Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, a podcast that does what it says in
Speaker 1: the name of the podcast, because there's two ways to
Speaker 1: name things, and one is direct and literal and one
Speaker 1: is evocative. And usually go for evocative, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I went for a direct and literal post Martyr Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: I'm a host of Cool People Did Cool Stuff and
Speaker 1: one of the people who's cool and does cool stuff,
Speaker 1: but isn't the subject of today's episode, but is instead.
Speaker 1: The guest for today's episode is Cody Johnston. Hi, how
Speaker 1: are you?
Speaker 2: I'm great, how are you? Thank you so much? What
Speaker 2: a nice compliment. Oh, thank you. I hope to be
Speaker 2: the subject of the podcast one day. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 2: is your life. Yeah, you'll be a guest. Actually, for
Speaker 2: the record, I would never listen to a podcast about myself.
Speaker 2: Please nobody make that exist ever, No Hollywood story, please don't.
Speaker 2: What have we made stuff up? Be like?
Speaker 1: And then his life fell apart as he got into
Speaker 1: I don't know what you have and haven't done, so
Speaker 1: I don't want to like a joke and you actually
Speaker 1: have struggled with the addiction, so but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have your opinions about politicians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my life is boring. One assumes no one will
Speaker 2: ever know though, because there won't be a podcast about it.
Speaker 1: That's true. What there will be a podcast about is
Speaker 1: our producer, Sharenhi Sheren, How are you?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, there won't.
Speaker 1: Scharene welcome to this is your Life? Surprised, Thanks Margaret,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Yeah, Sharene's our producer today
Speaker 1: and well it's actually always one of our producers, but
Speaker 1: is our on mic producer today. So if you like
Speaker 1: the show, it's in large part because of Shreene.
Speaker 3: Oh that's very nice.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: Whenever people are like, ah, DII is the best, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I have done almost everything I do also DIY. And
Speaker 1: you know what rules is like working with a team
Speaker 1: of people that makes some good. It's so good. It's
Speaker 1: so much better. And this is coming from a hard
Speaker 1: introvert who doesn't like working with people. But one of
Speaker 1: the people that I'm happy to work with is or
Speaker 1: our audio engineer Hi Rori hi Rori, Hi Rory. And
Speaker 1: also our the musical was written for us by own women.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why I'm talking so fast? Why
Speaker 1: am I talking so fast. It probably has to do
Speaker 1: with the cookies that are on the table next to me.
Speaker 1: Now I am realizing that I am in.
Speaker 2: A sugar rush.
Speaker 1: What a great way to podcast. Anyway, This is part
Speaker 1: two in our two parter about the forty eight ers
Speaker 1: from the Spirit of forty eight, the Good Sorry eight
Speaker 1: and how a bunch of German immigrants came to America
Speaker 1: and joined the abolitionist movement and are largely left out
Speaker 1: of the story. I mean mostly it's the black abolitions
Speaker 1: are left out of the story. And we've done a
Speaker 1: bunch of episodes about black abolitionism and we're going to
Speaker 1: do more. But I hadn't heard about the immigrant abolitionists.
Speaker 1: I mostly hear stories about all the immigrants were a
Speaker 1: bunch of racists, which a lot of them were, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them weren't. Anyway, you know what state
Speaker 1: is really big? And almost never on this show.
Speaker 2: I do, but only because because I said that last time, Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: I was gonna say Utah, Oh.
Speaker 1: That's pretty big. And also never on this show. We've
Speaker 1: probably never done a Utah because I knew, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Montana was probably in some of
Speaker 1: our Lakota Resistance. It's the Dakota's more.
Speaker 3: Montana is pretty big less, yes, I know.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, there's so many places I haven't done.
Speaker 1: I have to keep having a job, so thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: That's why I have a job. We haven't gotten to
Speaker 1: talk about cool people in Texas much, and when we did,
Speaker 1: it was, of course Mexican immigrant laborers who unionized and
Speaker 1: fought in the Mexican Revolution. You can listen to our
Speaker 1: episode about the Maganistas if you want to hear about that.
Speaker 1: But here's maybe our only second Texas story, unless there's
Speaker 1: another one I forgot. The first wave of German immigration
Speaker 1: to Texas pre dates Texas being a state. In the
Speaker 1: early eighteen forties, some nobles from Prussia, they settled in
Speaker 1: what is now Central Texas but was called Western Texas
Speaker 1: at the time, and they paid for hundreds of peasants
Speaker 1: to come join them. And I don't know enough about
Speaker 1: this to know whether or not this was a like,
Speaker 1: hey serfs, we miss having serfs, or whether it was
Speaker 1: like a we're going to help you all start new
Speaker 1: lives right right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe they I mean the movie said the second thing,
Speaker 2: but really meant the first thing. You know, we want
Speaker 2: to help you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we don't know how to pour our own tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This era is called aristocratic German Texas by the probably
Speaker 1: ten people alive who think or talk about it. Germany
Speaker 1: was a fairly diverse place, and suddenly Protestants, Catholics, and
Speaker 1: Jews were all neighbors in Texas. And that is a
Speaker 1: like not what you expect out of eighteen forties Texas.
Speaker 1: When the revolutionary forty eight er Germans came over, they
Speaker 1: created something really different. They created a whole ass counterculture
Speaker 1: of what might be called farmer intellectuals. They are like
Speaker 1: working class, Like like a Northern journalist came down and
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, what the fuck? You can like ride
Speaker 1: a horse around on a ranch talking about Dante with
Speaker 1: like workers who split shingles for a living. This is amazing.
Speaker 1: I am in love with it. I get that that
Speaker 1: sounds fun.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: These German ethnic enclaves were little anti slavery islands in
Speaker 1: Texas where white workers owned their own farms and did
Speaker 1: the work themselves, which is a wild idea. I know
Speaker 1: there were exceptions to this here and there, but overall,
Speaker 1: these Germans were opposed to slavery, Like there was a
Speaker 1: couple of them who were like, hell, yeah, I'm in
Speaker 1: America when in rome By.
Speaker 2: There's always going to be a couple. Yeah, any group
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 1: Like one person on your streets a slaver and you're
Speaker 1: just like, fuck, now I have to.
Speaker 3: Go to one.
Speaker 1: They formed societies like the Sister Dale Free Society based
Speaker 1: on platforms that slavery needed to be abolished, which was
Speaker 1: really specifically bold for immigrants in the South to be
Speaker 1: saying most groups of people who would run around saying
Speaker 1: we aggressively hate slavery and would like to see it
Speaker 1: end in don't live where the slavers with guns can
Speaker 1: reach you. Yeah, and I feel like that needs to
Speaker 1: be acknowledged about, like a specific radical act of being
Speaker 1: in Texas saying this the main focus of our story,
Speaker 1: this part of the story. We're going to get to
Speaker 1: Ohio later. A radical newspaper that tried to push anti
Speaker 1: slavery and abolition at great risk to life and limb.
Speaker 1: The newspaper was called the San Antonio Zeitungue, which means newspaper.
Speaker 1: It's subtitle translated to a social democratic paper for the
Speaker 1: Germans in Western Texas. Because when you have to name
Speaker 1: something either very literally or more evocatively. As far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, ninety nine percent of German immigrants in
Speaker 1: America picked literal.
Speaker 2: Do what you know?
Speaker 1: Yeah? The newspaper that like is the reason we celebrate
Speaker 1: May Day was called Arbitter's Tongue, which means worker newspaper.
Speaker 1: So I need it's all there, Yeah, exactly, that's what
Speaker 1: it says.
Speaker 2: It doesn't need to be fans. Yeah, partsy shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's principal editor. Uh. The san Antotiose Tongue was
Speaker 1: a German immigrant named Adolf. Do I Adolf? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call him Adolf because due is harder pronounced. But it's
Speaker 1: going to be funny to call him Adolf the whole time,
Speaker 1: because for some weird reason, people don't name their kids
Speaker 1: that anymore.
Speaker 3: There's there was a good one before there was a
Speaker 3: bad one. You know, that's just sad.
Speaker 1: It's actually another Adolf in the Chicago Haymarket story who
Speaker 1: ran a different America's German newspaper that a different name that.
Speaker 1: Oh the name escapes me.
Speaker 2: I mean it just takes one. Yeah, it takes one
Speaker 2: one monster. Yeah, and other stuff, but especially the name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our Adolf had lived a wildlife already before he
Speaker 1: moved to Texas. Yeah, the good Adolph. He had five
Speaker 1: separate arrests for high treason in Prussia that got him
Speaker 1: jailed and eventually driven into exile, and when he got
Speaker 1: to the US he was in no way reformed. High
Speaker 1: treason might as well have been his middle name. That
Speaker 1: visiting journalist wrote about him, I never saw a man
Speaker 1: more cheerful and full of boundless hope and aspirations for
Speaker 1: the elevation of all mankind, including Africans.
Speaker 3: What a different ad All. That's just the opposite of
Speaker 3: the most famous all. It's even spelled differently. Wait, is
Speaker 3: our is bad Adolf? pH or F?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, it's an f F.
Speaker 1: Oh okay. The other Adolf from Chicago is pH Okay,
Speaker 1: this one has the bad spelling, but again years ago?
Speaker 3: Even who is the spelling?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Really, that man needs to go back and change his
Speaker 1: name ahead time. Otherways, he's canceled.
Speaker 3: But that's quote you just read. It's like the antithesis
Speaker 3: of the Bad Adolf. Yeah, I have nothing bad to
Speaker 3: say about this man. I'm sure there's bad stuff, but
Speaker 3: he is a heartwarming story. He is fighting off slavers
Speaker 3: with his elderly dad side by side with guns by
Speaker 3: the end of this story, did he paint?
Speaker 2: He painted.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he painted, but I bet they're good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be creepy if they were like similarly like
Speaker 1: mid with slightly bad perspective?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be really funny.
Speaker 1: Like nothing to write home about, but not terrible.
Speaker 2: It's fine, like I don't know you yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But who did try to cancel? Adolph was the slavers.
Speaker 1: A culture war stirred up when he started publishing anti
Speaker 1: slavery articles, and they were all in German. At first,
Speaker 1: he was actually kind of getting ratted out by the
Speaker 1: conservative German immigrants because they existed right like wherever this
Speaker 1: is happening, there's also people who are like Bootleckers, who
Speaker 1: are like, no, we want to hang out both the
Speaker 1: cool slavers, you know. By eighteen fifty four, a right
Speaker 1: wing boycott of his paper was gaining ground, and he
Speaker 1: was losing subscribers and advertisers. Do I was not the
Speaker 1: kind of guy to lose his nerve. He fundraised to
Speaker 1: buy his paper. It was originally owned by like stockholders
Speaker 1: and they were increasingly nervous, and they wanted to avoid trouble,
Speaker 1: and so he fundraised, got a lot of money actually
Speaker 1: from northern abolitionists, and bought his own paper. People also
Speaker 1: kept threatening to lynch him, which was, to be clear,
Speaker 1: a very real threat. An awful lot of anti slavery folks,
Speaker 1: white and black, were getting lynched in Texas at the time.
Speaker 1: He kept going, He and the other folks around him
Speaker 1: went harder. Together they formed what was called the Free
Speaker 1: Soil Texas Movement. It is a movement to make Texas
Speaker 1: a free state. And when I think of like states
Speaker 1: that would probably be hard to make a free state,
Speaker 1: Like I don't think Texas is where I would like
Speaker 1: first pick.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not the first Yeah, good luck to them, Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: and good luck.
Speaker 1: They were not afraid of biting off more than they
Speaker 1: could chew. He has five arrests for high trees and
Speaker 1: in Prussia, you know, okay, So there's two ways of
Speaker 1: they went about it. A lot of the other folks
Speaker 1: were like, we're just going to bring abolitionists Germans from
Speaker 1: the north of the US and outvote the pro slavery folks, right,
Speaker 1: We're going to like out colonize them basically. You know,
Speaker 1: Adolph was more optimistic. He was like, the answer is
Speaker 1: public education, the answer. Most white Texans didn't own people.
Speaker 1: Most white Texans are poor. He wanted to teach how
Speaker 1: class solidarity was what mattered, not race solidarity, not white supremacy.
Speaker 1: So he turned The Zetongue into a bilingual paper to
Speaker 1: educate English speakers too, and he had help of the
Speaker 1: decentralized National Abolitionist Movement fundraised to help him buy the paper,
Speaker 1: and they also helped him buy English language type. Right,
Speaker 1: because it's just different characters slightly. Oh my god, that
Speaker 1: means it was in black letter, holy shit, because Germany
Speaker 1: didn't drop black letter until the Nazis actually decided it
Speaker 1: was too Jewish. Which is funny, right because black letter
Speaker 1: looks really Nazi because we associated with Germany, it does. Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 1: Hitler was like, ah, that shit looks Jewish to me.
Speaker 1: Journalists across the country started talking about this movement of
Speaker 1: people that were cultivating the soil with their own fucking
Speaker 1: hands and how that was happening in northwestern Texas. Of course,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be America if there wasn't a massive blind
Speaker 1: spot in someone's political position. Adolf was completely fine with
Speaker 1: colonization of the United States, as best as I can tell.
Speaker 1: I found like one sentence about it. I didn't read
Speaker 1: all the things he wrote, right, Basically, he was like,
Speaker 1: the tribes that live here should just join the US,
Speaker 1: and if they don't, then whatever, fuck them.
Speaker 3: So no one's perfect.
Speaker 2: He could have he could have had a better opinion
Speaker 2: about that. Absolutely, Yeah, he could have been not perfect
Speaker 2: in other ways.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, That's a big wamp wamp for me.
Speaker 1: It's just interesting because it's like everyone is just still
Speaker 1: for a very long time, just coming in with this
Speaker 1: colonial mindset of like we're enlightenment thinkers. We're going to
Speaker 1: make these big enlightened democracies, and the big problem is, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, slavery is a big problem, right, you know.
Speaker 1: But like he's like, oh, we're going to create racial
Speaker 1: quality within a liberal Republican state, you know, except for well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think he would have been pro the
Speaker 1: like what he would have considered anti racism, you know,
Speaker 1: he would have been against being racists to indigenous people.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to steal all their land and have
Speaker 1: them no longer be in the formations that they used
Speaker 1: to be and have. It's still bad, is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very very clear. They're building this free labor movement.
Speaker 1: And what's really interesting to me is that this is
Speaker 1: when I kind of realized it was a little bit socialist,
Speaker 1: or at least not capitalists as we understand it today.
Speaker 1: Northern Protestant abolitionists were pretty capitalists, right, A lot of them.
Speaker 1: They didn't mind that there would be like rich barons
Speaker 1: who hired everyone and created a proletarian working class. But
Speaker 1: the free labor movement, like I was saying earlier, it's
Speaker 1: all wage labor is temporary. It's a step in the
Speaker 1: way for everyone to own the means of production, to
Speaker 1: produce with their own hands. And this is in serious
Speaker 1: and aggressive contrast to the Southern planter gentry, who proved
Speaker 1: their value by having not to work at all. Right,
Speaker 1: if you're like a slave owner, your whole thing is
Speaker 1: you're like, ah, I'm gotta work. I just sit around
Speaker 1: and drink tea and not beer. Yeah oh yeah, god yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so weird to imagine them not drinking. I'd like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a ton of them drank the ze tongue
Speaker 1: that he was publishing. Believed in free and open discussion,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just like a here's a list of answers,
Speaker 1: but instead it was like pages where people could discuss
Speaker 1: abolishist methods and ideas. Because there's this idea again I
Speaker 1: used to saying really cool things. It came from Germany.
Speaker 1: There's this German idea called buildung, which is a tradition
Speaker 1: of self cultivation of identity, the ideas that we slowly
Speaker 1: improve ourselves as individuals to improve society, like by making
Speaker 1: ourselves better and good people. Later, when we talk about Ohio,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how like gymnastics societies were,
Speaker 1: like how they organized their revolutionary and abolitionist movement. James
Speaker 1: would have loved it. Oh well, James will never be
Speaker 1: able to listen because only the two of you can listen.
Speaker 1: That's the cool thing about podcasting. So this is part
Speaker 1: of why he didn't believe in like he believed in
Speaker 1: free speech. He didn't want to censor himself despite constant
Speaker 1: threats of violence. Also did help that he was a
Speaker 1: hardened revolutionary and not above Later he's going to fight
Speaker 1: some people who come at him, but he was toning
Speaker 1: it down a little bit. He avoided for years outright
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, we should overthrow slave society. Instead, he
Speaker 1: was like, we should move towards a free society. He
Speaker 1: also didn't do that. I don't think he did the
Speaker 1: like twelve years is a great way to do it,
Speaker 1: you know. I think he stayed kind of wishy washy
Speaker 1: about it. And this could have been cowardice, it could
Speaker 1: have been pragmatism. I think my best guess is that
Speaker 1: he was looking at the people he was trying to reach,
Speaker 1: and he was trying to figure out the best way
Speaker 1: to reach them, and he was trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to like bring them along. That is my generous
Speaker 1: but I.
Speaker 2: Don't but I mean, if you know, his approach seems
Speaker 2: to be like you're saying, like education and inform people
Speaker 2: of these sort of things, and you kind of to
Speaker 2: do that, you have to meet them where they are
Speaker 2: and start bringing over, start bringing over. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's not the person who's trying to break the Overton window.
Speaker 1: He's trying to meet people and bring them yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he realized that the slavers are basically the same
Speaker 1: autocratic police state that they left behind in Germany. The
Speaker 1: aristocracy had to be destroyed for democracy to flourish, And
Speaker 1: so he actually wrote mostly about slavery's impact on poor,
Speaker 1: rural white folks and immigrants. How can free labor survive
Speaker 1: when competing with giant slave plantations. He did write about
Speaker 1: the moral implications and why you know slavery is bad
Speaker 1: for black people too, right, But like his focus was
Speaker 1: on this other thing, and his theory about how this
Speaker 1: revolution would happen is actually way more radical than what
Speaker 1: I just read. Makes it sound like he would guess
Speaker 1: because most northern abolitionists are like, oh, a white leader
Speaker 1: will like lead us to victory. Right, He's like, enslaved
Speaker 1: people who are armed are going to lead a violent
Speaker 1: revolution that poor whites would join to help them destroy
Speaker 1: what is a feudal society because the white people will
Speaker 1: realize that like basically the coming race war should become
Speaker 1: a class war to destroy the rich, and it starts
Speaker 1: with and is led by black folks.
Speaker 2: So okay, is that a sure? You've seen that. It's
Speaker 2: that meme with the MAGA guy and the Black Lives
Speaker 2: Matter guy and they're like it's bumping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but what about or what's then?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just like it's that, but like not I
Speaker 2: don't even know what I'm saying that like approach of
Speaker 2: like actually like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that the white people need to tell black
Speaker 1: people it's a ya. So basically, the leftist discourse before
Speaker 1: the Civil War was like, how the fuck do we
Speaker 1: get white people to recognize class solidarity is what matters,
Speaker 1: not allegiance to white supremacy. And I know I'm like
Speaker 1: hammering that point, but it's like such an interesting point,
Speaker 1: and it's an important question, Adolf. It is one that
Speaker 1: we're still asking today. Most of the people we look
Speaker 1: for for answers are not named Adolf, but that's because
Speaker 1: the name is gone lost to the annals of history.
Speaker 1: If you're listening and your name is Adolf and it's
Speaker 1: actually a common name where you live, I'm sorry for
Speaker 1: making assumptions. What I'm only a little sorry for is
Speaker 1: the fact that what I accept as a compromise based
Speaker 1: on the economy that we live in that I wish
Speaker 1: didn't exist is that we're an ad sponsored show and
Speaker 1: here's ads for other things, some of which are good,
Speaker 1: good ads sneak in every now and then, like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you never know, still like go out to the forest, one.
Speaker 1: I love that ad.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll listen to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a free ad. Go out to the forest.
Speaker 1: It's nice, it is nice. Take a big deep breath.
Speaker 3: There is better there.
Speaker 2: It's true, taste better.
Speaker 1: Here's ads, and we're back. So the paper survives this
Speaker 1: like cancel culture attack on it the first one. It's okay.
Speaker 1: Later they're going to get it. But spoiler, it survives
Speaker 1: this boycott, and he starts to get new subscribers and investors,
Speaker 1: and some of the Anglo settlers start actually reading it.
Speaker 1: It starts spreading this free soil movement, and the Spanish
Speaker 1: language sister publication was soon in the works. The book
Speaker 1: I read about this focused mostly on his newspapers. It's
Speaker 1: called Where the Revolutionists, and it's by Misha Honeck, and
Speaker 1: it's just about a lot of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple other sources that I put together
Speaker 1: for some of the other sorts of the story. But
Speaker 1: and that book focuses mostly on like here's the newspaper.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit more like I kind of want
Speaker 1: to know a little bit more about some of this
Speaker 1: other stuff that, like I know that German free soilers
Speaker 1: were getting into skirmishes with pro slavery folks. What does
Speaker 1: that mean?
Speaker 2: What does that mean? What?
Speaker 1: Contextually? My best guess, based on other things I've read
Speaker 1: from elsewhere, is that these are a combination of brawls, standoffs,
Speaker 1: and shootouts that probably had a body count, probably in
Speaker 1: the like I'm guessing like four or five people died
Speaker 1: on each side. This is completely just my guess based
Speaker 1: on other similar movements from the time. I think German
Speaker 1: immigrants are helping enslaved folks run away, sheltering them and
Speaker 1: getting them north. But that's me reading between the lines.
Speaker 1: I certainly know that three German settlers were lynched for
Speaker 1: being suspected of having done so. The slightly moderate line
Speaker 1: of the San Antonio paper, which I think was understandable
Speaker 1: considering its context, and it's already getting into gunfights with racists,
Speaker 1: which is like more or less like the line I
Speaker 1: want people to be at is I want people to
Speaker 1: be rather enough the racists want to shoot you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want you get shot, but like anyway.
Speaker 2: Angry as Yeah, they're angry enough that they might want
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: But it is still too moderate for some of the
Speaker 1: other forty eight ers in Louisville, Kentucky. Don't fuck with
Speaker 1: Louisville also a slave state. The German radical paper there
Speaker 1: they're Pioneer, which I'm guessing means the Pioneer published statements
Speaker 1: like quote, only idiots, cowards or villains betray the principles
Speaker 1: of freedom for practical considerations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where it fucking goes on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, idiots, cowards or villains.
Speaker 2: Louisville slack.
Speaker 1: And so eventually, in nineteen fifty five, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was a response to Louisville or not, the
Speaker 1: Ze tongue, the San Antonio Ze Tongue, just came out
Speaker 1: and said it, our goal is to create a free
Speaker 1: state out of Texas. And the pro slavery papers were like, what,
Speaker 1: oh my god, these monsters in our midst.
Speaker 2: I'm just hearing this for the first time.
Speaker 1: Totally and other papers are like, look, we believe in
Speaker 1: free speech, but we need to shut this crowd up.
Speaker 1: Or other ones are just like, let's call for the
Speaker 1: death penalty for the editors of this paper. Totally normal, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but hard and revolutionaries are hard to fuck with. He
Speaker 1: doesn't back down, this Texas asshole. Not another guy. The
Speaker 1: editor of the Texas State Times, swaggers over with a
Speaker 1: friend like into his office and insists that Adolph prints
Speaker 1: a retraction for an article about whatever fucking thing. And
Speaker 1: Adolph is like, no, I'm good, I'm just not going
Speaker 1: to do that. And so this slavery stand takes a
Speaker 1: swing at him, and so Adolf beats the shit out
Speaker 1: of him. And I think this is a quote from
Speaker 1: his autobiography that he quote quietly beat him up until
Speaker 1: he bled the word quietly is.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that says everything about that situation and that person.
Speaker 1: And like that's the scene in the movie where like
Speaker 1: the real sketchy fight scenes are the ones where the
Speaker 1: music stops.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, It's like it's just like this intense focus.
Speaker 2: It's yes, you have one goal and you know efficiency.
Speaker 2: It's just exactly totally. Another time, twelve pro slavery folks
Speaker 2: showed up at his office in San Antonio and said
Speaker 2: they were going to lynch him. So twelve of his friends,
Speaker 2: this is why, I know is a larger movement. He's
Speaker 2: like the one who becomes the central figure. But so
Speaker 2: twelve of his friends take to the roof with guns
Speaker 2: and then Adolph's father, an old soldier, himself, barricades the
Speaker 2: door and sets up with a gun, And in.
Speaker 1: Adolph's autobiography he talks about how like this is like
Speaker 1: his father's, like feeling youthful and excited and feels great again.
Speaker 1: You know, we are at the fucking barrack, reinvigorated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good for him.
Speaker 1: The pro slavery folks took one look at the situation
Speaker 1: and got the fuck out of town.
Speaker 2: Nice quietly left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and quietly until they bled. But the tide
Speaker 1: was turning against the larger Texas Free Soil movement. New
Speaker 1: settlers in Texas were more and more pro slavery, and
Speaker 1: so some other forty eight ers were like, look, we've lost.
Speaker 1: They said, quote, do not induce any good man to
Speaker 1: settle here. It's not gonna work. We should try elsewhere.
Speaker 1: The Anglo whites were not being won over by and large,
Speaker 1: and the German folks were more and more afraid to
Speaker 1: speak up for liberty and were distancing themselves from the radicals.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen fifty six it was just eight off
Speaker 1: see me eighteen eighteen, I do mean eighteen fifty six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't run this for one hundred and many four
Speaker 1: years or whatever. Yeah, that seems crazy to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Adolphin is very elderly. Father. At this point, they're running
Speaker 1: the paper by themselves, both the German and English one,
Speaker 1: and then the Spanish one. I think that just like
Speaker 1: everyone's like fled this cause, and they are like, we
Speaker 1: are not giving up. We are antislaver propagandists. We are
Speaker 1: going to keep doing this. They type said it all.
Speaker 1: They worked fourteen hour days trying to stem the tide
Speaker 1: of slavery until basically he was broke and he couldn't
Speaker 1: make enough money selling the paper to eat. He was
Speaker 1: forced to sell the paper to a conservative in order
Speaker 1: to survive, like the only person who would buy it,
Speaker 1: I think, which delighted in destroying it, and he and
Speaker 1: presumably his father moved back up to New York. I
Speaker 1: know nothing about his family, because why would people talk
Speaker 1: about women in books. I actually kind of get the
Speaker 1: impression of this man was a bachelor though, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. He kept up his work as a journalist
Speaker 1: and he started speaking around the country, drumming up support
Speaker 1: among the German population for anti slavery. He did not stop.
Speaker 1: He just got out of the South.
Speaker 2: He just left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly when Texas seceded in the Civil War. They
Speaker 1: cited slavery as the primary cause of it. I think
Speaker 1: everyone who listens to this know that the Civil War
Speaker 1: was about slavery, but in case you didn't, that was
Speaker 1: what Texas cited. At least sixty Unionists, mostly German forty
Speaker 1: eight ers who hadn't previously fled Texas tried to make
Speaker 1: a break for it to the Mexico border, but they
Speaker 1: were caught by a Confederate army and they were killed
Speaker 1: to a person. And this ended one of the largest
Speaker 1: white attempts at spreading abolitionist rhetoric in the deepest into
Speaker 1: slave country you can go. But then the Union army
Speaker 1: kicked the shit out of the fucking piece of shit
Speaker 1: slavers in Texas became a free state by force of arms.
Speaker 1: And here's the heartwarming twist, ending Adolph's own press, like
Speaker 1: the physical press that he printed with, was taken up
Speaker 1: by the first black owned newspaper in Texas. They sent
Speaker 1: him a copy. On the front page it said, quote
Speaker 1: this newspaper, the first to be founded in Texas by negroes,
Speaker 1: was printed on the same press which doctor Adolph dou
Speaker 1: I founded in San Antonio in eighteen fifty three, in
Speaker 1: order to combat slavery. It will be a great satisfaction
Speaker 1: to him that the freed slaves of Texas gratefully remember
Speaker 1: his dangerous and courageous agitation on their behalf.
Speaker 3: That's nice.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a little tiary when I was
Speaker 1: just reading it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so many I'm good for. Don't take this
Speaker 2: out of context. Good for aight off.
Speaker 3: You know what's really tragic. I've been thinking about this
Speaker 3: is not what happened, But wouldn't it be sad if
Speaker 3: Adolf Hitler's mom named Adolf after.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, Yeah, oh oh God in his memory?
Speaker 1: And so now I'm going to go over to Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: the city that is most known as I thought it
Speaker 1: was spelled with two t's and only two ends, but
Speaker 1: it's only one tea.
Speaker 2: It's one tea.
Speaker 1: The reason is most known as that is because when
Speaker 1: I do my edits at the end of the thing,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of changing how I spelled it
Speaker 1: right very quickly. When I'm sketching out the drafts of
Speaker 1: these episodes.
Speaker 2: Birthplace of ninety eight degrees. That's a boy nick Lache,
Speaker 2: It is a boy band. Yeah, they got they got
Speaker 2: him to do the voice of the tram for about
Speaker 2: a year that they wait, really, I don't know what
Speaker 2: the tram is. They built I left, Yeah, they built it.
Speaker 2: Trams is nawty. It's like years after I moved away
Speaker 2: from Ohio and I visited once and the voice is
Speaker 2: like nick Lache, like, yeah, they changed it shortly after,
Speaker 2: but it's very, very jarring and the weird that's so funny.
Speaker 1: I like how Ohio is, like it's the state that
Speaker 1: is the most self contained. Like no one talks about
Speaker 1: Ohio unless you live there, and then it has everything thing.
Speaker 1: It's like its own world.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's got everything you need. It's just flat
Speaker 2: and you kind of want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah know, everyone leaves it. Yeah, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: no one talks about it. But there's a lot there
Speaker 1: a lot of cities that start with C and I
Speaker 1: don't know which ones are where because they all start
Speaker 1: with the same letter and they're roughly the same length.
Speaker 1: I can't use any of my to determine what's the
Speaker 1: same as Like recently, I had to interact with someone
Speaker 1: named Josh and someone named Jack, I think, and I
Speaker 1: was like trying to explain to them that I was like,
Speaker 1: you are the same person in my head until I
Speaker 1: see you physically, and you better have different haircuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no offense. And if someone's like I can't tell the
Speaker 1: difference between a Margaret and a Claudia, you understand, it's fine. Anyway. Cincinnati,
Speaker 1: Cincinnati was right on the border with Kentucky, which is
Speaker 1: a slave state. Ohio is a free state. It was
Speaker 1: also full of racists, like every other part of the North,
Speaker 1: but maybe especially Ohio. But but it's also just everywhere
Speaker 1: so racist that it's hard to say, like really only
Speaker 1: like Massachusetts is like trying to come out of this
Speaker 1: looking as good as possible, you know. Yeah, Pennsylvania's full
Speaker 1: of Quakers, Okay, whatever. Anyway, Ohio racist but not slavery racist.
Speaker 1: That's where I'm gonna That's what I'm gonna call it.
Speaker 1: So black people came into Cincinnati looking for something like
Speaker 1: a modicum of freedom. They made up about three percent
Speaker 1: of the city's population in the run up to the war,
Speaker 1: mostly living in a poor black neighborhood called Little Africa
Speaker 1: or more racistly, Bucktown, either of those ring a bell.
Speaker 2: Not familiar with either ra though so awesome.
Speaker 1: Some lived, however, in over the Rhine, which was the
Speaker 1: working class immigrant German neighborhood. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: one that I'm familiar with Over the Rhine is still
Speaker 1: over the Rhine. You are the hero of the rest
Speaker 1: of this episode.
Speaker 2: There we go. That's probably why the name stuck.
Speaker 1: Around, because did they actually have a proud history for
Speaker 1: this part. Cincinnati was a hub for working class forty
Speaker 1: eight or agitation. A lot of the German tech free
Speaker 1: soil stuff was a little bit more middle class. This
Speaker 1: is like the fucking I don't know, their job is
Speaker 1: probably lumber shover, you know. Thirty thousand of them showed up.
Speaker 1: Forty eight ers showed up and hit the ground running.
Speaker 1: Moving into Cincinnati, a working man's club was formed to
Speaker 1: fight for better wages. Freethinkers clubs were formed to debate
Speaker 1: the topics of the day. They were socialists, they were atheists,
Speaker 1: they were abolitionists. They fought the know nothings in the street,
Speaker 1: getting into gun battles. They built militias to defend themselves
Speaker 1: against the rioters. They set up like sharpshooter clubs, and
Speaker 1: they were called the turners after the turn varying which
Speaker 1: are these gymnastic clubs that existed in Germany to promote
Speaker 1: German culture, physical fitness, and radical politics, which sounds really bad,
Speaker 1: but again, nineteenth century is upside down times. The Republicans
Speaker 1: are the left, the Germans are the gabolitionists. The Turners
Speaker 1: took part in the eighteen forty eight reve and so
Speaker 1: they kept the tradition going in the US. And this
Speaker 1: is where the Turners kind of are are more known
Speaker 1: for is the German American groups. And when I say
Speaker 1: more known for, I mean the ten people who pay
Speaker 1: attention to this, which now includes all of you listening.
Speaker 1: And since everyone was still really into thinking in terms
Speaker 1: of ethnicity and race. For the German immigrants, being in
Speaker 1: favor of anti racism was an ethnic trait of the
Speaker 1: German people that they were very proud of.
Speaker 3: That's I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: Us Teutonic people, we are the true anti racists. Nothing
Speaker 1: bad will come.
Speaker 2: Of this, and that's so silly, But I guess if
Speaker 2: you're gonna have an ethnic trade, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being anti racist, okay. And like, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, they have like all these clubs and they're
Speaker 1: like sending all these plays and doing all this cool shit,
Speaker 1: they are working class people. And this is like a
Speaker 1: thing that comes up a lot on the show is
Speaker 1: that like immigerent cultures will have more cultural access than
Speaker 1: like a white native born poor person in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways at this time, because they built it, and
Speaker 1: they were like, we want what rich people have, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna fucking do it. We're gonna throw picnics, We're
Speaker 1: gonna throw plays, We're gonna like just we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the fucking Dante or whatever. You know, yeah, live, yeah,
Speaker 1: And the German Fortiators in Cincinnati were some of the
Speaker 1: most direct and radical abolitionists in the country. They weren't
Speaker 1: fucking around with like oh maybe twelve years, you know.
Speaker 1: They were like, we call for an immediate federal ban
Speaker 1: on slavery, not even like oh, we want this state
Speaker 1: or that state to be They were like war to
Speaker 1: the slavers. Fuck them. And while most white immigrant abolitionists
Speaker 1: first and foremostly connected with white na native abolitionists, the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Fourtiators connected with the black community directly, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: Black schools started teaching German as the language to connect
Speaker 1: them with their radical friends, and it was Ohio black
Speaker 1: groups who had been fundraising for the revolution.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One time, a white journalist named William Connolly was imprisoned
Speaker 1: for hiding fugitive slaves. And I don't think he was
Speaker 1: German based on the name, assuming he was Scottish or
Speaker 1: Irish or something. And so the German population came out
Speaker 1: and supported him because he was imprisoned for hiding fugitive slaves.
Speaker 1: When he was released, they met him at the jail
Speaker 1: in the pouring rain and led a torchlight procession for
Speaker 1: their hero because it didn't matter that he wasn't German.
Speaker 1: They're doing what's right. And while there's a ton of
Speaker 1: cool individual folks in that scene, there's like black intellectuals,
Speaker 1: and there's a native born white Catholic who was excommunicated
Speaker 1: for preaching too hard against slavery. I'm going to focus
Speaker 1: on a figure, a guy named August Willich, who was
Speaker 1: a former Prussian noble who became a communist in his thirties,
Speaker 1: fought in the revolutionchallenged Marks to a duel. This is
Speaker 1: probably why I included him.
Speaker 3: Your tone when you even said that, I was like,
Speaker 3: that's why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like organized uncompromising interracial solidarity in Ohio raised two
Speaker 1: regiments of German immigrants to fight the Confederacy in the
Speaker 1: war beat the Texas Rangers was a general who led
Speaker 1: from the front even of he was in his like
Speaker 1: mid fifties, and he survived the war and I really
Speaker 1: like him. But what I also like is swords. This
Speaker 1: episode is brought to you by swords. In the the
Speaker 1: Union Army had swords. It's true you can buy replicas. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's way easier to buy replicas of Confederate swords. But
Speaker 1: you can buy a replica Union sword, or if you're rich,
Speaker 1: you can buy me a real Union sword. I actually
Speaker 1: don't have a po box. I don't want people sending
Speaker 1: me random packages. But you know what, if you're buying
Speaker 1: me a real sword, you can reach out to me.
Speaker 1: I'll figure it out o boxes for you. But this
Speaker 1: episode brought to you by swords. Everyone likes swords.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: What was your favorite medieval weapon that we advertised during
Speaker 1: the break.
Speaker 2: Was good?
Speaker 1: A lot of moving parts, that's true. Good for fighting skeletons.
Speaker 2: You know, good for fighting skeletons. I'm kind of using
Speaker 2: for exercises, true practice, jump rope, a lot a lot
Speaker 2: of with the mace.
Speaker 1: Serene Okay, some other time I'm going to ask.
Speaker 2: You for you Well, you're not going to make it
Speaker 2: if you don't have a weapon. I don't know, they're old.
Speaker 3: All I'm thinking about is that spiky ball. But that's
Speaker 3: not a real thing, is it.
Speaker 1: So that's feeling. It's what Cody meant when Cody said mace.
Speaker 2: It is literally exactly what I meant.
Speaker 3: Great, okay, that's what I think.
Speaker 2: Picked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's called a flail. A mace actually doesn't have
Speaker 1: any moving parts. It's a ball on a city.
Speaker 2: Doesn't have movie. I was thinking exactly. I had a
Speaker 2: delve into my like, no, that's not actually mace doesn't
Speaker 2: have the movie.
Speaker 1: Well flail, right, No, flails are great, spikey ball hell yeah.
Speaker 1: August Wilich was born Johann August Ernst von Wilich in
Speaker 1: eighteen ten. You will be shocked to know with the
Speaker 1: name Johann August Ernst von Wilich. He was born into
Speaker 1: the landed nobility of Prussia in a part that is
Speaker 1: now Poland. He was orphaned at three, but I think
Speaker 1: he was just like still like brought up in noble times,
Speaker 1: like off to school or whatever. I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened him at three. He stayed noble for thirty six years.
Speaker 1: He did what he was supposed to do his landed nobility.
Speaker 1: He spent nineteen years sir in the Prussian Army as
Speaker 1: a captain. But while he was in the army, he
Speaker 1: was reading, and he was reading philosophy. And if you're
Speaker 1: reading philosophy in like the middle of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: in Europe, you're reading radical philosophy. And he was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, we shouldn't treat workers like we do.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, whenever I would meet like philosophy
Speaker 1: majors when I was younger, I imagine them just like, okay,
Speaker 1: when I met when I met imaginary philosophy majors. In
Speaker 1: my head, they'd be smoking cigarettes and talking about how
Speaker 1: nothing as meaning, you know, and they wouldn't be talking
Speaker 1: about like why the workers need to be free. But
Speaker 1: actually turns out that even in nihilism, that's a big
Speaker 1: part of it. So he's reading all this stuff and
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty six he resigns his commission in an
Speaker 1: open letter against the aristocracy. It is so strongly worded
Speaker 1: that they arrest him in court martial him Yeah. He
Speaker 1: comes out. He's like he's thirty five or thirty six,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I have become a radical, and he
Speaker 1: he fucking meant it.
Speaker 2: Don't let people read. Yeah, that's exactly I think. It's
Speaker 2: just like people shouldn't be read.
Speaker 1: Move to Florida, and two years later they eventually let
Speaker 1: him out, let him leave the army after he serves
Speaker 1: his time. Two years later, the revolution breaks out, and
Speaker 1: so he goes to war against the aristocracy and he's
Speaker 1: leading troops and he has fucking Frederick Engels, like of
Speaker 1: Marx and Engels as his aide de camp, the guy
Speaker 1: helping him, right, But he refuses to be treated better
Speaker 1: than his soldiers, and he takes no special privileges. He's
Speaker 1: just probably the one who should be in charge because
Speaker 1: he's the nineteen year officer who's led a whole lot
Speaker 1: of troops into battle. Before you know, the revolution loses.
Speaker 1: He goes into exile in England, where he starts butting
Speaker 1: heads with Karl Marx, who set out that revolution. He
Speaker 1: considered Karl Marx too conservative. But what they actually got
Speaker 1: into an argument about in the end was that Willis
Speaker 1: wanted to build more of a popular front and was
Speaker 1: like willing to work with like Democrats, and Marx was like, no,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do that, and so will resigned from the
Speaker 1: Communist League. Then he like went back to a meeting
Speaker 1: just to insult Marx and challenge him to a duel.
Speaker 2: Do you love this so much?
Speaker 1: This is the thing, this is a Yeah, my dream job,
Speaker 1: it is being him. My secondary dream job is talking
Speaker 1: about him. Yeah, talk about him. But if you could
Speaker 1: be Carl Marx does not fight Karl Marx rights. So
Speaker 1: Carl Marx sent a proxy to dual Willitch in Belgium,
Speaker 1: and Wilich wounded the guy. And because he's fucking August Willich,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to fucking duel August Wilich. What are
Speaker 1: you talking about? This man has been an army officer
Speaker 1: for nineteen years and at this point he's like, Europe
Speaker 1: is not for me. I kind of burned bridges of
Speaker 1: the Communist League. Here Mark seems to be in charge.
Speaker 1: I tried to kill him. That's there for you except Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: Well he did okay. First he goes to Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: he's a carpenter for a while Brooklyn, and then he's
Speaker 1: doing math with the US Coastal survey. And then he
Speaker 1: moves to Cincinnati, the town with only one T in
Speaker 1: its name, to edit a German newspaper, and that's where
Speaker 1: he is for a while. They build this entire subculture
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, like all the best movements they had. I
Speaker 1: already said some of this, but it's in the script,
Speaker 1: so I'm just going to keep going. They built a
Speaker 1: shooting club and had picnics and put on plays and
Speaker 1: organized interracial solidarity as best as they can. They went
Speaker 1: through elaborate efforts to unite people across ethnic and religious lines,
Speaker 1: like you have an ex Catholic preacher going to a
Speaker 1: Jewish neighborhood to talk, and they're bringing Hindu speakers to
Speaker 1: talk at their congregations. And they just did the hard
Speaker 1: and thankless work of building movements, because these movements are
Speaker 1: really split along religious lines, right, because now you have
Speaker 1: all these like atheist abolitionists. But then people are like, no,
Speaker 1: we're doing abolition because God told us to. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to talk to you. You're all weird socialists.
Speaker 1: And they're like, yeah, we are weird socialists. We want endslavery,
Speaker 1: You want endslavery. Can we just fucking.
Speaker 2: Slavery, but we all agree exact bigger.
Speaker 1: Problem here it is called the Confederacy. Well so called
Speaker 1: that yet, but it will be soon. On December fourth,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, a few months after John Brown and
Speaker 1: his friends raided Harper's Ferry. Basically, when John Brown dies,
Speaker 1: the whole abolitionist world is like, oh, fuck, he's our guy.
Speaker 1: Well most of them. Some of them are like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's a little extreme. I support his ideas, but not
Speaker 1: that violence part, you know, But maybe like twelve years
Speaker 1: of like yeah, totally, yeah, it's good enough for a
Speaker 1: number of apostles. I think those twelve or maybe it
Speaker 1: was thirteen. I don't actually know. I'm good at stuff
Speaker 1: and uh. Anyway, So there's big rallies and gatherings and
Speaker 1: memorials all over the country, especially the parts where you
Speaker 1: won't get shot for doing it, like the North. On
Speaker 1: December fourth, eighteen fifty nine, the German working class socialists
Speaker 1: throw a memorial for their fallen hero and it brings
Speaker 1: together all of these groups that they've been working with
Speaker 1: to unite white and black, showing up and sitting side
Speaker 1: by side. And this is a huge deal.
Speaker 2: Even most the.
Speaker 1: Abolitionist movement, anti slavery movement, blah blah blah, are not
Speaker 1: socializing inter racially, and at this they are. And the
Speaker 1: American flag, the German Republican flag which is red, black
Speaker 1: and gold, and the flag from an African American contingent
Speaker 1: that I want to know so badly what was But
Speaker 1: all I have is they brought their flag.
Speaker 2: Oh I want to see that flag.
Speaker 1: I know what fucking flag was it? I'm aware of
Speaker 1: only twentieth century Like I mean, I'm sure there's other ones, right,
Speaker 1: but I've my attempts to find have only found twentieth century,
Speaker 1: like African American flags. But they brought a flag and
Speaker 1: it was also on display, and people from each contingent
Speaker 1: came up and spoke. You know, there's like sort of
Speaker 1: the white religious groups and then there was black groups.
Speaker 1: And August Willich was the German speaker at the event,
Speaker 1: and I think he spoke in English, but he told
Speaker 1: the crowd that they should quote what their sabers and
Speaker 1: nerve their arms for the day of retrotion, when all
Speaker 1: slavers and their supporters would quote be crushed into a
Speaker 1: common grave.
Speaker 2: Ooh that's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's real solid and like, it's not empty words.
Speaker 1: The crowd roars and approval, and they are all willing
Speaker 1: to get directly involved. After the service, the crowd gathers
Speaker 1: up torches and led a procession through downtown Cincinnati despite
Speaker 1: numerous threats from the racists. And this freaks people the
Speaker 1: fuck out. The mainstream press hated the forty eight ers
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati. One paper wrote, their politics have ever been
Speaker 1: the most degraded of the most degraded stamp, and the
Speaker 1: most dangerous character to the peace and welfare of this nation.
Speaker 1: And that quote. They recognize no distinction of color in
Speaker 1: their social intercourse, and if anything, consider a negro a
Speaker 1: little better than a white man.
Speaker 3: Oh, it sounds like Jesus to me.
Speaker 4: You do it.
Speaker 1: And the Turners, the German folks, they're organizing around these
Speaker 1: like gymnastics societies. Right, they don't wait for a war
Speaker 1: to be announced before they start drilling and training and
Speaker 1: will it is just like, all right, we're about to
Speaker 1: be an army. Let's set up a fucking army. So
Speaker 1: they're kind of the first union soldiers. Yeah, at least
Speaker 1: the first like volunteers. I can't remember whether we had
Speaker 1: to stand out.
Speaker 2: Cultural working class Coalition Army.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and their units were ethnically divided because the Union
Speaker 1: Army when it starts is racist, right, and it takes
Speaker 1: a long time for black soldiers to be able to fight.
Speaker 1: They're mostly like digging ditches and shit. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: so then, to quote a twenty seventeen article from Cincinnati Magazine,
Speaker 1: because Cincinnati knows it's zeros. Quote, when the Civil War
Speaker 1: erupted Cincinnati, Germans responded so quickly that within a week,
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred men had enlisted in what became the legendary
Speaker 1: ninth Ohio Infantry Regiment, and August is the most experienced commander.
Speaker 1: But they went with a non German leader who was
Speaker 1: like friends with all the Germans. For political reasons. They
Speaker 1: were like, oh, we gotta have a non German so
Speaker 1: that people actually give us money for uniforms and shit.
Speaker 1: You know. So he drilled the ninth. He was like
Speaker 1: second in command. He drilled the ninth, He marched them
Speaker 1: to Virginia, and then he went home and started another regiment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or he didn't go home, I guess he went to Indiana.
Speaker 1: He started Indiana's thirty second, which is another German regiment,
Speaker 1: and he was the commander of that one. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: Cincinnati was one of the most aggressively anti Confederate cities
Speaker 1: in the nation. And I know I've talked shit on
Speaker 1: Irish Americans throughout this entire episode. They came out and
Speaker 1: droves two. The Irish Montgomery Brigade was one of the
Speaker 1: first units to come out of the city. As the
Speaker 1: war dragged on, Some Irish and German workers, the ones
Speaker 1: who weren't all fighting, and I think not the Turners,
Speaker 1: I'd like to believe, not the Turners, but that's because
Speaker 1: I want them to be great, turned their back on
Speaker 1: blackfellow workers. And there were race riots in Cincinnati as
Speaker 1: well as like everywhere else. There was one thing that
Speaker 1: happened earlier where at one point some black folks showed
Speaker 1: up to a Turner event and they were turned away
Speaker 1: for being black. And so then the Turners had like
Speaker 1: a come to Jesus moment where they were like, you
Speaker 1: turned people away for being black at our events? What
Speaker 1: the fuck? And so then they codified we don't turn
Speaker 1: people away for being black, and like kind of went
Speaker 1: from being anti slavery to abolitionist by that standard.
Speaker 2: You know that's good. Sometimes you gotta yeah, yeah, get
Speaker 2: a little you gotta do something foolish and stang your mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Cincinnati the Radical Press overall, like most papers
Speaker 1: are like kind of downplaying slavery as the reason because
Speaker 1: they're afraid of plausant race riots. The Cincinnati Radical Press
Speaker 1: is like, we say what we mean. Not only is
Speaker 1: anti slay' very the reason to fight, it's actually the
Speaker 1: only legitimate war goal, which I think means like, look,
Speaker 1: you can't really get mad at people for succeeding. You
Speaker 1: can get mad at people for owning people, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is my take on the Civil War. And the
Speaker 1: thing that they said really specifically, and it's where the
Speaker 1: book We Are the Revolutionists gets its name from, is
Speaker 1: that they're like, we are having a revolution. The revolution
Speaker 1: is against slavery, like the counter revolution is the Confederacy, right,
Speaker 1: And it's a semantic difference, but it kind of matters,
Speaker 1: and it's like one that people don't talk about now. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 1: I famously have the word sedition tattooed across my hands
Speaker 1: and I got really mad on January sixth. You know, Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, like I have friends who are insurrectionists. That
Speaker 1: is their political position. It means that they don't believe in,
Speaker 1: like waiting to organize a mass movement before fighting for
Speaker 1: what they believe in. It sucks when these words get
Speaker 1: taken by people embarrassing day. I'm just like for this,
Speaker 1: you're doing this for this?
Speaker 2: Yes, what do you what? Do you get it together?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: But yeah, like refocusing to like the war is against slavery,
Speaker 2: this like keeping yeah, keeping the union together, doing this
Speaker 2: and this and this. That's like that happened as a
Speaker 2: result of the war that we started, which is against
Speaker 2: slavery exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's like you could look at the
Speaker 1: same thing and draw a different conclusion. But this is
Speaker 1: why they fought. This is why the Turners marched to
Speaker 1: war and were some of the first people and were
Speaker 1: prepared beforehand, and we're training for it, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so Wilich went to war. He beat the fucking
Speaker 1: Texas Rangers. He led from the front. His troops called
Speaker 1: him Papa Willich. He regularly gave lectures, not just about
Speaker 1: like philosophy, like I mean one and why is he
Speaker 1: giving any lectures? But he's just like, hey, comin, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give lectures about philosophy. And also like astronomy
Speaker 1: and shit to his soldiers.
Speaker 3: God, he's so cool, I know.
Speaker 1: Okay, then here's your Hollywood moment that I haven't seen
Speaker 1: in another battle. His forces are starting to flag and
Speaker 1: they're about to rout, and this is relayed by a
Speaker 1: higher up general. I don't remember whether Willich is a
Speaker 1: general yet at this point, but if he never hits
Speaker 1: like high general, he's like low general whatever. I didn't
Speaker 1: write down this specific thing because it didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: understand it. So this other general, higher general sees this happen.
Speaker 1: Willich's troops are starting to rout, which is the most
Speaker 1: dangerous time in a battle. Once you route, that's when
Speaker 1: you just get gunned down and everyone dies run away.
Speaker 1: It's it's an unordered retreat. Retreat is like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get out of here carefully. Rout is like fuck run,
Speaker 1: And that's like, especially in medieval battles, that's like when
Speaker 1: almost everyone who dies dies. You scare them until they run,
Speaker 1: and then you chase them down with cavalry and.
Speaker 2: It's chaos and you're not you're focused.
Speaker 1: So his troops are about to be routed, so he
Speaker 1: rides his horse to the front of them in the
Speaker 1: middle of this fucking battle. He turns his back to
Speaker 1: the enemy and he has his soldiers drill do their
Speaker 1: like manual of arms like hold the rifle, load the
Speaker 1: right like like practice while some of them are dying
Speaker 1: like while they're getting shot. The effect, according to a
Speaker 1: general who watched quote, was magical. This stopped the route
Speaker 1: and they stayed in the fight. And even though some
Speaker 1: of them died while drilling in the middle of a battle,
Speaker 1: it kept the morale up and kept a lot of
Speaker 1: them alive.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Later his horse was shot and he was captured. He
Speaker 1: spent I think five months in a pow camp before
Speaker 1: he was traded in an exchange, and apparently he like
Speaker 1: spent the whole time he was in jail like planning
Speaker 1: more tactics, of course, and when he came out he
Speaker 1: invented a bunch of new tactics around rapid fire attacks
Speaker 1: and using bugle calls to direct his troops. Supposedly, this
Speaker 1: is like the guy who invented using bugle calls to
Speaker 1: uh direct your troops. To me, this seems so obvious that,
Speaker 1: of course everyone has been doing it forever. But he's
Speaker 1: a German communist who tried to kill Karl Marx, who
Speaker 1: did it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took five months in Fiodovi camp to come up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Later he loses the use of his right arm when
Speaker 1: it's injured in a battle. He keeps going. He does
Speaker 1: not leave, but he came up with a new way
Speaker 1: to have another. Totally, Karl Marx would have liked. Karl
Speaker 1: Marks might have been right about the thing that we're
Speaker 1: fighting about. I don't know, we don't even know.
Speaker 2: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I'd have to read the autobiography of his daughter to
Speaker 1: find out more about that, because it's just read a
Speaker 1: kind of low context quote about it from that book. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So he stays in. He stays until the fucking war
Speaker 1: is one. He once wrote to a friend in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. Middle of the war, he writes to a friend, quote,
Speaker 1: working toward a solution of the social problem and calling
Speaker 1: attention to it is and will remain the only purpose
Speaker 1: of my life. This work alone not only makes life
Speaker 1: bearable but worth living in my eyes.
Speaker 2: What a guy, Hell of a guy.
Speaker 1: It took fucking Zelotz d end slavery. Yeah, yeah, focused
Speaker 1: violent zealots, Yes, totally. And so that's the German communist
Speaker 1: general of the Union Army who once tried to duel
Speaker 1: car Marks. And there were well so many other forty
Speaker 1: eight ers who fought slavery in whatever way. Whenever I
Speaker 1: do an eight million part episode on like John Brown
Speaker 1: and the Gorilla Resistance to Slavery, I'll get to talk
Speaker 1: about Charles Kaiser and August Bondi, who were forty eight
Speaker 1: ers who joined John Brown's Gorilla gang. Carl Schurz is
Speaker 1: probably the most famous German forty eight er. He was
Speaker 1: a general in the Union Army in the Civil War.
Speaker 1: Later he went on to be pretty boring. He joined
Speaker 1: the like liberal Republican Party, which was basically like Reconstructions
Speaker 1: too radical. So Kimo A tenth of the Union Army
Speaker 1: was born in Germany, and it was German volunteers who
Speaker 1: kept Saint Louis and therefore Missouri from falling to the
Speaker 1: Confederacy at the outbreak of the war.
Speaker 3: That's not nothing.
Speaker 1: No, it's not one state, a big old battleground when
Speaker 1: there's like only fucking I don't know how many states
Speaker 1: or the time twenty forty seventy, I don't know, seven
Speaker 1: probably probably used to be about seventy States at least seventy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anytime I do an episode about chattel slavery, I really
Speaker 1: need to nail home the point that the Thirteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: was written with a loophole. It reads, neither slavery nor
Speaker 1: involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party
Speaker 1: shall have been duly convicted, shall exist. Within the United States,
Speaker 1: prison labor is slavery. One point two million people are
Speaker 1: currently enslaved by the car sool system in the United States.
Speaker 1: There is an abolitionist movement right now that tries to
Speaker 1: end prison slavery. So if you want to know what
Speaker 1: you would be doing during times when there's abolitionists, it's
Speaker 1: now that's my episode. What do you all think about
Speaker 1: the forty eight ers.
Speaker 2: Good for Germans during that period?
Speaker 3: Yeah, would never have thought.
Speaker 2: But that also Cincinnati, Yeah, during that period of time
Speaker 2: as well, some of Cincinnati like Cincinnati's like some of Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: I guess I'm not saying like Cincinnati's a successively racist place,
Speaker 2: but I was surprised by some of that information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the trajectory of alcohol and Germans is kind of
Speaker 3: wild to have observed in the last century or two
Speaker 3: that's crazy.
Speaker 1: The pro drinking Germans were on the right side of
Speaker 1: history in nineteenth century America.
Speaker 4: Something that you got to fight for your right to party. Yeah, true,
Speaker 4: that was awesome, though I liked you for your Reich party.
Speaker 4: Oh no, sorry, they did fight the Reich. That was
Speaker 4: a thing they did.
Speaker 1: That was part of their whole thing was that they
Speaker 1: did not like kings, so would have been the same
Speaker 1: Germans who would have also been anti fascist one hundred
Speaker 1: years later. If people want to hear about things that
Speaker 1: are happening now, do you have any options for them.
Speaker 1: I know it's much easier to find stuff out about
Speaker 1: old timey stuff, but Hi, you.
Speaker 2: Can find me all over the place. I do all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff, not about the past. Usually we talked
Speaker 2: about the past. We talk about the present. Mostly. You
Speaker 2: circle is you can watch Ohio native jd Vance ordered
Speaker 2: donuts in the worst way possibly. It's so funny.
Speaker 1: You work here, You work here long? Where are you
Speaker 1: driving to? Had anything to drink tonight? Sir?
Speaker 2: Phrase you use whatever makes sense? When I asked about like,
Speaker 2: he's like a glaze some sprinkles. Whatever makes sense. The
Speaker 2: weirdest thing you could possibly saying? Donuts imagine ordering in
Speaker 2: a restaurant. Whatever makes sense. Well, I don't know you, sir, anyway,
Speaker 2: we don't even talk about that guy, right. I have
Speaker 2: a show called some More News I host on YouTube,
Speaker 2: and there's a podcast called even more News, and sometimes
Speaker 2: we do a podcast called way Less News because who
Speaker 2: likes talking about the news? Very rarely, but we're doing
Speaker 2: it more because it's fun. And I've got a band
Speaker 2: called the Hot Shapes if you'd like to check them
Speaker 2: out on places not Spotify currently but maybe soon. And
Speaker 2: I'm doctor mister Cody on social media. I think that's
Speaker 2: the end of that sentence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, good sense. I have a substack. It's Margaret
Speaker 1: Kildroid at substack dot com and it is where I
Speaker 1: write things about how I feel about current events and history.
Speaker 1: And half of them are personal and for people who
Speaker 1: pay me money, and half of them are free and
Speaker 1: are more political and you know, how to be an
Speaker 1: activist or build movements or whatever it is I talk
Speaker 1: about and care about. I'm not entirely sure I don't
Speaker 1: care about anything. Oh I'm a nihilist. That's not true. Actually,
Speaker 1: actually now, I do weirdly care about a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but one time, I was playing concertina loudly outside this Starbucks,
Speaker 1: very badly, and I was trying to get some money
Speaker 1: because I didn't have any money at concertina, and I
Speaker 1: was playing very badly, and this guy comes up and
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, i'll give you a dollar if you
Speaker 1: moved to the other street. Oh, And I was like no,
Speaker 1: and he was like I think. I was like, I'll
Speaker 1: give you ten dollars and he was like no. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you're drink at Starbucks. I'm not
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong. And he's like, oh, it's a protest
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, it's not protest. I'm a nihilist,
Speaker 1: which isn't true then or now, but I was just
Speaker 1: feeling salty. And he was like, i'll give you a dollar.
Speaker 1: You can spell nihilist, and so I spelled nihilist and
Speaker 1: he gave me a dollar and then he went and
Speaker 1: sat back down. He was a man of his word.
Speaker 2: Did he keep playing.
Speaker 1: I played for like long enough to feel like I
Speaker 1: had won, and then I left because I don't actually
Speaker 1: like playing music when I know that people hate it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no exactly. You have you bury that feeling, though,
Speaker 2: to make them feel bad. For a little extra time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then get out.
Speaker 1: And then I got an accordion and got halfway good
Speaker 1: at it, and I no longer made annoying noises and
Speaker 1: that was a much better instrument to play on the
Speaker 1: street for me. That's my story about why I don't
Speaker 1: know why I'm talking about this train.
Speaker 2: You guy, then you want to plug.
Speaker 3: I sometimes host it could happen here, or join another
Speaker 3: host on it could happen here, and talk about stuff
Speaker 3: A lot of palsigne stuff recently, or when I'm not
Speaker 3: talking about that and getting really depressed, I talk about
Speaker 3: food and history and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So hell yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Love food in history, the food of the mind.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, I'm gonna have to do an alcohol episode. I'm
Speaker 3: so fascinated with how alcohol rebranded itself.
Speaker 2: It's I know, yeah, so successfully, one of the most
Speaker 2: successful rebrands of all time. Genuinely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: And it also ties into like early white feminism was
Speaker 1: very into the temperance movement, but some of them were
Speaker 1: actually rad and many of them weren't, and so it
Speaker 1: was just all tied together in weird ways pro and
Speaker 1: anti drinking. Yeah, way more political than I ever could
Speaker 1: have imagined. Yeah, all right, I'll see you all later.
Speaker 2: Cool Goodbye.
Speaker 1: Cool People who did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 3: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, but wherever you get your podcasts.