Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
Speaker 2: there's people trying to do good things. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy, and this is a rerun week. Everyone loves
Speaker 2: a rerun week. It's when I get to take a
Speaker 2: short break and run a rerun instead of doing another
Speaker 2: episode in the endless march of podcast production, which is
Speaker 2: endless anyway. I'm recording this on the fourth of July.
Speaker 2: And I am not a particularly patriotic person in general
Speaker 2: and in particular for the slave empire called the United
Speaker 2: States of America, and so I don't have a lot
Speaker 2: of stories that specifically talk about the ways in which
Speaker 2: It's something that's come up again and again on this
Speaker 2: show is the ways in which the American Revolution was
Speaker 2: honestly kind of a counter revolution. And so I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell a story, or rather rerun a story called
Speaker 2: the Battle of Negro Fort about Florida's Maroon community, and
Speaker 2: it is a story that gets into a little bit
Speaker 2: about the black loyalists. They're called the people who took
Speaker 2: the UK up on its offer, Britain up on its
Speaker 2: offer to fight for Britain in the American Revolution in
Speaker 2: order to gain their freedom and some of the things
Speaker 2: that those people then went on to do. So I
Speaker 2: hope you like the story and I'll be back next
Speaker 2: week with an episode that's probably not a rerun.
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff Podcast About the Stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today as
Speaker 2: my guest, is the host of every podcast, the Queen
Speaker 2: of Tube shaped Food, Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: I couldn't ask for a better introduction. It makes me
Speaker 3: sound so busy.
Speaker 1: And you're executive producing a new show as well, aren't you, Jamie.
Speaker 3: It's true. I'm trying to do an impression of Sophie
Speaker 3: and producing We the Unhoused that just launched on iHeart
Speaker 3: as well. It existed before, but now it's relaunching on iHeart.
Speaker 3: You should check it out.
Speaker 2: Well what's it about?
Speaker 3: Well it is, Thank you for asking bye it We
Speaker 3: the end Housed is a show that was originally created
Speaker 3: and is still written and hosted by Theo Henderson formally
Speaker 3: Unhoused person in la. He began the show back in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen as a way to show the issues that
Speaker 3: unhouse people in LA face from the perspective of unhoused
Speaker 3: people and took a year off and is now relaunching
Speaker 3: the show with iHeart. So our first episode is out
Speaker 3: now and covers Theo's experience being unhoused as well as
Speaker 3: just sort of talking about the show and interviewing someone
Speaker 3: who is a part of the reclaiming house initiatives in
Speaker 3: LA where unhoused people or low income people are reclaiming
Speaker 3: empty units in buildings that the city is just leaving
Speaker 3: empty for no reason. And then we have a new
Speaker 3: episode coming up that is all about the Unhoused Day
Speaker 3: of Remembrance that happens towards the end of the year
Speaker 3: where people who past who are unhoused and haven't gotten
Speaker 3: a proper memorial are given that memorial within their communities.
Speaker 3: So that's the show. It's been really really fun to
Speaker 3: work on and Theo's the best.
Speaker 2: I suspect that if you like this podcast, you will
Speaker 2: like that podcast.
Speaker 3: Can almost guarantee it, yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you don't, you should feel guilty about.
Speaker 3: You should really ask yourself, why, yeah, is it that
Speaker 3: you don't like me? Specifically, it might be that you
Speaker 3: don't like you won't hear my voice on Meet the House,
Speaker 3: so it's okay, okay, Well maybe I'll listen to it though, Yeah,
Speaker 3: check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really funny. Well, Sophie Licktman is our producer.
Speaker 3: That's me.
Speaker 2: That's that's me.
Speaker 1: I am the producer, the only producer except that one,
Speaker 1: except that one time that Jamie takes my face.
Speaker 3: That one happens from time to time, and we don't
Speaker 3: talk about it.
Speaker 2: No, like in I'm okay wait, I'm obsessed with the
Speaker 2: BBC version of Dracula that came out in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: that's on that Flix.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, we've talked about this.
Speaker 2: Yes, did we talk about it on the on air
Speaker 2: before this? Damn it?
Speaker 3: Say more, say more, No, don't back down.
Speaker 2: Well, there's some there's some face wearing in that and
Speaker 2: I rewatched. I rewatched it already. I I'm so into it.
Speaker 2: It is like written for me. It was like anyway whatever, okay, okay. Also,
Speaker 2: our audio engineers Ian Hi Ian Hi ian Nyan. Our
Speaker 2: theme music was written for us by unwoman Jamie. Have
Speaker 2: you ever heard of a place called Florida?
Speaker 3: Yes? With yes, And I guess I'll just leave it
Speaker 3: at that, yes, and I've spent some time there myself.
Speaker 2: I never thought I'd be doing an episode about Florida history.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, people want to hear Church. Yeah yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Just a little bit of my experience with Florida.
Speaker 2: Well, we're gonna talk about some more Florida history today.
Speaker 2: I never really expected that I would be doing any
Speaker 2: Florida history. No offense to some offense to the state
Speaker 2: of Florida. But don't worry. This story is set during
Speaker 2: the most riveting time period in American history, the time
Speaker 2: we all know and care so much about the war
Speaker 2: that everyone pays attention to in US history, the War
Speaker 2: of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 3: Oh, that is very Florida coated.
Speaker 2: For it is a Florida coated war. I see, you
Speaker 2: know more about the War of eighteen twelve than I did.
Speaker 3: Oh only because of Ghost Church. That was for I
Speaker 3: ended up learning one thousand times more because I think
Speaker 3: the only thing I do about the War of eighteen
Speaker 3: twelve is that it had most certainly happened and when
Speaker 3: then that was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's hard to forget when the War of
Speaker 2: eighteen twelve happened.
Speaker 3: That is one of its main features.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although you'd think it was like neatly constrained by
Speaker 2: the year eighteen twelve, but that's not the case.
Speaker 3: No, it also the drama.
Speaker 2: It also went on after it ended.
Speaker 3: Yeah, didn't it keep going until like fourteen fifteen?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they like some way. Well, part of the problem,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about it later. But part of the problem
Speaker 2: is that they signed the agent to settle it. But
Speaker 2: this was decades before the Transcontinental Telegraph. Oh, so they
Speaker 2: kept fighting for months before word came that the war
Speaker 2: was over.
Speaker 3: Brutal, brutal Okay, very war again, very War of eighteen
Speaker 3: twelve coded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is not a story. Don't worry, dear listeners,
Speaker 2: not a story about the War of eighteen twelve. Think
Speaker 2: of that as that as like the backdrop, like you're
Speaker 2: watching a period piece the romance.
Speaker 1: My working title for this for our dropbox folder is
Speaker 1: behind the War.
Speaker 2: Of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 3: Because I'm trash. Yeah, so I can't imagine that the
Speaker 3: War of eighteen twelve was the cool person who did
Speaker 3: cool things.
Speaker 2: I know, absolutely not. Although there are some surprise good
Speaker 2: guys in this story. I don't want to spoil it,
Speaker 2: but I'll give you a hint. Is the group of
Speaker 2: people that I am second least likely to ever call
Speaker 2: the good guys of an episode. Ooh well wait h
Speaker 2: it probably goes like Rhodesians and Nazis are number one,
Speaker 2: and then America or whatever. Okay, it's like the third
Speaker 2: or fourth least likely.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, I an American president. You're close.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, you're not that far off.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this week's story is like a lot of our stories.
Speaker 2: The big basic gist of it is like every beautiful
Speaker 2: moment in history ever, a group of people found community
Speaker 2: and solidarity amidst the horror movie that is most of history.
Speaker 2: They set about to live their lives and were eventually
Speaker 2: destroyed by this or that empire. It's a story worth
Speaker 2: hearing again and again because all of our lives eventually end,
Speaker 2: and some of our lives have these great, beautiful moments
Speaker 2: of freedom. And that's accidentally the cool people formula. This
Speaker 2: is the story of a place called negro Fort. You
Speaker 2: ever heard of negro Fort?
Speaker 3: I have not.
Speaker 2: I hadn't either. Besides when I first heard about the
Speaker 2: story and added it to my list of one day
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this.
Speaker 3: Story, and day is now.
Speaker 2: This story is a funny mess of identities. It is
Speaker 2: mostly about black ex slaves, some born in the US,
Speaker 2: some born in Africa, some born in Spanish colony, living
Speaker 2: in a Spanish colony while wrapping the British flag and
Speaker 2: the red coat. That's our surprise. The hero of the
Speaker 2: story is the British Empire.
Speaker 3: We wow, that is number three, isn't it? That even
Speaker 3: comes before American president. Wow, that's that's a that's a
Speaker 3: difficult chafe. I'm in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, don't worry. A American president before he's president
Speaker 2: is the main antagonist. Okay, my favorite folk punk band
Speaker 2: used to be named after or the bad guy president.
Speaker 3: As I said to.
Speaker 1: You before, when you told me and that you were
Speaker 1: doing this, I was like, there's I thought the only
Speaker 1: good British person was James Stout and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Honorey mentioned Jake Hanrahan.
Speaker 2: What is this so very exciting here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, James Madison. Now, I was like, that's not a bed.
Speaker 2: There's a band called AJJ that used to be called
Speaker 2: Andrew Jackson Jeehat and then they were like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: a bad name, and then they changed their name.
Speaker 3: It sure is. And that's also the name of an
Speaker 3: undert well, depending on who you an underrated Broadway musical Bloody,
Speaker 3: Bloody Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2: Oh I haven't seen this, but I mean it has
Speaker 2: a better at least it knows that this man is.
Speaker 3: Bad, better than AJJ. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we'll talk about all that later. So this
Speaker 2: story is also the story of a pattern we're going
Speaker 2: to see not in the show, but in history again
Speaker 2: and again, just one hundred years earlier than usual, because
Speaker 2: this is the story about the United States deciding that
Speaker 2: it is in its own best interests to go blow
Speaker 2: shit up in a foreign country without asking to defend
Speaker 2: the interests of wealthy, white supremacist Americans.
Speaker 3: Hmm, okay, it sounds like them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just the twentieth century, only it happened in
Speaker 2: the early nineteenth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also the twenty first. I mean it's
Speaker 3: like they're not over it.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, that nothing's gonna it. Basically, we came out
Speaker 2: the gate. It wasn't even fifty years after we became
Speaker 2: like thirty years after we became a republic when they
Speaker 2: did this shit.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just I've got my hand on my heart
Speaker 3: and I'm looking at my flag. Just I forgot it
Speaker 3: was an audio medium for a second.
Speaker 2: Well, don't worry. This is also a story that lets
Speaker 2: me do my favorite thing ever, which just talk shit
Speaker 2: on the American Revolution. Oh but because in order to
Speaker 2: talk about the War of eighteen twelve, being me, I
Speaker 2: have to say something about the revolution I wore. I've
Speaker 2: covered the rev Lutionary War a bunch of times on
Speaker 2: this show. Basically the lay of the rest. A lot
Speaker 2: of the propaganda we hear growing up in America the
Speaker 2: British Empire is really bad. All empires bad, British Empire
Speaker 2: among the worst. But in this case, England kind of
Speaker 2: managed to be more or less the lesser evil in
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary War, at least from the point of view
Speaker 2: of most black and Indigenous people in North America. One
Speaker 2: of the huge reasons for the War of Independence was
Speaker 2: because American settlers wanted to go west and steal more
Speaker 2: land from various indigenous nations, but the king didn't want
Speaker 2: to let them, so they throw a fit aka war.
Speaker 3: God, you can refer to every war as a little
Speaker 3: fit that someone is throwing to the detriment of millions,
Speaker 3: can't you, wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. Being a slave society is a huge
Speaker 2: military weakness, and this is something that doesn't come up enough.
Speaker 2: I think it has always been this case and it
Speaker 2: will always be the case. And it came up in
Speaker 2: the American Civil War. One of the many reasons of
Speaker 2: the South loss is because it had an economy based
Speaker 2: on sl When you have an economy based on slavery,
Speaker 2: you are sitting on a powder keg and you know it.
Speaker 2: And so now your primary motive is to make sure
Speaker 2: no one blows up this powder keg that you're sitting
Speaker 2: on top of, right, okay, because you can always have
Speaker 2: slaver volts and they will fuck you up, right. And
Speaker 2: when most of the people in your country aren't treated
Speaker 2: like people, it means most of the people in your
Speaker 2: country hate the fucking government. The British learned that during
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary War when they armed black and indigenous groups
Speaker 2: promising to free the black enslaved people from slavery and
Speaker 2: or get indigenous treaties respected. Britain famously lost the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2: That's why it's called the Revolutionary War, yep.
Speaker 3: But it did name the word till after it ended,
Speaker 3: which I think was kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you mean? Probably I wonder what the Firs.
Speaker 3: Are named after the outcome, not all of them. We're
Speaker 3: of eighteen.
Speaker 2: Twelve unclear, Yeah, well the worst northern gret never mind.
Speaker 2: In the end, it did work out. This deal that
Speaker 2: the Brits made did work out for the twenty thousand
Speaker 2: or so black men who fought for their freedom and
Speaker 2: were freed during the Revolutionary War by the British Empire.
Speaker 2: What does that have to do with Florida. Well, I'm
Speaker 2: glad I asked.
Speaker 3: Florida here, I'm here. I second that ask.
Speaker 2: Okay, great Florida spent most of its hit his history
Speaker 2: inhabited by indigenous people, but in fifteen thirteen the Spanish
Speaker 2: were like, oh, it's ours now, and they got the
Speaker 2: name from land of flowers, and it was kind of
Speaker 2: a forgotten colony for a while. Spain didn't really give
Speaker 2: a shit about Florida pretty much the entire time it
Speaker 2: had Florida maybe like right at the beginning, they were
Speaker 2: into it for a little while. Then we talked about
Speaker 2: this another time. You get the Seven Years War, which
Speaker 2: started in seventeen fifty six and then ran seven years,
Speaker 2: and this was World War zero two. European colonial powers
Speaker 2: were like, let's turn the entire world into a fucking battleground. Yeah, Florida.
Speaker 2: The end result for this is that the British got it.
Speaker 2: I'm actually curious when you were doing Ghost Church and
Speaker 2: you went to Florida and stuff you said you ended
Speaker 2: up learning a decent bit about Florida history. Is that
Speaker 2: because like, I feel like I don't learn about like
Speaker 2: Florida as like a previously Spanish controlled area much like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I granted all of this research was
Speaker 3: conducted nearly two years ago. Now, so grain of salt
Speaker 3: in what I recall off the top of my head.
Speaker 3: But yeah, when I was looking into this, I was
Speaker 3: researching this spiritualist camp in central Florida, and I wanted
Speaker 3: to because the spiritualist camp pulls from a lot of
Speaker 3: it is a majority white camp, that all of its
Speaker 3: architecture is different from a lot of what you see
Speaker 3: in central Florida. It looks like a New England town
Speaker 3: because it was it was sort of migrated from upstate
Speaker 3: New York. And in spiritualism, they pull really heavily from
Speaker 3: tropes surrounding American indigenous people, but seemed to have little
Speaker 3: to know contact with any indigenous community. And so I
Speaker 3: did some research into what that what the spiritualist community
Speaker 3: thought happened on the land they now live on, and
Speaker 3: then sort of contrasted that with what actually happened. And Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I think that it was a series of
Speaker 3: that I was not aware of, and I would be
Speaker 3: very curious because I didn't. I grew up in Massachusetts.
Speaker 3: I didn't have close contact with Florida. I'd be curious
Speaker 3: if Floridians grew up with this history at all. That
Speaker 3: there were a series of armed conflicts over the course
Speaker 3: of hundreds of years, and that the land in Florida
Speaker 3: was un you know, like undeveloped in the capitalistic sense
Speaker 3: for a really long time, and then it changed hands
Speaker 3: so many times in spite of not very much about
Speaker 3: the landscape changing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, see, Okay, So that actually brings up a
Speaker 2: really good point, which is that throughout the entire thing
Speaker 2: that we're going to be talking about, there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of people living in Florida. You know, this is
Speaker 2: not yet where old people go to die, right, and
Speaker 2: it's mostly actually under indigenous control through most of what
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about. But yeah, world War during
Speaker 2: World War zero, which no one calls it that except me.
Speaker 2: The Seven Years' War, Yeah, totally. The British get it.
Speaker 2: At the end of that war, It's part of their whole.
Speaker 2: You know. It was kind of a stalemate war and
Speaker 2: the British were like, all right, we're going to take this,
Speaker 2: and Spain actually paid to get almost all their people
Speaker 2: out of there, which I think this is now my
Speaker 2: conjecture is part of why there's not a ton of
Speaker 2: continuity like culturally or anything like that, is that most
Speaker 2: of the Spanish colonists were uh transported out when Britain
Speaker 2: took control. The brit split it into two colonies. You've
Speaker 2: got West Florida, which is the current day Panhandle, and
Speaker 2: then the southern trunk of a bunch of current days
Speaker 2: states west of it almost to New Orleans. And then
Speaker 2: you've got East Florida, which is the actual peninsula Florida
Speaker 2: we all know in.
Speaker 3: Love and love and love and love were absolute.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I almost feel bad, Like I feel like everyone
Speaker 2: makes now I hate Florida because of the fucking piece
Speaker 2: of shit fascist who hates everyone of marginalized identities who
Speaker 2: rules the place.
Speaker 3: But people live there, like marginalized people live there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like even the like the famous
Speaker 2: like Florida man thing. I am now completely speaking out
Speaker 2: of a headline I read a while ago, so like,
Speaker 2: but the famous like Florida man fights the drunk alligator
Speaker 2: while on crack or whatever. That whole thing I think
Speaker 2: comes to something to do with like a law where
Speaker 2: like newspapers are allowed to port more of that shit
Speaker 2: than like most states or something interesting.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then now everyone it is absolutely true and
Speaker 2: I totally am remembering this very clearly from an article
Speaker 2: I read a year ago.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm, well, I mean, yeah, I feel like that
Speaker 3: is like a very common and I've heard it with
Speaker 3: friends and just like people I follow who are from Florida,
Speaker 3: seems to be like a general complaint with the way
Speaker 3: that like it's it's whatever, one of the easiest states
Speaker 3: to dunk on. Yeah, but there are so many Like
Speaker 3: the reason that we hate all the fascist laws that
Speaker 3: exist there is because marginalized people live there and not
Speaker 3: exactly not talked about quite as frequently. And then occasionally
Speaker 3: you see a Florida Man headline and it gets you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and see, I would be very proud of that
Speaker 2: part of it.
Speaker 3: If I'm yeah, I'd be like, look at we're we're
Speaker 3: a sturdy people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, we're not dead. No, So it's now a
Speaker 2: British colony, and Britain is like, look they're in there,
Speaker 2: like good guy, arc. I don't know entirely why. They're
Speaker 2: basically like, look, you all don't have to pay taxes.
Speaker 2: We just kind of want you to live there, and
Speaker 2: you don't have to pay taxes because you're not making
Speaker 2: any profit yet. Once you start making a profit, we'll
Speaker 2: revisit it, but for now, you're fine. Just do your thing.
Speaker 2: So basically the whole taxation without representation thing that the
Speaker 2: rest of the colonies did, Florida didn't give a shit.
Speaker 2: They were like, oh, no taxation, no representation, no problem.
Speaker 2: You know, we got none of it. It's fine whatever
Speaker 2: in us issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they didn't join the rebellion against the British and
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary War, and by and large they were loyalists. Okay, well,
Speaker 2: by and large they were indigenous. Indigenous people outnumbered the
Speaker 2: British colonists by about three to one during the time
Speaker 2: of the Revolutionary War. Of those indigenous groups, most notably,
Speaker 2: you've got the Muscogee people, who are often called the Creek,
Speaker 2: which is a large and diverse group of different peoples
Speaker 2: who were formed in the Muscogee Creek Confederacy. And then
Speaker 2: you've got future friend of the pod, the Seminoles, who
Speaker 2: are more recent group of people basically a bunch of
Speaker 2: folks who really really didn't want to give up the
Speaker 2: land of white people and included a lot of black
Speaker 2: folk as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a lot of I mean, I guess, and
Speaker 3: that's coming off of this period of time. A lot
Speaker 3: of what I was looking at were the Seminole Wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they come right, the first Seminole Wars like
Speaker 2: kind of the end of most of today's story. And
Speaker 2: actually the thing that we're going to talk about kind
Speaker 2: of kicks off the Seminole Wars.
Speaker 3: Ooh okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eventually I'm going to cover the Seminoles because they're
Speaker 2: fucking cool and interesting. Well, specifically, you know, the way
Speaker 2: in which they resisted US imperialism. Basically, their whole deal
Speaker 2: was like We're going to to the swamps and the
Speaker 2: deepest woods and fuck up anyone who tries to colonize us.
Speaker 2: So Florida, they backed the British during the Revolutionary War,
Speaker 2: but then during that war, the Spanish were like, what
Speaker 2: if Florida was ours again? So they just went ahead
Speaker 2: and took it, and Spain has Florida for the whole
Speaker 2: of the story we're talking about today. Okay, much like you,
Speaker 2: dear listener, also have available to you the entire story today,
Speaker 2: sweet sweet opportunities to buy objects and or services. I'm
Speaker 2: with you from the sponsors of today's show, who we
Speaker 2: all wholeheartedly agree with on every issue.
Speaker 3: I just got off a call with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this show brought to you by big sponsor.
Speaker 2: Here's what a big sponsor has to say, and we're back.
Speaker 2: I hope you're enjoying those services and goods.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I've got I've got. Oh, this is kind
Speaker 3: of a fun experiment. Whatever you just heard advertise to you.
Speaker 3: I currently have underneath my table. Whatever it is, it's
Speaker 3: there and it feels great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm jealous because I didn't get to it
Speaker 2: in time.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. But next it's a limited time offer.
Speaker 2: Next one I'm going to get. So okay, what's next
Speaker 2: on our context list for today's story? Slavery. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you knew this, but the founders of this
Speaker 2: nation were slavers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard, I've I've heard about.
Speaker 2: It, yeah, or slave owners. Whatever I think owns people
Speaker 2: is enough to get you the title slaver in my book. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them specifically did the buying and
Speaker 2: sell and people are still like, oh, slave owner, and
Speaker 2: I'm like whatever, fuck all these people are not even
Speaker 2: any redundant. Yeah, yeah, okay, But then there's weird nuance
Speaker 2: that is going to relate to today's story, not nuance
Speaker 2: that makes anyone involve a better person. To be clear,
Speaker 2: there's just a bunch of different types of white supremacists
Speaker 2: who are trying to run the country in the late
Speaker 2: eighteenth century during the Revolutionary warn't after it. Most of
Speaker 2: the Founding Fathers were this weird variety that actually, like
Speaker 2: later Southern Confederate types, disagreed with very actively because the
Speaker 2: Founding fathers, most of them are like a ton of
Speaker 2: them owned slaves and they were white supremacists, but they
Speaker 2: were interested in the gradual abolition of slavery because they
Speaker 2: wanted a white only society.
Speaker 3: Oh god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like, we gotta kick every all the
Speaker 2: black people out of here.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, new type of slavery just dropped.
Speaker 3: That's like a galaxy brain racist. That's okay, okay.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's instead of it being like a two,
Speaker 2: instead of it being like a more racist than the
Speaker 2: previous racist, it's like two orbiting stars of racism. You know.
Speaker 2: The galaxy is a binary system.
Speaker 3: What's clear is that no one is right and or
Speaker 3: anywhere close. God that is mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, even like George Washington and shit was one,
Speaker 2: even though he's like the famous horror movie teeth made
Speaker 2: out of the teeth ripped out of his enslaved people's faces.
Speaker 2: Even he was like kind of like, oh, slavery is
Speaker 2: like not the best, but really, I mean, obviously white
Speaker 2: people and black people put it together. So the Articles
Speaker 2: of Confederation, because we were confederacy for a while before
Speaker 2: we became a republic, didn't make any rules about slavery.
Speaker 2: That was up to the states. Overall, slavery was starting
Speaker 2: to go out of style in the entire Western world.
Speaker 2: The northern states started voting for abolition really early on.
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania didn't even wait till the war with England was over.
Speaker 2: They passed gradual abolition where all children were born free,
Speaker 2: no more enslaved people could be trafficked into the state,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the Northern abolitionists, it's like, not
Speaker 2: all of them were the type of white supremacist I
Speaker 2: was just talking about, but like that was among the
Speaker 2: reasons why people would argue for either at whatever.
Speaker 3: It's all messy, okay, Okay, Yeah, I mean it's like
Speaker 3: there's always tricky talking about Northern abolitionists because they feel
Speaker 3: like it just ends up like painting them with the
Speaker 3: very broad brush of like the good guys, when it's
Speaker 3: like there were so many absurd shades of gray, and
Speaker 3: then even if they were working in the right direction,
Speaker 3: it was often not for the right reason.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll just yeah, shit, absolutely for every
Speaker 2: John Brown. You have, all the people's names I don't
Speaker 2: remember because they're bad people.
Speaker 3: That's an other show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good people's show, Yeah, exactly. The South,
Speaker 2: of course, was famously very into slavery. Even during the Confederation,
Speaker 2: Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which was like, no slavery
Speaker 2: north and west of the Ohio River. The Northwest Territories
Speaker 2: does not mean what we would call Northwest. It's like
Speaker 2: Ohio and fucking up into Minnesota and shit, and by
Speaker 2: the time people were writing the Constitution, most people wanted
Speaker 2: to end the transatlantic slave trade. So there was this
Speaker 2: like deal in the Constitution where it was like, all right, well,
Speaker 2: we're not gonna do it for twenty years at least,
Speaker 2: And it was basically all the northern states were like, fuck,
Speaker 2: if we don't like, if we don't allow for some slavery,
Speaker 2: the South isn't going to join the union because that
Speaker 2: tension was there since the very founding of the United States.
Speaker 2: The Constitution itself was going to mention slavery openly, but
Speaker 2: then it didn't because, as slave owner James Madison put it,
Speaker 2: it was wrong to quote it in the Constitution that
Speaker 2: there could be property in men. Basically, they are They
Speaker 2: all knew that. They were hypocrites who were like gonna
Speaker 2: burn in hell for all eternity because they preached about
Speaker 2: all men being created equal and that enslaving people. They
Speaker 2: all fucking knew it, and they all still fucking did it.
Speaker 3: I hate and yet we have a million boring ass
Speaker 3: movies and plays about how right they were to say
Speaker 3: what they said, And you never see the note session
Speaker 3: where James Madison is like, now, hold on, yeah, fellas. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just noticed there's a bit of a chafe in
Speaker 3: one of these. Yeah, one of these, and so it's
Speaker 3: just a lie biomission. God.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the Constitution authorized the federal government to suppress
Speaker 2: slave insurrections, and it also said that free states couldn't
Speaker 2: free runaways. These were like the concessions that they were making, right,
Speaker 2: The government wasn't allowed to ban the transatlantic slave trade
Speaker 2: for at least twenty years. The Constitution was bad enough
Speaker 2: that seventy years later, in eighteen fifty four, the abolitionist
Speaker 2: William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution and
Speaker 2: called it, quote a covenant with death and an agreement
Speaker 2: with hell woo. And I really just threw that in
Speaker 2: because I had a fucking sick line.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really metals.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The nad As pro slavery founding fathers were the
Speaker 2: white supremacist They wanted the white Republic, and then they
Speaker 2: of course wanted to take all the land from the
Speaker 2: indigenous people. And whatever the reason I'm bringing all this
Speaker 2: shit up, Partly it's because I enjoy talking shit on
Speaker 2: the founding of the United States, but also because it's
Speaker 2: important to understand that slavery was already a divisive issue
Speaker 2: right from the start of this country. During the end
Speaker 2: of the eighteenth century, slavery in the western world was
Speaker 2: on a decline. The US South was fucking obsessed with
Speaker 2: buying and selling people, and they were kind of an outlier,
Speaker 2: and this, of course had disastrous consequences for everyone on
Speaker 2: the South's obsession with the expansion of slavery, the peculiar institution,
Speaker 2: including this had very negative influences on the heroes of
Speaker 2: this week's story. So, while slavery is starting to become
Speaker 2: a little bit less popular, over all, the Southern plantation
Speaker 2: slave society is growing and they're getting like more and more,
Speaker 2: like no, this is who we fucking are, right, It
Speaker 2: is like, we're so cool. The Louisiana Purchase of eighteen
Speaker 2: oh three, when the which is what's kind of in
Speaker 2: the name in the air eighteen o three, the United
Speaker 2: States purchase Louisiana. Yeah, it opened up a ton of
Speaker 2: land into the court of King Cotton, as it was
Speaker 2: called at the time. And so they were like, man,
Speaker 2: we're not allowed to do this up north. Where else
Speaker 2: can we go? And then they were like, oh, hey,
Speaker 2: Florida what's up? Can we can we show up there
Speaker 2: and be more of an evil empire?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's Florida even like within the world of the South,
Speaker 3: feels like for hundreds of years has been its own
Speaker 3: thing in terms of conversation, Like, it's obviously very much
Speaker 3: a part of the South, but when you think of
Speaker 3: the South, Florida it's still at least to be feels
Speaker 3: like its own thing and has always been treated that way.
Speaker 2: And this like I finally understand why after learning more
Speaker 2: about the history of Florida, you know, because the rest
Speaker 2: of the South was like we're the South for like
Speaker 2: fucking hundreds of years, right, and then Florida was like
Speaker 2: there's a couple swamps here and some traders.
Speaker 3: Right, and then like that, the you know, industrial developed
Speaker 3: sense didn't develop an identity until far later than like
Speaker 3: most places did. And so it's just and that's why
Speaker 3: it was like a sitting duck for you know, Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse to like raw fuck it at that? Yep, I
Speaker 3: guess I stand by that sentence. Why not?
Speaker 2: What could go wrong? The weird timeline we're in is
Speaker 2: where Disney and fucking what's that asshole's name? Disantas are
Speaker 2: like at each other, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, and you're just like, I don't huh.
Speaker 2: I've played enough risk that I know that what happens
Speaker 2: here is you encourage both of them and then you
Speaker 2: stand back and wait.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just wait for bob Iger and DeSantis to get
Speaker 3: into a slap fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting. For so long, my friend told me this, and
Speaker 3: then I realized a long time later that it was
Speaker 3: not It was obviously not true, but that bob Iger's
Speaker 3: name was said like Bonie Verar because it looks the same,
Speaker 3: so I thought it was Bobi Gaar for a while.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: Wait, I can't even I don't know how to spell
Speaker 2: any of these people's names.
Speaker 3: It's fine, and we could keep moving.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sorry Sophie's doing that. Margaret didn't get a
Speaker 2: reference space.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it, and part of our audience will
Speaker 1: think it's really funny.
Speaker 3: But you don't need to comfort me. It's okay. It
Speaker 3: didn't work. It didn't work. I liked it.
Speaker 1: You're doing great, sweetie.
Speaker 3: All right, just keep telling me the story.
Speaker 2: All right. So Spanish Florida is like, fuck, we really
Speaker 2: don't want to become the States because some of the
Speaker 2: people who lived in that area include Indigenous people who
Speaker 2: weren't a big fan of the US's whole genocide the
Speaker 2: indigenous people, policy creole people who were generally free Catholic
Speaker 2: descendants of Spanish and Black parentage who weren't excited about
Speaker 2: a strict racial caste system showing up and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you know, being at the bottom of it.
Speaker 2: And British loyalists who you know, branded as traders, so
Speaker 2: they weren't really stoked. They weren't like, oh, man, the
Speaker 2: US to come on down.
Speaker 3: M h.
Speaker 2: The southern slave owners, though, were like, you know, rubbing
Speaker 2: their hands together and salivating at all the potential plantation land.
Speaker 3: Sounds like them.
Speaker 2: Spanish Florida was still a slave society, but it was
Speaker 2: one wherein slave people had a lot more rights. Like like,
Speaker 2: it's so hard to explain because like often slavery apologists
Speaker 2: will be like, oh, everywhere heead slavery. It's like that's true,
Speaker 2: and also not a good excuse. No, I know, I know, right,
Speaker 2: But US chattel slavery was worse. It was its own
Speaker 2: fucked up thing that everyone was like, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: kind of fucked up. Can we keep getting away with us,
Speaker 2: you know, and eventually.
Speaker 3: We write this down that we're doing this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, So I mean, like, like fuck
Speaker 2: slave societies absolutely in Spanish Florida, in slave people had
Speaker 2: basic property and marriage rights and they could buy themselves
Speaker 2: out of slavery. So a lot of people ran the
Speaker 2: fuck away from the evil empire of the United States
Speaker 2: into the Spanish territories all the time and like to
Speaker 2: have a chance at a better life. And you wind
Speaker 2: up with a lot of maroon societies, which are in
Speaker 2: this case it's both black people integrated into seminal society
Speaker 2: but also independent maroon societies. And if you really want
Speaker 2: to get into and I barely do, but I feel
Speaker 2: like it'd be lied by a mission to not mention
Speaker 2: this if you really want to get into the blurriness
Speaker 2: of the gradiation of slavery. The seminal society was also
Speaker 2: a slave society, but it was different even than the
Speaker 2: Spanish slave society. By and large, Seminole slavery was closer
Speaker 2: to serfdom. People lived their lives and then gave some
Speaker 2: percentage of their crops to their owners. It is real mess.
Speaker 2: See both the indigenous seminoles and the black seminoles believed
Speaker 2: that they had to work together to destroy the US
Speaker 2: in order to destroy slavery and colonization all in one go.
Speaker 2: And basically we're like, oh, we're gonna get rid of
Speaker 2: slavery once we destroy the United States. That is I
Speaker 2: want to do so much more reading about the seminole
Speaker 2: and all that, but that is the you know, gist
Speaker 2: of what I've read.
Speaker 3: I only got the tip of the iceberg. And it's
Speaker 3: fascinating and like you're speaking to your point, messy as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have a lot of times where indigenous
Speaker 2: seminoles and black seminoles will fight alongside one another and
Speaker 2: defend each other, and like, you know, it is a
Speaker 2: a thing whatever, moral relativism whatever.
Speaker 3: Okay, more more an hour and moral relativism.
Speaker 2: Go and that's it. That's the end of the show.
Speaker 2: So maroon societies, Maroon societies are this very common phenomenon
Speaker 2: across the New World of different society. I had not
Speaker 2: heard of marine society, so I was a grown ass adult.
Speaker 2: I'm curious if you had.
Speaker 3: I had not known.
Speaker 2: So there's this very common phenomenon across the New World
Speaker 2: of Different societies where people escaping slavery end up setting
Speaker 2: up their own resistance societies, Like all over the fucking place,
Speaker 2: there's ones that lasted hundreds of years, you know, you
Speaker 2: havely Yeah, Like we've covered a couple of them. They'll
Speaker 2: be called different things in different languages. Colombo is another
Speaker 2: word for this style of society, and in English it
Speaker 2: usually gets called maroon society. The most famous one of
Speaker 2: the United States that I really want to cover at
Speaker 2: some point, that we touched on in our one of
Speaker 2: our episodes a long ast time ago, was the Great
Speaker 2: Dismal Swamp in northeast North Carolina, where like a ton
Speaker 2: of people lived for hundreds of years resisting colonization, and
Speaker 2: maroon societies were often they were like mostly black and
Speaker 2: runaway enslaved folks, but there was also like poor white
Speaker 2: people often would end up in them because they were like, well,
Speaker 2: fuck the society I'm from. That one gets played up
Speaker 2: a little bit by like white radicals like me. You
Speaker 2: get really excited about that part. And then also indigenous
Speaker 2: folks who were like putting in their lot together, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then there was like huge one that we covered
Speaker 2: in an episode we did about Brazil. We're going to
Speaker 2: cover more of them. I fucking they're amazing, and I
Speaker 2: just didn't know about it. I was just like, oh,
Speaker 2: people who were enslaved, it sucked and they had no
Speaker 2: options except to goes or the white people in the north.
Speaker 3: Right, right right, which is like, I mean, whatever, the
Speaker 3: story we learned a bagillion times about, like, well, what
Speaker 3: is the advantage of teaching get that way?
Speaker 2: It's obvious? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So today we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about a maroon society, a really particular one, not
Speaker 2: a very long lived one, but the largest one inside
Speaker 2: what is now the United States. Spoilers in Florida. You
Speaker 2: probably figured that part out. And in order to talk
Speaker 2: about it, we're gonna talk about the War of eighteen twelve.
Speaker 2: But before we talk about the War of eighteen twelve,
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about one hundred and twelve one hundred
Speaker 2: eighteen oney, eight hundred and twelve things that you can
Speaker 2: buy for me for Christmas. Because all of these ads
Speaker 2: I want you, the listener to buy for me for Christmas.
Speaker 3: I've got my feet steeped in the last thing we advertise,
Speaker 3: and I just know that the next one is going
Speaker 3: to be delicious.
Speaker 2: Mmm mmmmmm sweet.
Speaker 3: I hope it's a car.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love when I get ads about how you
Speaker 2: should buy new cars all the time and new phones.
Speaker 2: If you don't have a new phone every year, then
Speaker 2: you're a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: I hope it's not a car, because, as we've establish,
Speaker 1: it's under your desk right now. And if that's under
Speaker 1: your desk right now, I'm really concerned.
Speaker 3: It's under my desk, and I'm going to eat it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, concern continues.
Speaker 2: Here's the ads, and we're back. The War of eighteen
Speaker 2: twelve is also known as the War. I probably took
Speaker 2: a test on in eighth grade, but I don't remember
Speaker 2: anything except that the Brits burned down Washington. Or if
Speaker 2: you live in Maryland, you might know it as the
Speaker 2: reason we have really shitty license plates. Ooh yeah, we
Speaker 2: didn't used to have American flags in our license plates,
Speaker 2: but then at some point people were like War of
Speaker 2: eighteen twelve, and then we had really an annoying license plate.
Speaker 3: Where's the War of eighteen twelve? Hive came to the
Speaker 3: license plates specifically, but interesting to know I've seen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: my family member lives in Maryland and I never understood it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maryland also has the really nice ones, the like
Speaker 2: Save of the Bay. One has like a heron on it.
Speaker 2: But there's that northern well of.
Speaker 3: A state bird. Love a state bird and a license
Speaker 3: plate more.
Speaker 2: Of that well Maryland mostly. I think I've already told
Speaker 2: people I'm from Maryland, mostly famous for having crabs on
Speaker 2: your driver's license.
Speaker 3: Mhm, I mean like you cornered the market on crab culture.
Speaker 3: I found out recently that my my kitten was I
Speaker 3: adopted him, and they gave me like the cross streets
Speaker 3: of where he'd been found, and he was found slash
Speaker 3: born in front of a chain restaurant called Oh My Crab, Like,
Speaker 3: oh my God, but crab for some reason, Oh.
Speaker 1: That actually really fits.
Speaker 3: And really it resonated with me. I'm like, I feel
Speaker 3: like he's got oh my crab, you know, energy, he
Speaker 3: carried it with him, he does, he does. I love
Speaker 3: that for him, my crab. I'm to try to get
Speaker 3: that into my daily language.
Speaker 2: You should just actually, every time that the word God
Speaker 2: is in something, you should replace it with crab.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I need to stop taking the name of God in vain.
Speaker 2: So crab damned tam Denoyd.
Speaker 3: That's really like Grandma. That's some Grandma, shit.
Speaker 2: These crabless heathens, all right. The War of eighteen twelve,
Speaker 2: the short version, the US got real mad at Britain,
Speaker 2: so they declared war in eighteen twelve. Yeah. Why they
Speaker 2: were mad is something that's fun to argue about. There's
Speaker 2: two main perspectives, the main American perspective and the one
Speaker 2: that actually probably is a little bit. It's like the
Speaker 2: main one that you hear about, and it's a little
Speaker 2: bit the more one. Probably it was about American honor
Speaker 2: because Britain kept fucking with American ships and they were
Speaker 2: restricting trade, and they were pressed ganging American soldier American
Speaker 2: sailors into being in the British navy, which, to be fair,
Speaker 2: is reason enough to go to war. Stealing people and
Speaker 2: forcing them to do labor is always reason enough to
Speaker 2: go to war against anyone who would do such a thing.
Speaker 2: That's my subtle anyway. So the other reason is that
Speaker 2: Britain was making it really hard for Americans to steep,
Speaker 2: keep stealing land from indigenous groups, and also the Americans
Speaker 2: wanted to steal Canada.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Specifically, the US was trying to hard to balance the
Speaker 2: like slave and free states as it expanded and the
Speaker 2: South had just got in Louisiana. So the North, it's
Speaker 2: only fair the North should get to stay, Canada should.
Speaker 3: Get to stook it. And I understand that this was
Speaker 3: a legitimate plan, but it just does sound like when
Speaker 3: Grew from Despicable Me describes wanting to steal the Moon.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, sure, you're gonna steal Canada.
Speaker 2: Best of luck. Yeah, No, it like, why would you
Speaker 2: take your own hat? It makes no sense exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you'll like this part. One of the reasons the South
Speaker 2: was against annexing Canada is that it meant not only
Speaker 2: would it mean more free states, but it would mean
Speaker 2: more Catholics.
Speaker 3: You know, I were always i, Margaret, I feel like
Speaker 3: you always find a random w for Catholics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, why not. Yeah, if I can find
Speaker 2: somebody who died in tuberculosis, or I can find some
Speaker 2: like anti papist nonsense.
Speaker 3: And so you know, there's got to be a fair
Speaker 3: amount of overlap on that event diagram.
Speaker 2: That's true. Yeah, And so the British they were also
Speaker 2: doing this thing that pissed off the US. They were
Speaker 2: supporting future friend of the pod To Cumsa and his
Speaker 2: confederacy and I want to do more about him. At
Speaker 2: some point, he was one of the first indigenous leaders
Speaker 2: to say, let's create one big confederation in resistance to
Speaker 2: the American Empire. So he like he spent the year
Speaker 2: of eighteen eleven traveling around the United States in the
Speaker 2: area west of the United States trying to build an
Speaker 2: anti American confederation. And one of his sick quotes when
Speaker 2: he was talking about how to deal with the US,
Speaker 2: he demanded war now, war always, war on the living,
Speaker 2: war on the dead. Who medalist fuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was like, that's another that's like a rob
Speaker 3: zombie character.
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, And so he went around he was like, look,
Speaker 2: if we do this, Britain in Spain will arm us
Speaker 2: and then we can go fuck up the Americans. He
Speaker 2: only partially succeeded because the US had been not all
Speaker 2: indigenous groups were against the United States, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: British support for his war on the US was part
Speaker 2: of why the US went to war with Britain. So,
Speaker 2: for whatever reasons, in eighteen twelve the US declared war.
Speaker 2: England was like, yeah, whatever, sure, because they were busy
Speaker 2: dealing with a Napoleon and a war in Europe. But
Speaker 2: then when the US invaded Canada, it was still British.
Speaker 2: So Britain was like, fine, I guess we have a
Speaker 2: war whatever if you really want one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really really teen girl about it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely stop. Yeah, they were like could you wait?
Speaker 3: But fine, I'll sacrifice some of my own citizens and
Speaker 3: murder hundreds of thousands of others.
Speaker 2: Uh. Yeah. Well, mostly they first just armed indigenous and
Speaker 2: black groups, which is like both like noble.
Speaker 3: And forgetting that they're the keep forgetting that they're like
Speaker 3: not the bad guys here.
Speaker 2: I know, all right, I know, but it's like all right,
Speaker 2: it's still like part of the reason that they're arming
Speaker 2: all these people is that they don't want to fight
Speaker 2: the war, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Decums have died in the Battle of the Thames on
Speaker 2: October eighteen thirteen as part of the War of eighteen twelve,
Speaker 2: and once again, like last time, Britain looked at the
Speaker 2: US and was like, all right, how do we fuck
Speaker 2: up America? Oh right, they're on a fucking powder keg.
Speaker 2: Let's give the guns to runaway slaves and to indigenous people.
Speaker 2: And in the spring of eighteen fourteen, Napoleon gave up
Speaker 2: the French throne and some shit that I haven't researched
Speaker 2: enough yet that everyone who's listening knows more about than me,
Speaker 2: and Britain was able to turn his attention to the
Speaker 2: US War. They invaded and burned the US capital and
Speaker 2: the White House, which wasn't called the White House yet
Speaker 2: it was called like the President's Mansion or whatever the fuck,
Speaker 2: and black fugitive ex slaves were their allies in that
Speaker 2: they acted as scouts, spies, soldiers, sailors, and some of
Speaker 2: them did the burning, which is cool as fuck. Fuck Britain,
Speaker 2: but fuck the US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're really presented with the real trick heutory of villains.
Speaker 3: I'm pleased. Whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when people fled slavery and crossed into British
Speaker 2: controlled territory during the war, which thousands and thousands of
Speaker 2: people did, the British helped women and children get passage
Speaker 2: to Bermuda and to other British colonies to live free.
Speaker 2: Black men were given a choice. They could either go
Speaker 2: with everyone else, or they could stay and fight, and
Speaker 2: if they did, they would be given a red coat
Speaker 2: and a musket and they would be part of integrated
Speaker 2: military units, which was not something that anyone else was
Speaker 2: fucking thinking about at that point, right, and given a chance.
Speaker 2: Some of them were non integrated units, but some of
Speaker 2: them were integrated units. We'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 2: about that, okay, And given a chance to shoot the
Speaker 2: people who were trying to own them. And so a
Speaker 2: lot of people were like, yeah, that sounds fucking great.
Speaker 2: Give me a fucking gun. I want to go kill
Speaker 2: these slavers.
Speaker 3: Never mind this red coat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a gun. It's the point, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but okay, Well, actually, in a weird way, the legitimacy
Speaker 2: of the red coat meant a lot to people, a
Speaker 2: lot of them. It was like it was kind of
Speaker 2: a you can't fuck with us. We're under the union
Speaker 2: jack now and like oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like sheltered by a larger like infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because those white Americans are the most deluded people
Speaker 2: in the history of the world. The British were like, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, are you mad that we stole your property.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, if you approach under a flag
Speaker 2: of truce, we will give you a chance to personally
Speaker 2: plead your case and try to get your runaway slaves
Speaker 2: to come back to you. So and this happened all
Speaker 2: over the United States and people kept doing it. All
Speaker 2: of these slave owners were like, well, I'm nice to Ted,
Speaker 2: so of course Ted will come back to me. And
Speaker 2: so they all went under a flag of truce and
Speaker 2: they were like, come on, Bud, remember those good times.
Speaker 2: Oh my, you will be shocked to know that at
Speaker 2: least in a few places, a few like like one
Speaker 2: percent of people or something or less were like fine,
Speaker 2: fuck it. But at least in the particular case where
Speaker 2: they did it, in like Maryland, Virginia, DC area or whatever, like,
Speaker 2: not a single person voluntarily went back to slavery, and
Speaker 2: it no kidding that they kept trying it is the
Speaker 2: most indicative of how deluded people are ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, or just likeugh, god, that's so depressing and
Speaker 3: embarrassing and just like you because that is just like
Speaker 3: proof positive that I don't know. It feels like almost
Speaker 3: an answer to James Madison being like, well, guys, we
Speaker 3: shouldn't mention it, we shouldn't codify slavery because of what
Speaker 3: we said earlier. It's like less self awareness than that
Speaker 3: of like truly taking the time to delude yourself into
Speaker 3: thinking you are both a slave owner and a good person. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that like you're such a good person as a
Speaker 3: bad person that that Oh god, no, that's so embarrassing.
Speaker 3: But also like, ugh, I would love I would just
Speaker 3: love to read the journy in an entry after like
Speaker 3: you won't believe what happened today.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them. The main book about Negro
Speaker 2: Force called The Battle of Negro Force, and it's a
Speaker 2: really good book, and it has a lot of quotes
Speaker 2: of like the because a lot of the specific specifics
Speaker 2: we know about is people later writing and being like, oh,
Speaker 2: I went today and tried to get ted back, or
Speaker 2: or it's Ted writing being like, oh, the guy came
Speaker 2: back or whatever and tried to get me. I want
Speaker 2: to watch like the reality TV show not but set
Speaker 2: then like not obviously recreating the situation. Yeah. So part
Speaker 2: of the reason that Britain was so eager to free
Speaker 2: folks in the US is their own honor. Britain had
Speaker 2: always seen itself as like the bastion of liberty, which
Speaker 2: is funny and ironic. But then after the US, funny
Speaker 2: is the US? Yeah, But after the US Revolution, the
Speaker 2: US was getting the reputation of being the bastion of liberty,
Speaker 2: and so Britain loved pointing out that they're a slave society.
Speaker 2: Had just been like, you know, who's unfree in your territory?
Speaker 2: All of the following people, you pieces of shit. And
Speaker 2: in the South during the War of eighteen twelve, the
Speaker 2: ostensibly neutral Spanish were like, you know, we hate the US. Anyway,
Speaker 2: you can set up a fort in our territory with
Speaker 2: which to plan an attack on the US South. And
Speaker 2: so the British did, and they set up the Core
Speaker 2: of Colonial Marines, which is kind of our There's like
Speaker 2: two cool people this week. One of them is the
Speaker 2: Core of Colonial Marines, and one of them is the
Speaker 2: Negro Fort, which is the people who remained. But we'll
Speaker 2: talk about that later. The corp of Colonial Marines was
Speaker 2: a multi racial army of black, white, and indigenous troops.
Speaker 2: I read in one place that it was all white officers,
Speaker 2: but then in another source I read about at least
Speaker 2: one black guy we're going to talk about later, who
Speaker 2: was a lieutenant. So I think that the top ranks
Speaker 2: were white people, but there were black officers. And they
Speaker 2: built this big, old fucking fort together, and they picked
Speaker 2: a site called Prospect Bluff, lisas was called an English
Speaker 2: and it's at the mouth of the apalachic Cola River,
Speaker 2: which is totally a river I had definitely heard of before,
Speaker 2: because I am definitely a geography knowing person.
Speaker 3: It just tripped off the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is gorgeous. Yeah, no, totally. I didn't like,
Speaker 2: go back and make ian editor where I had to
Speaker 2: say it again. Oh no, no, yeah. And so they
Speaker 2: seized the area. They get this army right, and it's
Speaker 2: like and they're like, all right, well there's this trading
Speaker 2: post here, but fuck them. They have enslaved people anyway.
Speaker 2: So they just show up take the area free all
Speaker 2: the people who had been working there, and the free
Speaker 2: people who had been working there or the unfree people
Speaker 2: who had been working there joined as free people to
Speaker 2: now work on the fort. And they started building, and
Speaker 2: they built this real fuck off fort. Eventually it started off.
Speaker 2: You know, they're expanding on it right by the end.
Speaker 2: It's got high stone walls, it's got a wide moat
Speaker 2: as stone buildings to store gunpowder and shit, all surrounded
Speaker 2: by forest full of like swampy forest full of one
Speaker 2: hundred foot tall pine trees.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is some like infrastructure I'm familiar with, Like
Speaker 3: the vaguely medieval stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's people hitting people with swords in this story,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is my Florida.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's right, Yeah, medieval Florida. And so they
Speaker 2: went around and they went to all these indigenous groups
Speaker 2: and all these leaders and were like, hey, do you
Speaker 2: want a ton of guns and food and shit. If
Speaker 2: you're down to fight the Americans who keeps stealing all
Speaker 2: this shit from you, we will help you fight them.
Speaker 2: Bonus points if you could also go around and tell
Speaker 2: any enslave people, anyone who runs away from America or
Speaker 2: Spain whose territory were in, they're free now if they
Speaker 2: make it to us. Eventually, three thousand Muskogie warriors donned
Speaker 2: redcoats and joined the army against their common enemy. Others
Speaker 2: went and recruited people to slavery, and they built an army,
Speaker 2: a really cool multi racial army. Their officer Okay, I
Speaker 2: hate how we know more about their officer, the white officer,
Speaker 2: than we do about almost any of the other people. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy's really fucking cool. His name is Edward Nichols,
Speaker 2: and he's his irishman.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm already listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he dedicated his life to fighting slavery as well
Speaker 2: as fighting for the rights of indigenous North Americans against
Speaker 2: the American government. That was like what he did with
Speaker 2: his life. He was wild. He was born a Protestant
Speaker 2: in Ireland. Can can't help that, you know, no one,
Speaker 2: no one chooses. He joined the Royal Navy at eleven.
Speaker 2: He fought in one hundred and seven battles in his life.
Speaker 2: He survived starting when he was eleven. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: I think by sixteen he's like really more doing the
Speaker 2: war stuff. I think he's like kind of like a
Speaker 2: ship hand or something. At the first.
Speaker 3: It does. I mean, he's got a he's got a
Speaker 3: really good like movie protagonist name. They're like, yeah, Nichols.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's a wild card. His lookout for Nichols. Fighting
Speaker 2: Nichols is his name during most of the story.
Speaker 3: Of course, he's got an Irish sounding nickname, fighting Nichols.
Speaker 3: That's Irish as a hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah. During his life, he survived a broken leg, being
Speaker 2: shot through the torso, shot through the arm, hid in
Speaker 2: the head with a sword, almost killed, bayonetted through the chest,
Speaker 2: and lost an eye to grape shot. That one's actually
Speaker 2: gonna happen.
Speaker 3: During the story, God, you're your move recipe and that's
Speaker 3: wild all before antibiotics.
Speaker 2: He lived to be eighty five years old.
Speaker 3: That, oh God, that's the certainly the result of some
Speaker 3: sort of witchcraft, and celebrate that witchcraft.
Speaker 2: That's why did.
Speaker 3: It at any point? I mean, I'm not expecting you
Speaker 3: to know his like totally. At any point. Did he
Speaker 3: have to slow down at any point or was he
Speaker 3: just like this way.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of this eighty five years
Speaker 2: he was fighting, you know, because I like, I like
Speaker 2: thought about it. I like ran into him and I
Speaker 2: was like, I wonder if I'm going to save him
Speaker 2: and just do him later. And I'm like, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like, you know, if we're dis
Speaker 3: covering one exploit today, it sounds like you've got exploitss
Speaker 3: if he started when he was eleven.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like the mccaullay culkin of being this.
Speaker 2: Guy and his abolitionism comes from religious fervor sort of.
Speaker 2: John Brown's style and his actions and the actions of
Speaker 2: everyone else that we're going to talk about today too,
Speaker 2: are going to inspire John Brown, who's going to specifically
Speaker 2: reference negro Ford, although under a different name. After the
Speaker 2: war in America, Nichols moves to like the mid Atlantic
Speaker 2: or whatever. He starts attacking slave ships as part of
Speaker 2: the attempt to destroy the Transatlantic slave trade. There's a
Speaker 2: town named after him in the Bahamas called Nichols Town,
Speaker 2: named by its founders, who were enslaved people he helped liberate. Okay,
Speaker 2: so he's cool. He wasn't in charge of the British post,
Speaker 2: but he was in charge of the training, teaching them
Speaker 2: how to fire muskets and shit and leading them into battle.
Speaker 2: Less than a month into the training, the Americans start
Speaker 2: trying to invade Pensacola, and he and his troops show up,
Speaker 2: and the Americans are like, in their mind, we don't
Speaker 2: want to invade Pensacola. We changed our mind. It's not
Speaker 2: we weren't even I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: We weren't going to invade. We were just hanging out.
Speaker 3: To kill who.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, that's weird. Yeah. The fact that white, black,
Speaker 2: and indigenous soldiers led by an irishman very specifically did
Speaker 2: the newspapers complain about that part. The fact that they
Speaker 2: were all fighting alongside one another scandalized the American press.
Speaker 2: The savages are taking over. Basically, something must be done.
Speaker 2: Nothing could be done right away because there was already
Speaker 2: a war. All of the getting done was try trying
Speaker 2: to happen, you know, right The US side was also
Speaker 2: arming indigenous groups. Every war the US has ever gotten
Speaker 2: or got up to manage to turn not only different
Speaker 2: tribes and nations against each other, but often split them
Speaker 2: internally in kind of a brother versus brother way. This
Speaker 2: week's story is going to be no different. There's going
Speaker 2: to be Indigenous people fighting on both sides of this.
Speaker 2: There's this asshole slaver named Benjamin Hawkins who spent decades
Speaker 2: quote unquote civilizing the Muskogee, encouraging them to practice chattel
Speaker 2: slavery of black people, and paid them bounties to catch
Speaker 2: fugitive slaves. So a lot of these indigenous folks are
Speaker 2: US allies in the War of eighteen twelve, and they're
Speaker 2: promised that they can keep any black people they find
Speaker 2: who don't already have owners. Basically, whenever they do any
Speaker 2: of these raids, later many of them will feel betrayed
Speaker 2: and switch sides. But that's later. But you know what
Speaker 2: else is later, Jamie, The rest of might have a
Speaker 2: feel it's the rest of the story because because you
Speaker 2: the super rat army, what are they going to do?
Speaker 2: You can't just read a history book or Wikipedia or
Speaker 2: the Wikipedia won't get you the good stuff. Unfortunately, you
Speaker 2: have to wait till Wednesday.
Speaker 3: But I want no, I'm gonna wait two whole minutes
Speaker 3: and then we're gonna start recording the next Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's true. And then when we're done, I'm gonna eat dinner.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: We love to see it.
Speaker 2: But before we do any of that, Jamie, what do
Speaker 2: you have to plug?
Speaker 3: I will you know? I want to plug. We the
Speaker 3: Unhoused again. We've got new episodes coming out every other Tuesday.
Speaker 3: It's hosted and written by the O Henderson, and we
Speaker 3: have a bunch of great episodes coming out in the
Speaker 3: new year. We have an episode in production that is
Speaker 3: about living out of trailers and especially a long venice beach.
Speaker 3: We have an episode coming out about being unhoused and
Speaker 3: queer in LA. We've all this stuff coming out and
Speaker 3: I would recommend you subscribe. And then if you want
Speaker 3: to read a book about hot dogs, there's one called
Speaker 3: raw Dog and it's all my faults and you can
Speaker 3: get it, and that's what I'll plug.
Speaker 2: And that's why forever for well, eventually people will stop
Speaker 2: only making hot dog references when they talk to you.
Speaker 2: Won't that be nice?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I feel
Speaker 3: like that's kind of a nice thing where you're like, well,
Speaker 3: this is this association is going to be forever. But
Speaker 3: then you spend ten hours talking about something more specific
Speaker 3: and worse.
Speaker 2: And then it's that, yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: Life's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Life is beautiful, Sophie. What do you want to plug?
Speaker 1: I want to plug that, Jamie said, okay, if I
Speaker 1: plug the show for next year, Yeah, yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: want to plug that. We have cool Zone Media are
Speaker 1: bringing you a weekly Loftus bring you a new show,
Speaker 1: written and hosted, investigated and interviewed with the one and
Speaker 1: only Jamie Loftis interviewed. I don't know if that was
Speaker 1: a good I don't know if I did it.
Speaker 2: I did it justice there.
Speaker 1: It's true, though I'm not gonna tell you what it's
Speaker 1: about because ha ha, but look for it and Mark String.
Speaker 3: Coming spring along with the flowers. It's going to be
Speaker 3: a blast. I'm so scared. I'm So Scared of Photography
Speaker 3: with Robert Mgpei about how to have an intense scripted
Speaker 3: weekly podcast and it seems easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't say, oh god, it's going to burn
Speaker 2: you out. I said it's amazing.
Speaker 3: You said easy, easy, easy, easy.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: But basically what I'm saying is you're fucking welcome listeners.
Speaker 3: Look out for it.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. Every Jamie Loftis podcast is a good one, and.
Speaker 3: Every Jamie Loftis podcast is produced by Sophie Lick Driven
Speaker 3: even better.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear more stories, you can listen
Speaker 2: to on Sunday. Maybe you already do because it's in
Speaker 2: the same podcast feed, but you can listen to cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media book Club where fiction and if you want
Speaker 2: all of the ad pivots but none of the ads,
Speaker 2: subscribe to Cooler Zone Media and we'll see you on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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