WEBVTT - Part One: Rebecca Felton: The First Female Senator (was also a pro-lynching activist) 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:07.800 Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:10.119 where we tell you everything you don't know about the 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:12.560 very worst people in all of history. And we have 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.159 quite a special episode for everybody this week. And to 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.799 tell that special episode, we have a special guest, the 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:22.520 great Samantha McVeigh, host of Stuff Your Mom Never Told 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:24.800 You in the podcast and the book Stuff your Mom 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:27.160 Never Told You. I should say, Samantha, welcome to the show. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:29.080 To the show. I don't know he. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:36.199 Either way, you did, Jesus stuff Mom never told you. 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:39.320 It's it's early morning for me, you know. 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:41.360 It's one friends. 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:45.400 Yeah, yeah, well I haven't slept o'clock my time, So there. 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:46.720 You go, speaking of friend. 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:51.479 Hi Sam, Hi, how is everybody? 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.320 I'm good, Sam. I wanted to know, do you know 0:00:54.360 --> 0:00:56.440 anything about the first female senator? 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.040 Uh? First, not the see Now I'm confused because I 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:02.360 remember the pantsuit senator, which we do talk about. 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:04.080 Huh, And I have to go back. 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:04.480 To my book. 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.440 This is the first female senator, right, This is the 0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.240 lady who was technically the first female senator. She didn't 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.120 actually do the job of a senator really, but she 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:15.920 was an activist who kind of got it as an 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.600 award late in life after women got the vote because 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:21.480 she was She was also a major suffragette activist. Her 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.720 name was Rebecca Felton, and she was technically the first 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:30.319 female US senator. Now that all sounds great, right, That 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:32.160 doesn't sound like the subject for a buy in the 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:37.080 Bastard's episode. Unfortunately, Rebecca wasn't just a suffragette, right. She 0:01:37.120 --> 0:01:39.320 wasn't just someone who was an activist for that. She 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.160 was an activist for a lot of things, including lynching. 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:44.839 And yeah, I was gonna say she was racist. Wasn't 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:46.440 she racist? 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.080 She was a plantation racist. 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:51.840 Georgia, Georgia. 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:53.680 Oh, this is a Georgia story. 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.240 The actual first senator I was thinking about was a 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:57.919 black woman. But maybe I'm wrong. 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:01.080 I don't I don't know the elected first senator off 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:02.440 the top of my head right now. I read about 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:03.960 her when I was doing the research for this. But 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:09.280 I'm purely focusing on the mod the white technically because 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.079 she fits for our purposes here on behind the Bastards. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:14.760 Right, I'm so excited to talk about racist. I love 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:16.840 talking about racist. This is one of my favorite hobbies. 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:27.080 Let's go, all right, So, Rebecca an Latimer was born 0:02:27.160 --> 0:02:30.840 on June tenth, eighteen thirty five, somewhere near Decatur, Georgia. 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:32.519 Felton's family was rich. 0:02:33.000 --> 0:02:37.359 Oh okay, cool well, such a it's such a local story. 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:38.799 This is too close to home. 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:41.480 This is full on a Samantha McVay episode. 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:43.600 It is literally my home, guys. 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:48.040 I think the first female senator was Hattie I forget 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:51.280 her last name. She finished her husband's after he died. 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:53.520 She finished her husband's term because it was. 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:56.920 It was after Rebecca, after Rebecca Felton, there was a 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.160 senator who actually got to do some of the work, 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.200 but it was because she taken over for her husband. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:03.399 And then the first elected female senator was some time 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:07.440 after that. Yeah, Felton was the first technical female senator. Right, 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.560 She's a Decatur girl. Her family is rich as hell, 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:14.000 and she was going to be raised and spend all 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:15.799 of her early life living on a seven hundred and 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.800 twenty five acre plantation with a big white mansion that 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.040 is still around to this day. Sam since your indicator, 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.480 you could go see the Latimer home or I's just 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.680 until pretty recently. Yeah, this is where she would have 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.040 been raised and obviously a seven hundred and twenty five 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:33.120 Acre plantation. They owned a lot of people, right The 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:37.720 Latimer family own a huge number of enslaved people. It 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.320 will not surprise you to hear that Rebecca's family had 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:42.480 been rich basically as long as there had been white 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:45.800 people on the East coast of North America. Her ancestors 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.960 had been early settlers and had fought in the Revolutionary War. 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.440 So they had been prominent Americans in pre Revolutionary times 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:54.560 and after the war. They're kind of part of the 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.080 first elite class in this new country. 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:00.400 Right Now. 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:02.720 Her family, at the time of her birth lives in Georgia, 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:04.960 but they'd initially lived in the far East coast. They'd 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:07.600 been on the Potomac right like literally, they'd had a 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.520 huge estate on the Potomac for like two hundred years, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.280 and not long before Rebecca was born. When her dad 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:16.760 was like seven years old, the family left for Decatur. 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:19.200 She would later write of this move, quote, the family 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:22.080 left behind them the splendid brick residents, the capacious barn 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.000 and outbuildings, all built of brick, perfectly sound and useful 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:27.440 at this present time, a home of former wealth and luxury, 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.799 to adventure life, fortunate and happiness, and a sparsely settled country, 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.599 fully half of which was still inhabited by Red Indians. 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.080 So this is like her dad's generations is still what 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.560 she's being raised to feel about, like what the family's doing. 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.760 Why we left the Northeast for Georgia, right, is because 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:46.400 there was more adventure there, It was more open, there 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.160 was more space. It was only inhabited by these natives. 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:51.320 Right, I was gonna say, So she was there before 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:55.360 the Trail of tears, like she helped you outations. 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.840 The trailft tears happens as she's a girl, basically, right, 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.080 Like that's an early early things she would have been 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:03.400 aware of, right, is the Trail of tears, And in 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:05.720 her autobiography, by the way she writes about it is 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:08.400 like a horrifying thing. Like she at least as an 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.119 adult after the war, doesn't see as this is good. 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:15.160 But she's also she's very critical of her family and 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.160 the South as an adult decades later. So don't take 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:20.440 that to mean that as a kid growing up in 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.400 this rich family that's like colonizing this region, She's not 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:27.600 necessarily feeling like it's wrong while she's living it. Right, 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.600 this is something she'll come to recognize later in life. 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.440 So I don't know why the Latimers left the Potomac 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:37.520 for Georgia other than you know what they said, more adventure. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:40.479 I think probably the real reason was that by selling 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:42.960 that land and the more crowded East, they were able 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:45.440 to afford to buy a much larger plot of land 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.440 in a place with a better growing climate. One of 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:51.000 my sources for these episodes is the exceedingly good history 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:54.080 books Southern Horrors by Crystal Feimster, and she writes that 0:05:54.120 --> 0:05:56.960 by the time Rebecca was born, the Latimer family owned 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.520 not just their vast plantation, but a flour mill, a 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:02.920 blacksmith shop, a wood shop, tavern, general store, and post office. 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:07.320 They ran Decatur. Really, they owned Decatur pretty much. The 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:11.080 Latimer family runs Decatur in its early Yeah. 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.200 Our theme is come to Decatur where it's greater. So 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:16.280 maybe they are the ones that placed that there. That's 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:17.680 why they did that. 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:19.800 That is more or less why why she seems to 0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:23.479 think that they gave now the Latimer fa Latimer's East 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.640 Coast family land had was sold to the Potomac Boat 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.680 Company and made into a park outside of DC that 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.960 I think still exists today. So I don't know that's 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.279 cool Anyway, Rebecca did not write that autobiography that I 0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:36.080 get some of this info from until she was like 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:38.560 in her eighties, And so again we shouldn't assume that 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.880 her thoughts in it always reflect your thoughts at the time. 0:06:41.440 --> 0:06:44.480 For example, in her autobiography, she writes extensively about the 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.000 reason her family was able to buy land in Georgia 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:49.360 in the first place, which was something called the Yazoo 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.120 Land fraud. The New Georgia Encyclopedia describes this as the 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.479 quote bizarre climax to a decade of fringely speculation in 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.479 the state's public lands. See In the immediate wake of 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.440 the American Revolution, the state of Georgia, like many states, 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.960 was broke and running low of young men. It was 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:07.880 unable to defend its claims to the western Yazoo Land, 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.200 so named after the river, So the legislature solicited pitches 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.120 from speculators who wanted to create new settlements in the 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.440 unsettled areas, and this led to a series of failed 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:20.160 attempts to create communities in the seventeen eighties. But it's 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:24.200 really hard to do that out there, right, So after 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:26.640 those kind of go bunk, Georgia tries to seed the 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:29.080 land to Congress. They're like, well, make this federal land. 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:31.240 I don't want to deal with this shit anymore. And 0:07:31.320 --> 0:07:33.040 Congress says, wait, why we don't want to deal with 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.240 what are you talking about? And so then in the 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.080 seventeen nineties, after a bunch of back and forth public pressure, 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:42.040 the governor transfers thirty five million acres to four companies 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:44.960 that had paid a total of about half a million dollars. Now, 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.000 the only way to actually do this transaction was for 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.679 the governor to bribe a huge number of people, because 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:52.160 most of what they were doing to kind of force 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:55.160 this through was technically illegal. His I think his assumption 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.320 was just, well, this is such a pain to everybody 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.320 having this land that if I have to break the 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:01.920 law to get onto someone else's hands so the Georgia 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:03.800 doesn't have to deal with it, it'll be worth it 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.520 for everybody. But then the news finds out, and the 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.239 news finds out that this guy has basically like bribed 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.320 away a huge chunk of the collectively owned like land 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:15.840 of Georgia. As you know, the white people in Georgia 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:17.960 see it, and so there's years and years of lawsuits 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.200 and countersuits and the Yazoo fraud kind of dominates Georgia 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.400 state politics for around twenty years now. The Native American 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:26.880 tribes in the area also get involved and start in, 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.000 you know, counter suing and whatnot, because it's their land 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.440 being sold and they have some issues with it, right. 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:34.360 Some of them are like, we should at least get 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.520 some money for this, right. So there's a lot of 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:40.240 court fights over this. The land eventually gets seated finally 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:42.720 to the federal government in eighteen oh two, like Georgia 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:45.720 had wanted to do originally, and the federal government pays 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.560 Georgia one point twenty five million dollars to extinguish the 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:51.400 remaining claims on the territory. That means they're supposed to 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:53.640 pay off, for example, a lot of these tribes who 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:56.640 say they have claims to this area and then for 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.400 the New Georgia Encyclopedia. As cotton culture spread across Georgia, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.319 the national government proved unable to extinguish Creek and Cherokee 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.040 claims to land quickly enough for white Georgians who were 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.600 rapidly laying claim to inland at tracks through the land 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.520 lottery system. Anger over this matter fueled the development of 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.440 the state's rites philosophy for which George's leaders became notorious 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:17.079 in the eighteen twenties and eighteen thirties. Is they continually 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:19.160 proud of the United States to complete the process of 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.040 Indian removal. In a sense, the Yazu land fraud helped 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:24.680 lead to the Cherokee Trail of Tears in eighteen thirty eight. 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:30.319 So purpose, Yeah, the purpose is horror, but like that 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.000 that's this is Rebecca's understanding of like how her family 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:35.720 gets to Georgia later, which is she realizes it's because 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:38.960 of this fraud that like violently displaced these people, and 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.400 she has very early memories of the Trail of Tears. 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:43.559 It's a thing that I think is upsetting to her 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:46.200 even from a young age before she fully understands it. 0:09:46.640 --> 0:09:48.880 So I suspect that's kind of why she spends so 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.240 much time as an adult trying to understand what had 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:53.840 caused it. But this is something she writes about a lot, 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.559 so she knows, my comfortable family life in Georgia only 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.320 was possible because these people were robbed and because of 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.120 this fast fraud, like we should never have been there, 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.080 which is something she's going to like talk about pretty 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.320 openly later, but again, isn't really thinking about at the time, Right, 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:11.120 We shouldn't assume she knew any of this as a 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:11.640 little girl. 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.280 You're starting to build her up like she's actually like 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:18.559 human and kind, so I'm really the interested in ware 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:19.600 the story goes. 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:22.600 The tough thing about Rebecca is she says the right 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.080 thing like sixty percent of the time, but if you 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:27.400 interrogate it, like most of the time when she says 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:29.880 the right thing, it's for a really bad reason, and 0:10:29.920 --> 0:10:32.040 we get we'll get to all of that. She does 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.120 sound weirdly woke at points. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.320 Like this is like the white women's hears those that 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:40.079 that we were like, yeah, we definitely need that intersection 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:42.559 because without it it's very one sided. So this is 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:44.800 where we're at with her, right, Okay, okay, okay, yeah. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:45.640 Yeah. 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:47.920 So from an early age, Rebecca is aware of how 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:50.480 much of her daily comfort and security is provided for 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.040 by the women in her family, and most of her 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.600 like most interesting recollections of her childhood is her talking 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.440 about how much she admired the older women in her family, 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.800 These who are in charge of these huge households and 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:06.160 plantations and are kind of organizing the affairs of all 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.440 of these workers and enslaved people. She really admires like 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:11.200 the ladies in her family more than it because that 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:13.840 in part because that's who she has direct contact with. 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:17.040 But she also sees very accurately that a lot of 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.360 Southern culture is held up by the labor of these women, right, 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:22.280 even though they don't get a lot of credit for it. 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:24.880 And one of these women that she admires as a 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:28.080 girl is missus Lucy Talbot Swift, who Rebecca described as 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:31.439 the mother of eleven children, all reaching maturity except two 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:34.400 that live to eleven and twelve years. Her industry, her management, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.800 and her executive ability and caring for and carrying on 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.160 household affairs are still wonderful memories. So this is like, 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:42.800 this is who she's raised to idolize. This is the 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.600 best woman you can be in the South, Right, Is 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:47.600 this like Lucy Swift? You know this lady who has 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:50.280 eleven kids, nine of them make it to adulthood, and 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:52.640 she's really good at managing a household. Right, that's a 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:53.560 successful woman. 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.360 And that's what we call leaning. 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:01.439 In exactly exactly. And so Rebecca is raised to idolize 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.760 that kind of woman all her clothing. All of Rebecca's clothing, 0:12:04.800 --> 0:12:07.080 every blanket, and every pillow she ever used were all 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:10.080 handmade and all crafted by her female relatives or by 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:13.600 enslaved people, usually by enslaved people being like watched over 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:18.880 by your female relatives, right. One of Rebecca's first specific 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:21.320 recollections about her own life is that she was given 0:12:21.360 --> 0:12:23.800 a pony at a very young age. So this was 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.480 her pet, which again shows that she's a very wealthy girl, 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:30.000 but it's also a practical tool for the farm. She writes, quote, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.080 the Negro boys learned to plow with him, and he 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.120 was the dependence for going on mill with a sack 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.360 of corn on his back for more than a dozen years. 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:38.880 And her family also owns a bunch of race horses. 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:40.840 So all of their and this is kind of worth noting, 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.000 all of their wealth and all of their luxury items 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.079 are alive. This is a wealthy family, but they primarily 0:12:48.120 --> 0:12:50.320 think of their wealth in terms of like material goods. 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.360 They basically have what they make. They don't go out 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:54.120 and buy stuff. They don't have a ton of ready 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:57.480 cash necessarily, but they own people, which are worth way 0:12:57.520 --> 0:12:59.560 more than just about any other commodity you can own. 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.800 And they own horses in livestock. Right, that's what makes 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:04.720 them rich. That's what makes you rich in this day, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:08.000 right in the South, is that you have human beings. 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.520 In the first few dozen pages of her autobiography, she 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.600 refers to the people her family owned exclusively as nurses, servants, 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.840 and help. In one passage describing a great feast held 0:13:18.880 --> 0:13:21.800 in her plantation, she writes, white farmers came with their 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.360 colored men. So it's interesting she seems to be almost 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:30.360 hiding or trying to avoid, even maybe unconsciously describing these 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.080 people as slaves and what her family's doing as slaving 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:35.920 for a weirdly long time. Now, that doesn't keep up 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:38.560 the whole book. She finally makes a direct and open 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:41.120 reference to slavery, the first that I found on page 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:43.360 fifty three, and it's a lot more common after that. 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:45.120 It's just weird how long it takes her to use 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:47.079 that word. I thought that was kind of worth noting. 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:51.720 So she may have subconsciously understood a this is kind 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.800 of bad because this is a person, because she refers 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:55.640 to them as people. 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.480 Yes, And she also is writing this decades later, after 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:01.800 the Civil War or after freedom in the twentieth century. 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.120 Right the early twentieth centuries when this book gets written. 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.120 So some of this is certainly her referring to these 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.240 people more by the modern terms than by you know 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.960 what she would have called them at the time. Her 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.760 first and direct open reference to slavery, at least that 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:19.680 I found was, came when discussing a woman she admired 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:22.000 whose husband had passed away early and left her to 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:25.680 manage an entire plantation and family. Quote, there were slaves, 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:27.920 but nobody to direct but the anxious woman who had 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.160 this large family black and white to provide for. And 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.560 you see this a lot in like Southern narratives before 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:36.760 the Civil War, where they will both refer to the 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.800 people they own as family and as you know, property. 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.680 And that's also literally true in most of these cases, right, 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.360 most of these slaves people are related to the people 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:49.160 who own them, or not most, but a lot of 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:49.520 them are. 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:50.440 It's very common. 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:53.440 I mean, that's what companies do today. We're family, right, 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:55.680 or do this because we love the job, not because 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:56.400 we have to be paid. 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:57.720 Yeah, it's a bit. 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.640 Here's we're literally family because I own you and raping 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:04.240 in order to make more people that I own. 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.880 Yeah, and then I'd discard you if you were no 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:11.400 longer more selues. Yeah, horrifying, Yeah, yeah, and. 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:13.400 Yeah. 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:15.880 Rebecca's very aware of that dimension of it too as 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:20.240 she gets older. Now, Rebecca is open about the fact 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.280 that most wealthy Southern women were raised to be ornaments 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.120 in this period of time. They're made for early marriage 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:28.680 and child rearing. They're not supposed to make decisions about 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.360 anything too important. In her book, Crystal Feimster ads from 0:15:32.400 --> 0:15:35.440 a young age, Rebecca was integrated into a hierarchical social 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:39.240 order that sanctioned male dominance that discouraged female autonomy. Because 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.000 Southern white women were legally subordinated to and he economically 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:45.840 dependent on their fathers and husbands, they had little choice 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.840 but to accept paternalistic domination in exchange for male protection 0:15:48.920 --> 0:15:51.480 and a measure of discrete power within the household. As 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:54.080 an obedient and dutiful daughter, Rebecca could count on her 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.200 father's care. It was he who came to a rescue 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.560 when she found a drunken man hanging on their front gate, 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.360 shouting the most awful things. The man served as a 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.480 reminder of the dangers that lay outside the sheltered security 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.640 of the plantation, and her father's protective and watchful eye. 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:09.720 Rebecca and the other young women of her class were 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:13.040 always closely guarded and never traveled without male chaperones. 0:16:14.280 --> 0:16:18.280 She's a owned as well, like she is property. Yeah, 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:19.720 she's so close. 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:24.400 She comes to understand very quickly that women can't have 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.040 a cap on their ambitions and a cap on what 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:29.400 they can do, no matter how smart and capable they are. 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.640 And she's going to gradually understand that. And this this 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:36.360 understanding starts when she's a girl, which is that like, well, 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.360 it's a dangerous world out there for me a girl, 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.040 I need the protection of a man, my father and 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.600 then my husband, right, and then if I don't have that, 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.200 I feel naked and unprotected to the world. That's how 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.640 she's raised to feel from being a very little girl. 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.320 And so there's other men, by the way, fear from other. 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.840 Men, and it's it's never explicitly stated as such, but 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.480 there's a social contract she comes to understand, which is 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.440 that women in the South do what they're supposed to 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:05.760 and make themselves small, and in exchange, they get protection 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.439 and they don't have to work. Right, That's that's the 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.320 promise for rich women, right, there's plenty of poor lady, 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:12.320 white ladies in the South. 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.439 Who have to work because they know not tony people. 0:17:14.880 --> 0:17:17.359 And technically the women that she admires work a lot 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.119 in they do giving the household. 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:22.399 But they're working at it managing the work of people 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.000 they own. That is also a big part of it, right, 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.200 So there are accounts, I mean, and again that's also 0:17:29.280 --> 0:17:32.080 not always what happens, because not all of these, especially 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:35.719 the higher you get in wealth, these these white like 0:17:35.960 --> 0:17:39.760 mistresses of the plantation, it's almost the more money you have, 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:42.080 the less you're expected to do. And in fact, there 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.159 are accounts by white women and extremely wealthy plantation households 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:47.959 from like letters where we see them talking about panicking 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.159 when their husbands and sons are away and they have 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.240 to be in charge of the help themselves. This isn't 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.760 the overwhelming norm, but it wasn't uncommon, and it gives 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.320 you an idea of how much agency high status women 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.159 in the Old South are expected to seed. In Southern Horrors, 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:04.320 Finster quotes a South Carolina matron named Emily Harrison who 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:06.480 wrote in her diary, I shall never get used to 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:08.719 being left as the head of the of affairs at 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:11.240 home I am constituted so as to crave a guide 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.680 and protect her. I am not an independent woman, no, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.680 nor ever shall be. That's a woman writing it's like 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:18.280 a rich woman. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:18.919 You know. 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:20.960 That is not what Margaret Mitchell told me about the 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:22.760 Antebell himself. So I'm really. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:28.120 Turns out some of it that might have getten glorified 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:31.920 it just a little bit. Turns out Gone with the 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:36.080 Wind wasn't a perfect recollection. Rebecca's story is a lot 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.600 like Scarlett O'Hara is. Honestly, they have a lot of 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:40.680 comparisons to make. 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:43.560 I'm starting to wonder if Margaret Mitchell actually knew her, 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:45.800 because she was from Georgia's well, so. 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.480 I mean almost very good chance Rebecca's and Rebecca's very 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.920 famous after the war too, like knew of her, certainly. 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:56.359 I don't know if they were social. Yeah. 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:59.720 As a girl, Rebecca attended multiple slave weddings on the plantation. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.879