and a government inspector who observed the school during

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Speaker 1: this time noted that young male inmates regularly slept with

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Speaker 1: each other in experimented set truly, and a lot of

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Speaker 1: that experimentation was probably not consensual on both sides. And well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love that the government has an inspector to go

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Speaker 1: check out the workhouses. Like what is he hoping to

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Speaker 1: find there? Yeah, you are kind of at a loss

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Speaker 1: to like what would have been possibly the Like, you're

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Speaker 1: not doing anything to stop this from happening, So what's

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Speaker 1: your hope here? Yeah, created a prison for children. When

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Speaker 1: you go there, when you're like, oh, no, they're having

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Speaker 1: sex with each other, You've gotta be kidding me. I

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Speaker 1: have to raise the alarm. It turns out things are

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Speaker 1: bleak at the child prison. So we don't know if

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Speaker 1: if Stanley engaged in any of this experimentation or if

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Speaker 1: he was sexually abused. He would always claim in letters

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Speaker 1: to like his romantic partners that he stayed pure at

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Speaker 1: the school while writing about it later. But that doesn't

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Speaker 1: fucking mean a damn thing. Um whatever, Yeah, whatever the truth.

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Speaker 1: Stanley was noted the rest of his life by everyone

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Speaker 1: who knew him for having an extreme terror of physical

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Speaker 1: and sexual intimacy, and this terror remained with him for

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Speaker 1: the entirety of his life. So something happened. We don't

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Speaker 1: really know what, but this boy walks out of it

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Speaker 1: real changed. Yeah, I think he went in a little

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Speaker 1: changed to you don't talk for the words with your

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Speaker 1: your surrogate father who's lavishing you with praise and then

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Speaker 1: drops you off at a workhouse and be like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna let somebody else in. It

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Speaker 1: feels like at the opportunity for me to open my

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Speaker 1: heart to someone else. This is one of those stories

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Speaker 1: that it reads like an experiment for like how much

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Speaker 1: can we damage a child? Like if we really go

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Speaker 1: all in, how badly can we fucking get up? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So Stanley did uh, at the least receive an education

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Speaker 1: which you know, generally was considered to be pretty decent.

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Speaker 1: Where he went, he learned how to read and write,

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Speaker 1: and he excelled at school. While he was in the workhouse,

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Speaker 1: he was awarded a fancy bible from the local bishop

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Speaker 1: for his scholastic excellence. Uh. Young John Rowlands, and again

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Speaker 1: that's his name at the time, that's his real name is.

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Speaker 1: John Rowlands was particularly enamored by geography and penmanship throughout

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Speaker 1: his life. He made a point of writing neatly, almost

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Speaker 1: to an obsessive degree, and King Leopold's ghost hoss Child writes,

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Speaker 1: it was as if through his handwriting he were trying

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Speaker 1: to pull himself out of disgrace and turn the script

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Speaker 1: of his life from one of poverty to one of elegance,

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Speaker 1: which I think is probably pretty accurate description. So John

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Speaker 1: may not have had the very worst childhood a boy

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Speaker 1: could have in Wales, but it was pretty close to that. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The defining moment of his early life came when he

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Speaker 1: was twelve. His supervisor quote came up to me during

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Speaker 1: the dinner hour when all the inmates were assembled, and

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Speaker 1: pointed out a tall woman with an oval face and

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Speaker 1: a great coil of dark hair behind her head. He

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Speaker 1: asked me if I recognized her, No, sir, I replied,

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Speaker 1: what do you not know your own mother? I started

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Speaker 1: with a burning face and directed a shy glance at

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Speaker 1: her and perceived she was regarding me with a look

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Speaker 1: of cruel, critical scrutiny. I had expected to feel a

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Speaker 1: gush of tenderness towards her, but her expression was so

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Speaker 1: chilling that the valves of my heart closed with a snap.

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Speaker 1: So that's yeah, that's a bad thing to go through

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Speaker 1: as Yeah, that's a rough one. He saw his mom

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Speaker 1: at that, So she was she then in the workhouse

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Speaker 1: as well. She had two more kids and she wasn't

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Speaker 1: going to take care of them, but they were also

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Speaker 1: young enough that she couldn't just drop them out the

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Speaker 1: workhouse basically, I think made her kind of hang around

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Speaker 1: to finish breastfeeding them and stuff before she could abandon them.

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Speaker 1: So she's there for a while with her other kids

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Speaker 1: before she abandons them too. And yeah, not great. It's

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Speaker 1: at least you know that the records the record keeping

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Speaker 1: there is good. Yeah, it's really good record keeping. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: they know not only do they know that this was

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Speaker 1: his mother. They're not just like taking in kids and

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Speaker 1: being like, yeah, well the parents didn't want you. We

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Speaker 1: don't know who they are. They're like, no, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: keep tracks so that when you are old enough for

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Speaker 1: the age of revenge, we'll give you a name on

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper and you can go take care

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Speaker 1: of it. It would be so much less depressing if

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Speaker 1: he got revenge on her. But the rest of his

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Speaker 1: life part of why he lied so much as he

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Speaker 1: was like very dedicated to making his mom proud and

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Speaker 1: she clearly didn't give a funk about him and at

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Speaker 1: best wanted his money. Um, it's a fucking bummer duty.

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Speaker 1: So the workhouse remained John Rowland's life until the age

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Speaker 1: of fifteen, when he escaped. Now, the reality of the

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Speaker 1: situation seems to be the escape wasn't really hard and

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Speaker 1: he basically just fucked off because he was old enough

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Speaker 1: to do so. Um. But Stanley felt the need to

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Speaker 1: dream up a lurid lie about how he left the school,

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Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote from Adam hoss Child again. He

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Speaker 1: tells of leaving the Welsh workhouse in melodramatic terms. He

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Speaker 1: leapt over a garden wall and escaped, he claims, after

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Speaker 1: leading a class rebellion against a cruel supervisor named James Francis,

403
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Speaker 1: who had viciously brutalized the entire senior class. Never again,

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Speaker 1: I shouted, marveling at my own audacity, Stanley wrote, the

405
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Speaker 1: words had scarcely escaped me. Where I found myself swung

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Speaker 1: upwards into the air by the color of my jacket,

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Speaker 1: and flung into a nerveless heap on the bench. The

408
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Speaker 1: passionate brute pumbled me in the stomach until I fell backward,

409
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Speaker 1: gasping for breath. Again, I was lifted dashed upon the

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Speaker 1: bin with a shock that almost broke my spine um.

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Speaker 1: And this is again all lies. One of the things

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Speaker 1: that hosts Child notes and and that Gel notes, is

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Speaker 1: that Stanley was at that point a very healthy fifteen

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Speaker 1: year old boy, while his teacher was it was a sick,

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Speaker 1: middle aged former cold miner who was missing a hand.

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Speaker 1: And was he he he was unlikely to have been

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Speaker 1: doing a lot of throwing, is the incredible. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: most people seem to agree if there had actually been

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Speaker 1: a fight, the fifteen year old, healthy boy probably would

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Speaker 1: have beaten the handless coal miner, but you know the

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Speaker 1: man with black lung and copd Yeah, yeah, he wasn't.

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Speaker 1: He wasn't a price fighter. Um. And none of Stanley's

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Speaker 1: classmates were called anything like this happening. And yeah, again

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Speaker 1: they considered frances to have been a nice guy and

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Speaker 1: Stanley to have been, uh, the teacher's pet. And again

426
00:21:55,560 --> 00:21:58,000
Speaker 1: one of the really sad things about this is that

427
00:21:58,080 --> 00:22:01,080
Speaker 1: one of the suspicions is that why he later developed

428
00:22:01,080 --> 00:22:03,800
Speaker 1: such a grudge against John Francis, is that maybe Francis,

429
00:22:04,119 --> 00:22:07,160
Speaker 1: who there's a good chance was gay. Maybe Francis made

430
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,119
Speaker 1: a pass at him once he's you know, because like

431
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:13,040
Speaker 1: fifteen people were considered yeah, so maybe this the teacher

432
00:22:13,080 --> 00:22:15,600
Speaker 1: made a pass at him or something more, and that's

433
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:17,960
Speaker 1: why Stanley felt the need to attack him so much.

434
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,320
Speaker 1: But we really don't know, um, But something happened there too,

435
00:22:22,400 --> 00:22:23,879
Speaker 1: Like there's a couple of points like this in his

436
00:22:23,960 --> 00:22:25,959
Speaker 1: life where it's like, yeah, something happened to make you

437
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 1: tell that specific kind of lie. But and also what

438
00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:33,600
Speaker 1: you're probably getting from this is that young Stanley was

439
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:36,920
Speaker 1: a big fan of A. C. Dick h. Charles Dickens

440
00:22:37,160 --> 00:22:41,119
Speaker 1: um and and Dickens Like that's a very Dickensian moment,

441
00:22:41,160 --> 00:22:46,119
Speaker 1: like the child like fights off the abusive teacher to

442
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:48,680
Speaker 1: like save his classmates and then winds up on a

443
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:53,199
Speaker 1: magical journey. Like that's a fucking Charles Dickens story. You know.

444
00:22:53,600 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 1: Stanley would be throughout his life a big Dickens fan.

445
00:22:56,200 --> 00:23:00,719
Speaker 1: Probably influenced how he wrote his own biography. Um yeah,

446
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:02,720
Speaker 1: actually that okay, so a lot of things are falling

447
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:05,840
Speaker 1: into place that that's why his writing style is so

448
00:23:05,920 --> 00:23:09,280
Speaker 1: purple and like I could see. Yeah, yeah, he's he's

449
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 1: very influenced by Dickens. Um. And it's a really fun

450
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:15,240
Speaker 1: note if anybody wants to know more about Charles Dickens

451
00:23:15,320 --> 00:23:18,880
Speaker 1: from like an interesting perspective. George Orwell wrote so many

452
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:22,560
Speaker 1: fucking articles about Charles Dickens is writing and like analyzed

453
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:24,680
Speaker 1: him from like the perspective of a socialist is really

454
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:27,240
Speaker 1: interesting set up. There's a bunch of them in um

455
00:23:27,280 --> 00:23:29,840
Speaker 1: the collection All Art Is Propaganda, which is a good

456
00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 1: chunka Orwell reading if you're into that anyway. Um, so yeah,

457
00:23:35,320 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 1: after he escapes from the workhouse or just kind of

458
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: walks out the door because they don't really care all

459
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,960
Speaker 1: that much. Um, Stanley winds up, you know, living with

460
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,399
Speaker 1: a series of relatives for brief periods of time, but

461
00:23:45,440 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 1: none of them wanted to put him up for long,

462
00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:49,639
Speaker 1: and he eventually wound up living with an uncle in Liverpool,

463
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 1: working as the delivery boy to a butcher um and

464
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:54,399
Speaker 1: John got the feeling that he was going to be

465
00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 1: kicked out onto the street at any moment, and he

466
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: was probably right about that, and fortunately right around the

467
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,159
Speaker 1: same time time, he wound up delivering meat to an

468
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: American merchant ship called the Windowmere, which was docked nearby.

469
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:08,280
Speaker 1: And as Stanley kind of describes it, and it's probably

470
00:24:08,280 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: broadly accurate because this was an uncommon at the time,

471
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:13,360
Speaker 1: the captain basically looked him up and down and was like, hey,

472
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:18,200
Speaker 1: you want to work on a boat there. There weren't

473
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,040
Speaker 1: a lot of rules back of the day about this

474
00:24:20,080 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So it feels like they were like

475
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:26,000
Speaker 1: twelve people in history, like every time somebody wanted a job,

476
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, I'll get you a job. Yeah.

477
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: So he he does the pretty normal thing for a

478
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 1: poor kid at this part of the world at the time,

479
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:37,720
Speaker 1: and he gets a gig fucking working on a boat

480
00:24:37,760 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 1: that takes him to the United States. Um and John

481
00:24:41,280 --> 00:24:43,439
Speaker 1: very clearly was not a fan of sea life, and

482
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 1: as soon as the Windowmere landed in New Orleans in

483
00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,679
Speaker 1: February of eighteen fifty nine, he jumped ship and basically

484
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,239
Speaker 1: just wandered into America and said, Okay, I guess I'm

485
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: gonna have a life here. Um Because again, you could

486
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: do that at the time. So in some ways, I'm like,

487
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,200
Speaker 1: I'm really it's depressing to hear about history. In other ways,

488
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,879
Speaker 1: I'm like, funk. Everything was so much easier then that,

489
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,119
Speaker 1: Like a lot of stuff was easier. You could just

490
00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:07,440
Speaker 1: be like, you know what I want to be in.

491
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: I feel like I want to be in Louisiana. I

492
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 1: will figure out a way to get there. And if

493
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,400
Speaker 1: I don't die of cholera, no one's gonna stop me. Right. Yeah.

494
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: The thing you really had to worry about where diseases

495
00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:21,119
Speaker 1: and abusive people. But like, yeah, the opportunities beyond those

496
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: horrific things were endless. Yeah, it wasn't hard to to

497
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: just do ship like that, you know if it Yeah,

498
00:25:29,000 --> 00:25:32,560
Speaker 1: nobody was making you fill out a whole lot of paperwork. Yes, yeah,

499
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 1: you're being tracked for your Like his credit was consideration

500
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,640
Speaker 1: at that point, you no, it was not Um. And

501
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: and and again. This is another one of one of

502
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,200
Speaker 1: what will become many different parts of the Stanley story

503
00:25:44,240 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: where his version of events in reality to verge. But

504
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: he claims that basically, he's wandering around the streets of

505
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,359
Speaker 1: New Orleans and he sees a local business owner like,

506
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:54,200
Speaker 1: looks up at this guy who's wearing a nice suit

507
00:25:54,240 --> 00:25:56,639
Speaker 1: and runs a business. Uh, and he walks out. He

508
00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:58,720
Speaker 1: just walks up to this guy and says, do you

509
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: want to boy? Sir? That's your resume in the eighteen fifties,

510
00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: just a just a single word boy next to a dash.

511
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: Uh God, what a gig to have. But this distinguished

512
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: gentleman did in fact want a boy. He turned out

513
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: to be a wealthy cut You know what, I came

514
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 1: into town for one of those I was gonna pick

515
00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:36,399
Speaker 1: me up a boy at the workhouse. But this is

516
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:42,040
Speaker 1: this is fast so uh yeah, this, this gentleman turned

517
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: out to be the wealthy cotton salesman Henry Hope Stanley Um,

518
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: who was a real person and was a very successful

519
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,119
Speaker 1: merchant in New Orleans at the time. And and again,

520
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: according to Stanley's version of events, which is a lie.

521
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: Henry Hope Stanley instantly developed a liking for our boy

522
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:01,720
Speaker 1: John and became his mentor in sir get father figure. Uh.

523
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:03,880
Speaker 1: He got him a job working for a shopkeeper named

524
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,959
Speaker 1: James speak Um. And again, the only part of this

525
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 1: is that's true is that Stanley worked for James Speake

526
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:14,199
Speaker 1: and the reality Henry Morton and family. He probably did not.

527
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:18,640
Speaker 1: Stanley inserts Henry Hope Stanley into the story decades later.

528
00:27:19,000 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: The likely reality is that he was in fact wandering

529
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: the streets, walked into this guy's shop and said, do

530
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: you want a boy and this guy was like, yeah, sure,

531
00:27:25,960 --> 00:27:27,879
Speaker 1: And he worked at this guy's shop until he died

532
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,520
Speaker 1: and then he went on with his life. Um. But

533
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:33,840
Speaker 1: that's Stanley has to lie. He judges up the story

534
00:27:33,880 --> 00:27:35,919
Speaker 1: and he adds in this rich person who has the

535
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 1: name that he later adopts. That's incredible. He's got such

536
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 1: like a Trumpian element to him. Yeah, totally. He can't

537
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: help himself but lie to let to sound in any

538
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: way any like little tiny way grander. Yeah. Yeah, they're

539
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: all kind of everyone we talked about on the show

540
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,159
Speaker 1: is kind of the same person, with the exception of

541
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: l Ron Hubbard who is at the top of the heap.

542
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: But I mean before you get into it. Uh, do

543
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: you know what time it is? I can't imagine what

544
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 1: you're trying to lead me towards, Sophie. I don't know that.

545
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:15,800
Speaker 1: Just this thing that you know keeps this podcast afloat.

546
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh you mean robbing merchant vessels on the

547
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: Spanish Main exactly? Yeah, for some information? Oh absolutely, yeah?

548
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 1: Did your did your gun not coming the mail? No?

549
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: But I mean I got a lot this okay, fun, Yeah,

550
00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: this will be this will be. This will be a

551
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:35,959
Speaker 1: real hoot. Yeah. Alright, Well, we're gonna go find a

552
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: merchantman on the Spanish Main. You do the same, and

553
00:28:38,680 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: we will all meet back to talk more about Henry

554
00:28:40,920 --> 00:28:50,240
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley and divide up the booty. We're back. Oh

555
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: my gosh. That was some good pillaging, some good looting,

556
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: a lot of balloons. Now you do you do? Um,

557
00:28:57,360 --> 00:28:59,080
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to find a boy to help you

558
00:28:59,120 --> 00:29:01,640
Speaker 1: with that. I need a fence for these. I don't

559
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: even know. I want to work. Does like Target take these? Actually? Yeah?

560
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 1: Target does? Costco does not. Uh, they prefer pieces of eight,

561
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: which are probably the same things but whatever, fuck you.

562
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: So Stanley starts working for this guy, James Speak, and

563
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:18,120
Speaker 1: he basically works as a boy in a shop, and

564
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,239
Speaker 1: he's really good at at working and like, uh, this

565
00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 1: is like essentially like a grocery store type deal or

566
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: a general store. And he's good at the job. He's

567
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,680
Speaker 1: an incredible memory. Everybody seems to agree that about him,

568
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,400
Speaker 1: and so he's really good at keeping things stocked and knowing,

569
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: you know, what needs to move. And yeah, he's he's

570
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: a good worker. Um. But Stanley's version of the story

571
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 1: is very different. He claims that while he's working for

572
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 1: James Speak, he and Henry Hope Stanley are growing very

573
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 1: close and that they basically spend two years traveling up

574
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: and down the Mississippi on business, and that the old

575
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: man eventually tells Stanley, who becomes a surrogate son, that

576
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: he's giving him the right to use the Stanley name.

577
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:59,680
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so uh fucking Stanley will claim that Henry

578
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: Hope Stanley died in eighteen sixty one, which is a lie.

579
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: He lived for like another sixteen years. What a weird

580
00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: thing to lie about. Yeah, he lies about everything though,

581
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, there's no evidence that he and Stanley

582
00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:14,480
Speaker 1: arranged exchange so much as a word. But you understand,

583
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: like the real story in the fake story. The fake

584
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:17,880
Speaker 1: story is that you know, he works with this guy,

585
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: James Speake, who pays him very well, and then James

586
00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: Speake dies when a plague hits town and Stanley winds

587
00:30:23,880 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: up needing to move on. Um yeah, so it's cool.

588
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's it's the opposite of cool. Yeah, Stanley

589
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: is not a cool dude. He's not a cool dude.

590
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: Throughout the early eighteen sixties, though, he starts adopting the

591
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: name of like one of the richest people in town,

592
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: and smart gradually changed that that is not a bad call.

593
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, John Rowlands is a shift, a shitty name

594
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: in anyway, like Henry Morton Stanley. You just tell that

595
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: name to someone and asks, this is a famous person,

596
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: what do you think they did. One of your first

597
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:03,560
Speaker 1: three guesses is going to be explorer, right like yeah, absolutely, yeah,

598
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,479
Speaker 1: um so yeah, I'm going to read a quote from

599
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 1: King Leopold's Ghost explaining the process of him stealing this

600
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: other man's name. In the eighteen sixty New Orleans Senses,

601
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,239
Speaker 1: he's listed as j Rolling, a woman who knew him

602
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:18,959
Speaker 1: at the time, remembered him as John Rowland's smart as

603
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: a whip and much given to bragging, big talk and

604
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: telling stories. She said, yeah. Within a few years, however,

605
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: he began using the first and last name of the

606
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: merchant who had given him his job. He continued to

607
00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:32,520
Speaker 1: experiment with the middle names, using Morley, more Like, and Moreland,

608
00:31:32,600 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: before finally settling on Morton. So yeah, that's more or

609
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,720
Speaker 1: less the truth and Tim Jeal's revisionist history of Stanley

610
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:42,240
Speaker 1: the one that's like really pro Stanley goes into the

611
00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: fact that he's lying about all of this, like Gel

612
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it's a very valuable book

613
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:48,160
Speaker 1: because again he was like the first guy with access

614
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: to this dude's notes. There's a lot of it that's

615
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: in there that's interesting. The stuff that shitty, I think

616
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: is actually Jeal's personal conclusions about everything. Um. But he

617
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: he goes he's very open about the fact that Henry

618
00:31:59,320 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley or lied about fucking everything. Um but he

619
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: has all these really fun explanations and justifications for why

620
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 1: Stanley light in every case, like he's defensive of his

621
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: biography subject and he feels the need to like explain

622
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 1: why it's cool that he did all this. Um, And

623
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: his argument in favor of stealing a man's name is

624
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 1: that Henry first told this lie to his mother after

625
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:24,840
Speaker 1: he was famous, and then it became a part of

626
00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:27,520
Speaker 1: his biography later, and so he started lying about this

627
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: because he wanted her to believe that somebody rich and

628
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,240
Speaker 1: powerful had adopted him, which is actually kind of plausible.

629
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: Um That, Like, he wanted because he'd been abandoned by

630
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 1: every single adult in his childhood. He wanted to be

631
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,000
Speaker 1: able to go back to them and be like, this

632
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: guy was rich and cool and he thought I was

633
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 1: good enough to be his son. He wanted me. Yeah,

634
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:51,640
Speaker 1: which is a bummer and kind of scans like, I'll

635
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:54,800
Speaker 1: give gel that one. Later on, his justifications get worse

636
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, I could see that being the truth. Um.

637
00:32:59,400 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: So Gil goes on a note, and this is where

638
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: we get into him being really defensive, and I find

639
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 1: it fun. Yet his lies have led his critics to

640
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 1: treat him with disdain and condescension ever since. His private

641
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,440
Speaker 1: lies to his mother were made public by her without

642
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: his knowledge, thus making it all but impossible for him

643
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: to be honest. Later, young people who lie usually do

644
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 1: so because they feel bad about themselves and need to

645
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: enhance their self esteem. That Stanley should have been trapped

646
00:33:20,960 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: for the whole of his life and by what he

647
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: had said to his mother during his twenties was a

648
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: personal tragedy for him and for his subsequent reputation. Um.

649
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: And one of the things that interesting about Geal is

650
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: he is as frustrated at people judging Stanley for this

651
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: is he isn't them judging Stanley for gunning people down

652
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: in the congo, like it's both are have equal weight

653
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 1: in his Yeah, they absolutely do, and it's it's fun.

654
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: I want I think that fun. Without meeting Geal, I'm

655
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: pretty confident that he's a liar. He's somebody who is

656
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: lying in his past like little kids lie, because yes,

657
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 1: yes they do. But that's not why we're critical of

658
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:05,960
Speaker 1: stand now. Yeah so anyway, uh. For a while, Henry

659
00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:08,319
Speaker 1: worked at a general store in a log cabin, selling

660
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: all sorts of tools that people needed as they kind

661
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:13,480
Speaker 1: of moved into the less settled parts of Louisiana. He

662
00:34:13,520 --> 00:34:16,719
Speaker 1: became particularly interested in different sorts of rifles and revolvers

663
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: and became very knowledgeable about firearms. And this was as

664
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: much out of necessity as interest. Southern culture at the

665
00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: time was brutal in ways we don't normally talk about,

666
00:34:24,600 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: because you know, there was slavery, and that's kind of

667
00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: everyone's focus on how brutal that was. But the brutality

668
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:33,719
Speaker 1: extended throughout every layer of Southern culture. Um and it

669
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:36,640
Speaker 1: included the fact that plantation owners and they're like were

670
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: extremely physically aggressive people as a matter of rule. Uh

671
00:34:40,640 --> 00:34:43,400
Speaker 1: something about owning hundreds of human beings that seems like

672
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 1: it makes you unwilling to listen to what anyone else

673
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,800
Speaker 1: has to say. Um And Jil has actually a pretty

674
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: good quote here. It shocked Henry, after the civilities of

675
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:53,960
Speaker 1: the city, to witness gunfights and to hear about murders

676
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: and disappearances. With so many vain and violent men around him,

677
00:34:56,960 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: possessing natures as sensitive as hair triggers, he was care

678
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,279
Speaker 1: well not to argue with Ednie backwoodsman or planter, who

679
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: might draw a gun on the least provocation. However amiable

680
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,319
Speaker 1: they might originally have been, their isolation had promoted the

681
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:12,160
Speaker 1: growth of egotism. These Southern gentlemen talked endlessly about their

682
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,760
Speaker 1: honor and often acted to avenge it. In this environment,

683
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: it was every man for himself. So in case of trouble,

684
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 1: Henry bought a Smith and Wesson revolver and practiced with

685
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: it until he could sever a pack threat at twenty paces.

686
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 1: I feel like that's still that's like a lesson you

687
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 1: can still live by today. Yeah. Yeah, if you're going

688
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: to live in the South, learn how to sever a

689
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:32,880
Speaker 1: thread with a revolver and keep it on you at

690
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:35,520
Speaker 1: all times. I've always said that. Yeah. And if you're

691
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: in a rural area, don't funk with anybody there, absolutely not. Yeah. Yeah,

692
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 1: don't argue with people out in the sticks, you know,

693
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: just move move along, just get going. Yeah, keep on,

694
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: keep on trucking. Um. So. People who knew Stanley during

695
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: this period described him as talkative and intelligent, short, but burly,

696
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,800
Speaker 1: and confident unless he was asked about his family. Questions

697
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:06,879
Speaker 1: about his family caused him to stutter and eventually mumble out,

698
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:11,440
Speaker 1: there is a mystery about my birth. Um. He's not

699
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: even a good liar. No, no, no, no, I didn't

700
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: even think about that in person when he was actually

701
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 1: doing his line. He was not bad. No, he doesn't

702
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 1: seem to have been great at it. He was a

703
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: good he was a good writing liar. So after a

704
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: year or so, when Louisiana, Stanley's boss died and Stanley

705
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:31,760
Speaker 1: was forced to move to Cyphress Bend at the age

706
00:36:31,760 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: of nineteen, he got a job at another store and

707
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:36,960
Speaker 1: rented a room at a cheap boarding house. And Stanley

708
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: stood out there, his colorful neckerchiefs and his habitual cleanliness

709
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:42,719
Speaker 1: where it odds with the sort of people who crashed it.

710
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 1: What was essentially a mix between a shitty motel and

711
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 1: a for profit homeless shelter. Like that's kind of what

712
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: a boarding house is. And this part of the world

713
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: at the time a lot of real rough customers moving through.

714
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: And then you have kind of this this fancy lad

715
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: victorian fop who rolls through, Yeah, big fan of yeah,

716
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: big fantasy kerchiefs, colorful kerchiefs, really wants to be a

717
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: British noble, even though he comes from I mean, the

718
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: poorest fucking working class background you can, right, this is

719
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,160
Speaker 1: an example of relying in the wrong direction, like trying

720
00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:15,560
Speaker 1: to establish himself as an aristocrat in a place where

721
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:18,680
Speaker 1: no one wants that. It's like, no your background would

722
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: help you here, Stanley tell people the truth. Yeah, and

723
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 1: it is one of those things throughout his life, like

724
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 1: a lot of fancy British people will always treat him

725
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,360
Speaker 1: like ship, even after he becomes rich and famous, because

726
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 1: he comes from a low class background. Well like the

727
00:37:31,719 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: Americans he works, They're just like, yeah, whatever, you can

728
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: shoot a pack threat at thirty paces, That's all I

729
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 1: care about, because we're going to shoot at each other.

730
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,280
Speaker 1: I come from the South. I can't not shoot somebody.

731
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 1: I got it. I haven't shot a single personal day.

732
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,040
Speaker 1: You're not You're not my buddy if we haven't gotten

733
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:55,840
Speaker 1: into an afternoon gunfight. Yeah. So Henry got malarias shortly

734
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: after moving and dropped down to just ninety five pounds

735
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,760
Speaker 1: and this hilaria. Yeah, this happens so many times throughout

736
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 1: his life. He will drop down to like the weight

737
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:08,400
Speaker 1: of a ten year old repeatedly, just because you know,

738
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,520
Speaker 1: every he's always sick and dying, like this guy's in

739
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:13,960
Speaker 1: the Congo for a huge chunk of his life. He

740
00:38:14,040 --> 00:38:17,840
Speaker 1: spends about like half of his life actively dying of

741
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: some sort of horrible, contagious, contagious disease. And that's the

742
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 1: case with every explorer, Like I do a lot of

743
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: reading about the lives of great explorers, because that that's

744
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 1: my ship. Uh. And they all are always dying of

745
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:34,200
Speaker 1: the illnesses they've picked up. Like the best of them

746
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: were just constantly ill and just didn't quite die. I

747
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: love that in actual actuality, these people are being dragged

748
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: through their exploration. They're they're not actually out there cutting stuff,

749
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:48,439
Speaker 1: bush whacking with their own machete or anything. They're being

750
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: carried on a palanquin as they slowly wither away into nothing.

751
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 1: Some of them are Stanley is one of those guys

752
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:57,000
Speaker 1: who is famous for like always like like working his

753
00:38:57,080 --> 00:38:59,360
Speaker 1: ass off like and and a number of them were

754
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 1: like what they would just always be sick and dying.

755
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: And the ones that got famous are the ones who

756
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: didn't die, like like the whole team would crack, would

757
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: croak basically and stay. It would just be like Stanley

758
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:16,360
Speaker 1: and a bunch of like local people wandering into some town. Um, yeah,

759
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: it's he's It's funny to me that like the stereotypical

760
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: image of like one of these guys, it's kind of

761
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:24,279
Speaker 1: like the rock in those Jumanji movies or whatever. Like

762
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:26,839
Speaker 1: we're like the big barrel chested wearing that shirt they

763
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,720
Speaker 1: all wore, and like the reality is like they looked

764
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: like fucking concentration camp survivors a lot of the time

765
00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:34,839
Speaker 1: because they just had been dying for nine months, like

766
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 1: they had no calories left. They were shipping themselves uncontrollably,

767
00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:43,120
Speaker 1: like just couldn't keep food down, zero fat on their bones. Like,

768
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 1: and that's that's Stanley's whole life. He's actively looks like

769
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: a dead man most of his days. He's Christian Baleing

770
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: the machinist. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's rough,

771
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: and that's just a call. Like everyone's sick all the

772
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,840
Speaker 1: time back in those days. So yeah, he moves to

773
00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: the sticks and immediately almost dies. And despite being on

774
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,280
Speaker 1: the verge of death, his new boss, who's like working

775
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: at a shop, sends him out regularly to work as

776
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:10,319
Speaker 1: a debt collector and collect debts from customers, which is

777
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: not a safe vocation. So he's like in armed standoffs

778
00:40:13,600 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 1: with men as he's shifting himself uncontrollably and like barely

779
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:21,280
Speaker 1: able to stay conscious. So Stanley lives though, because he's he's.

780
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:23,479
Speaker 1: One thing you can say for Stanley, he was a

781
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:27,399
Speaker 1: cussed ly tough son of a bitch um. Yeah, and

782
00:40:27,480 --> 00:40:30,400
Speaker 1: he doesn't die, as will be the long story with

783
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh. And you know, during this time as

784
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: he's doing working as a debt collector and dying, he

785
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: had exactly two encounters with members of the opposite sex,

786
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: and both of them were profoundly sad um and Teal

787
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:46,720
Speaker 1: writes here unlike most young men living in boarding houses

788
00:40:46,719 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: frequented by sailors, Stanley had avoided brothels. However, on one

789
00:40:50,160 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: occasion only he had taken to a gilded parlor where

790
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: he saw four young ladies and such scant clothing that

791
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 1: he was, He wrote, speechless with amazement. When they proceeded

792
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 1: to take liberties with my person. They seem to me

793
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:02,759
Speaker 1: to be so appallingly wicked that I shook them off

794
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 1: and fled. My disgust was so great that I never,

795
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 1: in after years, could overcome my repugnance to females of

796
00:41:08,280 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 1: that character. I love that he this women started touching

797
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:21,360
Speaker 1: him and he ship dog that fucks him up. Yeah. Yeah,

798
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: he's that kind of dude. And there is the thing

799
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 1: he is scaredest of, like Stanley is is the kind

800
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,279
Speaker 1: of guy who will repeatedly face down like wild animals,

801
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,200
Speaker 1: you know, with a crude and unreliable rifle. Um, but

802
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: he cannot handle a woman being like, I think you're cute,

803
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: the most dangerous animal of all. Yeah, it's awesome, um

804
00:41:43,560 --> 00:41:47,960
Speaker 1: and totally totally to character. So Gil goes on to note,

805
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:51,680
Speaker 1: abandoned by a promiscuous mother, Henry's mistrust of prostitutes was

806
00:41:51,760 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: not hypocritical. Uh, and he goes he notes another incident

807
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,759
Speaker 1: confirmed his sexual naivety in his overcrowded boarding house. Bet

808
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: sharing was not unusual. Once Stanley slept on a four

809
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,239
Speaker 1: poster with a youth called Dick Heaton, who had also

810
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 1: jumped ship. Although Dick was so modest he would not

811
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,440
Speaker 1: retire by candle light and walked in a suspiciously female manner.

812
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: Stanley oldly twigged his true sex at the end of

813
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: three days. Um. And he like realizes this in bed

814
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:22,919
Speaker 1: when he sees one of Dick's breasts. And I don't

815
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 1: know if like Dick was actually like a transgender person

816
00:42:25,120 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: or just like a lot of times in those days,

817
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:28,240
Speaker 1: like if you were a woman who had to travel

818
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 1: alone for some reason because you have money, it's just

819
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,560
Speaker 1: safer to present his male hard to say what the

820
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: actual truth here, But he realizes Dick name for we

821
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:48,279
Speaker 1: have Yeah, that is a good porn name. Um. So

822
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 1: Stanley's recollection of this is that like they're sleeping together

823
00:42:51,200 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 1: because you know, that was pretty normal at the time.

824
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 1: And Stanley realizes that Dick has has breasts and and

825
00:42:55,800 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: lady parts. Um, you know, realize Stanley really lies, is

826
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: that that that Dick is? Yeah? Anyway, and he like

827
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: freaks out and Dick has to flee the place, like

828
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:09,799
Speaker 1: he doesn't tell anyone, or at least Stanley claims he

829
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: doesn't tell anyone. But Dick is gone the next day

830
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:18,279
Speaker 1: and Stanley hears nothing else about him. So I don't know, no, no, no,

831
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:22,759
Speaker 1: not a great story. Yeah, surely something. Yeah, that's another

832
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:24,839
Speaker 1: one of those situations where something happened between the two

833
00:43:24,920 --> 00:43:27,279
Speaker 1: of them and Henry Morton. Stanley is like, I never

834
00:43:27,280 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: want to hear about this person again. I mean, he

835
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:30,600
Speaker 1: was just gone. He's gone from my memory, he's gone

836
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: from the world. He doesn't exist anymore. I wouldn't be

837
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 1: surprised if actually what happened is that he like turned

838
00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:38,879
Speaker 1: him in or like made other people aware, and things

839
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 1: went really bad for Dick and It's something that horrified

840
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: Stanley that he didn't talk about. I don't know hard

841
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,960
Speaker 1: to say, well, we'll never know. This could have actually

842
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,040
Speaker 1: gone just the way because I could also see Henry

843
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 1: Morton Stanley being so shocked and horrified by this realization

844
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 1: that he just is spellbound for hours. Yeah, like this,

845
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 1: this rocks the firmament of his world. The Mike Pence

846
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:05,400
Speaker 1: soul inside of him is like, yeah, no, no, no, no,

847
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:06,840
Speaker 1: I need to lie down for a week. This is

848
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:10,960
Speaker 1: worse than malaria, yeah, which he was dealing with constantly

849
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,720
Speaker 1: at the time. So in November of eighteen sixty, Abraham Lincoln,

850
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:17,319
Speaker 1: America's greatest president not named Taft, was elected after a

851
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 1: contentious vote. As a foreigner, Henry didn't really see what

852
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 1: the big deal was, but his friend Dan Gorerie, with

853
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 1: the son of his store's biggest customer, filled him in.

854
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:28,960
Speaker 1: And obviously, Dan Gorerie is a rich Southern kid in

855
00:44:29,040 --> 00:44:31,160
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, so I'm gonna give you a guess as

856
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 1: to where his political allegiances wound up being during the

857
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 1: whole war thing. Stanley later wrote that he was informed

858
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 1: quote the election of Aide Lincoln in November previous had

859
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:42,520
Speaker 1: created a hostile feeling in the South because this man

860
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,000
Speaker 1: had declared himself opposed to slavery. And as soon as

861
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 1: he became president in March, he would do all in

862
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:49,440
Speaker 1: his power to free the slaves. Of course, said he.

863
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:53,799
Speaker 1: In that event, all slaveholders would be ruined. Now, as

864
00:44:53,840 --> 00:44:57,240
Speaker 1: you can probably guess, Dan and his father were people

865
00:44:57,239 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 1: who owned other people for profit. The Gory family had

866
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty slaves, which is yeah, yeah, I apologize.

867
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: Um Now. Dan told Henry that he suspected the South

868
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,359
Speaker 1: would succeed over the issue of slavery and whatever else

869
00:45:12,400 --> 00:45:14,719
Speaker 1: you can say. He was not wrong about that. Uh.

870
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: And as the Civil War ramped up, Stanley's main concern

871
00:45:18,560 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 1: was that the Union had seized a series of forts

872
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 1: at the mouth of the Mississippi. Uh he and he

873
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:25,320
Speaker 1: concluded that this meant that the election of Abraham Lincoln

874
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 1: was going to ruin his business because he worked as

875
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 1: a ship boy on the river. Uh. And so that's

876
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: why he says he decides to volunteer for the Confederate Army,

877
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: or at least that's part of it. Um. So one

878
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 1: of the funniest things in the world. Sor and in

879
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: the whole goddamn world is reading Tim gel try to

880
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,920
Speaker 1: explain how Henry Morton Stanley, a man who fought for

881
00:45:45,960 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 1: the Confederate Army, did not support slavery and was not

882
00:45:49,080 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: a racist. He's been so much of this book arguing

883
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 1: that Stanley wasn't a racist, and it is the funniest

884
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: goddamn thing. I mean, it's it's really it's really amusing.

885
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:02,720
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a selection from Tim Jill's

886
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:05,719
Speaker 1: book Stanley, so you can hear this man explain how

887
00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: totally not racist Stanley was. Yes, though Henry expressed no

888
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: revulsion towards slavery in the Deep South, which was legal

889
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: and accepted by everyone he knew, he was not he

890
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:22,439
Speaker 1: was not prejudiced against black people, but it was fine

891
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: to own them. But that that's not That doesn't mean

892
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,839
Speaker 1: you're prejudiced. You can be racist and fine, you can

893
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 1: be not anti racist and fine with slavery. It's it's impossible,

894
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:35,279
Speaker 1: totally possible. I guess that is an argument. No, No,

895
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:37,960
Speaker 1: I think these people are perfectly equal to me in

896
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:41,000
Speaker 1: every way, and I just owned them from bydnal force.

897
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: Like I guess, at least that's honest. Boy, Yeah, I

898
00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:49,920
Speaker 1: love that. I love Jill that He's like, look he yes, okay,

899
00:46:49,960 --> 00:46:53,439
Speaker 1: he and he lived with slavery and maybe it got

900
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:57,680
Speaker 1: advantages from it, but it was legal, everybody, It's fine,

901
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: it's legal. It's fine. Not just got advantage? Is this

902
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:04,279
Speaker 1: from it? Like actively fought and was willing to kill

903
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:09,400
Speaker 1: for it. Uh, it is a stance to take. Yes,

904
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:14,600
Speaker 1: he fought for slavery, but he wasn't racist. Excellent, It's

905
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: it's great, dude. Uh So, I'm not even done with

906
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,359
Speaker 1: this fucking quote. So he just explains how that he's

907
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 1: not practiced against black people. Indeed, he had lived in

908
00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:25,360
Speaker 1: the New Orleans boarding house that was owned by a

909
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: freed black woman. It had been recommended to him by

910
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:35,840
Speaker 1: two of James Speake's slaves. Uh. Oh boy, Now, Soren,

911
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,160
Speaker 1: you know who won't fight for slavery in eighteen sixty

912
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. That is accurate. That is accurate. And also

913
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast, many of

914
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: which are Abraham Lincoln. He's a big, big donor to

915
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:57,680
Speaker 1: the pod, The Ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Here we go,

916
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. Oh my gosh, oh those ads.

917
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 1: I I am just fucking you could hang a pipe

918
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 1: rail gate off me. That's how hard I am. Anyway,

919
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 1: let's roll back into the episode and not analyze that

920
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:24,880
Speaker 1: too much. Um so, uh yeah, okay, we are still

921
00:48:24,920 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: making it through this fucking paragraph of Tim Geil explaining

922
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:31,920
Speaker 1: why it's not racist to fight for the Confederacy. Um

923
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:33,920
Speaker 1: my god. So he's just explained that he lived in

924
00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 1: a New Orleans boarding house, was one by a free

925
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 1: black woman. Quote. A frenzy desire to fight the Yankees

926
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:40,399
Speaker 1: inflamed most of the young men Stanley knew, and most

927
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:42,719
Speaker 1: of the young women urged them on. Many customers of

928
00:48:42,719 --> 00:48:45,479
Speaker 1: the store joined up after Captain Samuel G. Smith raised

929
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,600
Speaker 1: a local company called the Dixie Grays. Because Henry felt

930
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: the Coral was not really his and was puzzled that

931
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:52,840
Speaker 1: white's meant to fight one another over the rights of blacks.

932
00:48:53,160 --> 00:48:57,720
Speaker 1: He did not enlist but on receiving So he's not racist,

933
00:48:57,719 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 1: but he doesn't see why it's worth fighting over the

934
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: rights of other people who aren't white. Tim, are you

935
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:09,560
Speaker 1: reading the paragraph you're writing? Can't we all just get along?

936
00:49:10,040 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: Not them, I mean us people, the actual human beings. Yeah,

937
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:18,520
Speaker 1: you do get that feeling from old Timmy g Timmy J.

938
00:49:18,840 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: So quote. Uh yeah, but upon receiving in a parcel

939
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 1: a chemise and a petticoat such as a Negro lady's

940
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:29,759
Speaker 1: maid might wear, he felt compelled to ask, not least

941
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 1: because suspecting that the sinder was one of Dr Gorey's

942
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: beautiful daughters. So he gets sent ladies clothing by a

943
00:49:36,400 --> 00:49:38,680
Speaker 1: woman he thinks is hot, and she's basically being like,

944
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 1: you're a lady because you're not fighting for the South. Oh,

945
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: that's such a good burn for that time. Yeah, and

946
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 1: it it it's actually a really common thing historically. A

947
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:50,759
Speaker 1: similar thing happened in England during World War One. We're

948
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:53,200
Speaker 1: like women would get together to like shame men in

949
00:49:53,239 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 1: town who hadn't volunteered to fight yet. Um. Variations of

950
00:49:57,120 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: this have happened in a lot of places throughout history.

951
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:04,399
Speaker 1: Uh and Stanley, if that's true, Stanley, that's absolutely part

952
00:50:04,440 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: of what Stanley does this for. It did not seem

953
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,360
Speaker 1: like a whimp, which you know scance. But on the

954
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 1: other hand, a woman he liked just sent him some

955
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,839
Speaker 1: of her clothes. I mean that's like silver. No, it

956
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: wasn't her clothes, It was the kind of ladies clothing

957
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,919
Speaker 1: that a black woman would wear. Oh yeah, I bet

958
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:25,719
Speaker 1: that was part of that. No, he did not like that.

959
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:30,720
Speaker 1: So he enlists as a private soldier under an officer

960
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:34,560
Speaker 1: named Henry H. Stanley, which is weird, um, but nobody

961
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:36,760
Speaker 1: seems to make anything of it. So whatever. He wound

962
00:50:36,800 --> 00:50:38,560
Speaker 1: up fighting with a unit called the Dixie Grays at

963
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:41,800
Speaker 1: the Battle of Shiloh, which was a pretty bad battle.

964
00:50:42,239 --> 00:50:44,359
Speaker 1: Not a good time familiar. Yeah, yeah, not a great

965
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:46,680
Speaker 1: battle as far as battles go. If I had to

966
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: be in a battle, wouldn't be top of my list. Uh.

967
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: And yeah, he fought against the Army of I don't

968
00:50:52,040 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 1: know about you, Sor, but my favorite career alcoholic Ulysses

969
00:50:55,000 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 1: Simpson Grant. Um, yeah, he alcoholics. A cry baby. Uh.

970
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 1: He fucking ruled, dude. Oh my gosh. So Stanley saw heavy,

971
00:51:06,120 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: nightmarish combat during the first day of the battle, and

972
00:51:08,440 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: many of his friends were shot dead immediately in front

973
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 1: of him. Uh. He later wrote of his feelings while

974
00:51:12,800 --> 00:51:14,799
Speaker 1: standing in the carnage that he felt shocked to see

975
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,160
Speaker 1: quote that the human form we made so much of

976
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 1: should now be mutilated, hacked, and outraged, and that life

977
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: hitherto guarded as a sacred thing should be given up

978
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:28,000
Speaker 1: to death. Um, so that's all right, Henry, Yeah, come on, man, Yeah,

979
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,680
Speaker 1: it's it's lame. You're about the eighty billionth person to

980
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:33,239
Speaker 1: write about that. And what you're about to do is

981
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,440
Speaker 1: what you're about to do exactly that to hundreds of people.

982
00:51:36,840 --> 00:51:39,240
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, with so many more than hundred. Soren

983
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: So he was captured on the second day of fighting

984
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,960
Speaker 1: and found himself imprisoned in a pow camp outside of Chicago.

985
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:46,880
Speaker 1: And this was not a nice place, although it probably

986
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:50,440
Speaker 1: compared favorably to the workhouse he'd grown up in. Um.

987
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 1: After a brief confinement, he was given the opportunity to

988
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:55,840
Speaker 1: free himself by enlisting in the Union Army and fighting

989
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: for the other side. Adam hoss Child of King Leopold's

990
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 1: Ghosts right that he promptly agreed to do so. And

991
00:52:01,680 --> 00:52:03,399
Speaker 1: this is one of the few places where hoss Child

992
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:05,960
Speaker 1: has kind of a more positive view of Stanley than

993
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:10,239
Speaker 1: Tim Jean does. But Tim Jean doesn't mean it that way.

994
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: He disagrees with this and thinks that it was hard

995
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:16,759
Speaker 1: for Stanley to leave the Confederacy. Quote. Henry held out

996
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,359
Speaker 1: for six weeks before changing sides. He had been through

997
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: hell with his fellow Southerners and felt disloyal, but as

998
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 1: a foreigner embroiled in the war by chance and having

999
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 1: little understanding of the conflict's true significance, Stanley's behavior was

1000
00:52:27,800 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: not forgivable. And it's funny because he says that he

1001
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 1: really just didn't understand what all this fighting was about.

1002
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:36,000
Speaker 1: And then later in the book, when Stanley becomes an

1003
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: anti slavery crusader, makes a huge point about how good

1004
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: it was that he was an abolitionist. How could he

1005
00:52:41,719 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 1: not have known what this fight was about? That's great.

1006
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:51,920
Speaker 1: Uh so, it's awesome. Um, it's it's so cool. Yeah,

1007
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: he it's it's cool that he feels the need to

1008
00:52:55,920 --> 00:53:00,719
Speaker 1: explain how why leaving the Confederate Army was quote not forgivable.

1009
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 1: That says a lot about gene. That wasn't anyone's question,

1010
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:09,320
Speaker 1: tim So anyway, Stanley and next spent some time fighting

1011
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:11,359
Speaker 1: for the Union as an artillerist until he gets sick

1012
00:53:11,400 --> 00:53:14,400
Speaker 1: from dysentery and received a medical discharge. He' spent a

1013
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: bit of time working as a sailor on the Atlantic

1014
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:18,920
Speaker 1: before in eighteen sixty four, he enlisted in the Union

1015
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: Navy and got a posting on the frigate Minnesota by

1016
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 1: virtue of his very nice penmanship. Uh. He worked as

1017
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:26,960
Speaker 1: a ship's clerk and was present for a naval battle

1018
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:30,120
Speaker 1: wherein his ship bombarded a Confederate fort in North Carolina.

1019
00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 1: Henry Morton Stanley was one of a very small number

1020
00:53:32,600 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: of people to experience combat on both sides of the war,

1021
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 1: in the land and on the sea. So that's an

1022
00:53:37,520 --> 00:53:40,520
Speaker 1: eat piece of trivia. Well, not a lot of folks

1023
00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah, So he was in the army and

1024
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 1: the navy. He was in the Confederate Army, the U. S. Army,

1025
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 1: and the U. S. Navy. During the course of the

1026
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: Civil War, he got around a bit, you know, not

1027
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:54,200
Speaker 1: most not a lot of people did that. So once

1028
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:56,200
Speaker 1: the Civil War was over, Stanley used some of his

1029
00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: army bucks to take a trip to Turkey with two

1030
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: of his friends, including a younger boy who basically worship

1031
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,319
Speaker 1: Stanley named Louis no. And this is a recurrent theme

1032
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 1: in Stanley's life. There's always one or two or three

1033
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:10,320
Speaker 1: young white boys hanging around who think he's the bee's knees,

1034
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 1: and most of them die. Um, but he seems to

1035
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 1: have a need to have adoring young men kind of

1036
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: hanging around him. So the object of Stanley's trip was

1037
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 1: to just kind of wander around Turkey and then quote

1038
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:27,840
Speaker 1: write a great book of adventure. It's amazing. Yeah, it

1039
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,759
Speaker 1: is like the child It's like the career that I

1040
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,840
Speaker 1: dreamed of having when I was nine. Yeah, go find

1041
00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:38,360
Speaker 1: yourself in this foreign country and then write a gripping

1042
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 1: book about it. Yeah. I mean his Eat Prey Love

1043
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 1: would involve shooting a lot of people, but like that

1044
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: was the idea, right, Yeah. Yeah, and I'm not opposed

1045
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:49,879
Speaker 1: to reading something like that either. No. I I too

1046
00:54:49,920 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: would like to travel somewhere different from what I'm used

1047
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:54,600
Speaker 1: to and then write a great book of adventure. That

1048
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:58,040
Speaker 1: does sound fun. Now. The fact that people like me

1049
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:01,279
Speaker 1: and people like you if I that fun is part

1050
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 1: of why the eight hundreds were a real rough period

1051
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: for a lot of the globe. That's a good point.

1052
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:13,040
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah. But you know, whatever while

1053
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:15,920
Speaker 1: we were just describing was a very very tame version

1054
00:55:15,920 --> 00:55:19,480
Speaker 1: of manifest destiny. Yeah, and it's like the version of

1055
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:22,960
Speaker 1: manifest destiny that I don't know, like like Indiana Jones

1056
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:25,080
Speaker 1: and Tintin books pass Along, where it's like, yeah, it

1057
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:27,440
Speaker 1: seems super fun to go have adventures and meet cookie

1058
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:33,160
Speaker 1: characters and strange places. What's about that? Go get into

1059
00:55:33,200 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: scrapes with the crazy savages. Oh oh yep, okay, yeah,

1060
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: there's I see that's problematic. Yeah. The people who did

1061
00:55:44,840 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: that got so many people killed. Okay. Yeah. So unfortunately,

1062
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:53,760
Speaker 1: before they could go off to Turkey, No and Uh

1063
00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:56,120
Speaker 1: Stanley lost almost all of their guns and equipment to

1064
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:59,080
Speaker 1: a boating accident in the United States. UH, and they

1065
00:55:59,080 --> 00:56:02,240
Speaker 1: suffered a fur or accident in Anatolia. When they actually

1066
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: get to Turkey, and Louis No decided to start a

1067
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 1: campfire in the middle of a drought and it quickly

1068
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:09,880
Speaker 1: raged out of control and the local police took Stanley

1069
00:56:09,920 --> 00:56:12,799
Speaker 1: and his other partner into custody. UH. They got out,

1070
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 1: but louis No freaked out because he was scared of

1071
00:56:15,560 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: how angry Stanley was going to be UH and as

1072
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:19,759
Speaker 1: soon as they got out of jail, he fled to

1073
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,120
Speaker 1: a nearby island. So Stanley catches up with his boy

1074
00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:25,600
Speaker 1: a few days later, and he gives what No would

1075
00:56:25,680 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 1: later call a sadistic flogging and then forces him to

1076
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 1: return to the expedition. So the slavery hater has a

1077
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:35,680
Speaker 1: long history of whipping people and making them work for him,

1078
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: but in ways that aren't slaveries. Yeah, it's cool, it's cool.

1079
00:56:45,280 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: The voyage continued and the crew made their way three

1080
00:56:48,000 --> 00:56:51,680
Speaker 1: miles inland to Turkey, with again no clear goal but adventure. Uh.

1081
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: They reach a village called and here's how Jail describes

1082
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:58,879
Speaker 1: what happens next. According to no who came to hate

1083
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,200
Speaker 1: Stanley before the trip was over, Stanley tried to murder

1084
00:57:02,239 --> 00:57:05,520
Speaker 1: a turk in order to steal his horses. It's all perfect.

1085
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:08,720
Speaker 1: He's just gonna kill me a man and take his horses.

1086
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:12,160
Speaker 1: Henry would later claim that the turk had made obscene

1087
00:57:12,239 --> 00:57:14,880
Speaker 1: overtures to Know, and he Stanley had been slashed at

1088
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 1: him with his sword to defend his young friend. Stanley's

1089
00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:20,400
Speaker 1: diary confirms that the turk had been sexually drawn to

1090
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: Know when they were riding together in a group, but

1091
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:25,240
Speaker 1: Stanley may have used his disgust as a pretext to

1092
00:57:25,320 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: attack an attempt to rob the man. So again, this

1093
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 1: is the guy who is the most sympathetic to Stanley.

1094
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:34,600
Speaker 1: You could be he was like, maybe he used his

1095
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 1: friend's sexual assault is pretext to commit armed robberies. Al Right,

1096
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:45,720
Speaker 1: guy like horses, We gotta get us some horses. I'm

1097
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:48,960
Speaker 1: gonna steal him. I'm gonna I'm gonna make up a

1098
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: story about this guy wanting us my friend so I

1099
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: can take his stuff. Yeah, uh, it's cool. I'm gonna

1100
00:57:56,360 --> 00:58:00,000
Speaker 1: continue Jeels paragraph because the middle gymnask is here. Real fun.

1101
00:58:00,560 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 1: If he had really been contemplating murder, he would have

1102
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:05,280
Speaker 1: surreptitiously loaded a gun in advance to be able to

1103
00:58:05,280 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 1: shoot the turk without risking a hand to hand tussle

1104
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: with a man used to fighting with swords and daggers,

1105
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: so both both being like, look, here's what he would

1106
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:17,439
Speaker 1: have done if he really wanted to kill the guy,

1107
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: and also going of course, turks naturally know how to

1108
00:58:20,640 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 1: fight with daggers. You always see them with those long

1109
00:58:24,520 --> 00:58:29,480
Speaker 1: curved swords. But Henry made no such preparation. After his

1110
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 1: hands had been badly cutting the fight and he was

1111
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: desperate to end it, he failed to lay hands on

1112
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: a single loaded gun among the weapons he had brought

1113
00:58:34,840 --> 00:58:37,840
Speaker 1: with him, so like, he also didn't kill him in vengeance,

1114
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:43,680
Speaker 1: So he's a good guy. It's so fun so reputation spotless.

1115
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:49,920
Speaker 1: Still still a flawless man, oh man. Now, Stanley and

1116
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:52,560
Speaker 1: his men were surrounded by angry Turks and they opted

1117
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,320
Speaker 1: to surrender rather than fight. They were beaten, tied up,

1118
00:58:55,360 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: and robbed, and Louis No was raped at knife point repeatedly. Um.

1119
00:58:59,640 --> 00:59:02,600
Speaker 1: They vived though, and successfully brought suit against the men

1120
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:06,000
Speaker 1: who'd attacked them. Stanley won a dollar judgment, and he

1121
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:10,800
Speaker 1: gave louis No the smallest share. Yeah. Well, imagine the

1122
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:13,560
Speaker 1: emotional turmoil this Henry Smarton Stanley had to go through

1123
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: his boy get beaten like that. Yeah, oh good lord.

1124
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 1: So Stanley returned to the United States and got a

1125
00:59:19,960 --> 00:59:21,640
Speaker 1: job as a reporter. And this is the first time

1126
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:25,320
Speaker 1: in his life when Henry Morton Stanley was good at something. Um.

1127
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: He his beat was the Indian Wars, which in eighteen

1128
00:59:28,080 --> 00:59:31,240
Speaker 1: sixty seven we're not a super at a hopeful point

1129
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:34,400
Speaker 1: for the Native American side, and most of what Stanley

1130
00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: saw in person were like, you know, we would call

1131
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: him desperate peace negotiations um by the victims of a

1132
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: genocide and the genociders. Now, this is the area where

1133
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:47,720
Speaker 1: hoss Child and Gail diverge substantially, or at least one

1134
00:59:47,760 --> 00:59:50,280
Speaker 1: of them. Uh. The hoss Child claims that Stanley just

1135
00:59:50,360 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 1: lied and invented fake battles and massacres to basically rile

1136
00:59:53,640 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: up people's blood with lines like this, the Indians, true

1137
00:59:56,760 --> 00:59:58,920
Speaker 1: to their promises, true to their bloody instincts, true to

1138
00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,280
Speaker 1: their savage hatred of the white race, true to the

1139
01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 1: lessons instilled in their bosoms by their progenitors, are on

1140
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: the war path. Um. Yeah, that's a that's a bad one. Yeah,

1141
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: that's a bad one. Um. Gel has a totally different

1142
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:19,400
Speaker 1: attitude and says that Stanley did witness some horrible crimes

1143
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,600
Speaker 1: by Native Americans, but that he also reported sympathetically on

1144
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 1: them because he thought they'd been mistreated by the white man.

1145
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:28,800
Speaker 1: And he provides several examples of this, and the reality

1146
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:31,880
Speaker 1: seems to be that number one, it wasn't uncommon to

1147
01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: both right lies about the brutality of Native Americans and

1148
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 1: also write sympathetically about their plight. That was huge in Europe.

1149
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:41,680
Speaker 1: There was this both all throughout. We talked about this

1150
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:44,480
Speaker 1: in our Karl May episode, whose Hitler's like favorite novelist

1151
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:48,400
Speaker 1: who wrote a bunch of cowboy books. May simultaneously wrote

1152
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:50,760
Speaker 1: about how tragic it was that Native Americans were being

1153
01:00:50,760 --> 01:00:54,200
Speaker 1: exterminated and also portrayed them as brutal, savage monsters. Like

1154
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:57,680
Speaker 1: he did both simultaneously, and that was kind of pretty

1155
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:02,720
Speaker 1: common in among Europeans, and Stanley he did the same thing. Um,

1156
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:06,720
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's it's cool. Uh. Later, with explaining why

1157
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:09,960
Speaker 1: it's okay that Stanley vastly exaggerated the number of people

1158
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,480
Speaker 1: that he killed. Uh, Tim, Jeal cites this is a

1159
01:01:12,560 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 1: justification quote the knowledge he had gained when reporting from

1160
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: the Indian Wars that Americans like to read about red

1161
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:22,240
Speaker 1: Indians being killed in retaliation for injuries. So so there's

1162
01:01:22,240 --> 01:01:25,360
Speaker 1: a guy who's very sympathetic toward the Native American. Yes, yes,

1163
01:01:25,960 --> 01:01:32,200
Speaker 1: the least racist person possible. Come on, let's let's give

1164
01:01:32,280 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: him a break, everybody. The funniest part of Jeal's biography

1165
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:39,880
Speaker 1: is the multiple points where he off handedly expresses that

1166
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:43,840
Speaker 1: he's cleared Stanley from any charges of racism, just like,

1167
01:01:44,040 --> 01:01:46,439
Speaker 1: we can just dispense with that because I've proved he wasn't.

1168
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:53,120
Speaker 1: It's so good. So eventually, the quality of Stanley's articles

1169
01:01:53,160 --> 01:01:55,680
Speaker 1: earned him the attention of James Gordon Biddett Jr. The

1170
01:01:55,720 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: owner of the New York Herald, which was at the

1171
01:01:57,440 --> 01:01:59,600
Speaker 1: time one of the most profitable publications in the world

1172
01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:01,520
Speaker 1: at the moment. I would try to compare it to

1173
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:04,280
Speaker 1: a modern publication, but I can't think of a profitable one,

1174
01:02:04,320 --> 01:02:09,120
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna move on past that. Stanley fin

1175
01:02:09,200 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 1: angled himself a job basically working for free to report

1176
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:14,040
Speaker 1: on a war between the British government and the Emperor

1177
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:16,720
Speaker 1: of Abyssinia. So Stanley is one of those guys who're like, yes,

1178
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:20,120
Speaker 1: sometimes you get it right for free to get exposure, um,

1179
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:22,840
Speaker 1: which is not ideal but also isn't wrong. Like that

1180
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: is kind of the way it works, and it sucks

1181
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: and unfairly uh rewards people who are already rich and

1182
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:30,720
Speaker 1: come from wealth. But if you're willing to write for free,

1183
01:02:30,760 --> 01:02:33,600
Speaker 1: you can really jump start your career. Yeah, or if

1184
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:36,000
Speaker 1: you're either you're rich or you're used to living in

1185
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:40,360
Speaker 1: absolute squalor yes, that is the path I took and

1186
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,520
Speaker 1: lived in a place where the ceiling collapsed on me

1187
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:49,400
Speaker 1: more than once. Quote here's talking Adam hoss Child describing

1188
01:02:49,440 --> 01:02:52,680
Speaker 1: his his first war, corresponding gig at Suez on his

1189
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 1: way to the war, Stanley bribe the cheap telegraph clerk

1190
01:02:55,200 --> 01:02:57,960
Speaker 1: to make sure that when correspondence reports arrived from the front,

1191
01:02:58,120 --> 01:03:00,680
Speaker 1: his would be the first cabled home. His site paid off,

1192
01:03:00,680 --> 01:03:02,440
Speaker 1: and his glowing account of how the British won the

1193
01:03:02,480 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 1: war's only significant battle was the first to reach the world.

1194
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:07,640
Speaker 1: In a grand stroke of luck, the trans Mediterranean telegraph

1195
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: cable broke just after Stanley's stories were sent off. The

1196
01:03:10,440 --> 01:03:13,120
Speaker 1: dispatches of his exasperated rivals and even the British Army's

1197
01:03:13,160 --> 01:03:15,280
Speaker 1: official reports had to travel part of the way to

1198
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:17,960
Speaker 1: Europe by ship. In a Cairo hotel in June eighteen

1199
01:03:18,040 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: sixty eight, Stanley savored his scoop and the news that

1200
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:23,040
Speaker 1: he had been named a permanent roving foreign correspondent for

1201
01:03:23,080 --> 01:03:27,040
Speaker 1: the Herald. He was twenty seven years old, so really

1202
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:29,560
Speaker 1: fox up his fellow reporters, but not a dumb call.

1203
01:03:30,200 --> 01:03:34,920
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I I had someone do the big

1204
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:36,720
Speaker 1: equivalent of that to me when I was in Moses.

1205
01:03:36,800 --> 01:03:40,360
Speaker 1: I had an employee of a major news network bribe

1206
01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:42,960
Speaker 1: the Iraqi military to not let me in. A bunch

1207
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 1: of other journalists passed a checkpoint. And that is the

1208
01:03:44,840 --> 01:03:47,720
Speaker 1: most I can say about that story. Without being legally

1209
01:03:48,040 --> 01:03:51,240
Speaker 1: charged with something by the said company. So we're gonna

1210
01:03:51,320 --> 01:03:55,479
Speaker 1: roll right along. It was a fun We got where

1211
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: we wanted to go because we had better fixers than

1212
01:03:57,800 --> 01:04:03,080
Speaker 1: they did. But it sucked. So Uh, this was you know,

1213
01:04:03,120 --> 01:04:05,880
Speaker 1: the first time in this story that Henry's life was

1214
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:07,640
Speaker 1: in what you would call pretty good shape. You know,

1215
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 1: he's he's a roving foreign correspondent. He's gotten a huge scoop.

1216
01:04:10,480 --> 01:04:13,480
Speaker 1: Money is starting to come in and he's in in America.

1217
01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:15,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if you wouldn't call journalism respectable, but

1218
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 1: he has money and that's respectable. Um. And despite you

1219
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,120
Speaker 1: know the fact that he fought for an empire founded

1220
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:26,160
Speaker 1: on human bondage. You could call this an inspiring journey.

1221
01:04:26,520 --> 01:04:30,959
Speaker 1: Abandoned child makes his way up to respected foreign correspondent.

1222
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:33,480
Speaker 1: That's a that's a tale with an arc to it.

1223
01:04:33,760 --> 01:04:37,120
Speaker 1: But Stanley wasn't satisfied with these achievements. Journalism then is

1224
01:04:37,200 --> 01:04:39,959
Speaker 1: now was not a well regarded profession in England. People

1225
01:04:40,000 --> 01:04:42,880
Speaker 1: in America, you know, a little bit more positive towards him. Uh,

1226
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:44,960
Speaker 1: William Morton Stanley had been living as an American for

1227
01:04:45,000 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: more than a decade at this point, but the opinions

1228
01:04:46,760 --> 01:04:49,360
Speaker 1: of English high society still very much mattered to him,

1229
01:04:49,440 --> 01:04:51,440
Speaker 1: and he knew that the only real way for a

1230
01:04:51,480 --> 01:04:53,880
Speaker 1: man like him to sneak his way into the tippy

1231
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: top of English society was to become the most respected

1232
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:01,760
Speaker 1: thing of that day, an African explorer. And that is

1233
01:05:01,800 --> 01:05:04,480
Speaker 1: where we're gonna roll into in part two. Are you

1234
01:05:04,520 --> 01:05:07,080
Speaker 1: ready for this ship? This is where it gets really

1235
01:05:07,120 --> 01:05:09,520
Speaker 1: this is really really starts cooking. This is where he

1236
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 1: really starts, and I mean really starts killing people like

1237
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:15,280
Speaker 1: he's been doing. He's been doing some killing, don't get

1238
01:05:15,320 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 1: me wrong, but he really he really in some lives here.

1239
01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:25,400
Speaker 1: All right, I can't wait? Alright, Soran, Uh you got

1240
01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:30,240
Speaker 1: anything to plug? Uh? Yeah, I have my podcast which

1241
01:05:30,320 --> 01:05:33,160
Speaker 1: is uh Soaring and Dan. It's called Quick Question with

1242
01:05:33,200 --> 01:05:35,080
Speaker 1: Sore and Dan. Actually I don't even know the name

1243
01:05:35,080 --> 01:05:38,720
Speaker 1: of my own podcast. Uh. You can also find me

1244
01:05:38,720 --> 01:05:41,960
Speaker 1: on Twitter Sore and Underscore Ltd. And you can watch

1245
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:45,480
Speaker 1: American Dad. We should've got new episodes coming out in May,

1246
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 1: he sure does. You can find us on the internet

1247
01:05:49,240 --> 01:05:51,520
Speaker 1: behind the Bastards dot com. And you have plenty of

1248
01:05:51,560 --> 01:05:53,600
Speaker 1: time to do that with the whole being stuck inside

1249
01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 1: thing you can. You can buy T shirts if you

1250
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:58,960
Speaker 1: need to hire your nakedness in these times. I'm actually

1251
01:05:58,960 --> 01:06:02,120
Speaker 1: shocked that we're we're our T shirt sales are are

1252
01:06:02,160 --> 01:06:04,960
Speaker 1: more or less the same, just because I didn't imagine.

1253
01:06:05,000 --> 01:06:07,360
Speaker 1: I thought a lot more people would be going shirtless

1254
01:06:07,440 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 1: during this period of time. And I haven't really processed

1255
01:06:10,400 --> 01:06:14,720
Speaker 1: my feelings on that. But we have Anderson merch. We

1256
01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:17,760
Speaker 1: do have Anderson merch. People should continue buying that so

1257
01:06:17,800 --> 01:06:20,400
Speaker 1: that they can use it to craft the flags that

1258
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:25,400
Speaker 1: wave over the glorious revolution. Just wait, but those shirt

1259
01:06:25,440 --> 01:06:28,520
Speaker 1: sales will start tanking, and then and then buy a

1260
01:06:28,600 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 1: mug by a magnet by a sticker if you still

1261
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,840
Speaker 1: have money, because the economy hasn't collept. If not, continue

1262
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 1: enjoying our free content. Check out some of the sources

1263
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:43,040
Speaker 1: for this episode. Um, and go hug a cat. You

1264
01:06:43,080 --> 01:06:45,120
Speaker 1: can still do that a lot of the time if

1265
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:47,680
Speaker 1: you already have one. Don't hug a stranger's cat. You

1266
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Speaker 1: might you might spread the COVID h which has bummed

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Speaker 1: me out. I love hugging strange cat anyway. Follow Robert

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01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:57,000
Speaker 1: on Twitter and I write, okay, you can follow us

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Speaker 1: some Instagram at Bastard's pod. You can find the sources

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Speaker 1: for this podcast under the episode description on all the

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Speaker 1: apps who use and uh, wash your hands, wash your hands.

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Speaker 1: Just sanitize those cats before you hug them. You could

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Speaker 1: do that still, Robert, I do, but they just hate

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Speaker 1: they you know what, they hate the tequila sprayer and

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Speaker 1: I can't think of another way to sanitize a cat quickly.

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Speaker 1: But they don't want to hugging much either, so it's

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Speaker 1: too much. It's kind of a wash for you, especially

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Speaker 1: after I've sprayed them with the tequila. It is just

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Speaker 1: not good anyway. Episodes over all, right, m