Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's good things,
Speaker 2: and then sometimes bad things happen to the good things,
Speaker 2: but then good things come out of the bad things
Speaker 2: that happen to the good things that were in response
Speaker 2: to the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 2: with me today is Bridget Tod.
Speaker 3: Hi. How are you, hey, Margaret. I'm so excited to
Speaker 3: be back.
Speaker 2: I know it's nice to have you. And wait now,
Speaker 2: I don't remember what the last I usually try and
Speaker 2: remember and look up with the last episode because you've
Speaker 2: been on a bunch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, was it Wendy Carlos?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, it might have been that one?
Speaker 3: Was it might have been Wendy Carlos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people should go back and listen to me talk
Speaker 2: about the trans woman who invented electronic music. Bridgetod is
Speaker 2: the host of There Are No Girls on the Internet,
Speaker 2: which is an untrue title. I've been meaning to tell
Speaker 2: you this.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh god, the title is like I mean, first
Speaker 4: of all, it's a mouthful. If you ever have to
Speaker 4: name a podcast having a long title, just give it
Speaker 4: some thought. If that's really what you want to do.
Speaker 4: I know, I guess cool people who I mean, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, it's I think it's worth it.
Speaker 2: It just means that every time you go anywhere, people
Speaker 2: get your title slightly wrong. People are like, I'm adage
Speaker 2: fan of cool people who did cool things, and you're like, sure,
Speaker 2: good enough. I don't correct people. What do people get
Speaker 2: your your's a mouthful? What do people say instead?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's like girls on the internet, which feels like
Speaker 4: vaguely pornographic, like.
Speaker 2: Whatever I type that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally it's some combination of
Speaker 4: correct ish words in not correct order. But yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't correct them either. I actually love hearing the incorrect
Speaker 4: podcast titles.
Speaker 3: Keep them coming.
Speaker 2: I know me too. And I'm also like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm glad that people listen. I wouldn't remember the name
Speaker 2: of my own podcast. Like we even had a long fight,
Speaker 2: not fight, we had a long discussion. I don't think
Speaker 2: anyone actually took any strong positions whether we were going
Speaker 2: to call it cool people did cool things or cool
Speaker 2: people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 4: Is there a functional difference between the things and the stuff,
Speaker 4: the stuff and the things Sophie do you remember why
Speaker 4: we ended up with stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it just sounded better.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. Also, people who listen every week
Speaker 2: might notice, is that Sophie and it is our producer.
Speaker 2: Sophie's here. Hi Sophie, Hi.
Speaker 3: Magpie, Hi be Hi Sophie Sophie.
Speaker 4: Speaking of podcast titles, I was interviewing Molly Konger about
Speaker 4: Weird Little Guys and I asked, where did that title
Speaker 4: come from? And she said, oh, that was a Sophie
Speaker 4: a Sophie production right there.
Speaker 1: Not exactly, She's very nice to say that, but it's
Speaker 1: something she said in a meeting, and I wrote it
Speaker 1: down on my like creepy notepad of like that could
Speaker 1: be a podcast title. And then when we decided to
Speaker 1: do a weekly podcast with her, I was like, lardy
Speaker 1: have the title. So it was her idea. Originally, I
Speaker 1: want to make sure she credits herself as well.
Speaker 2: Which is a podcast that people should go listen to absolutely, but.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 2: I was trying to come up with a segway, but
Speaker 2: I don't have one. Okay, So lately I have been
Speaker 2: burning through my short list of topics that I've wanted
Speaker 2: to cover since the very beginning of this show. I
Speaker 2: had like maybe ten things that I set out being like, I,
Speaker 2: however long the show goes, I need to make sure
Speaker 2: to cover these at some point. And in earlier this week,
Speaker 2: I went to a little national park. I accidentally, I
Speaker 2: mean on purpose. I totally went on purpose when on
Speaker 2: the day that everyone had protests at the national parks,
Speaker 2: I went to a national park called Harper's Ferry in
Speaker 2: West Virginia and I got like every book there. It
Speaker 2: was amazing. I went up and was like, here's all
Speaker 2: the books, and the person behind the counter was like interesting.
Speaker 2: This week we are talking about the raid on Harper's
Speaker 2: Ferry of eighteen fifty nine that not only presaged the
Speaker 2: coming Civil War but essentially sparked it. I know the
Speaker 2: answer to this because I asked you earlier. But have
Speaker 2: you ever been to Harper's Ferry.
Speaker 4: I have been to Harper's Ferry many times. I love
Speaker 4: Harper's Ferry.
Speaker 2: It's so beautiful there. When I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: it was just like the place to go get taffy.
Speaker 2: And also there's something that happened during the Civil War there,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I went there with my parents, it was
Speaker 4: the place where they have you know those like historical
Speaker 4: markers of like historical thing happened here. And I have
Speaker 4: many many memories of my dad being like I'm going
Speaker 4: to go read this time to find out what happened here,
Speaker 4: and we're like, Dad, let's go like that, Like that's
Speaker 4: the space that Harper's Ferry occupied when I was young.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. It is a very beautiful place with
Speaker 2: some historical markers, and now it's a place that I
Speaker 2: like just like go and cry because I think that
Speaker 2: the people who fought there are wonderful people. But the
Speaker 2: most famous of those people is not who we're talking
Speaker 2: about today. Ooh, John Brown is the most famous Harper's
Speaker 2: Fairy adjacent person, right, Yes, I think people hold on
Speaker 2: to him because he's the best white guy in American history, accurate,
Speaker 2: especially at a time when like decent white men were
Speaker 2: like real thin on the ground.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not a ton of them back then, not really
Speaker 4: a lot today either, really.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, fair enough, And so people should go and
Speaker 2: learn from John Brown's example if you're a you know,
Speaker 2: a white man living today, that is a thing to
Speaker 2: go read about, you know. But John Brown has been
Speaker 2: covered a fair amount, But like I like him but
Speaker 2: he's been covered a lot, including in an excellent series
Speaker 2: of Christmas special episodes on Behind the Bastards. So you
Speaker 2: can listen to a Cool Zone Media special all about
Speaker 2: John Brown this week. I want to talk about the
Speaker 2: other Raiders because twenty two people participated in the raid
Speaker 2: on Harper's Ferry, and even that's not true. Twenty two
Speaker 2: people set out to participate on the raid on Harper's Ferry,
Speaker 2: an unknown of additional enslaved people joined them. I've read
Speaker 2: fifteen and I've read fifty, but I want to talk
Speaker 2: about these other raiders, and in particular, I want to
Speaker 2: talk about the five Black Raiders who set out with
Speaker 2: the intention of joining in this raid. Have you heard
Speaker 2: much about this story besides the just the John brown Er.
Speaker 4: I have to admit I have not, Like I definitely
Speaker 4: John Brown is the name that looms large when I
Speaker 4: think about Harper's Ferry, So I'm excited to learn more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like one of these things where it's
Speaker 2: like I understand why people were doing the like big
Speaker 2: man of history stuff, but it's not interesting to me.
Speaker 2: Like he's great. I really am not trying to put
Speaker 2: this man down, but like there were other people who
Speaker 2: fought and died and sometimes survived who were part of this,
Speaker 2: And uh, yeah, I don't know, so I want to
Speaker 2: talk about them. The shortest version of this story is
Speaker 2: that during the first half of the nineteenth century, US
Speaker 2: politics were growing more and more tense over the issue
Speaker 2: of slavery. It helps that the century kicked off with
Speaker 2: Haiti proving that you can, in fact, just grab a
Speaker 2: bunch of pikes and guns and then kill all the
Speaker 2: people who claim to own other people, which scared the
Speaker 2: piss out of America. Like I didn't, I didn't know
Speaker 2: as much about how Haiti influenced American politics until it
Speaker 2: started reading history books for a living. Rebellions were popping
Speaker 2: off everywhere, and even in the halls of power, people
Speaker 2: were discussing the issue more and more. Abolitionist tensions were
Speaker 2: reaching a boiling point when in eighteen fifty nine, nineteen
Speaker 2: abolitionists stormed the federal armory in Harper's Ferry. I said
Speaker 2: twenty two earlier, But that's because three of them stayed
Speaker 2: back at the farmhouse to guard all the guns that
Speaker 2: they were going to give to enslave people if the
Speaker 2: whole thing worked out. So nineteen of them stormed the
Speaker 2: Federal Armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia now regular Virginia
Speaker 2: at the time, with the intention of seizing arms, freeing slaves,
Speaker 2: and starting a generalized rebellion as well as an independent
Speaker 2: black nation right here in Appalachia. And that was another
Speaker 2: part that like never really got explained to me. Like
Speaker 2: maybe maybe whenever I keeping like, I didn't learn about
Speaker 2: this in school. Maybe I was just asleep. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I don't remember learning that they were going to
Speaker 2: start an independent black nation in Appalachia, that was the
Speaker 2: purpose of this raid.
Speaker 3: No, I definitely didn't learn that either.
Speaker 4: I went I went to school in like the former
Speaker 4: capital of the Confederacy. So I have come as an
Speaker 4: adult to realize all the different ways that specifically the
Speaker 4: Civil War curriculum was taught to me. Is like so
Speaker 4: messed up. But no, I did not learn about this either, Margaret.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: I even like, when I think back about I don't
Speaker 2: remember whether school taught me that slavery was the cause
Speaker 2: of the Civil War, not because I remember being told, Oh,
Speaker 2: people say that, but it's really states rights, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I So I grew I went to school in Richmond,
Speaker 4: right outside of Richmond, Virginia, and we explicitly did not
Speaker 4: learn that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War.
Speaker 4: It's all states rights, yeah, like it. And it's so
Speaker 4: funny because like I'll look at my like cousins, like
Speaker 4: their history books and the way that they go out
Speaker 4: of their way to be like, well, you know, sure
Speaker 4: slavery was bad, but like it's it's yeah. So I
Speaker 4: didn't learn it that way either, Yeah, And it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of wild how like some of these talking points
Speaker 4: haven't changed since the end of the Civil War, like
Speaker 4: this idea that like slavery was bad, but enslave people.
Speaker 5: Were kind of happy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's really well.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so most people claim that the raid on Harper's
Speaker 2: Ferry did not work. It was an abject failure. To
Speaker 2: be certain, it was a military failure. Only one of
Speaker 2: the raiders who actually went to Harper's Ferry, a black
Speaker 2: man named Osborne Pierce Anderson, survived the raid. John Brown
Speaker 2: himself was hanged. They had ordered a thousand pikes to
Speaker 2: be handed out to a thousand enslaved people, and only
Speaker 2: about twenty to fifty ended up handed out. They did
Speaker 2: not themselves. These raiders personally wage war on the slave states,
Speaker 2: successfully as they intended. But my argument here is an
Speaker 2: argument that I think modern historians tend to just actually
Speaker 2: agree on now, is that they succeeded. The raid on
Speaker 2: Harper's Ferry was the spark that ignited the Civil War,
Speaker 2: the end of chattel slavery. It didn't pan out like
Speaker 2: the raiders had planned, but it happened, and they used
Speaker 2: their own deaths to spark the war. And the thing
Speaker 2: that I didn't realize until doing more research on this now,
Speaker 2: that was k kind of their plan b all along.
Speaker 2: Like their goal was to have a raid and arm
Speaker 2: everyone and go and create this independent black nation. But
Speaker 2: they were like very consciously. Okay, I feel weird saying
Speaker 2: the majority of the raiders were white, because it's not true.
Speaker 2: The majority of the people who marched there were white,
Speaker 2: but the majority of the people who fought were black.
Speaker 2: But the reason that the majority of the people who
Speaker 2: march there were white is that they were like, we
Speaker 2: think that if a bunch of white people die, it
Speaker 2: will cause northern white people to actually grow the fuck
Speaker 2: up and do something about this.
Speaker 4: Wow, I mean I get that as a strategy. I
Speaker 4: totally get that as a strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what a what a wild one one of
Speaker 2: the wild. Like like the Raiders had planned, the enslaved
Speaker 2: people of the South had a hand or millions of
Speaker 2: hands in their own liberation. As I've covered before on
Speaker 2: the show, the General Strike conducted by enslaved people in
Speaker 2: the South was the most successful labor action in US history.
Speaker 2: They grinded the Confederate economy into dust while black and
Speaker 2: white gorillas waged a civil war within the Civil War.
Speaker 2: And this doesn't even mention yet the one hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty thousand black soldiers who fought in the Union Army
Speaker 2: or the thirty six thousand of them who died, and
Speaker 2: the Union Army when it marched into the Civil War,
Speaker 2: it marched with a song on their lips. And the
Speaker 2: song was John Brown's Body, which states John Brown's body
Speaker 2: lies a moldering in the grave, but his soul is
Speaker 2: marching on. To me, this was the people marching into
Speaker 2: the South to end slavery. Was his soul marching on
Speaker 2: like a for me a kind of literal sense. And
Speaker 2: so my argument is that the Raiders fought, died, and
Speaker 2: then won. And I think there are many such cases
Speaker 2: of this throughout history. One of the reasons that I
Speaker 2: think so much about this. Okay, So I went, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go off script. I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: read my script because I'm going to say what I
Speaker 2: was going to say. The raid itself was fought and
Speaker 2: over within a couple of days, about thirty six hours
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty nine, but the battle over its story
Speaker 2: is still being fought. I live not terribly far from
Speaker 2: Harper's Ferry, and I grew up going there as a kid.
Speaker 2: I went a couple years back and I saw a
Speaker 2: private tour guide giving a talk. He said, basically, oh, well,
Speaker 2: the raid was ill advised. No matter how good his intentions.
Speaker 2: John Brown was basically just this white guy who is
Speaker 2: disconnected from what the black enslave people here actually wanted.
Speaker 2: You know, they didn't want someone coming in to liberate
Speaker 2: them at gunpoint, and I wanted to scream in retrospect,
Speaker 2: I kind of wish I had, but I had my
Speaker 2: dog with me, and I didn't want to go to
Speaker 2: jail because this is the talking point that even like
Speaker 2: sympathetic people have started to believe. And when I say
Speaker 2: started immediately this was an active media campaign right away
Speaker 2: to disconnect John Brown from a racially integrated abolitionist movement
Speaker 2: that he was an integral part of. I got really
Speaker 2: angry about this stuff.
Speaker 4: Why do you think that attitude person or like, how
Speaker 4: have that attitude managed to persist today that you're hearing
Speaker 4: it from a tour guide in a park.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of thoughts about it. So I
Speaker 2: think he wasn't an official tour guide because I actually
Speaker 2: went back and I think the actual National Park the
Speaker 2: information that the National Park Service is presenting is actually
Speaker 2: fairly accurate for now. If you're listening to this next year,
Speaker 2: it might be not anymore. They'll just be like John Brown,
Speaker 2: a trader who just went and died, and all black
Speaker 2: people hated him. But I think there's a couple reasons.
Speaker 2: I think that people immediately people painted him as a
Speaker 2: zealot and then ignored everyone else who fought right. It
Speaker 2: was just him and he was crazy. He had to
Speaker 2: be crazy in order to do what he did. So
Speaker 2: for racist white Southerners it was a way to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: obviously that's the wrong way to make change. But I
Speaker 2: think vaguely less racist white Northerners. It was kind of
Speaker 2: the same thing. It was kind of a way to
Speaker 2: get yourself off the hook, to be like, oh well,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't really have work to take militant action against slavery.
Speaker 2: So it's okay that all I did was hold up
Speaker 2: a ping pong paddle that says we don't like fascism
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Because after the raid, the Southern media presented John Brown
Speaker 2: as evil and as a threat to all humanity. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the basic moral rightness of his cause couldn't really be
Speaker 2: argued right, and in order to reach that, seven hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty thousand people had to die. But the conservative position,
Speaker 2: I'm back on script saying the same things I just said,
Speaker 2: sorry about that. The conservative position switched quickly to claim
Speaker 2: that he was a zalot and crazy. His followers were
Speaker 2: misguided or crazy too, and they wanted to deny that
Speaker 2: he was a well connected and well loved abolitionist too,
Speaker 2: as part of an international movement to end shadow slavery
Speaker 2: in the US. He also was a bit of a zelot.
Speaker 2: I think it might take a bit of a zelot.
Speaker 2: And when I read about the rest of his followers,
Speaker 2: I think they kind of were too.
Speaker 4: They're nice though, Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me
Speaker 4: that this kind of action would take a bit of
Speaker 4: a zelo it to organize, I.
Speaker 2: Know, especially especially once they found out what the real
Speaker 2: plan was. They were like, wait, our plan is to
Speaker 2: just go there and try and win. We're just gonna
Speaker 2: twenty one of us are just gonna take over the South.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you gotta a.
Speaker 4: Zelot might be the type of person that would go
Speaker 4: along with that plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But you know, it doesn't take much as
Speaker 2: ellotry going along with Wow, taking advantage of the excellent
Speaker 2: that are offered by all of our sponsors, which absolutely
Speaker 2: would later claim to have been on the right side
Speaker 2: of any given large thing in history. Allegedly, here's our.
Speaker 5: Ads and we're back.
Speaker 2: So it is true that Frederick Douglas, the most famous abolitionist,
Speaker 2: a man who had self emancipated from slavery, turned John
Speaker 2: Brown down when he was invited to the raid, but
Speaker 2: one of Frederick Douglas's close friends, who was at the
Speaker 2: same meeting, agreed to join. Harriet Tubman, perhaps the single
Speaker 2: most impressive badass the US has ever produced. Like, honestly,
Speaker 2: I'm like I bring her up like here and there
Speaker 2: in other episodes, but mostly because it's just like I'm
Speaker 2: just slowly collecting books and I'm just I don't know. Anyway,
Speaker 2: she was amazing.
Speaker 3: She's the coolest fun fact.
Speaker 4: She's like, I'm an avid outdoors woman, and whenever people
Speaker 4: are like, oh, black women hiking, I'm like, oh, Harriet
Speaker 4: Tubman was like, people don't think of her this way,
Speaker 4: but avid outdoors woman, you know, Like that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I really I really own her as my like black
Speaker 4: woman outdoors woman, you know, idol.
Speaker 2: Honestly, there's a lot to be said there about like
Speaker 2: people who were using the outdoors in real interesting ways
Speaker 2: during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: Like, oh, yes, that's cool.
Speaker 3: I'm so.
Speaker 4: I mean something told me that that might be a
Speaker 4: spirit that we have to embrace at some point in
Speaker 4: the future.
Speaker 3: I'll put it that way.
Speaker 2: It's fair enough. Yeah, Honestly, one of the people involved
Speaker 2: in this story is going to die because he can't
Speaker 2: hike far enough.
Speaker 5: Uh there you go.
Speaker 2: So uh so Harriet Tubman wasn't on the raid because
Speaker 2: she was sick when the when it was planned, so
Speaker 2: she didn't make it, but she proved contacts for it,
Speaker 2: She raised funds, and she recruited soldiers. And there's so
Speaker 2: much focus on John Brown himself and his psychology that
Speaker 2: I think that disconnects him from the vibrant movement he
Speaker 2: was part of, right, because not everyone involved in that
Speaker 2: movement was like a zalot, but he was still part
Speaker 2: of that movement, if any, he was kind of the
Speaker 2: wing nut fringe of it, and that movement that he
Speaker 2: was part of did in the end and through bloodshed
Speaker 2: and legal chattel slavery in the United States. There were
Speaker 2: twenty two people who were part of the raid. Nineteen
Speaker 2: of them marched on Harper's ferry. John Brown was one
Speaker 2: of them. And we're going to talk about some of
Speaker 2: the other ones. But first context, those are the other
Speaker 2: instead of ads. That's the other thing I cut to context.
Speaker 1: We should like play the Jaws theme song whenever you
Speaker 1: say context.
Speaker 5: We absolutely should.
Speaker 2: The South was always internally divided on the issue of slavery,
Speaker 2: as we've talked about before on this show. Of course,
Speaker 2: four point five million people living there had a particularly
Speaker 2: personal reason to be opposed to the institution of slavery.
Speaker 2: There was a free black population, and as there were
Speaker 2: a few white people arguing against it as well. For
Speaker 2: about three years, from eighteen twenty nine to eighteen thirty two,
Speaker 2: debates raged in Virginia about slavery. And I think this
Speaker 2: was happening elsewhere, but like I read about it in
Speaker 2: Virginia because the western half of the state, which is
Speaker 2: now West Virginia or Greater Virginia. Actually people have told
Speaker 2: me I shouldn't call it Greater Virginia, I should call
Speaker 2: it Best Virginia. And that makes sense.
Speaker 5: West Virginia Best Virginia it is.
Speaker 2: And whenever people are like, why do you call it
Speaker 2: Best Virginia, I'm like, hello, I would like to introduce
Speaker 2: you to why West Virginia exists. It's because they did
Speaker 2: not want to fight for the Confederacy. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: the tables have turned politically a little bit, but I'm
Speaker 2: still holding out that people will anyway whatever. So just
Speaker 2: don't look at a modern voting map of the country,
Speaker 2: and we can still hold the by the Best Virginia.
Speaker 2: So the western half of the state was mountainous and poor.
Speaker 2: Most people there didn't own other people, and they were
Speaker 2: firmly in favor of abolition. Overall. Quakers throughout the state too,
Speaker 2: fought for abolition as well as free black people and
Speaker 2: enslaved black people, and some of the Quakers were also black.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, in eighteen thirty one, Nat Turner's
Speaker 2: rebellion in Virginia. We've covered this a bit on the
Speaker 2: show before. This also scared the shit out of everyone.
Speaker 2: All the slavers were like, oh fuck a black man
Speaker 2: named Nat Turner and a bunch of other people were
Speaker 2: like fuck this, and they started killing white slavers and
Speaker 2: the white slavers families. This scared the shit out of
Speaker 2: the legal institutions of the South. Laws started getting passed
Speaker 2: everywhere in the Slave states restricting the rights of free
Speaker 2: black people even further, like laws where black people weren't
Speaker 2: even allowed to preach anymore. Church services were banned for
Speaker 2: black people after dark because preachers were doing a lot
Speaker 2: of the itinerant. Preachers were going around and being like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what the Bible says. Also, the way to
Speaker 2: the swamp is this way, and that's a good place
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 5: Free.
Speaker 2: Progress is never linear. Free black people started having more
Speaker 2: of their voting rights taken away, including in the North.
Speaker 2: Now I didn't even realize this. I had just assumed
Speaker 2: free black people couldn't vote in the South, but it
Speaker 2: turns out at various times they could. It's very easy
Speaker 2: to fall into the sort of like linear things you
Speaker 2: just slowly chip away at oppression, yeah, you know, but
Speaker 2: it turns out sometimes you start chipping away at a
Speaker 2: depression and then they're like, how about twice as much oppression.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's a good reminder that these things are not always
Speaker 4: like so binary or yes, it's easy to think of
Speaker 4: them as switch flip as opposed to like, oh, it
Speaker 4: was a chip away and then this, you know.
Speaker 3: It's a good reminder.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it also it's like worth understanding how like
Speaker 2: I mean, even the I mean, obviously, the Civil War
Speaker 2: was in many ways terrible. It was the bloodiest thing
Speaker 2: that's happened in the US besides the destruction of the
Speaker 2: indigenous population here. But like it ended legal chattel slavery
Speaker 2: in the United States, and it came from the right
Speaker 2: wing reaction to people helping people become more free. It
Speaker 2: came from the right wing being like, fine, more oppression
Speaker 2: and then people are like, nope, we've had enough of it.
Speaker 2: You know. But before all of that, as free black
Speaker 2: people are having more of their rights taken away. In Virginia,
Speaker 2: people were like, what are we going to do with
Speaker 2: all these free black people? It's scary, We're scared. We
Speaker 2: are terrible and cowardly people. I think that's what they said.
Speaker 2: One of the answers was send them back to Africa.
Speaker 2: Both slave owners and white Quaker abolitionists agreed send free
Speaker 2: black people back to Africa. And obviously there was a okay,
Speaker 2: so the slavers really liked this argument, but so did
Speaker 2: some like there were black abolitionists argument for this as well,
Speaker 2: like we're gonna I think even some of the people
Speaker 2: involved in Harper's Ferry's raid were on both sides of
Speaker 2: this particular issue. But a man named Henry Wise, who
Speaker 2: would later become the governor who signed the death warrants
Speaker 2: for all the Harper's Faery raiders, he was really in
Speaker 2: favor of this. He said to the Virginia Colonization Society
Speaker 2: of eighteen thirty eight, quote, Africa gave to Virginia a
Speaker 2: savage and a slave. Virginia gives back to Africa a
Speaker 2: citizen and a Christian.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Wow, it's so bad, thanks guys, Yeah, wow, so bad?
Speaker 4: Oh God, I mean I've actually I've heard like that
Speaker 4: argument from like some black radicals really did feel like
Speaker 4: black people should up and leave the United States and
Speaker 4: go back to the continent, like uh, totally. But then
Speaker 4: hearing that, it's like, yeah, this was not an argument
Speaker 4: you know, grounded in self determination and respect?
Speaker 3: What help woult it that way?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah it was.
Speaker 2: And for some people it was like yeah, for some
Speaker 2: people it was like, oh, we can get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of here. We never wanted to be here in
Speaker 2: the first place, right, And then other people were like, no,
Speaker 2: we're here now, like you can't just fucking get rid
Speaker 2: of us like that, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's I mean, like y'all brought us here, y'all,
Speaker 4: y'all are all ride like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this deepening racism that was happening in the South,
Speaker 2: which is a weird thing to say because in my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're it's already a horror movie set, you know,
Speaker 2: it led a lot of free people to migrate north.
Speaker 2: The deepening racism of the North led a lot of
Speaker 2: free people to migrate even further north to Canada. A
Speaker 2: lot of people, at least a lot of people relevant
Speaker 2: to today's story. When they went to the north, if
Speaker 2: they didn't go all the way to Canada, they made
Speaker 2: their way to Ohio. In particular, they found their way
Speaker 2: to a little college town in Ohio that was trying
Speaker 2: in its way to be the most anti racist place
Speaker 2: in the country. And this was to me, this is
Speaker 2: a twist. I don't know if other people are going
Speaker 2: to find as much of a twist. The most anti
Speaker 2: racist place in the United States in the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 2: forties and fifties Oberlin, Ohio.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that actually totally tracks with me. I
Speaker 4: had no idea where you were going. Oberlin is a surprise.
Speaker 4: But now that I'm thinking about it, like, yeah, I've
Speaker 4: known so many Oberlin college grads.
Speaker 3: I've had two.
Speaker 4: I've had two as roommates, by the way, terrible roommates
Speaker 4: and they don't make brave roommates, but we love them anyway.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was literally about to say the same thing bridge
Speaker 1: not me personally, but a friend of mine had an
Speaker 1: Oberlin roommate, and wow, yeah, by you guys. If you're
Speaker 1: if you're if you're an Oberlin roommate, work on your reputation.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, that's a good advice holer not so good.
Speaker 2: I once drove the only time I've ever been to Oberlin.
Speaker 2: It was to help my friend drop out of Oberlin
Speaker 2: to join the environmental direct action movement, which is actually
Speaker 2: a fitting thing that parallels to a lot of John
Speaker 2: Brown's raiders. It turns out a lot of them went
Speaker 2: to college at Oberlin for like a year.
Speaker 3: Interesting before dropping out.
Speaker 5: Yeah then.
Speaker 2: Starting an insurrection.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like this Oberlin business is not radical enough for me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I did not see Oberlin College as showing up
Speaker 2: as one of the cool people in this week's episodes.
Speaker 2: But here we are in eighteen thirty three. I'm not
Speaker 2: like a big college person. I mean, it's fine, Hey,
Speaker 2: I recognize its importance. Oberlin College was founded in eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty three specifically to be a Christian college teaching good
Speaker 2: Christian values like the abolition of slavery. By eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 2: with a slim majority vote of the trustees, they started
Speaker 2: letting in black students. It was like literally a one
Speaker 2: person majority, and one of the trustees who voted and
Speaker 2: therefore could have been the deciding vote, was John Brown's
Speaker 2: dear father, a Tanner named Owen Brown. This makes Oberlin
Speaker 2: College one of the first colleges in the US to
Speaker 2: let black students in, and it's the first to formally
Speaker 2: say we allow black students in.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: The first historically black university didn't actually open until two
Speaker 2: years later, the Cheney University in Pennsylvania in eighteen thirty seven.
Speaker 2: Oberlin then also became the first gender integrated college in
Speaker 2: the US. So they kind of came at the gate
Speaker 2: real fucking strong.
Speaker 3: Oh Oberlin, who knew.
Speaker 5: I know, I know Oberlin.
Speaker 2: The town became a hotbed of abolitionism. Black families would
Speaker 2: move to the area. It became an important stop on
Speaker 2: the under ground railroad. The local public schools were racially integrated,
Speaker 2: and there was a Liberty school at night for fugitives
Speaker 2: to learn how to read and write. The town refused
Speaker 2: to celebrate the Fourth of July because that celebrated a
Speaker 2: document that excluded black people. Awesome. Instead, their official celebration
Speaker 2: was August first, after the eighteen thirty four abolition of
Speaker 2: slavery in Jamaica.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, and if you're currently Oberlin, get back to
Speaker 2: your roots. And a disproportionate number of the Raiders came
Speaker 2: from Oberlin or like lived there or went to school
Speaker 2: there for a year or so. Some of them said
Speaker 2: that they went to Oberlin, but there's no record of
Speaker 2: them going to the college. They might have like audited classes,
Speaker 2: or they might have just been like patting their resume
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know.
Speaker 4: Is it like a status thing to have gone to
Speaker 4: Oberlin and like, oh, I went to Oberlin, don't fact check.
Speaker 2: That, I think So we'll start with a raider named
Speaker 2: John Anthony Copeland. John Anthony Copeland was born in eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty four in North Carolina. It is worth understanding how
Speaker 2: just fucking nonsensical and confusing slavery was at the time.
Speaker 2: Having a race based slavery chattel system doesn't make sense
Speaker 2: obviously morally is one of the worst things that's ever
Speaker 2: happened in the history of the world. But it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be a bunch of cases like this that
Speaker 2: are gonna be confusing as shit. John's father, John Copeland's
Speaker 2: father had been born enslaved by his own father, but
Speaker 2: was then freed on the death of his father owner
Speaker 2: when he was eight, and then became a carpenter working
Speaker 2: in Raleigh, North Carolina. Copeland was the oldest of eight children.
Speaker 2: When North Carolina removed the vote for free people of
Speaker 2: color in eighteen thirty five, his family was like, Nah,
Speaker 2: fuck this, We're getting out of here. This doesn't seem safe,
Speaker 2: and so they moved to Ohio. It wasn't eat. They
Speaker 2: needed letters of recommendation from white people to say that
Speaker 2: they weren't evil, subversives or whatever in order to be
Speaker 2: traveling freely. And they made their way to Ohio with
Speaker 2: lots of letters of recommendation. Folks from the underground Railroad
Speaker 2: helps them get It's one of things I also didn't realize.
Speaker 2: Undergroundrailroad also helped with a trip like helped free people,
Speaker 2: and also abolitionists move constantly helps them. Once they were
Speaker 2: in Ohio to settle an Oberlin, where Copeland grew up.
Speaker 2: He learned carpentry and joinery from his father, and eventually
Speaker 2: he went for one year to Oberlin. I think he's
Speaker 2: the one that we actually have record of going to Oberlin.
Speaker 2: He was a diehard abolitionist. He would attend meetings at
Speaker 2: the Liberty School and he realized his purpose in life
Speaker 2: was to abolish slavery, to free the four and a
Speaker 2: half million people in bondage in the country. He started
Speaker 2: speaking out about slavery everywhere he went. He also spoke
Speaker 2: regularly about how sometimes individual revolutionaries must die for the
Speaker 2: revolution to succeed. So like again, not just a bunch
Speaker 2: of deluded people who got led to their deaths by
Speaker 2: John Brown. Ohio at the time was pondering in secession.
Speaker 2: And this is the like we all kind of got
Speaker 2: taught states rights or the reason for the Civil War.
Speaker 2: Ohio was really concerned about some states rights. They hated
Speaker 2: the South. They didn't want to be in the same
Speaker 2: country as the South. The eighteen fifties was full of
Speaker 2: offenses to the North, like the eighteen fifty Fugitive Slave
Speaker 2: Act that meant the North was suddenly expected to return
Speaker 2: fugitives back to slavers in the South, and it became
Speaker 2: a federal offense to help people hide from people who
Speaker 2: were going to put them in cages. Then there was
Speaker 2: the dread Scott decision of the Supreme Court in eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty seven, which declared that black people couldn't be citizens,
Speaker 2: among a whole mass of other wild racist shit. It
Speaker 2: was like, if you go to the Wikipedia page for
Speaker 2: the dread Scott decision, I was like trying to track
Speaker 2: down some other parts of it, and it was like
Speaker 2: widely considered the worst decision the Supreme Court has ever
Speaker 2: made in the United States. Ohio looked at all this
Speaker 2: shit and was like, are you fucking kidding me? We
Speaker 2: have to let slavers come here and capture people? No, no,
Speaker 2: fuck this. Local legislations started passing resolutions like we condemn
Speaker 2: this act. I want to read the actual language of one,
Speaker 2: because it goes hard. Heart'sgrave, Ohio is worth quoting. They
Speaker 2: agreed to quote hold the Fugitive Slave Law in utter
Speaker 2: contempt as being no law, and pledge ourselves to despise
Speaker 2: the conduct of the makers of it for their utter
Speaker 2: destitution of principle, and that they would quote sooner than
Speaker 2: submit to such odious laws, we will see the Union dissolved.
Speaker 2: Sooner than see slavery perpetual, we would see war, and
Speaker 2: sooner than be slaves, we will fight.
Speaker 3: Awesome. I'm glad you read that because it does go hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like at the end, I decided the title probably
Speaker 2: will be something more shortened to the point, but it
Speaker 2: absolutely for a long time was sooner than see slavery perpetual,
Speaker 2: we would see war.
Speaker 4: And you know what's wild to me is that when
Speaker 4: you drive through certain parts of Ohio when you see
Speaker 4: massive Confederate flags, I'm always like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Like, I know, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: I know the Ohio River was like the sacred line
Speaker 2: of freedom. Like yeah, and in West Virginia you see
Speaker 2: the same and you're like, do you know why you're
Speaker 2: in West Virginia?
Speaker 3: Yes? It boggles my mind.
Speaker 4: And I feel like these states have such rad histories
Speaker 4: that I feel like it's like flinging this like very
Speaker 4: cool legacy of why your state exists or something that
Speaker 4: was foundational to your state in its space.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So the idea of sanctuary cities goes back a
Speaker 2: really long way, and I hope the modern sanctuary cities,
Speaker 2: which are more and more needed right now, I hope
Speaker 2: that they go as hard and care as much as
Speaker 2: Heartsgrove Ohio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be better than Ohio.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sorry, Ohio.
Speaker 3: That's a slogan, be better than Ohio.
Speaker 2: And then the back says, it's a higher bar than
Speaker 2: you think. That's so funny, so Oberlin itself. In eighteen
Speaker 2: forty one, two people who were on the run from
Speaker 2: slavery got caught in Oberlin, and they were taken to
Speaker 2: the jail. So a crowd of five hundred people white
Speaker 2: and black, brought guns, clubs, and rocks to try to
Speaker 2: fight back the cops to break the people out and
Speaker 2: free them. They failed during the day, but as best
Speaker 2: as I can tell, and this is I read literally
Speaker 2: a two hundred year old newspaper article about this. Of
Speaker 2: like my understanding of it is slightly imperfect. It might
Speaker 2: be a different incident. I believe this is the same
Speaker 2: an incident. At night, they came back a smaller crowd.
Speaker 2: The newspaper called them fanatical abolitionist anarchists, armed with axes
Speaker 2: and saws. They broke the two fugitives out and freed them.
Speaker 2: And then in eighteen fifty eight, an even more famous
Speaker 2: version of something similar happened in Oberlin. And it's more
Speaker 2: famous because it is considered one of the things that
Speaker 2: sparked the Civil War, like the bubbles you could see
Speaker 2: simmering in the pot, you know. And this one involves
Speaker 2: our man John Copeland as well as another raider that
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about in a second. In eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty six, an eighteen year old named John Price escaped
Speaker 2: slavery in Kentucky, and he crossed the river into Ohio
Speaker 2: and to what he hoped would be his freedom. He
Speaker 2: made it to Oberlin and he lived as a fugitive
Speaker 2: for two years before he was caught. Basically, someone like
Speaker 2: set him up because they knew that even though would
Speaker 2: have been legal to come capture him, they kind of
Speaker 2: couldn't in the town because people wouldn't let them. So
Speaker 2: someone was like, oh, we got a job for you.
Speaker 2: It's right outside of town. Don't you want a job?
Speaker 2: And as soon as he left, they was alone on
Speaker 2: the highway. They nab him and they're like, Oberlin isn't
Speaker 2: a safe place to hold this guy. So we're going
Speaker 2: to go to Wellington, Ohio, which is right nearby. But
Speaker 2: two Oberlin students saw him go by in the buggy
Speaker 2: and they gathered a posse of between two hundred and
Speaker 2: six hundred people white and black, surrounded the hotel that
Speaker 2: was holding him. Price was up in the attic. They
Speaker 2: started trying to negotiate. They were like, I mean, their
Speaker 2: negotiation point was like we're armed and we're not leaving,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: But a solid negotiation tactic, I know.
Speaker 2: As Frederick Douglas says, and I quote all the time.
Speaker 2: Power concedes nothing without a demand. And Copeland was there
Speaker 2: in the crowd. He had a handgun and he shouted
Speaker 2: that he would shoot any damn rascal who interfered with
Speaker 2: their plan to direct him. In one of the coolest
Speaker 2: things that college kids have ever done, a bunch of
Speaker 2: white Oberlin College students ran in through the front door
Speaker 2: of the hotel, distracting the guards while Copeland and some
Speaker 2: other folks climbed up the balcony at the back of
Speaker 2: the hotel. People tried to stop them, so they shot
Speaker 2: guns towards them, and then the people stopped trying to
Speaker 2: stop them.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I think these were warning.
Speaker 1: Shots when you were like, when you were like one
Speaker 1: of the cool I was like, I was like, that's
Speaker 1: a high bar. College kids do cool things all the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, no, it's true. And uh.
Speaker 2: They stormed the attic and rescued Price. There's this story
Speaker 2: about like the guy who was keeping them out was
Speaker 2: holding this rope that would hold the door shut. I
Speaker 2: think it was like one of those old doors where
Speaker 2: it's just literally a rope that's the handle, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's holding it, but there's a hole in the wall,
Speaker 2: and so one of the college kids just punches the
Speaker 2: guy in the head through the wall, and so the
Speaker 2: guy drops the rope. They storm in and they rescue
Speaker 2: John Price. Speaking of prices, Our prices are great.
Speaker 5: No why more stuff? No way?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, here's the mats.
Speaker 3: And they're back.
Speaker 2: So they get John Price out and they smuggle him
Speaker 2: out to the home of the guy who like later
Speaker 2: went on to become the third president of Oberlin College.
Speaker 2: Like the entire town was in on this, and then someone,
Speaker 2: most likely Copeland, took John Price and escorted him up
Speaker 2: to Canada and to freedom. A ton of people involved
Speaker 2: in the rescuer arrested around like thirty six or something
Speaker 2: like that. But Copeland himself, even though a warrant went
Speaker 2: out for him, was not arrested because he was probably
Speaker 2: he disappeared and he was probably in the middle of
Speaker 2: escorting him Price up to Canada. The prosecution of these
Speaker 2: rescuers is a big fucking deal in the history of
Speaker 2: the abolitionist movement. No one wanted to convict them, like
Speaker 2: in Ohio, right, but they like felt like they had
Speaker 2: to because the law and stuff, you know. The Ohio
Speaker 2: Supreme Court upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, and ten thousand
Speaker 2: people rallied in Cleveland on the But have you considered that?
Speaker 2: Fuck that law though, and therefore fucked the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: The courts trying the rescuers were pretty lenient. People got
Speaker 2: a few months in jail basically, I think, actually I
Speaker 2: think like two people got actual sentences. Everyone else was
Speaker 2: just like held in jail for a while and then
Speaker 2: released it. But the jailers were sympathetic to their cause,
Speaker 2: and so they made a newspaper while they were in jail.
Speaker 2: And because they just were given access to the jail's printing.
Speaker 4: Press, they've got a jail zine.
Speaker 2: They have a jail zine. The rescuers made a jail
Speaker 2: zine called The Rescuer Ah great, Yeah, and they like
Speaker 2: sold it outside to raise money for the abolitionist movement.
Speaker 3: And shit.
Speaker 2: As for John Price himself, no one ever wrote down
Speaker 2: where he was ever. Again. I hope that he lived
Speaker 2: a long, happy and free life, and frankly, I have
Speaker 2: no reason to suspect he didn't. The abolitionist movement knew
Speaker 2: how to take care of people. Another Oberlin man, a
Speaker 2: friend of Copeland's, Lewis Sheridan Leary. He was also born
Speaker 2: in North Carolina on March seventeenth, eighteen thirty five. His
Speaker 2: father was a fairly well to do free saddle maker
Speaker 2: who was part Irish, Croatan, Indian and Black. His mixed
Speaker 2: race mother was born in the French West Indies. Their
Speaker 2: family was wealthy and owned slaves, but would also regularly
Speaker 2: give their enslaved people enough money to buy themselves their
Speaker 2: freedom and then help set them up. And I am
Speaker 2: unsure whether they freed everyone they bought or not. I
Speaker 2: read some sources that were like, oh, yeah, they just
Speaker 2: freed everyone, and other ones were like, uh, they kind
Speaker 2: of did it sometimes, you know. Leary was raised to
Speaker 2: about as much wealth and privilege as was available to
Speaker 2: free black people in the South, which was not that much.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways. He had a reputation for
Speaker 2: being hot headed and rash, but also I believe, moral
Speaker 2: and brave. He left North Carolina in eighteen fifty seven
Speaker 2: when he was twenty two years old, on the advice
Speaker 2: of his father. The reason his father advised him to
Speaker 2: leave North Carolina was this is the only version of
Speaker 2: the story, but there's no whatever. There's no specific evidence
Speaker 2: of this besides oral tradition, but I have no reason
Speaker 2: to doubt it. One day, Leary is walking down the
Speaker 2: street and he sees a slaver whipping a guy, so
Speaker 2: he grabs the guy's whip and starts whipping the slaver instead,
Speaker 2: at which point his dad was like, you should get
Speaker 2: the fuck out of the South because they were going
Speaker 2: to kill him. He got the fuck out of the South.
Speaker 2: He went to Oberlin. He started working as a saddle
Speaker 2: maker too. He fell in love with an abolitionist woman
Speaker 2: named Mary Simpson Patterson, who was the first black woman
Speaker 2: to attend Oberlin College. They got married and had a
Speaker 2: daughter named Lewis and Mary Simpson Patterson. Her grandson by
Speaker 2: a different father is Langston Hughes.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, there's so.
Speaker 2: Many people alive in this time, what are the fucking odds? Yeah,
Speaker 2: the couple did a bunch of underground railroad work together.
Speaker 2: Leary at least, I have no reason to believe his
Speaker 2: wife wasn't. But it isn't written into history because why
Speaker 2: would anyone write that down, even though she went on
Speaker 2: to do more work than he was able to, because
Speaker 2: she survived and he dies. Anyway, they were part of
Speaker 2: the Price Rescue, the one at the Hotel. Leary, who
Speaker 2: had Irish heritage, liked quoting poems by an Irish nationalist,
Speaker 2: William Smith O'Brien, who was part of the Young Ireland
Speaker 2: movement that I've talked about sometimes on this show. Specifically,
Speaker 2: Leary liked to quote the following lines, whether on the
Speaker 2: Scaffold high or in the battles Van, the fittest place
Speaker 2: for a man to die is where he dies for man.
Speaker 2: So yeah, when when John Brown came through Oberlin looking
Speaker 2: for recruits, both Copeland and Leary volunteered. Leary told John Brown,
Speaker 2: I am ready to die. I only ask that when
Speaker 2: I have given my life to free others, my own
Speaker 2: wife and dear little daughter shall never know want. And
Speaker 2: that's what happened. He dies and the abolitionist movement takes
Speaker 2: care of his family.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like you were just saying that part of
Speaker 4: the movement was taking care of each other, and I
Speaker 4: don't know, I find such power in that, especially now
Speaker 4: that like, our strength really does lie in our ability
Speaker 4: to care for each other totally and even to care
Speaker 4: for people who aren't, Like it's not just care for
Speaker 4: the frontline soldiers right, like price to anyone's knowledge. I mean,
Speaker 4: he might probably changed his name in and went off
Speaker 4: to do other stuff, but like, they didn't help him
Speaker 4: escape slavery so that he could join Danaris Targarian's army
Speaker 4: of enslaved people to go attack something. You know, they
Speaker 4: freedom because he needed to be free. And yeah, a
Speaker 4: lot of enslaved people, formally enslaved people fight militantly for abolitionism,
Speaker 4: but no one's telling them that they have to. And
Speaker 4: if you just want to get out, they'll help you
Speaker 4: get out. I just I really like that.
Speaker 2: I really There's a lot of bad stuff in American history,
Speaker 2: and the abolitionist movement is one of the coolest things
Speaker 2: that's ever happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he absolutely should be learning a lot from it today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, especially the way that they like work together
Speaker 2: across intersectional politics. And it's not a coincidence that the
Speaker 2: first college to formally let black people in also was
Speaker 2: the first college to let women in, you know, and
Speaker 2: let black women in. And I don't know it just
Speaker 2: I can really, I don't know. I went to Harper's
Speaker 2: Ferry and cried a lot, decided to write this episode.
Speaker 2: The pair raised up the money to get train tickets
Speaker 2: east and they headed off towards the farmhouse in Maryland,
Speaker 2: five miles from Harper's Ferry, where the conspirators were building
Speaker 2: their army. Okay, those are those two. Now we're going
Speaker 2: to cut to another one of them. This is the
Speaker 2: one who I was like, literally saw in the John
Speaker 2: Brown Museum that reading about it made me cry, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I just now, I'm just telling you, ever,
Speaker 2: how often I cry whatever. I read history for a reason,
Speaker 2: it was this man's story was the reason that I
Speaker 2: decided to do this episode.
Speaker 1: Crying can be good. It reduces stress.
Speaker 2: That's true. There was a man named Dangerfield Nuby, and
Speaker 2: Dangerfield is a good name. Just gonna get that out there.
Speaker 3: Dangerfield Newby is like a very good name.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there is going to be someone who has
Speaker 2: a better name than him in all of this, and
Speaker 2: it's someone who picked his own name. But we'll get
Speaker 2: to that later.
Speaker 3: Oh I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Oh that might he can be a clifhanger for Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I think he might not even show up to a Wednesday.
Speaker 2: But Dangerfield Nuby was forty four and he was the
Speaker 2: oldest of the raiders after John Brown. John Brown did
Speaker 2: his thing when he was fifty nine, so never feel
Speaker 2: too old. John Brown was fifty nine when he started
Speaker 2: the Civil War. Dangerfield Nuby was born in eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: in Virginia. He was the oldest son of eleven kids.
Speaker 2: His father was a white man named Henry Nuby. This
Speaker 2: is the complicated ass one that I'm just like, what
Speaker 2: the fuck is? Obviously, this is just like whatever. His
Speaker 2: father was a white man named Henry Nuby. His mother
Speaker 2: was Henry's enslaved common law wife, but not enslaved by Henry. Elsie.
Speaker 2: His wife was actually owned by an eccentric slaver named
Speaker 2: John Fox, who did shit like let Elsie live with
Speaker 2: someone else. Just be like, I don't know whatever, you
Speaker 2: can go live with your husband. Okay, this isn't entirely benevolent.
Speaker 2: All of Henry and Elsie's kids are immediately John Fox's property,
Speaker 2: and there's all this stuff. People are like, John Fox
Speaker 2: did free a fuck ton of he actually he freed
Speaker 2: to everyone when he died, but he freed a fuck
Speaker 2: ton of people while he was alive. But I kind of
Speaker 2: have this bar where I'm like, if you don't just
Speaker 2: immediately free everyone you own I kind of, I don't
Speaker 2: know whatever. But Dangerfield was owned by his mother's owner,
Speaker 2: John Fox. So this kid, well, he's not a kid.
Speaker 2: He grows up and he gets leased out as a blacksmith.
Speaker 2: While he's enslaved in Virginia, he gets married to a
Speaker 2: woman named Harriet, who was owned by yet another man,
Speaker 2: and together the pair of them had probably seven kids.
Speaker 2: His brother described Dangerfield as a quiet man, upright, quick tempered,
Speaker 2: and devoted to his family. In eighteen fifty eight, his
Speaker 2: father took him and some of his siblings and moved
Speaker 2: to Ohio with John Fox's blessing. This means that they
Speaker 2: were freed. Ohio wasn't fucking around with that. If you
Speaker 2: set up residency in Ohio, you are formally freed. At
Speaker 2: this point, the Ohio Supreme Court had decided in eighteen
Speaker 2: fifty six that's setting up residency in Ohio freed you.
Speaker 2: They wrote that the chains of slavery had to be
Speaker 2: broken and quote crumble to dust when he who has
Speaker 2: warned them obtained the liberty from his oppressor and has
Speaker 2: afforded the opportunity of placing his feet upon our shore,
Speaker 2: go Ohio. I know they know, so He's thirty six
Speaker 2: years old when his dad frees him by moving him
Speaker 2: to Ohio. Like fucking if it wasn't just like a
Speaker 2: nightmare land of horror, it would be comical, how fucking Anyway,
Speaker 2: Dangerfield had a problem. His wife wasn't free. I suspect
Speaker 2: this story might have influenced the plot of Django Unchained,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure it might have. This kind of
Speaker 2: story might have happened a lot.
Speaker 3: I was literally just thinking the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Dangerfield dedicated the rest of his life to
Speaker 2: trying to free his family. For years, he did this
Speaker 2: by working his ass off and saving every cent he
Speaker 2: could to buy Harriet and his kids. But the slaver
Speaker 2: who owned her kept doing shit like and the historical
Speaker 2: record isn't certain here either taking his money and not
Speaker 2: freeing his wife or upping the price at the last minute.
Speaker 2: All the while, rather than go to a safe place
Speaker 2: like Oberlin, he stayed along the Ohio River and helped
Speaker 2: shepherd people to safety working the underground railroad. This is
Speaker 2: how he met John Brown, who offered him a different
Speaker 2: way to free his family, Force of Arms. The last
Speaker 2: letter he ever got from his wife Harriet read quote
Speaker 2: it is said, master is in want of money. If so,
Speaker 2: I know not what time he may sell me, and
Speaker 2: then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted.
Speaker 2: For there has been one bright hope to cheer me
Speaker 2: in all my troubles, that is to be with you.
Speaker 2: For if I thought I should never see you, this
Speaker 2: earth would have no charms for me. Do all you
Speaker 2: can for me, which I have no doubt you will.
Speaker 2: I want to see you so much.
Speaker 3: Like that's a beautiful letter.
Speaker 2: It's I know, oh, I know. Basically like she was
Speaker 2: worried that she would end up like sold down the
Speaker 2: river to Louisiana, where conditions were worse, and in fact
Speaker 2: that is what happens. I don't know. There might be
Speaker 2: more information in more of the books than what I
Speaker 2: got to about what happens to her after. But fortunately
Speaker 2: her husband starts a civil war which ends up ending slavery.
Speaker 2: So if she made it through a couple more years,
Speaker 2: so yeah, he's in. And then there's Osborne Anderson. Osborne
Speaker 2: Anderson was born on July twenty seventh, eighteen thirty, to
Speaker 2: a free black mixed race family in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: which is a bit west of Philly fun fact.
Speaker 1: When you said Osborne Anderson, my dog with excellent hearings,
Speaker 1: ears went up.
Speaker 2: She was like me, She was like, hello, this is
Speaker 2: who Anderson's named after. Probably I don't remember who Anderson's
Speaker 2: actually named after.
Speaker 1: She's named after Andy Anderson from him How to Lose
Speaker 1: a guy in ten Days.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, similar, very similar, similar, similar journeys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna start calling Anderson Osborne Anderson.
Speaker 1: Both my dogs are named after fictional movie characters because
Speaker 1: you can't really name anybody after a real a real person,
Speaker 1: because you.
Speaker 2: Know history and finding out that they're terrible people in
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well Anderson, he does good, wonderful. We might need
Speaker 1: to change her name origin story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just multiple name origins. There you go. Osborne
Speaker 2: Anderson grew up deep and Quaker territory, so deeply abolitionist area.
Speaker 2: Public schools there were integrated, and he got an education.
Speaker 2: Most sources I say I've read say he went to
Speaker 2: Oberlin College, which would have been a nice tie in
Speaker 2: for the story. This is the guy who probably didn't
Speaker 2: actually go to Oberlin College. I actually think that this
Speaker 2: is going to be our tends to exaggerate guy of
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 4: Tends to exaggerate his association with Oberlin College.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some other stuff too, but like he's still
Speaker 2: so cool that like and none of the things that
Speaker 2: he's like, I don't know whatever. Anyway, he didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: go to Oberlin.
Speaker 5: He might have.
Speaker 2: He was family friends with another free black family, the Shads,
Speaker 2: specifically a woman named Mary Ann Shadd who is around
Speaker 2: seven years older than Anderson. She was a school teacher until,
Speaker 2: like thousands of other people, she was like, fuck America
Speaker 2: and got the fuck to Canada. In eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: she moved to the sort of center of Black Canada,
Speaker 2: a naval town called Chatham, which is east of Detroit,
Speaker 2: where she set up a school, and in eighteen fifty
Speaker 2: three she became the first woman in Canada to publish
Speaker 2: a newspaper, also the first black woman in North America
Speaker 2: at all to publish a newspaper. She started a newspaper
Speaker 2: called The Provincial Freeman with the motto self reliance is
Speaker 2: the true road to independence. She and her contributors argued
Speaker 2: fiercely against begging white folks for funds. She traveled as
Speaker 2: a public speaker, something that women didn't really do at
Speaker 2: the time, let alone a black woman, but she did
Speaker 2: often write and publish under the name Mas Carrie carry
Speaker 2: as her married name. She married a guy. He wasn't
Speaker 2: important enough to include the story. She married a guy.
Speaker 2: He died right away, but she kept his name to
Speaker 2: avoid gender discrimination. She went by Maas Then her childhood
Speaker 2: friend Osborne Anderson, moved himself to Chatham somewhere along the way.
Speaker 2: He worked as a farmer for a bit that wasn't
Speaker 2: really his thing, and so we started working for the
Speaker 2: provincial Freeman, first as a sales agent, then as a
Speaker 2: printer and a contry and he wrote extensively, and he
Speaker 2: wrote against the send Black People to Africa movement as
Speaker 2: one of his main things that he wrote. There was
Speaker 2: kind of two competing, like I was saying we were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, but in Chatham there was like a
Speaker 2: It was hotly contested between these two positions of like
Speaker 2: do we go back to Africa do we stay in
Speaker 2: North America? And since this was in Canada, where so
Speaker 2: many black abolitionists lived and where the underground railroad often
Speaker 2: took people, Chatham became the logical place for folks to
Speaker 2: get together and figure out, So how exactly do we
Speaker 2: destroy that slave empire to our south? And since that
Speaker 2: was a good place to go do good plotting, John
Speaker 2: Brown went there. He'd cemented his reputation a few years
Speaker 2: prior in Kansas. But what happened in Kansas? In Chatham,
Speaker 2: in Harper's Ferry? And what about the man with the
Speaker 2: amazing name? We'll talk about them on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Wow, I can't wait to hear this name.
Speaker 2: It's so good. It's multiple good names. He has so
Speaker 2: many good names.
Speaker 1: I really, Rory, Rory, who edits the podcast, I really
Speaker 1: need us to start thinking about putting in like music
Speaker 1: sound effects for Magpie. She needs a cliffhanger music sound
Speaker 1: effects so badly.
Speaker 2: And what about the man with the amazing name? We'll
Speaker 2: talk about them on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: She needs a context sound effects so badly.
Speaker 4: Context context, context, context, context context.
Speaker 3: There it is there, it is. I feel use that.
Speaker 1: She simply deserves it. And Rory, I know you can,
Speaker 1: I know you can. Rory also edits a weird little Guys,
Speaker 1: so he is extremely talented at doing sound design music,
Speaker 1: so we could add it in here. Magpie, you deserve it.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, let's do it. Thank you, Rory. Even though
Speaker 2: we didn't shout you out this episode, I forgot everyone's
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 3: Hi to Rory.
Speaker 2: Hi, Rory, Hi, Hi Roy. And our theme music was
Speaker 2: written for us by own woman, bridge Is Todd. How
Speaker 2: can people find you on the internet where you probably
Speaker 2: aren't because there are no girls on the internet.
Speaker 4: Well, surprise, surprise, I actually do show up on the internet.
Speaker 4: You can find me at Blue Sky, where I am
Speaker 4: Bridget Todd. I think that's right. I'm not used to
Speaker 4: calling out my Blue Sky. Let me just double check
Speaker 4: that that is accurate.
Speaker 3: I hear you on that.
Speaker 2: And you don't want to be like dot BSk dot
Speaker 2: as what are you.
Speaker 4: Supposed to say? Are you supposed to say? Like your
Speaker 4: name dot like b Scott like you can. You'll figure
Speaker 4: it out. Yeah, you'll figure it out. You can listen
Speaker 4: to my podcast. There are no girls on the internet.
Speaker 4: On iHeartRadio, yeah.
Speaker 3: All the things.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, I have a Kickstarter going. You probably have
Speaker 2: heard me say that before, but that's what I talk
Speaker 2: about when I have one that's going on YELP. The
Speaker 2: third book in the Danielle Kaine series, The Immortal Choiral,
Speaker 2: holds every voice speaking of naming things very long things
Speaker 2: that then get mixed up. Is being kickstarted right now.
Speaker 2: We've already as of this recording done two and a
Speaker 2: half times our goal. But if we get enough money,
Speaker 2: everyone involved in publishing is going to get tattoos from it.
Speaker 2: That's one of our stretch goals. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe you'll like it. And also one of the cheapest
Speaker 2: thing is for fifteen dollars you get three audio books,
Speaker 2: which is the entire series, so hard to beat and
Speaker 2: what bargain. I know, we decided where this like small
Speaker 2: collective publisher, and it's really hard. Book prices haven't gone
Speaker 2: up yet to match the fact that paper prices have
Speaker 2: gone up, and so as an independent press, it's really
Speaker 2: hard for us to have competitive print book prices. And
Speaker 2: so what we decided is that our digital content is
Speaker 2: going to be kind of as cheap as we can
Speaker 2: get away with because we have to pay so much
Speaker 2: for print, which is our print books are still affordable,
Speaker 2: they're just not as affordable as we wish they were.
Speaker 2: Because we're a bunch of punks anyway, uh and listen
Speaker 2: to weird little guys and take care of each other
Speaker 2: because the world is a nightmare world. But it's not
Speaker 2: always because we can take care of each other.
Speaker 1: This is true.
Speaker 2: Okay, Bye, I see you Wednesday.
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