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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome back to cool people who did cool stuff.

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Speaker 2: You're a weekly reminder that sometimes people beat people to

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Speaker 2: death with clubs, but in a good way, like when

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Speaker 2: those people had enslaved them. I'm your host, Margaro Kiljoy

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Speaker 2: and my guest today is Sophie.

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Speaker 1: Hi.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Sophie, Hi, You ever beaten A Nope, I'm not

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Speaker 2: gonna ask that.

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Speaker 1: Anderson and Truman are here. They say hello, Oh amazing. Yep.

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Speaker 1: Everyone say hi to Anderson, Rentron Truman.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you better do it.

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Speaker 1: They can't hear you say it louder.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Also, people should say hi to Rory, our audio engineer. Hi, Rory,

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Speaker 2: Hi Roy. And that's our guest Sophie, who's also our producer.

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Speaker 2: And our theme musical was written for us byon Woman.

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Speaker 2: And this is part two in a two parter about

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Speaker 2: the Great Dismal Swamp Maroons, who were a multi century

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Speaker 2: resisted project to the slave empire of the United States

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Speaker 2: of America. When you pick like one topic and sort

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Speaker 2: of deep dive and just realize even like everything ties

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Speaker 2: into the fact that it's this like slave economy, just

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Speaker 2: like every little piece of it, even the poor white

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Speaker 2: people who end up siding with them. It still ties

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Speaker 2: into the fact that it's a slave economy, Like it's

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Speaker 2: just like such a overwhelming fact of American history.

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Speaker 1: A Marca sucks scay Mass country.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, some good people here, you know. Yeah, So we

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Speaker 2: just had Carrie's Rebellion. The Leveler Quaker Republic has fallen,

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Speaker 2: and many of the people fled into the swamps, the

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Speaker 2: Great Dismal Swamp. Not long after, in seventeen eleven, the

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Speaker 2: tusc Aurora, which is that confederacy of three different tribes

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Speaker 2: that folks have been working with who lived a bit

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Speaker 2: further inland from the swamp, went to war against the colonies.

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Speaker 2: Tensions were high between the two groups. They both had

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Speaker 2: valid points. Indigenous people were accused of harboring runaway slaves,

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Speaker 2: while settlers were you know, stealing Tuscarora land and sending

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Speaker 2: out surveyors to map to put towns in where it

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Speaker 2: wasn't theirs, and also just showing up and stealing people

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Speaker 2: and selling them. So really again, just complicated thing, you know,

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Speaker 2: just a complicated conflict that we certainly couldn't take signs

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Speaker 2: and I can't do it and even pretend the Tuscarora

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Speaker 2: people and their allies, including a bunch of African and

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Speaker 2: mixed race Maroons, went to war. Oh, because you already

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Speaker 2: even have even at this point, there's already some Maroons

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Speaker 2: in those swamps. There's already people who just like I

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Speaker 2: ran away, and a ton more of them are about

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Speaker 2: to arrive. But like, so they went to war and

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Speaker 2: they're basically their goal was to kidnap enough white landowners

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Speaker 2: to exchange them back for their loved ones.

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Speaker 1: Cool.

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Speaker 2: Again, no historical or current parallels at all. And the

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Speaker 2: first day they went through and killed like one hundred

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Speaker 2: and thirty white people, mostly white land owning men, and

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Speaker 2: kidnapped a ton of people because they were trying to

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Speaker 2: do this hostage exchange thing. The governor tried to raise

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Speaker 2: up a militia, but the albumarl of white people were like, no,

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Speaker 2: we're We're good. The tusker are. They're not mad at us,

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Speaker 2: they're mad at the other white people. They're mad at

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Speaker 2: the rich people and the like landowners, and shit, we're

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Speaker 2: not going to fuck with them. Besides, we're mostly Quakers,

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Speaker 2: so we're not doing it. So it was a South

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Speaker 2: Carolina militia alongside allied indigenous fighters who put down the rebellion.

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Speaker 2: Really yeah, they had to bring them in from elsewhere.

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Speaker 2: And then also, like, I mean, the other thing about

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Speaker 2: the history of the destruction of indigenous peoples in the

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Speaker 2: United States is or the place that became the United

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Speaker 2: States is using dividing conquer tactics and getting one group

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Speaker 2: to fight against the other group.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but it wasn't all like crush rebellion. The two

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Speaker 2: sides sued for peace and they had a truce and

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Speaker 2: they agreed to release all their hostages. So the Tuscarora

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Speaker 2: released all their hostages. The English were like, why would

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Speaker 2: we do what we said we were going to do,

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Speaker 2: and they didn't. Instead, they sold their hostages into slavery,

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Speaker 2: fucking clown asque country, Fucking.

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Speaker 1: A stupid place we live in.

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Speaker 2: So the Tuscara went back to war. They were like,

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Speaker 2: all right, well, we had a truce and you didn't

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Speaker 2: do it. So they attacked more of the slave labor camps.

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Speaker 2: But unfortunately the divide and conqueror was like real close

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Speaker 2: to home. They told the chief of the northern Tuscarora,

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Speaker 2: it was kind of divided into two groups, told them

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Speaker 2: that he would rule over the southern Tuscarora too if

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Speaker 2: he would join the English in the war, and that happened.

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Speaker 2: So hundreds of southern Tuscarora and their allies laid up

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Speaker 2: in a fort for a last stand, and a ton

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Speaker 2: of them were slaughtered or sold into slavery. At this point,

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Speaker 2: the majority of the Tuscarora went north and joined the

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Speaker 2: Iroquois Confederacy, which is that massive democra project that is

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Speaker 2: way way more interesting in radical and democratic than the

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Speaker 2: US has ever been or will be. But a whole

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Speaker 2: lot of the Tuscarora people, as well as the Machapunga

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Speaker 2: and presumably other allies, they couldn't make it north because

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Speaker 2: they were blocked by soldiers. So where do they go?

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Speaker 2: They went into the swamps, and the Yamassee people from

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Speaker 2: South Carolina had been a major tool of the English

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Speaker 2: in the war against the Tuscarora. Within months of helping

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Speaker 2: put down the revolt of the Tuscarora, they had their

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Speaker 2: own revolt because they realized that they were on the

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Speaker 2: wrong side and that they weren't getting treated any better.

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Speaker 2: And they have the Yamassee War, which lasted another two years.

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Speaker 2: So now the swamps have the pesky leveler whites and

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Speaker 2: blacks they have fighting indigenous people and they've all been

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Speaker 2: driven into the swamps. Because of all that slave labor

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Speaker 2: and plantation culture could move into the area more freely.

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Speaker 2: So basically the like the cool vibe of North Carolina

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Speaker 2: is going away quickly, right, numbers of enslaved people skyrocketed.

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Speaker 2: Laws against black and indigenous people voting were passed. Black

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Speaker 2: people from Virginia started making their way into the swamps

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Speaker 2: also at this point, and they're fleeing the slave labor

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Speaker 2: camps where they've been imprisoned. And the thing is people

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Speaker 2: were helping them do it. Like the thing that is

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Speaker 2: like it wasn't just like, oh, I'm going to go

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Speaker 2: run into the swamps and hope for the best. Right,

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Speaker 2: these swamps are a pretty literal maze, right, and the

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Speaker 2: wrong path will kill you. So they were met by

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Speaker 2: other Maroons who navigated them in Oh it's cool. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: they had this whole elaborate system.

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Speaker 1: Because if you don't like, you're fucked right, Like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not this is not a nice concrete path, this

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Speaker 1: is swamp.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not even just like, oh, I'm going

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Speaker 2: to walk through some like knee high muck. It's like

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Speaker 2: I'm walking through nee high muck. Now I'm over my head.

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Speaker 2: There's an alligator you.

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Speaker 1: Know right, Oh in that giant spider that you talked about.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like literally later on, basically, the colonial media,

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Speaker 2: or I guess it was the United States media. The

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Speaker 2: slave media was like, God, this sounds like something that anyway. Whatever.

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Speaker 2: The slave media was like, there's snakes in there. Don't

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Speaker 2: go in there. There's snakes, you know, stay here and

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Speaker 2: grow stuff for us instead of hanging out with snakes.

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Speaker 2: I mean there were lots of venomous snakes in there.

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Speaker 2: It was a really rough place, you know. And overall,

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Speaker 2: the most common form of resistance that the Maroons did

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Speaker 2: sort of universally was they helped others find their way in.

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Speaker 2: And we also have some evidence that basically once you

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Speaker 2: were helped in, they would set you up. The people

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Speaker 2: who live there. You're not necessarily like joining in. It's

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Speaker 2: not like, oh, we all live in one big, happy

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Speaker 2: commune or like one big city in the middle and whatever.

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Speaker 2: But they're like, oh, okay, we'll set you up. Well,

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Speaker 2: we know where all the spots of land are. Archaeological

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Speaker 2: evidence is that over this entire region, like almost all

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Speaker 2: of the dry island areas had like multiple buildings and

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Speaker 2: like was like people were living there, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 2: And so they get you set up when you get in,

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Speaker 2: and soon enough you have multi generational communities scattered all

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Speaker 2: throughout the swamps. Some are in the edges, still interacting

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Speaker 2: with the regular world. Some are deep inside the swamps.

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Speaker 2: Many people spend their entire lives without leaving the swamps. Theoretically,

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Speaker 2: we don't know a ton about their lives. There's like

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Speaker 2: the stuff that people are able to conjecture, and the

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Speaker 2: numbers are pretty unknown. The main estimate that people have

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Speaker 2: is like two to three thousand over the course of centuries,

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Speaker 2: like not total, but at any given time. But those

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Speaker 2: are the estimates of like the militias chasing Nat Turner later.

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Speaker 2: So there's no reason to believe those estimates. Like we

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Speaker 2: don't know, we don't know when people live there. A

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Speaker 2: lot of them wild people went, according to the Governor

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Speaker 2: of Virginia, every single day. The Governor of Virginia said

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Speaker 2: about the dismal quote, great numbers of loose and disorderly

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Speaker 2: people daily flock thither, which is, I want to be wherever,

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Speaker 2: great numbers of loosen disorderly people greatly daily flock thither,

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Speaker 2: even if I don't say it. And so the Great

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Speaker 2: Dismal Swamp became a maroon community, not just any maroon community,

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Speaker 2: but the largest and longest lasting and most influential in

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Speaker 2: US history. As history of Medievo cadal I put it, quote,

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Speaker 2: the Great Dismal Swamp was a regional magnet to the oppressed,

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Speaker 2: the dispossessed, the defiant, the rebellious, and those who refused

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Speaker 2: to be bound by the conventions of hierarchical society. Swamps

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Speaker 2: were places where no horses or dogs could be used

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Speaker 2: to hunt them down, and where tobacco production simply could

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Speaker 2: not take place. They were places of peace, where loved

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Speaker 2: ones could not be bought or sold. These were places

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Speaker 2: where freedom seekers could build the intimately democratic communities where

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Speaker 2: they could survive and thrive. Wow, I know, it's just

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Speaker 2: like I such a like people do amazing shit in

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Speaker 2: really bad situations. You know. Yeah, sometimes it almost seems

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Speaker 2: like it doesn't really, but sometimes it seems like it

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Speaker 2: takes a real bad situation before people do really amazing shit.

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Speaker 2: But actually people would have been doing this amazing shit

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Speaker 2: if there hadn't been the terrible stuff either, So I

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Speaker 2: don't know. They lived in swamp cabins on the islands

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Speaker 2: of dry Land. They raised livestock and crops. The Maroons

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Speaker 2: had their own internal economy. Archaeologists are aware of at

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Speaker 2: least one person building musical instruments. Most of their life

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Speaker 2: was concerned with daily life, not waging war against slave society.

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Speaker 2: But there were like multiple anthropologists of like, there's like

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Speaker 2: four different classifications of Maroons in there. There's like the

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Speaker 2: deep maroon people who are like, I'm never going anywhere,

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Speaker 2: and then there's the people who kind of live in

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Speaker 2: the periphery and mostly raid and like. So you can't

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Speaker 2: really easily say, like, oh, everyone wanted to be left alone.

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Speaker 2: The people want to be left alone went to the

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Speaker 2: damn middle, and the people who wanted to hang out

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Speaker 2: on the edge and like kill people they didn't like

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Speaker 2: lived on the edge and kill people they didn't like.

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Speaker 1: You know, that makes sense.

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Speaker 2: It's just logical something for everyone.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: As for the word maroon, maroon was originally a Spanish

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Speaker 2: term for the cattle that escaped from early settlers and

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Speaker 2: went feral. By the fifteen forties, it was applied to

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Speaker 2: people and by the fifteen seventies, it appeared in English

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Speaker 2: and the colonial Americans the government wasn't really a big

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Speaker 2: fan of this thing that was happening. They were like,

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Speaker 2: we don't even know where the line between the two

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Speaker 2: of our colonies is who's in charge? And this is

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Speaker 2: like literally they would have this problem where they'd want

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Speaker 2: to go and raid or they'd want to strike back

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Speaker 2: right against the raiders, but they kind of didn't because

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Speaker 2: they didn't know whose territory it was, because they didn't

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Speaker 2: know if it was Virginia North Carolina. And the existence

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Speaker 2: of maroonage was really uncomfortable for white slavers because it

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Speaker 2: was a beacon for enslave people, absolutely, but also because

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Speaker 2: it didn't sit right with the lies that slavers told.

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Speaker 2: Slavers in the US at the time would claim shit

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Speaker 2: that like, oh, black people are naturally docile, or they

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Speaker 2: can't survive without benevolent white owners, and the Great Dismal

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Speaker 2: Swamp was just a counter example, and they weren't happy

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Speaker 2: with it. Historian J. Brent Morris put it like this quote,

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Speaker 2: Maroon voices demand a reassessment of the meaning of freedom.

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Speaker 2: Maroonage in the Dismal represented an alternative to a life

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Speaker 2: of enslavement. It also represented a choice, in most cases

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Speaker 2: to live free lives in the swamp in the south

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Speaker 2: rather than seeking it in a free state or Canada.

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Speaker 2: Maroon Voices also remind us that freedom was not just

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Speaker 2: an accomplishment after passage along the underground railroad, but a

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Speaker 2: maroonage process sustained by their own heroic efforts. And a

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Speaker 2: lot of both of these books that I read about

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Speaker 2: this really wanted to kind of hit home. I think

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Speaker 2: in kind of contrast the way that American history is

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Speaker 2: taught that even the underground railroad, like people kind of

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Speaker 2: like the underground railroad, the white people kind of like

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Speaker 2: the underground railroad because it's like, oh, we went and

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Speaker 2: helped people. And it's true, the people who did the

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Speaker 2: underground railroad are fucking heroes, right, but then what yeah,

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Speaker 2: totally that's a And also like they were freeing themselves

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Speaker 2: with help, right, not sure, just pure people without agency

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Speaker 2: you can't rescue themselves. And the existence of maroons. The

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Speaker 2: self emancipation is a big evidence of that. And people

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Speaker 2: talk about basically anyone, including the people who use the

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Speaker 2: underground railroad, are self emancipating. And I really like that

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Speaker 2: way of framing it. It's also true that, yeah, people

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Speaker 2: would get north and nearly you're free, welcome to capitalism,

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Speaker 2: work a job, or die, you know. Yep. Literally half

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Speaker 2: the arguments that the abolitionists made against slavery were economic,

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Speaker 2: that it was cheaper to not take care of people's health. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: everything that seems like it should be good is bad. Like,

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Speaker 2: for example, that Ben Franklin thing where he's like, let's

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Speaker 2: make America white. It was an argument against transporting people

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Speaker 2: from Africa, right, because he didn't want more black people,

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Speaker 2: because he wanted America pure and white, and so it

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Speaker 2: was sort of an anti slavery argument for the aliens.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh that breaks my brain.

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Speaker 2: Yep. Fucking eighteenth century politics in the US are wacky. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: nineteenth century, twenty whatever politics. The swamps stood in the

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Speaker 2: way of colonization. It was untameable, it was unplawable, it

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Speaker 2: was full of disease. It actually probably wasn't really full

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Speaker 2: of disease, but they believed in the miasma theory of

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Speaker 2: disease at the time. I mean, I'm sure the mosquitoes

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Speaker 2: were carrying some diseases. I'm sure it wasn't a super

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Speaker 2: healthy place. But they thought literally like disease like grew

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Speaker 2: up out of the water.

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Speaker 1: Not ideal, but also really good to scare people off.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, they probably, Yeah, there's diseases

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Speaker 2: here in snakes, you know, stay the hell away from us.

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Speaker 1: Which is like, probably true, but maybe not as extreme

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Speaker 1: as they wanted people who they wanted to keep out

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Speaker 1: to think.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, totally. And so the idea of this untamable

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Speaker 2: nature was an affront to the very idea of enlightenment

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Speaker 2: rational Western thought. Nature has to be subdivided and controlled.

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Speaker 2: But the swamp refused them, and so the people who

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Speaker 2: lived in it were themselves sort of inherently outlaws, even

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Speaker 2: the ones who weren't fugitives, because they were living in

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Speaker 2: this uncontrollable space and they lived as outlaws. The first

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Speaker 2: raids out of the swamp were in seventeen oh nine.

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Speaker 2: They robbed storehouses and started picking off farm animals that

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Speaker 2: were close to the swamp. Also in seventeen oh nine,

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Speaker 2: they started planning a slave revolt from the swamps, one

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Speaker 2: that I don't know a ton about, but it happened.

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Speaker 2: In seventeen oh nine, Black and indigenous people started getting

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Speaker 2: ready for revolt. Its leaders were hanged, drawn and quartered,

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Speaker 2: including a man named Angola Peter, but neither of Virginia

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Speaker 2: or North Carolina was sure of who was in charge

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Speaker 2: of subduing revolts because no one knew where the line is.

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Speaker 2: But don't worry one bold man just kidding. He sucked

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Speaker 2: and he's kind of a coward.

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Speaker 1: I was like, it was, like, what podcast am I on?

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Speaker 2: H Yeah, yeah, will Bird the second? If there was

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Speaker 2: a show about bad people?

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Speaker 1: O fucking way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Could you imagine being named the second instead of Junior?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Like, I'm sorry, you don't get to be uh the

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Speaker 2: number until you're at least the third. You're just gonna

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Speaker 2: have to suck it up for a generation. Kiddo, you

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Speaker 2: are William Bird Junior.

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Speaker 1: That's so fucking funny.

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Speaker 2: In seventeen twenty eight, he went into Survey the Place.

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Speaker 2: He was a wealthy Virginia planter who wanted to know

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Speaker 2: exactly where the line between good and noble Virginia and

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Speaker 2: bad and rebellious North Carolina was. He was one of

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Speaker 2: the worst people I've ever read about. He was absolutely

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Speaker 2: brutal to the people he owned. He was so afraid

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Speaker 2: of slaver volt that he tortured and sexually assaulted everyone

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Speaker 2: he owned just to make sure they would never revolt God.

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Speaker 2: And then here's the part that makes him like not

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Speaker 2: just terrible, but like fucking poetically terrible. Starting in seventeen

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Speaker 2: oh nine, I think when he's like a kid, he

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Speaker 2: had recurring nightmares about slaver volts. And the way that

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Speaker 2: these nightmares happen is that there is a great fireball

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Speaker 2: in the sky over Virginia that represents divine wrath against slavery.

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Speaker 2: Imagine having that dream and then being like, I'm probably

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Speaker 2: the good guy here. I have dreams where God is

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Speaker 2: going to burn me up for my evil. Better go

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Speaker 2: mistreat these people. It's through his accounts that we get

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Speaker 2: some of the first written record of the people living

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Speaker 2: in the swamp. So this is like when I say

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Speaker 2: that the record is like kind of fucked up, this

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Speaker 2: is the first guy who like went in and talked

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Speaker 2: to people who lived there.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So unreliable narrator, I know.

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Speaker 2: But what's so funny is I think he's so in

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Speaker 2: his own head that he doesn't occur to him to

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Speaker 2: have lied in.

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Speaker 1: This case, because he sure so weird.

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Speaker 2: He starts on the coast and then with a bunch

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Speaker 2: of surveyors he starts heading west inland. And the people

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Speaker 2: he met there were terrible and barbarous people. After all,

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Speaker 2: they shared work equally between men and women. Oh, this

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Speaker 2: is the thing that's going to come up again and again.

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Speaker 2: But it's like really subtext because women are written out

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Speaker 2: of all history, right, Well, you know who else is

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Speaker 2: written out of history? Advertisers. There is not actually a

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Speaker 2: lot of record of the advertisers of old newspapers. I

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Speaker 2: sometimes look, I don't always find it because one thing

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Speaker 2: that I absolutely did start noticing Isbister doing a radical

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Speaker 2: podcast with mainstream advertisers, is that old radical newspapers absolutely

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Speaker 2: at advertisers because you actually need to pay to get

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Speaker 2: things out there. And I'm in part of a long,

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Speaker 2: noble tradition of pivoting to ads like these ones. And

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Speaker 2: we're back. So obviously you talk about at the time

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Speaker 2: how women are written out of history. But one of

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Speaker 2: the things that's come up everything I've read about the

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Speaker 2: dismal swamp, they're like not marking the gender of what's

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Speaker 2: happening overall. I mean, they are some times are talking

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Speaker 2: about women who are enslaved who fled there and stuff

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Speaker 2: also right, but it seems like almost everything, including the

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Speaker 2: fighting that I'm going to talk about, happening, was fairly

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Speaker 2: probably not fifty to fifty gender split, but was like

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Speaker 2: a substantially more egalitarian thing than what was happening outside. Specifically,

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Speaker 2: when Bird Junior is in there, he's like, is terrible

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Speaker 2: here they share work equally between men and women, I know,

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Speaker 2: And like he's also like almost mad that they offer

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Speaker 2: anyone runaway slave or common criminal alike, not just a

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Speaker 2: place to stay, but help them get a good spot

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Speaker 2: of dry land. Like one family also that probably had

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Speaker 2: a fugitive for a father, because he was asking like,

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Speaker 2: oh do y'all do and they're all like, oh, we're

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Speaker 2: all born free. But then like dad just like kind

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Speaker 2: of kept hiding, you know, yeah, because he was because

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Speaker 2: he's a fugitive. That family where the dad was a fugitive,

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Speaker 2: still took in this like white survey team and gave

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Speaker 2: them a place to stay and fed them because they

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Speaker 2: are good fucking people, like probably two good of people.

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Speaker 2: You know. If they just drowned all of these men,

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Speaker 2: the world would have been a better place. Allegedly, so

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Speaker 2: Bird dedicated his life to destroying that man and everyone

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Speaker 2: like him, like only a slaver colonizer can do. Thanks

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Speaker 2: for the dinner.

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Speaker 1: What a fucking asshole.

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Speaker 2: He wrote this long piece about how if this society

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Speaker 2: of slaves wasn't destroyed, like murdered in its cradle, it

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Speaker 2: would likely become a new Rome.

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Speaker 1: What a weird fucking motherfucking dude.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, Bird Junior is a strange man. He compares

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Speaker 2: the Maroons to Romulus and Remus, the two twins who

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Speaker 2: founded Rome. But negatively he's like, oh, we better stop this.

385
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Speaker 2: Like he this man knows he's on the wrong side.

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Speaker 2: He sees fireballs. And they kept telling him, all the

387
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Speaker 2: people he stayed with, they kept telling him in no

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Speaker 2: uncertain terms that if he and his men kept going

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Speaker 2: into the real heart of the swamps, they would never return.

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Speaker 2: This was maybe a friendly warning, and maybe it was

391
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Speaker 2: all like, get the fuck out of here, don't blow

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Speaker 2: up our spot.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: When they going got tough, the rich guy got going.

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Speaker 2: His crew went on without him to survey in the

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Speaker 2: interior of the swamp. He went around and waited for

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Speaker 2: them to come out the other side, and then to

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Speaker 2: try and take all the credit for doing the survey. Like,

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Speaker 2: if you're gonna be a gentleman adventurer, asshole, at least

400
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Speaker 2: go do the adventure. You know, I just don't like

401
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Speaker 2: this man.

402
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Speaker 1: No, he's awful. Fuck him.

403
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Speaker 2: His crew survived, but they only made it like a

404
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Speaker 2: mile or two a day while they're trying to survey

405
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Speaker 2: the swamps. Eventually, after eight days, they ran short on

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Speaker 2: supplies and they gave up on surveying and just booked

407
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Speaker 2: it west, trying not to die. And even then they

408
00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:02,439
Speaker 2: were still only able to make it like four miles

409
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Speaker 2: a day across this terrain. Only two years later, the

410
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Speaker 2: largest colonial era slave rebellion popped off, the Chesapeake Rebellion

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Speaker 2: of seventeen thirty. And this one is interesting. We know

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Speaker 2: way more about this one, or I know way more

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Speaker 2: about this one than I did about the seventeen oh

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Speaker 2: nine one. Basically, someone probably an enslaved person, started a

415
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Speaker 2: rumor that the king had declared that anyone baptized Christian

416
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Speaker 2: was now going to be freed from slavery, and so

417
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Speaker 2: hundreds of people felt the local officials were refusing the

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Speaker 2: king's orders to free them. They were like no, no, no,

419
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Speaker 2: the kings had were free. Now we heard a rumor

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Speaker 2: like I'm Christian, you gotta let me go, which is

421
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Speaker 2: what it used to be, right right, And so they

422
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Speaker 2: started drilling in units, getting ready for a fight because

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Speaker 2: they had been given legitimacy by the king, which is

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Speaker 2: such an interesting like most of the other rebellions didn't

425
00:22:57,720 --> 00:22:59,359
Speaker 2: feel like they needed this. They were like that man

426
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Speaker 2: thinks he owned me, let's kill him, you know. But

427
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Speaker 2: it was an effective way to get hundreds of people together.

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Speaker 2: They started drilling, getting ready for a fight, and it

429
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Speaker 2: was broken up and the rebels fled into the swamps,

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Speaker 2: and from there they led a gorilla struggle for years.

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Speaker 2: And that asshole Bird yeah, Bird Junior, Yeah yeah, maybe

432
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 2: Bird Senior was a little better, but I doubt it.

433
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:22,840
Speaker 1: Oh goddage, still far.

434
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 2: Far from the tree.

435
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:25,640
Speaker 1: What did he do? What did he do?

436
00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:29,400
Speaker 2: He was really worried about the Maroons. He was considered

437
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:31,720
Speaker 2: the world's leading expert on them because he'd met some

438
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 2: of them and survived to tell the tale, because they'd

439
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 2: fed him and housed him and informed him about dangers.

440
00:23:37,119 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: This fuck.

441
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jamaico was in an all out Maroon war at

442
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:42,880
Speaker 2: the time, which I hope it covered more one day,

443
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 2: and Bird was like, really worried about the maroons. I

444
00:23:46,280 --> 00:23:47,639
Speaker 2: think he was also a little bit worried about his

445
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:50,840
Speaker 2: own career and posterity. He advocated for the end of

446
00:23:50,840 --> 00:23:54,080
Speaker 2: the Transatlantic slave trade. Here's more of the people doing

447
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 2: everything you think is good is secretly bad.

448
00:23:57,080 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's what's the what's the uh?

449
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:01,800
Speaker 2: He was like, we need to end the Transatlantic slave

450
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 2: trade because Africans are more likely to maroon than seasoned

451
00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 2: That gets Air quotes African Americans who'd been born into slavery.

452
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 2: It's about like three times more common for people who

453
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:15,520
Speaker 2: were born in Africa to maroon than people who were

454
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 2: born in the United States. And so he was like,

455
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:21,159
Speaker 2: I'm going to write up this. He wrote up a

456
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:24,480
Speaker 2: long thing about how to physically drain the swamp. Oh yeah,

457
00:24:24,600 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 2: now we get to the drain the swamp part, because

458
00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 2: why not ever leave modern politics behind? And so he

459
00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 2: writes this whole thing about how to drain the swamp.

460
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,160
Speaker 2: But it wasn't him who tried to do it.

461
00:24:36,359 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: Instead, is that where the fucking dream the swamp the

462
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:40,879
Speaker 1: shit comes from?

463
00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:44,439
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I never thought about it and

464
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:46,920
Speaker 2: I never write about it. Yeah, I mean I doubt

465
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,120
Speaker 2: Trump was like specifically, like I'm talking about the Great

466
00:24:49,119 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 2: Dismal Swamp.

467
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: Oh no, No, he doesn't know anything about anything that's

468
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:54,119
Speaker 1: ever happened in the history of the world.

469
00:24:54,760 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this like goal to drain the swamp thing

470
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 2: is a huge par art of this era of colonial

471
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 2: history because people are really worried about this shit.

472
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:09,680
Speaker 1: No, it wouldn't make sense that that's where that originally started. God, Okay, And.

473
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 2: So you know how like sometimes people look at Trump

474
00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 2: as like in the far right is his aberration and

475
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 2: how far we've come far to the right of the

476
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 2: old original. Like, Nah, the first guy who tried to

477
00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:21,840
Speaker 2: drain the swamp, he was a guy you might have

478
00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 2: heard of. He's maybe the most famous slaver in all

479
00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:27,399
Speaker 2: of history. He is so terrifying that he wore the

480
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 2: teeth of slaves in his own mouth like a cartoon villain.

481
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:32,960
Speaker 1: Church fucking Washington and George Market It.

482
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:36,159
Speaker 2: Is George fucking Washington, the guy who went on to

483
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:39,720
Speaker 2: start the world's most powerful slave empire. George Washington and

484
00:25:39,720 --> 00:25:42,719
Speaker 2: his brother John and some other guys.

485
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:45,959
Speaker 1: Fuck fuck fuck okay to me, more n me more demore.

486
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. In seventeen fifty three, the entire region was given

487
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 2: a four guys because that's the other thing is that

488
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 2: people were like, oh, private corporations run everything now in America,

489
00:25:53,760 --> 00:25:55,720
Speaker 2: and like that is the way America was founded. It

490
00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 2: was actually really specifically in contrast to the way that

491
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 2: like the Catholic countries, which were not less evil, but

492
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:04,760
Speaker 2: the Catholic colonies were more like everything's owned by the

493
00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 2: church and the state and shit. Yeah, whereas like British

494
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,360
Speaker 2: colonies were like, we have the such and such company

495
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 2: with shareholders and blah blah blah. You know. So they

496
00:26:15,119 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 2: gave the entire Great Dismal Swamp to four guys, not

497
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 2: the Washington's. They were just hired on at first.

498
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 1: This is breaking my brain.

499
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,760
Speaker 2: Continue, Yeah, In seventeen sixty two, the four Guys sent

500
00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 2: an enslaved cruise to tame the swamp, and they hired

501
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:32,040
Speaker 2: this thirty one year old white guy to help, a

502
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 2: guy named George Washington, and Washington incorporated a group called

503
00:26:36,680 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 2: Adventurers to Drain the Dismal Swamp, which is a genuinely

504
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:42,360
Speaker 2: funny name to name a company.

505
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:43,240
Speaker 1: What.

506
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:47,119
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, because I think he's into this idea of

507
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:48,600
Speaker 2: like I'm a gentleman adventurer.

508
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:53,640
Speaker 1: You know, God, just the like romanticizing of this man

509
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 1: that this country has, this planet has done. When he's like,

510
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 1: that's your title, Yeah, that's your title, you fucking creep.

511
00:27:03,400 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just a cartoon villain. He runs a group

512
00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 2: called Adventures to Drain It. Yeah, and later this is

513
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 2: renamed the Less Fun Dismal Swamp Company. The only thing

514
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,520
Speaker 2: that was dismal was their chances of success h and

515
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:20,880
Speaker 2: also the working conditions of the people who died enslaved

516
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 2: underneath them. Each of these bold adventurers was like, all right,

517
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:26,960
Speaker 2: we're each going to donate five guys we owned to

518
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 2: get this done, and we'll all get super rich. But

519
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 2: they were all trying to outstingy each other, right, and

520
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:35,800
Speaker 2: so they all sent their least capable guys, their like

521
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 2: least valuable people that they thought they owned. Old slave

522
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 2: Teath himself didn't even send five. He only sent two

523
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:46,920
Speaker 2: guys he owned and forced to dig like dig ditches

524
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:49,920
Speaker 2: in swamp water. A whole bunch of them ran away

525
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 2: to join the Maroons, including a couple with really cool names,

526
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 2: Jack Dismal and his wife Venus. And those are good names.

527
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:58,200
Speaker 1: Those are good names.

528
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 2: And we know at least Jack is going to ride

529
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 2: away into the sunset, happy and alive at the end

530
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:07,199
Speaker 2: of this story. And I'm just assuming Venus does as well,

531
00:28:07,200 --> 00:28:09,240
Speaker 2: because I have no evidence of the contrary.

532
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 1: Cool fucking name Venus dismal.

533
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 2: I know, I know I would. I'd be surprised if

534
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 2: I've never met anyone who goes by that. That's such

535
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 2: a good fucking name. The whole company was a failure.

536
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 2: It was a dismal failure, and well done. I love

537
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:29,639
Speaker 2: how the swamp is dismal for slavers and evil civilization,

538
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 2: but it's actually good and amazing for the people resisting

539
00:28:31,800 --> 00:28:36,320
Speaker 2: these things. Unpaid workers kept dying or running away, and

540
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 2: the only money that the company made was by selling shingles,

541
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 2: and it did not drain the swamp, and it did

542
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 2: not even survey the swamp. Seventeen seventy five year olled

543
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 2: around and the Washington brothers, John and George had other

544
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 2: shit on their minds. Their fun little adventure of overseeing

545
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 2: a little death camp on the edge of a swamp

546
00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 2: was over, like literally, their idea of a good time

547
00:28:57,520 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 2: is to go oversee a slave death camp. Anyway, I

548
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 2: don't like them. No, so they had to move on

549
00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 2: to bigger things. They had a whole continent and later

550
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:10,400
Speaker 2: world to destroy with the American Revolution. I've probably mentioned

551
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 2: it a few times on this show, but the leaders

552
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 2: of the American Revolution were doing it to protect their

553
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:16,800
Speaker 2: right to expand their colonies into indigenous territories. And the

554
00:29:16,840 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 2: whole thing about democracy and freedom is a terrible, sinister farce,

555
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:25,959
Speaker 2: a scam that they sold working people. But it's worth reiterating,

556
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 2: as author Mediebo Cadale put it, quote, some people think

557
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 2: that the United States of America is the greatest experiment

558
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 2: in democracy, but there has never been any democracy here.

559
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 2: Some people are in love with what they are told

560
00:29:39,440 --> 00:29:42,360
Speaker 2: America is. But when you look at history very carefully,

561
00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 2: you will find that people whom I call freedom seekers

562
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 2: and resistors were constantly running away from America. I really

563
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 2: like that way of looking at it, being like, look,

564
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 2: we're sold this like bill of goods. We're told America's

565
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 2: land of freedom. Hey wait, why did all the black

566
00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 2: people side with the British? Hey wait, you know, like

567
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: you just like slowly, it's not true, That's what I'm saying.

568
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 2: The British declared freedom for any enslaved person who fled

569
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 2: from the rebels. A group called Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, fifteen

570
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 2: hundred strong, wore sashes that read Liberty to Slaves as

571
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 2: they went into battle against George Washington and his army

572
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 2: of slavery. And that is fucking cool. You're on the

573
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:25,959
Speaker 2: right side of history if you are in a battle

574
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 2: wearing a fucking sash that reads liberty the slaves. Some

575
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:33,400
Speaker 2: of George Washington's own slaves fought him in that war,

576
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 2: like Harry, who'd been kidnapped in Gambia and renamed Harry

577
00:30:37,280 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 2: by George Washington and fought on the British side as

578
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:44,959
Speaker 2: Corporal Harry Washington. And he was as important of an

579
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 2: icon to the black soldiers fighting against the American Revolution

580
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 2: as George Washington was to the other side. And I

581
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 2: like that both sides. Out of Washington, it's likely that

582
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 2: a great number of this regiment came from the maroons

583
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 2: of the swamp. The main evidence that we have of

584
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 2: this is that so many of these soldiers had intimate

585
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 2: knowledge of the swamps. Basically, they were like, yeah, all

586
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:10,440
Speaker 2: the people were just like knew all their ways in

587
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:14,280
Speaker 2: and out of the swamps, so they're from there. The

588
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 2: enslaved people who've been set to drain the swamp escaped

589
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 2: en masse and fled for freedom or to go fight

590
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:24,880
Speaker 2: against the Americans. Even after British forces abandoned the South,

591
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 2: the raids from the Dismal kept going. So like, the

592
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 2: British stopped trying to have a military presence around the

593
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 2: Dismal Swamp, but the Maroons kept going. They were like, nope,

594
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 2: we're fighting these fucking slave men, you know.

595
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: Yeah.

596
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 2: And these were multi racial units. One landless white laborer

597
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 2: named Jeshiah Phillips led a black and white band of

598
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,320
Speaker 2: fifty people in a gorilla struggle against the expansionist Americans.

599
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:55,720
Speaker 2: Many of them were Maroons, and Maroons kept them safe.

600
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 2: When white men in the South were impressed into the

601
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 2: military to track down Phillips's band, they basically refused to.

602
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 2: Like all these people got like, hey, you're a militia,

603
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 2: now go track down that, like the white guy who's

604
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:10,120
Speaker 2: leading a mixed race group of people against us or

605
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 2: a multiracial group against us. And people are like, now,

606
00:32:12,840 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 2: we're good, We're not tracking that guy down. We kind

607
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 2: of like him. A quarter of them deserted.

608
00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: That's so funny.

609
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, Phillips himself was caught and hanged in seventeen seventy eight.

610
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 2: But one of the things that keeps going in this

611
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 2: story is that as soon as they like take out

612
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 2: one of the leaders, it stops nothing. And so that's

613
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 2: how you know, the leaders are more like symbolic in

614
00:32:34,160 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 2: figureheads rather than like indispensable. Sure, yeah, yeah, the band

615
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,160
Speaker 2: kept going until the end of the war. The whole

616
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 2: Dismal Swamp region, not just the depths of it, was

617
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: completely uncontrollable by the US, and that guy Jack Dismal,

618
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 2: him and Corporal Harry Washington made it out on British

619
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 2: ships to freedom, and I assume Venus was with him,

620
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 2: but I don't know. Uck Yeah, yeah, because I'm not

621
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 2: clearly the British were the bad people like twenty years

622
00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 2: ago at this point, I'm not trying. It's super hard

623
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,080
Speaker 2: to fend them. But like they told the truth when

624
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 2: I said that not the.

625
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: Biggest villain in this very particular story.

626
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like, hey, well, we'll set you free

627
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,480
Speaker 2: if you fight for us, and then they did.

628
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: And then they kept their word, which is crazy, I.

629
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 2: Know, like genuinely wouldn't be surprised all of that hadn't happened.

630
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:25,720
Speaker 2: But yeah, and during the war, the population of Maroons

631
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 2: inside the swamp grew and grew sick, and for the

632
00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,959
Speaker 2: most part, they lived peaceful lives after that, though again

633
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 2: many of them joined great abolitionist conspiracies throughout the new country.

634
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:38,760
Speaker 2: And we're going to get how like in another like

635
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 2: twenty years, they're gonna be like basically in a war

636
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:45,000
Speaker 2: against the US. And so there's all these abolitionist conspiracies

637
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 2: going up and down the country. Literally there's word of

638
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 2: mouth campaigns organized by enslaved people. People were talking and organizing,

639
00:33:52,080 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 2: and what they were talking about, Sophie, is they were

640
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 2: talking about what a great deal on stuff they could

641
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 2: find have by listening to podcasts.

642
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:04,200
Speaker 1: Oh good for them.

643
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:08,399
Speaker 2: It's only through podcasting that you hear the finest of

644
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 2: goods and services, such as the ones who support this

645
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 2: very show and we're back. So now you have this country,

646
00:34:23,560 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 2: the United States of America, and they didn't like that

647
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:30,200
Speaker 2: a really big chunk of itself was a lawless land

648
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 2: of outlaws who kept stealing their quote unquote property aka themselves.

649
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 2: Like literally most of the records that we have about

650
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:39,840
Speaker 2: like the number of people living there was the amount

651
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:43,240
Speaker 2: of property damage done by their raids, which was number

652
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:49,400
Speaker 2: of people who've left like slave labor camps. By seventeen ninety,

653
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 2: laws were passed by both Virginia and North Carolina to

654
00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 2: build a canal through the swamp. They wanted to use

655
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:57,160
Speaker 2: a private company, of course, because that's what the US

656
00:34:57,239 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 2: was founded on, and for a decade hundreds of enslaved

657
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 2: people worked and died building a canal, though they eventually

658
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 2: did successfully build a twenty two mile canal, which immediately

659
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 2: started getting used by radicals, which is kind of cool.

660
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:15,240
Speaker 2: Itinerant abolitionist preachers used to coordinate rebellion, and abolitionist ships

661
00:35:15,239 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 2: would like show up, they'd like sail into the canal

662
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 2: to go find people were hiding out and put them

663
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:24,120
Speaker 2: on boats and take them up to like Boston and shit,

664
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 2: which is fucking cool. The Dismal Swamp became a stopover

665
00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 2: place for a lot of self emancipators after the United

666
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,240
Speaker 2: States was founded, and all the while maroons are organizing

667
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 2: to attack the slave empire. And I was promising you,

668
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:42,240
Speaker 2: how when like one leader goes down, there's this others

669
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 2: I'm gonna like I started tracking all of the names

670
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 2: of all the different leaders of bands.

671
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:48,839
Speaker 1: But yeah, who's up. Who's the next? Motherfucker?

672
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:54,280
Speaker 2: Tom Copper? One man. Tom Copper was a fugitive himself,

673
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:55,960
Speaker 2: and he led at least thirty eight fighters on.

674
00:35:56,040 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: The very based name of Tom Copper.

675
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 2: I mean, like it's such a good though, like like

676
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 2: if you wanted to watch like a noir film about.

677
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:08,400
Speaker 1: It, Yeah, that character's day would be Tom Copper.

678
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:12,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, he led at least thirty eight fighters.

679
00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:14,239
Speaker 2: Those are the number that were like literally they all

680
00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 2: wrote their name down on like a registry, but there's

681
00:36:16,360 --> 00:36:18,319
Speaker 2: almost certainly probably hundreds more.

682
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

683
00:36:19,520 --> 00:36:23,280
Speaker 2: And when he was arrested, six Maroons arrived on horseback

684
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:24,399
Speaker 2: and broke them out of jail.

685
00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, I knew we'd have a jail break in here.

686
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:31,520
Speaker 1: I know, just had jailbreak energy. Let's go on a

687
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: horseback to where's this fucking movie?

688
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 2: I know. God for the people who came and rescued

689
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 2: him were caught and ended up in prison in his place.

690
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 2: But you know, that's the thing you try and do

691
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 2: when you try and rescue your friends. And he did

692
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 2: get out. His army grew, he had captains one per

693
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 2: county who organized as well, and eventually one hundred Maroons

694
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 2: were caught and tortured and executed around eighteen oh two.

695
00:36:57,120 --> 00:36:59,799
Speaker 2: Exactly what happened to Tom Copper I think is lost

696
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:04,680
Speaker 2: to him. Yeah, after he disappeared, a new Maroon military leader,

697
00:37:05,040 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 2: a preacher named General Peter, stepped up.

698
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:15,480
Speaker 1: They're just like picking the most generic male names of history. Peter, Paul, Tom,

699
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 1: I mean, like Phil, Mike, John.

700
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,799
Speaker 2: There was only like ten names for white or black

701
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 2: people in America for a very long time.

702
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,719
Speaker 1: You know, you know that's actually so fair. I'm like, oh, right,

703
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:30,760
Speaker 1: are we just naming apostles? What's happening?

704
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just had you had to have a wasp name.

705
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 2: And if you didn't have a wasp, like, you didn't

706
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 2: have to be a wasp. You just had to have

707
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:36,839
Speaker 2: a wasp name.

708
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: Yeah.

709
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 2: And so during this time, when you have this, these

710
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 2: these people leading raids, the good whites of the South

711
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 2: were terrified. One guy wrote a newspaper saying, quote, we,

712
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 2: our wives, and our children were surrounded by desperadoes, white

713
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:56,279
Speaker 2: and black, who perhaps would laugh at our calamity and

714
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:00,759
Speaker 2: mock when our fear cometh, and you know what, I

715
00:38:00,800 --> 00:38:08,600
Speaker 2: would mock. When that man's fear comes, I join in.

716
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:16,120
Speaker 2: And so they were like leading these raids but planning

717
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 2: this larger attack. They wanted to do an attack on

718
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 2: both North Carolina and Virginia on the same day with clubs, spikes,

719
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 2: and axes. They didn't have any guns.

720
00:38:23,960 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 1: Yet, clubs, spikes and axes.

721
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 2: Oh I I know, I don't even know what the

722
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:29,879
Speaker 2: spikes were in this case, but.

723
00:38:30,360 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: Fuck it, I love it. Yeah, spikes and axes, let's go.

724
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the whole thing was coordinated by a network

725
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 2: of black preachers, and so later black churches and preachers

726
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:44,600
Speaker 2: and shit are going to get like basically run out

727
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 2: of this part of the South. But for a while,

728
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:49,480
Speaker 2: you basically like get a free black man who's a

729
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 2: preacher to go around and be like and the Lord said, hey,

730
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 2: next Wednesday, we're gonna and then after that and then

731
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:59,399
Speaker 2: we're gonna do this other thing. You know. Yeah. Some

732
00:38:59,440 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 2: people were caught and gave up under torture. Others were

733
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 2: caught and stayed strong. There's like good lines about like

734
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 2: people being like, nah, I'm you're not getting anything out

735
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 2: of me, and like one guy was just like I'm

736
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,800
Speaker 2: gonna laugh when when we come for you, you know. Yeah,

737
00:39:13,120 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 2: and uh, after General Peter, there was oh, we're gonna

738
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 2: get new names now, Pompy Little.

739
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what I'm fucking talking about. That is a

740
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:27,759
Speaker 1: cool fucking name. Pumpy Little. Let's go tell tell me

741
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:30,919
Speaker 1: what Pompy Little did. Please, I'm I'm on board. Why

742
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: is this not a movie? And Pompy Little was a

743
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 1: picturesque man. He was more than six feet tall. People

744
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 1: were shorter back then. He was a giant of a man. Honey.

745
00:39:40,080 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 2: He had a like I think he's the one. Oh no,

746
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:45,400
Speaker 2: it was a later guy who had this scar across

747
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 2: his face. Maybe one of them had a scar across

748
00:39:47,160 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 2: his face when we had been shot by a bullet

749
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 2: and kept going, you know, and uh, he was completely fearless.

750
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:55,839
Speaker 2: He fought with a long, double edged knife, and when

751
00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:58,839
Speaker 2: he would rob people, they'd be like, we're gonna tell

752
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 2: and give you a description. He was like, good, my

753
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 2: name's pomp and told people his name so that they

754
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 2: would be afraid of him.

755
00:40:07,560 --> 00:40:08,600
Speaker 1: He's fucking cool.

756
00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Eventually he was shot and killed, but that man

757
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 2: lived free.

758
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:14,919
Speaker 1: Yeah.

759
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 2: Then in eighteen eighteen, a multi racial, mixed gender gang

760
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 2: of Maroons. This is the only one. I suspect all

761
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 2: of these were multiracial, mixed gender, but I like this

762
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 2: is the one where like specifically details that yeah, yeah,

763
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 2: they're like and then one of the women who was

764
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 2: among them was shot and killed in the raid. You know,

765
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,680
Speaker 2: they declared themselves at war with nearby society and started

766
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 2: raiding farms and slave labor camps. Maroons would do shit

767
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,160
Speaker 2: like basically they like go find the man who had

768
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:46,319
Speaker 2: personally enslaved them, dragged them into the swamps, and beat

769
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 2: them to death with a club, like you imagine you

770
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 2: just like own a bunch of guys and then they

771
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,320
Speaker 2: run away and you're like, oh, I'm sure that's the

772
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 2: end of that. Yeah, okay, Like and this is like

773
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 2: during the time when the South keeps trying to like,

774
00:41:00,600 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 2: oh they they're docile, they don't mind. It's just you know,

775
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:06,400
Speaker 2: like nah.

776
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: Nah, fuck around and find out.

777
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:12,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh this is wait here's ming Mingo is the

778
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 2: guy with the the scar across his face our next guy,

779
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 2: and I think Mingo is involved in the eighteen eighteen gang.

780
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:22,720
Speaker 2: He was a bandit as people called him nam Mingo,

781
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:25,279
Speaker 2: and one of the things that he did because the

782
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,600
Speaker 2: local white people, like the poor ones, didn't really have

783
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 2: a problem with any of this, you know, because they

784
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:34,240
Speaker 2: weren't being targeted because they didn't own people. So Mingo

785
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,720
Speaker 2: would do murder for hire on slavers. Basically, some people

786
00:41:38,719 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 2: were like, like a white guy was like, hey, I

787
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:43,320
Speaker 2: really want this slaver to die, and Mingo was like,

788
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:45,760
Speaker 2: all right, well, I think it was like two hundred

789
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,799
Speaker 2: bucks or something was the payment. But the method of

790
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 2: the payment, as best as I can tell, was not

791
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 2: give me money. It was go buy that guy and

792
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:58,560
Speaker 2: set him free. Interesting, and so then they were like,

793
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:00,919
Speaker 2: all right, we'll go kill that slaver that you don't

794
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:04,839
Speaker 2: like in exchange for you, you know, giving us money

795
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 2: or doing this thing for us. This is the guy

796
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 2: who had a scar across his face from a bullet wound.

797
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 2: He was eventually betrayed by an associate, and it was

798
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:14,560
Speaker 2: like kind of a sad story. He was like the

799
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:17,520
Speaker 2: associate kind of waited until Mingo like shot his gun

800
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 2: off in celebration, and then the guy was like, hah,

801
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 2: your gun's empty and like jumped him. You know. Yeah.

802
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:26,640
Speaker 2: When he was betrayed, he was put on trial and

803
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 2: everyone was outraged, although like a local town was totally

804
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 2: scandalized because, to quote J. Brent Morris, eight white men

805
00:42:33,640 --> 00:42:35,840
Speaker 2: admitted that Mingo had informed them of his plan to

806
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 2: kill the Princess Anne County sheriff, and none of them

807
00:42:38,640 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 2: had taken measures to stop him. And so basically it

808
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 2: just like everyone was fine with these guys. Not everyone,

809
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:47,480
Speaker 2: obviously a lot of people were very unfine with these guys,

810
00:42:47,640 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 2: but the like the poor people who lived in the area,

811
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:51,239
Speaker 2: including the poor white people.

812
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: They were like, everything's cool. What do you mean.

813
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:55,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just that's just the guy who kills

814
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,800
Speaker 2: rich people, like, don't fuck with Luigi, you know. Yeah.

815
00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: Uh.

816
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 2: And while most of the local white population wasn't specifically

817
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:09,319
Speaker 2: abolition so that's the other thing too, right, they didn't

818
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 2: have abolitionist politics. Their primary form of assistance to the Maroons,

819
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 2: besides the ones who were literally were Maroons themselves. And

820
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 2: part of these bandit gangs is that they had a

821
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 2: really strong no snitching culture.

822
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah.

823
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 2: When outsiders would come and they'd be like, hey, what's

824
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:29,239
Speaker 2: in the swamps, people would be like, I heard of

825
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 2: a swamp. What are you talking about? There's nothing there,

826
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 2: you know, Because poor white rural people used to know

827
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 2: something about class solidarity and hating cops, and many of

828
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 2: them still do, but culture wars are trying to convince

829
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 2: them otherwise. That's what I say about that. Whenever a

830
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:48,680
Speaker 2: Maroon leader went down, another stepped up. There was no

831
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 2: end to the raids for decades. Huge bounties would go up,

832
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 2: but people were like, we don't want to slave raid

833
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:56,840
Speaker 2: the swamps. That's how you die.

834
00:43:57,400 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: What's that mythical creature where you cut off the head

835
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 1: and another head grows back.

836
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're the hydro of the swamps, which is

837
00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:05,839
Speaker 2: cool because hydros live in swamps. Oh my god, that's

838
00:44:05,880 --> 00:44:06,640
Speaker 2: fucking awesome.

839
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:07,319
Speaker 1: There you go.

840
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,520
Speaker 2: And one farmer at one point was like, all right,

841
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 2: let's get a posse together, let's go capture the slaves.

842
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:17,000
Speaker 2: As soon as he announced his plan, maroons came into

843
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 2: his fields and shop dead, immediately dead in front of

844
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,520
Speaker 2: his wife. Just were like you're dead now, and then

845
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 2: like walked away, see you, sir?

846
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 1: Enjoy Hell.

847
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,560
Speaker 2: Yeah. The people in charge of subduing the Maroons, like

848
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 2: the actual like officials, kept winding up dead too, like literally,

849
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 2: like they would like really leave the swamps to go

850
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:41,600
Speaker 2: assassinate people, so I like them. Yeah, And this came

851
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 2: to a head and kind of ended when and this

852
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 2: is not nat Turner's fault, but when future friend of

853
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 2: the Pod Nat Turner led the most famous slaver vault

854
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:55,800
Speaker 2: in US history, which was only twenty five miles east

855
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,720
Speaker 2: of the swamps. Nat Turner led seventy folks on raids

856
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,000
Speaker 2: and killed about sixty white people men, women, and children

857
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:07,239
Speaker 2: before being stopped by a group of white vigilantes. Some

858
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:09,600
Speaker 2: of the rebels made their way to the swamps in safety.

859
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,000
Speaker 2: Nat Turner went underground. They didn't catch him for a

860
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:15,960
Speaker 2: little while. He didn't go to the swamps actually, and

861
00:45:16,080 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 2: like he actually wasn't planning on using the swamps, but

862
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 2: everyone was convinced he was planning on using the swamps,

863
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,280
Speaker 2: which he probably should have been planning on using the swamps.

864
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,240
Speaker 2: I haven't I've only read what the Great Dismal Swamp

865
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 2: books has to say about Nat Turner. I haven't read

866
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 2: the books about Nat Turner what they have to say

867
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 2: about him yet. But white people lost their fucking mind

868
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 2: and started massacring black people after not Turner, two hundred people,

869
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:41,440
Speaker 2: two hundred black people were like randomly killed, and then

870
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:43,759
Speaker 2: their heads were put on pikes alongside.

871
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:45,440
Speaker 1: The road, and like this, fucking Christ, it.

872
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 2: Was a fucking massacre. And then the entire country, especially

873
00:45:50,280 --> 00:45:54,240
Speaker 2: the South, like mobilizes against this threat of an outright

874
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:58,760
Speaker 2: slave revolution because Haiti had just had one thirty years earlier,

875
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 2: and Haiti's revolution shook the western world to its core.

876
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 2: And then yeah, yeah, yeah, and so in this area,

877
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 2: now every white man was expected to be ready to

878
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 2: be pressed into a militia at anytime. Hunting maroons became

879
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 2: a full time job for some people.

880
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 3: But get a hobby, Jesus Christ, learn how to do

881
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:20,640
Speaker 3: a cross stitch, learn how to grow some crops, and oh, well,

882
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 3: they can't do that, mine your business.

883
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they started trying to burn people out of

884
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 2: the swamps. They would set fires on parts of it

885
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 2: to flush people out to recapture. But even despite this

886
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 2: huge concerted effort, this was not super effective. Even dogs

887
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,719
Speaker 2: can't really track scents deep into the swamps. And you

888
00:46:41,880 --> 00:46:45,440
Speaker 2: kind of couldn't pay people enough to go hunting for

889
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,800
Speaker 2: people in the deeper parts of the Great Dismal because

890
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 2: you'll just.

891
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 1: Die alligators, spiders, snakes, disease, yep.

892
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, And angry Maroons.

893
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to mention what's waiting for you when you

894
00:46:59,200 --> 00:46:59,680
Speaker 1: get there.

895
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:05,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. But while very few Maroons were captured during this period,

896
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 2: the raids did more or less cease. This seems have

897
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 2: kind of ended the like periphery Maroon bandit culture. For

898
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:16,920
Speaker 2: the last thirty or so years of the Maroon community's

899
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 2: existence until the very end when they go back to war,

900
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,760
Speaker 2: folks mostly just wanted to survive. People on the outside

901
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,960
Speaker 2: assumed that the swamps were more or less empty now

902
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:28,160
Speaker 2: because they thought that the bandits on the periphery were

903
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:31,719
Speaker 2: all the people there. This was not the case. The

904
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:34,480
Speaker 2: Northern abolitionists started making a huge deal out of the

905
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 2: Great Dismal Swamp, and so the struggle that came out

906
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 2: of the swamp continued, but it became a propaganda thing instead.

907
00:47:42,640 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 2: This is where abolitionism is really starting to come into

908
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 2: its own and you know, I mean soon enough it's

909
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:51,759
Speaker 2: going to mobilize a war. And did kill the slavers,

910
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 2: But the abolitionists are like, look, here's evidence that black

911
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 2: people self emancipate and live without white masters. Frederick Douglas

912
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 2: wrote quote that hundreds of slaves prefer the danger and

913
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 2: darkness of the dismal Swamps to the homes and plantations

914
00:48:09,320 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 2: of their Christian masters is proof that they dread the

915
00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:16,840
Speaker 2: wolfish propensities of the slaveholder more than they dread the

916
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: real wolf. That man could write.

917
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:21,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

918
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 2: Harriet Beecher Stowe, who's the abolitionist author of Uncle Tom's Cabin,

919
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 2: wrote another book that was quite popular in the nineteenth century,

920
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:33,320
Speaker 2: but its largely forgotten today. It's called Dread, A Tale

921
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:35,399
Speaker 2: of the Great Dismal Swamp, and it's about a guy

922
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 2: named Dread, which is also a good name.

923
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:38,720
Speaker 3: Yeah.

924
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 2: And this book is openly like let's go to war

925
00:48:42,680 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 2: for abolition. It celebrates the Maroon as a revolutionary, pointing

926
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:49,799
Speaker 2: out accurately that it will take fire and blood to

927
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 2: end the evil of slavery. And no white person loved

928
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 2: Maroon communities more than John Brown, who believed that Maroon

929
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 2: gorillas were the key to ending slavery, the Great Dismal

930
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,200
Speaker 2: Swamp Maroons. He may or may not have been planning

931
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:07,480
Speaker 2: to retreat to the swamp after his raid on Harper's Ferry,

932
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:11,920
Speaker 2: It's not entirely certain. And you know, the Civil War

933
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,560
Speaker 2: breaks out and the Maroons are all over that shit

934
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 2: many join Union forces, like as soon as black people

935
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:21,600
Speaker 2: are allowed into the forces or whatever, and like many

936
00:49:21,600 --> 00:49:24,799
Speaker 2: of them like flee north in order to join, right,

937
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 2: many joined as soon as the Union troops got a

938
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 2: foothold in the south. Many waged a gorilla war in

939
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 2: the South, whether for the Union army or not. There

940
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:39,239
Speaker 2: were irregular units called buffaloes that were made up of

941
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 2: Confederate deserters, white unionists, and black fighters all fighting side

942
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:46,359
Speaker 2: by side. And these people fucking.

943
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:48,320
Speaker 1: Ruled, yes, fucking cool.

944
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 2: They would just march around, freeing people and killing Confederates

945
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 2: and they just like walking through the South being like nah,

946
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 2: fuck this, and uh, Confederates in the area rode all

947
00:49:59,480 --> 00:50:02,440
Speaker 2: this stuff. That was like it would be a piece

948
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:04,799
Speaker 2: of cake to go be up in the battlefields in

949
00:50:04,840 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 2: the north instead of instead of being down here with

950
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 2: this shit. Oh shit, and uh yeah, because they would

951
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,600
Speaker 2: like it was just a gorilla war. And then the

952
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 2: other side knew that. I mean both sides knew some

953
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 2: of the territory. I'm not trying to be like the

954
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:21,879
Speaker 2: white Confederates were like complete no nothings, but like although

955
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:23,880
Speaker 2: they were probably in the political party, the know nothings.

956
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:29,280
Speaker 2: But that's unrelated Maroons also sheltered Southern Unionists and Confederate

957
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 2: draft dodgers. Hundreds of Maroons that didn't go fight directly

958
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 2: went and got jobs unloading cargo for the Union army

959
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:41,000
Speaker 2: in nearby ports. Maroons were scouts for passing units. One

960
00:50:41,040 --> 00:50:42,880
Speaker 2: of the main things that Maroons ended up doing was

961
00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 2: like hunting, especially wild hogs, and teaching others how to

962
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:49,879
Speaker 2: hunt in order to supplement military rations. And the war

963
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:52,839
Speaker 2: was won for the Union near the Dismal Swamp even

964
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:54,960
Speaker 2: before it was one else anywhere else in the South.

965
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 2: And so as soon as the buffaloes like had that

966
00:50:56,920 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 2: shit on lock, they just started moving further and further afield,

967
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 2: just rest gieing people and killing Confederates. And then the

968
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:07,799
Speaker 2: war ended, and some swampers set out towards the rest

969
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 2: of the world now that they had, you know, won

970
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:15,040
Speaker 2: their freedom, and many others just stayed put. And that's

971
00:51:15,040 --> 00:51:18,320
Speaker 2: the story of two hundred years of resistance to slavery

972
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,200
Speaker 2: from a mostly black but tri racial alliance of rebels

973
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 2: living in a cool last place, hanging out with spiders

974
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:25,720
Speaker 2: and killing Confederates.

975
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:30,400
Speaker 1: It's like, why do we need, you know, A remake

976
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 1: of a movie seventeen times when this is like the

977
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: literal perfect movie script.

978
00:51:36,040 --> 00:51:38,479
Speaker 2: I know, especially once you start tying in the Union

979
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 2: Army and all that shit. You can even kind of

980
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 2: get some patriotism into it if you want, because the

981
00:51:42,120 --> 00:51:44,279
Speaker 2: US was the right side of the fucking Civil War,

982
00:51:44,719 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 2: Like you know.

983
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: I mean, like, what are we doing here?

984
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:51,120
Speaker 2: This could be Yeah, I would watch the fucking like

985
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:53,839
Speaker 2: four seasons of this shit. At least, That's what I'm saying.

986
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 3: Say.

987
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:55,279
Speaker 1: It might not even be a movie. It could be

988
00:51:55,320 --> 00:51:59,319
Speaker 1: a whole series. Yeah, like honestly whole series and like

989
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 1: the like it's like it's like real life The Walking Dead, honestly.

990
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:09,800
Speaker 2: Totally Yeah, people living dangerous, hard, short lives in beautiful

991
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 2: found communities. That is that is literally the zombie apocalypse

992
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 2: dream of the Walking Dead, you know what I'm saying.

993
00:52:16,280 --> 00:52:19,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, thanks for telling me this story, Magpie.

994
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for thanks for being a guest instead of

995
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:24,520
Speaker 2: just a producer. Sorry that your hometown's on fire.

996
00:52:25,360 --> 00:52:28,200
Speaker 1: Thanks And if you you want to hear more of

997
00:52:28,320 --> 00:52:31,600
Speaker 1: me being a guest, I recently did my friend Sarah

998
00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 1: Marshall's You Are Good podcast where we talk about the

999
00:52:34,120 --> 00:52:37,160
Speaker 1: movie The Other Woman, and it's me not talking about

1000
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 1: anything historical or news or anything upsetting. So if you

1001
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,600
Speaker 1: want to hear me giggle with my friend, check it out.

1002
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more of what we already

1003
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:52,040
Speaker 1: do at cool Zone Media or cool zone media dot com.

1004
00:52:52,600 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 2: And if you like the ad transitions but not the ads,

1005
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:57,080
Speaker 2: have I got a service for you. This isn't an

1006
00:52:57,120 --> 00:52:59,319
Speaker 2: ad transition, it's sort of it is, but it's me

1007
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:02,640
Speaker 2: promoting cooler Zone Media, which is the same podcasts from

1008
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:06,520
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media, but without the ads. And I don't know,

1009
00:53:06,640 --> 00:53:09,520
Speaker 2: I'm pretty I do listen to podcasts that aren't just

1010
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,839
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media, but I listen to more cool Zone

1011
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:15,560
Speaker 2: Media than anything else. And thanks, you get it without

1012
00:53:15,600 --> 00:53:17,839
Speaker 2: the ads. Currently can only get it with iPhone and

1013
00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 2: Sophie is hard at work about fixing that. Yeah, it'll

1014
00:53:21,239 --> 00:53:26,400
Speaker 2: be soon. Cool Well, next week join us for another

1015
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:29,320
Speaker 2: dude thing about some of the stuff. I don't know

1016
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:31,680
Speaker 2: what it's going to be yet, because I could so

1017
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:33,960
Speaker 2: sucked up into one topic that I can't plan out

1018
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 2: anything else. I just entirely monofocused every week. It is

1019
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 2: kind of beautiful.

1020
00:53:39,480 --> 00:53:47,880
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, Hi, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is

1021
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:50,800
Speaker 3: a production of cool Zone Media for more podcasts and

1022
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media.

1023
00:53:51,840 --> 00:53:55,080
Speaker 1: Visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

1024
00:53:55,200 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: on the Iheartmedio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1025
00:53:58,600 --> 00:54:01,040
Speaker 1: your podcasts. I think you're