Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knucomb, and this is a production
Speaker 1: of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast. Brought to you
Speaker 1: by Tokova's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man and I've
Speaker 1: been wearing to Covis for years. The most comfortable boot
Speaker 1: I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the bear Grease Render. This is we're deep into
Speaker 1: the bear Grease Civil War summer as it's been deemed
Speaker 1: by Misty, which is long time coming from me. Learn
Speaker 1: a lot about the Civil War and it's been really powerful.
Speaker 1: We have two distinguished guests, quite distinguished.
Speaker 2: You're welcome America.
Speaker 3: I'm here.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll, we'll go counterclock clockwise. We have doctor mister Nukelem, welcome,
Speaker 1: thank you, great to see you.
Speaker 4: When you say counterclockwise, actually clockwise, well, I usually opposite order.
Speaker 1: I try to introduce a mystery guest, doctor mister Neukelem,
Speaker 1: doctor Josh Lambridge, Spilmaker.
Speaker 2: I'm working on it. I'm working on it.
Speaker 1: And then we have a guy who's been here before,
Speaker 1: Ben Lagron, who is uh.
Speaker 2: He's only got a master's degree.
Speaker 1: Master Ben LaGrone, I like, now, Ben, you you have
Speaker 1: some history street cred though I am.
Speaker 5: I am you know you call this Civil War summer, right,
Speaker 5: So I'm such a nerd that I remember as a
Speaker 5: kid every time July and it was getting hot, thinking
Speaker 5: it's really hot, but it could be worse. I could
Speaker 5: be wearing a wool uniform in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania fighting from
Speaker 5: my life, that is, because that's just when we were
Speaker 5: how old since I can remember. Wow, So that's my
Speaker 5: frame of reference to make myself feel better about hot summers.
Speaker 5: At least I'm not fighting in the Civil War in
Speaker 5: the middle of summer.
Speaker 1: So Gettysburg was in July.
Speaker 5: Yeah, July first to third sixty three.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, it's a really specific, like mental coping device.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's good.
Speaker 4: Some things about you been.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what I meant. You got some bona fides
Speaker 1: when it comes to history.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What I was actually talking about was that you used
Speaker 1: to teach history.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's irrelevant, it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. Yeah, Yeah, I
Speaker 5: taught history, and so I love some war.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, great to have you been lagrown And then
Speaker 1: a various thing distinguished guests. I was gonna say it distinguished.
Speaker 1: He is not extinguished. We can go on at all.
Speaker 1: He is on fire.
Speaker 2: Somebody get the fire extinguisher because he is on fire.
Speaker 1: This is Jeff Shreeve heard of him known as JB.
Speaker 1: Shrive too many and uh, Jeff is my brother in law.
Speaker 4: What disclosures.
Speaker 1: Jeff is misty.
Speaker 3: It's out there.
Speaker 4: It's out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Jeff has a no idea, very a wonderful history.
Speaker 1: You've got a couple of podcasts. Tell me about your podcast.
Speaker 3: It's basically all combined now Jbshreeve dot com. It's all
Speaker 3: right there. It's uh targeted towards believers Christians. But we
Speaker 3: look at current events, we look at history. Just try
Speaker 3: to The tagline is faith intelligent, faith based perspectives, so
Speaker 3: believers can make sense of the world they live in.
Speaker 1: But you do a lot of history stuff. Oh yeah, we're.
Speaker 3: Neck deep in ah look at American history going back
Speaker 3: to one hundred and fifty years, a two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty year story.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it's and you're a real history buff Like
Speaker 1: what got us going on you being here today is
Speaker 1: we were I told you about a couple of episodes
Speaker 1: we had done. Yeah, and you've you've very well read
Speaker 1: on the on the Civil War.
Speaker 3: I remember when the Civil War summer was just going
Speaker 3: to be three episodes.
Speaker 1: You've been you've been listening that long. You remember when
Speaker 1: it was just three episodes.
Speaker 3: Well, it was planned to be three episodes episode one,
Speaker 3: like we're gonna do three of these maybe, And now
Speaker 3: it's like we're just going and going.
Speaker 1: Keep going. Well, Jeff, you're in the Ta Covis hot seat.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, as you can tell by the boots on
Speaker 1: your chair. And uh, both you and Ben are going
Speaker 1: to get a gift card from Takovis that you could
Speaker 1: get a cool shirt like I've got or I got,
Speaker 1: or you could buy your wife pair of boots like
Speaker 1: Misty's got. We're really proud of our too, COVID.
Speaker 2: You could buy me a parently.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a place where you like, don't
Speaker 1: I mean in this in the field that we're in.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you you know, like promoting stuff is like the
Speaker 1: fun stuff that people come for. But like I'm pumped
Speaker 1: that sponsors this podcast.
Speaker 3: Pump. Yeah, so you lluyed me in the Civil War,
Speaker 3: but you had me with Chakhova.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well and they look what they sent us today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is pretty branding irons for boots. That's a meat
Speaker 1: eater logo.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: So so we'll take a propane torch and heat it
Speaker 1: up super hot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not wearing pants right on the cap.
Speaker 3: Ben's wearing the shorts.
Speaker 4: So you can get to.
Speaker 5: Clarify for those.
Speaker 1: Choice that you guys have in this is which brand
Speaker 1: do you want? The meat brand of the bear grease both?
Speaker 3: Oh so yeah, I left right, left, right there, you go.
Speaker 4: Let me let me see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't that cool?
Speaker 2: Where would you put that pretty slick? Just put it anywhere?
Speaker 2: Put on the heat my to.
Speaker 1: Cova's boots branded with my initials, like right on the
Speaker 1: heel right there.
Speaker 2: Or you could put it up on the on the
Speaker 2: shank of them.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah yeah I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we could we could brand yours Mistine Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. Nice. I also wanted to just a
Speaker 1: couple of heading off a couple of things at the past.
Speaker 1: Right at the top. This is the h O Sage
Speaker 1: orange orange acorn grunner. Very so this is Phelps grunting
Speaker 1: deer car. It's July man, it's time to start thinking
Speaker 1: about deer hunting. Yep, it really is.
Speaker 4: And uh, I wish Bear was here because Bear is
Speaker 4: passionate about the osage orange.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So what made me think of it was when
Speaker 1: we first made the acorn grunner, we used white oak,
Speaker 1: and so the first run was white oak, and then
Speaker 1: we made them a crylic, which we still do, which
Speaker 1: is like an indestructible plastic essentially that that it's that
Speaker 1: it is like machined out of this piece of crylic.
Speaker 1: But this is my favorite one. It's Osa George with
Speaker 1: a little burnt finish on it. And won't get this
Speaker 1: is an inhale exhale dough bleat buck grunt call, and
Speaker 1: uh it's it's a deer hunter's call. That's what I
Speaker 1: call it because when I'm deer hunting, I want to
Speaker 1: be able to call at a dough deer and have
Speaker 1: her come in. And in the early season they really
Speaker 1: respond to bleats. You can call in a buck during
Speaker 1: the rut with a bleat. A lot of guys just
Speaker 1: carry a grunt call. I like to have a dough
Speaker 1: bleat and a buck grunt, and this acorn grunner is
Speaker 1: a way to go.
Speaker 4: Is that is it o sage orange? Is that a
Speaker 4: tree that would be common.
Speaker 1: Across the Yeah, in many places in the kind of
Speaker 1: the southeast, the upper South, in the Midwest there's probably
Speaker 1: there's probably osage all across the South too, but it's
Speaker 1: also in the Midwest, Okay, So yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Was just wondering if people, if people in the Northwest
Speaker 4: would know what we were, what we were talking about when
Speaker 4: we said in George Osa.
Speaker 1: George has has had a multi century marketing campaign. They've
Speaker 1: been heavily marketed, first by the Native Americans, then by Bill,
Speaker 1: then by others Instagram, but the George it actually started
Speaker 1: with it was the first Native Americans were making bows
Speaker 1: out of it. But then the French came and called
Speaker 1: it bow dark Boy's day arc. I don't know what
Speaker 1: does that mean. Bo dark means.
Speaker 2: Uh, French.
Speaker 1: Wood of the bow, bow wood, I see, yeah, because
Speaker 1: they came here and they saw Native Americans making bows
Speaker 1: out of os George and it's uh, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of the most impressive woods on the continent. That's density strength.
Speaker 1: I planned, Jeff, listen to this. This is some brother
Speaker 1: in law stuff that we need to talk about. I
Speaker 1: redid my mailbox, which I mean might be something you
Speaker 1: might consider too, and wou hey, if we did it
Speaker 1: in Osa George, I'd get excited about it. I cut
Speaker 1: Os George two Osa George posts. I actually made a
Speaker 1: mailbox for the whole neighborhood.
Speaker 4: I actually think we should kind of go back and
Speaker 4: tell a little bit of the backstory on this.
Speaker 1: Well I don't even know is there much of a backstory.
Speaker 4: Well, we got a notice from our mail person the
Speaker 4: neighborhood did that our our roads mailbox was too rough
Speaker 4: and they would stop delivering like in thirty days if
Speaker 4: we didn't change it. Wow, no one took action. It
Speaker 4: was an exercise of collective inaction.
Speaker 1: Or our mailboxes. It's like a country road where all
Speaker 1: the mailboxes are the people that live on the road
Speaker 1: or on this you know this, this lengthy platform, elevated platform.
Speaker 1: And I mean the short version of the story is
Speaker 1: who came to the rescue of this haller.
Speaker 4: And who was very proud of that.
Speaker 1: This guy and I went and cut two big Os
Speaker 1: Jordan staves And when I put him in the ground,
Speaker 1: I knew that they would outlive me. I mean, they will,
Speaker 1: They'll stay on the ground for fifty to seventy years
Speaker 1: before they rot.
Speaker 3: So it's an actual tree that you planning for your boy.
Speaker 2: No, no, he just cut it. He just cut like
Speaker 2: a fence post.
Speaker 1: The fence post and then built this platform. You should
Speaker 1: look at it on the way.
Speaker 4: Oh it's a work of art. And he was proud
Speaker 4: of it. He sent me pictures, and our neighbors were
Speaker 4: proud of it. Several of them wrote and said thank you.
Speaker 4: They were very very plait like. None of us were like, oh,
Speaker 4: they're not going to stop delivering our boundy, and that's
Speaker 4: kind of how we all thought. But they did, in
Speaker 4: fact stop delivering our mail. So Clay went out there
Speaker 4: and he was super proud of it. And every time
Speaker 4: someone talks about it to me, they're like, hey, till
Speaker 4: Clay thinks. We saw him out there working on the thing.
Speaker 4: And I was like, oh, no, you should call him.
Speaker 1: You should call him yourself. Driving by slow it host
Speaker 1: to traffic jam. That looks good jam. All the old
Speaker 1: men around were coming over and just like, man, what
Speaker 1: are you doing George? Stay boy, it'll be there a
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 4: He kind of was the talk of the family chat
Speaker 4: for a while, you know, And proud of it.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time ago.
Speaker 4: Mainly Clay. You know, he was the main person sitting
Speaker 4: in that house there.
Speaker 2: It was like six months ago. Jeff's really noticed it
Speaker 2: every time he's come by.
Speaker 1: Well, what we could do is take out my mailbox
Speaker 1: staves and make a custom run over grunners.
Speaker 2: We'll do that in fifty to seventy years. Good look, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So what have you been doing today, Clay Man?
Speaker 1: I have I forgot what an intoxicant it was. He
Speaker 1: is going to be bulldozer.
Speaker 4: He's going to be unbearable.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote a song about it one time. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been on a I've been on Kamatsu fifty one
Speaker 1: for about six hours, five hours today.
Speaker 4: How long do you have it for? How many hours
Speaker 4: do you get to this forty? He's got forty hours
Speaker 4: he's going to be spending. I've texted with all the kids.
Speaker 4: This is like apex life experience for Clay Newcombe to
Speaker 4: get to be on a bulldozer, and I've just kind
Speaker 4: of resigned myself. He's doing hard work, good work that
Speaker 4: I want done, but he will be unbearable for for
Speaker 4: about a week, just just the thrill, the the adrenaline rush,
Speaker 4: the high of being on a bulldozer and feeling that
Speaker 4: much power all day long.
Speaker 2: He's have you ever done it, missy? Have you ever
Speaker 2: done it?
Speaker 4: No, but I have. There is talk of me getting to.
Speaker 5: Push somebody operating it.
Speaker 2: There is a high that comes with operating heavy equipment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is a I feel.
Speaker 4: So powerful when I say I'm bearable, I'm not judging.
Speaker 4: I'm like, I'm willing to take it like it's.
Speaker 2: There's a connotation of the word unbearable.
Speaker 4: Well, I get you. I hear what you're saying. I'm
Speaker 4: just saying I just know like this is going to
Speaker 4: put Clay in a position. I hope he can bear
Speaker 4: the weight of the burden that's on him right now.
Speaker 2: We'll see, we'll see where the humility versus the the adrenaline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'm not good at I'm good at pushing
Speaker 1: stuff over real good. I'm not great at keeping it smooth,
Speaker 1: because you know, you push over a big tree. I'm
Speaker 1: not pushing over big trees. I'm pushing over medium size
Speaker 1: locusts osae, orange and cedar that have grown up. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting study on the successionary plants of this region.
Speaker 1: But if you just take a if your front yard, Jeff,
Speaker 1: that you mow with a lawnmower, if you didn't mow
Speaker 1: it for one hundred years, just let it go. The
Speaker 1: first stage of succession would be locus osa George cedar,
Speaker 1: eastern red cedar, sassafras per simmon like these.
Speaker 3: How long would it take to get those?
Speaker 1: You would get those within two or three years. The
Speaker 1: sprouts would pop up.
Speaker 3: We're working on it.
Speaker 1: And then if you let that go for thirty years,
Speaker 1: you'd have what I have over here.
Speaker 2: When was the last time that was clear?
Speaker 1: Do you think My neighbor, who's very closely watching what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, has told me that thirty years ago it
Speaker 1: was a bermuda pasture just like his. Really, this is
Speaker 1: really beautiful, and he said it looked just like my place. Really,
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting, just how quickly the natural world takes
Speaker 1: over something. Yeah, you know. So, so there's the power
Speaker 1: is is what do you take? What do you leave?
Speaker 1: Because there is some nice walnut that is from that
Speaker 1: secondary growth. Yeah, so I'm keeping that, but we are well.
Speaker 1: Bar Newcomb is a bird's out of town today. But
Speaker 1: if you haven't checked looked at his YouTube channel. You should.
Speaker 1: He's got he's got some good.
Speaker 3: Wildly entertaining when he's making that foe. I know this
Speaker 3: is a couple of months ago, was that os George?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I turn on the videos a lot of times when
Speaker 2: I just sit down and eat lunch or something, and
Speaker 2: I'm just captivated. Yeah.
Speaker 4: A lot of a lot of my friends with young kids,
Speaker 4: their kids are watching them, and that's like, you know,
Speaker 4: just entertainment for for young people. I think that's pretty
Speaker 4: good entertainment.
Speaker 2: I met this little boy in the in the chiropractor.
Speaker 2: I think I may have mentioned it. Met him in
Speaker 2: the chiropractor the other day, and he's world's biggest Bear
Speaker 2: Grease fan. He's I think he's five six years old,
Speaker 2: maybe six years old, and his name is Gus. And
Speaker 2: I saw him again the other day and they've just
Speaker 2: been eating up at Bear Grease content.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, nice.
Speaker 1: Nice. Well we are we could continue to small talk.
Speaker 1: We could we could start, you know, as they say,
Speaker 1: big talk, yeah start, yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you can you clarify what they say?
Speaker 1: We are here to talk about the American Civil War.
Speaker 1: So the first episode that we did talked about the
Speaker 1: causes of the Civil War. Second episode was about Lincoln
Speaker 1: and Robert E. Lee, these two players that played roles
Speaker 1: in the Civil War. Third one was about why men
Speaker 1: fought and it basically we highlighted the cherokeys that fought.
Speaker 3: And is that the one where he surprised you with
Speaker 3: your family tree?
Speaker 1: Yes? Yes, yes, that was cool.
Speaker 4: The way he surprised him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jeff, do you have any When I started this,
Speaker 1: it's pretty intimidating to do an episode on the Civil War.
Speaker 1: It's just so big. Any commentary on the sometimes mysty's
Speaker 1: like played. The way that you do stuff is just
Speaker 1: completely backwards. Some lives are four and to me, it
Speaker 1: just makes perfect sense the way that we've done this anyway,
Speaker 1: the progression of the series. Like you're a podcaster, you're
Speaker 1: you're a writer.
Speaker 3: Boy, I'm enjoying it. I mean, I've been enjoying the
Speaker 3: way you get into it. I like to debate, you know.
Speaker 3: As I listened to him while I run and like
Speaker 3: I had to make sure this. I'm just tell him, Josh,
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure if this was video or podcast because
Speaker 3: I just threw everything audio. So I listened to him
Speaker 3: while I'm running, and I think about what they're saying.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, maybe this, maybe that, but I've been
Speaker 3: enjoying just the progression of it all so far.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, what did you said? You had
Speaker 1: some thoughts on Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 3: On Thomas Jefferson, Oh boy, do I got thoughts on
Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson.
Speaker 1: Because the question that came up in the first episode was,
Speaker 1: this is the guy that wrote the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 1: And we went back all the way to the dec
Speaker 1: Declaration and how I had kind of made a caveat
Speaker 1: for slavery, but yet it talked about the equality of
Speaker 1: all men, and then Thomas Jefferson had owned slaves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Jefferson, then you back me up, make me
Speaker 3: look smart, correct everything that I'm doing wrong here, but
Speaker 3: do it in a nice way. But Jefferson, he would
Speaker 3: say things like he was all about image. In my mind,
Speaker 3: when I look at Jefferson, the more I read about him,
Speaker 3: the less I like him, because when you dig down
Speaker 3: into his life, it's like, ah, this guy says these
Speaker 3: nice words, and then you look behind the scenes and
Speaker 3: it's like just a lot of the not nice way
Speaker 3: of hypocrisy. Just it doesn't line up his actions. Do
Speaker 3: not line up with what he says. And one of
Speaker 3: the things I've learned is there's two if you take
Speaker 3: politics and he divide him in half. There's realist and idealist, right,
Speaker 3: two different schools of thought. The idealist and you would
Speaker 3: put like Jefferson in that camp. To me Rousseau, who
Speaker 3: out of France, you know, with the Enlightenment, who he
Speaker 3: was heavily influenced by. You would also, going on down
Speaker 3: the line further in history, you'd put someone like Marx,
Speaker 3: Karl Marx, the founder of communism or one of the
Speaker 3: founders of communism, Guys like that, where they're all about
Speaker 3: painting this high vision and they don't expect you to
Speaker 3: necessarily hit it all all right. They don't like the
Speaker 3: idea of hypocrisy. That's not really the point. It's about
Speaker 3: putting this big thing out there, and you know, weoul
Speaker 3: just trib for it. And they're about more about tearing
Speaker 3: things down than they are about building things up, so
Speaker 3: they're tearing down power structures. People would say, like Marxist
Speaker 3: theory comes out of there. Then on the other side
Speaker 3: you've got the realist and that would be folks like
Speaker 3: John Adams and during with the founding father's generation. I'm
Speaker 3: Edmund Burke out of the British parliamentary parliamentary school of thought.
Speaker 3: Guys who you can't be all pineing the sky. You
Speaker 3: got to have realistic applications, and they do that. And
Speaker 3: so there's two different frames of thought. And so when
Speaker 3: it comes to those political theories, and so when I
Speaker 3: look at Jefferson, I would fall more along the lines
Speaker 3: of a realist. It's like, you got to do what
Speaker 3: you say, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Wait, he was He wasn't.
Speaker 3: He was not. And in his mind what I see
Speaker 3: when I read his writings, what he said and then
Speaker 3: what he actually did, it's kind of like that was
Speaker 3: It's okay in his mind. I mean, Rousseau wasn't thinking
Speaker 3: I've got to get all this accomplished now. He was thinking,
Speaker 3: I've got to tear down the power structures that would
Speaker 3: prevent these good things from happening. And that's the way
Speaker 3: he would put it out and.
Speaker 1: Kind of let someone else do it. Yeah, you gave
Speaker 1: me an example, you said, Carl Marx like lived with
Speaker 1: his mom or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like a drunk. He's a drunk. He
Speaker 3: was not a very good human being at all. He
Speaker 3: basically had to live off of his family's dollar just
Speaker 3: to get all these writings out. And then there's all
Speaker 3: sorts of chaos that resulted from the stuff that he did, Right,
Speaker 3: But he's putting something out there that had good pieces
Speaker 3: to it. You know, we've seen a lot of bad
Speaker 3: stuff from it, but he's basically saying, hey, you got
Speaker 3: to treat the workers more fairly, and that was what
Speaker 3: he contributed to the equation. Would you agree with this, Ben?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah. And I've not studied Jefferson as in depth as
Speaker 5: people like Washington and some other family brothers. But when
Speaker 5: I look at those guys, they recognized that they were
Speaker 5: born into a system that was very big and intimidating,
Speaker 5: even if they didn't agree with certain aspects of it.
Speaker 5: And so it's and I thought the episode is did
Speaker 5: a good job of painting that picture for some of
Speaker 5: those guys. I think I can't remember who. Maybe it
Speaker 5: was JD that brought up like cobalt mining, right. I mean,
Speaker 5: if you really want to dig into the atrocities that
Speaker 5: go into not just your cell phone, but getting electric
Speaker 5: cars and more lithium out, you will ask the question,
Speaker 5: what am I doing to stop this? I'm literally propagating
Speaker 5: and I'm going I'm buying. I'm actually contributing to it
Speaker 5: almost daily. Lithium batteries are a big part of my life,
Speaker 5: like yours in anyone's well speak for yourself. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 5: I think those guys, like Jeff said, they they're priority.
Speaker 5: It's more about priority versus beliefs. And those guys were politicians,
Speaker 5: and they had priorities that superseded whatever moral beliefs that
Speaker 5: they had. And no one can go back and know
Speaker 5: every deep inner thought that they had about it all,
Speaker 5: but there is enough evidence that they just there was
Speaker 5: a lot of things that they did they weren't necessarily
Speaker 5: comfortable with, just like I'm not super comfortable with all
Speaker 5: the lithium in our world.
Speaker 1: That's but a smartphone.
Speaker 5: I made a choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or yes?
Speaker 3: Or Bear's big example, you know, I think it was
Speaker 3: last week's and maybe the week before the environmental stuff. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's a perfect example. It's like that fits perfectly because
Speaker 3: I do all sorts of stuff. On hundred years from now,
Speaker 3: I'll probably think what a horrible man.
Speaker 4: Monster plastic spoon? Yeah, pictures of you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have I have a thing that I say
Speaker 1: is that they will look back at pictures of our
Speaker 1: kid's birthday parties and we'll see us using single use
Speaker 1: plastic utensils, and they will go, how was my grandfather
Speaker 1: was such? He was so nice to his family, he was,
Speaker 1: you know, good with this and that. But how could
Speaker 1: he have done it? It's I mean, that's quite different
Speaker 1: than human bondage.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's very very important to say that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's fascinating to me how we can look
Speaker 1: back in history and see the flaws inside of people, yeah,
Speaker 1: and try to reconcile it. And then yeah, here we
Speaker 1: are today using lithium batteries in our phones.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And like George Washington, like he wanted to he
Speaker 3: knew slavery was wrong, and like when he died, he
Speaker 3: wanted to free all of his slaves. That was the plan.
Speaker 3: And yet at the same time, when a lot of
Speaker 3: his slaves ran away during the Revolutionary War, they ran
Speaker 3: and fought for the British because the British made this deal,
Speaker 3: if you'll come fight for us, we're going to free
Speaker 3: all the slaves. He went looking for them for years
Speaker 3: after the battle was won. When the terms of surrender
Speaker 3: were done, he says. Hey also I want to get
Speaker 3: some of these slaves back that have gone and fought
Speaker 3: for you in the British that we can't do that.
Speaker 3: And it's some fascinating stories. It's like, you know this is.
Speaker 4: Wrong, but yeah, yeah, I just read about that.
Speaker 3: There is a difference. There is a difference.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Ben, you said that you learned some stuff about
Speaker 1: your family's Civil War history.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and growing up in my family, you're told this
Speaker 5: when you're young, but I called my mom earlier to
Speaker 5: brush up on some details. But it's really fascinating stuff
Speaker 5: and it ties into the complexity I felt like you
Speaker 5: touched on in the series about why did people fight
Speaker 5: on an individual level, not just why politically did the
Speaker 5: war happen. So my mother's side of the family has
Speaker 5: a long history over here, the Talbots, and they moved
Speaker 5: to Massachusetts in like the mid sixteen hundreds, and there's
Speaker 5: all this history with the Talbots and Massachusetts. I mean,
Speaker 5: you can go up to Massachusetts. There's books about some
Speaker 5: of my ancestors, and I have an ancestor buried very
Speaker 5: close to Alexander Hamilton's. I got all this great history,
Speaker 5: direct history well in the eighteen thirties. Wait to see
Speaker 5: what they did this for another.
Speaker 1: Podcast they did they must have done something bad.
Speaker 5: Well just kid, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 5: there was one family that fell on hard times and
Speaker 5: in eighteen thirty six, you could the government acquired Chickasaw
Speaker 5: land in Mississippi and branded it. Talking about marketing here
Speaker 5: with we were talking about earlier with the osage, they
Speaker 5: branded it as like the last cotton frontier. Go get
Speaker 5: some cheap land, whether you want it for speculating or
Speaker 5: plant yourself. And this family grabbed on some of that
Speaker 5: Chickasaw land and moved down here with all these ties
Speaker 5: back in Massachusetts. And it was one particular individual, and
Speaker 5: it was unsure what he actually did with it, because
Speaker 5: we don't have records of him starting a big plantation
Speaker 5: and buying slaves. He actually owned a drug store in Memphis,
Speaker 5: budd he had that land in and his son ended
Speaker 5: up actually multiple sons ended up fighting in the Civil War.
Speaker 5: And so before I get to the action, because there's
Speaker 5: a lot of action, it's always been intriguing to us
Speaker 5: as a family to study these guys and think, like
Speaker 5: you literally all of your kin, all of your ties
Speaker 5: are up in Massachusetts and with you know, you moved
Speaker 5: down here and within not that long a time you're
Speaker 5: literally fighting against them, and it's just always been intriguing
Speaker 5: to us. But I think especially for his kids, they
Speaker 5: would have grown up in Mississippi, so they wouldn't have
Speaker 5: like felt that history as strong as he would have.
Speaker 5: So anyway, a couple of the sons fought Antietam, one
Speaker 5: of them died, one of them lived, and that is
Speaker 5: my direct ancestor. And it gets crazier. So his name
Speaker 5: was Alan Alan Talbot. Yeah, he fought and Antietam and
Speaker 5: then and I don't remember all the specifics, but basically,
Speaker 5: like his division of the Mississippian eventually got tied up
Speaker 5: with Robert E. Lee, and just like there was the
Speaker 5: Third Arkansas was fought with Lee as well, and so
Speaker 5: he was in a lot of campaigns under Lee and
Speaker 5: drove an ambulance at Gettysburg and lived.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: So he literally lived through Antietam, lived through Gettysburg. And
Speaker 5: he didn't have his kids till after the Civil War,
Speaker 5: and he had his kids pretty late, so he probably
Speaker 5: was in maybe his late twenties early thirties when the
Speaker 5: war started. And then after the war, you know, he survived.
Speaker 5: He then got married, had like fifteen kids, and so
Speaker 5: if he would have died in the war, I wouldn't
Speaker 5: be here. And he's my great great grandfather, and that's
Speaker 5: pretty rare. I'm thirty eight, twenty twenty six. That's rare
Speaker 5: to to it's only my great great grandfather.
Speaker 1: It's only two greats.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, he was older kids, right exactly, and so
Speaker 5: were interesting to think about, just like him living through that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this was your your mother's great grandfather exactly. Now
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have known him though.
Speaker 5: No, but her dad talked about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it would have been his grandgrandfather. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Okay, lived through Antietam and Gettysburg.
Speaker 3: That's wild.
Speaker 5: And his brother was killed in Antietam and my parents
Speaker 5: were actually he was killed in the cornfields and my
Speaker 5: parents got to kind of go to the area that
Speaker 5: he most likely laid it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, that is interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do we have any relatives who find me some more?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: We no, Clay does.
Speaker 4: Well, we haven't. So here's the story I heard. Oh man,
Speaker 4: I don't really want to tell this on that.
Speaker 3: Well, don't do it because it's always going to be embarrassing. Well,
Speaker 3: not very good.
Speaker 4: It's that we had a female spy. Oh wow, a
Speaker 4: female spy and she for the Confederates and she came.
Speaker 4: And it's one of those things where it is literally
Speaker 4: written in our genealogy a story about it in a.
Speaker 1: Book about your yeah, yeah, with your maiden name.
Speaker 4: And I heard about it when I was in elementary
Speaker 4: school and we were we got the genealogy book, shared
Speaker 4: it with my teacher. We were doing a study on
Speaker 4: civil war and it was like probably one of the
Speaker 4: most interesting studies we ever did in elementary social studies
Speaker 4: because it was a project based and that wasn't popular
Speaker 4: back then. So we did this project bas thing where
Speaker 4: we like went to all the wars and there was
Speaker 4: a big board up on the wall and you would
Speaker 4: move and when she there was an allowance in the
Speaker 4: system for someone to be a spy or and like
Speaker 4: there were two teams. Yeah, I mean, education in the
Speaker 4: eighties and nineties is pretty.
Speaker 2: Crazy, unhinged. It was unhinged.
Speaker 5: I mean it really was.
Speaker 4: And so this was a decent person teaching our class.
Speaker 4: But there were two teams, was the Unions and the
Speaker 4: Confederate And I was on the Union team, but I
Speaker 4: was unbeknownst to them, actually a spy. And so I
Speaker 4: would give her my work but wouldn't turn it in
Speaker 4: in the class until our team would lose. And that
Speaker 4: was like a.
Speaker 1: Fun Did they tell you to do this or did
Speaker 1: you just like.
Speaker 4: There was allowance in the system for like, you know,
Speaker 4: it was like a kid that she brought.
Speaker 1: So when it all was settled, you were you were
Speaker 1: a spy and they actually knew it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I brought my little genealogy book and we
Speaker 4: all learned an interesting lesson about the Civil War. But yeah,
Speaker 4: so there was a we had a female spy in there,
Speaker 4: and that in my lifetime was looked on as like
Speaker 4: an honorable interesting thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, are you going to tell the story
Speaker 1: that that was in the book?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So the story in the well, and it always
Speaker 4: makes it always makes me a little bit nervous because
Speaker 4: sometimes I feel like people in my family were given
Speaker 4: to elastic retail telling.
Speaker 1: So I think the way that you would handle this is, say,
Speaker 1: as the story was.
Speaker 4: Told to me, she took she took some papers, some
Speaker 4: documents from the union, and they they followed her back
Speaker 4: to her house and she sat on them. She had
Speaker 4: you know, she heard the story. Yeah yeah, and she said,
Speaker 4: and who knows if it's true? And they wanted They
Speaker 4: looked all over the house. They tore it up, you know,
Speaker 4: they knew that she had the papers, and they asked
Speaker 4: her that. They said it could only be underneath you
Speaker 4: because they've torn up everything else. And she said, a
Speaker 4: Southern gentleman would never ask me to stand, but I'll
Speaker 4: stand if you want me to. And they said, never mind,
Speaker 4: and they left, and that's exactly where they were. She
Speaker 4: was sitting on them. And so, you know, as it
Speaker 4: was told to me. But I always have questions about
Speaker 4: some of the retelling of our family history.
Speaker 1: I think would be pretty interesting to pull people about
Speaker 1: the stories and their family about the Civil War. I
Speaker 1: actually have a story about the Civil War that I
Speaker 1: haven't even mentioned on this episode because I just feel
Speaker 1: like everybody has this same story, like I just I'm
Speaker 1: not I don't really know how true it is, okay,
Speaker 1: And that is that we were on my grandmother's side,
Speaker 1: her maiden name was Severe, and they were from Tennessee,
Speaker 1: that we were direct descendants of Stonewall Jackson.
Speaker 4: I don't know that everyone has that story. I didn't
Speaker 4: know that.
Speaker 1: I just don't have the I actually haven't verified it.
Speaker 1: But when I was a child, Yeah, my grandmother gave
Speaker 1: us books on Stonewall Jackson and was like, read this,
Speaker 1: and she could tell us how you got back there,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Our our not in our blood lineage, but in our lineage,
Speaker 4: we're apparently the the Daniel Boone is our ancestors. No,
Speaker 4: he didn't.
Speaker 1: He actually didn't fight in the Civil War.
Speaker 4: I know, I'm just saying. I just think that's kind
Speaker 4: of a better, that's kind of a.
Speaker 1: Pretty But the thing is, it's the reason it's interesting
Speaker 1: is that, like everybody has these these stories of their
Speaker 1: connection and and they're probably somewhat true. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you get this far away from something, the genealogy of it,
Speaker 1: I mean, Stonewall Jackson probably has thousands of descendants.
Speaker 4: You know what's interesting to me. I'm listening we're reading
Speaker 4: a reading slash listening to Grant's biography on tape right now, and.
Speaker 1: Wen you guys.
Speaker 4: Okay, So so I'm listening to the audible book, and
Speaker 4: it strikes me how connected people were, Like how many
Speaker 4: of these people knew each other and and his you know,
Speaker 4: his dad lived lived with John Brown, and I mean,
Speaker 4: like there's just all the.
Speaker 1: Country was a lot smaller.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It seems
Speaker 3: like when you're reading about the Civil War, you learn
Speaker 3: about the Civil War, it seems like everything is small.
Speaker 3: Like the opening battle takes place at this guy's in
Speaker 3: his pasture. The guy the bull room takes place in
Speaker 3: his pasture appamatics the courthouse. It's in his kitchen where
Speaker 3: the surrender is done, and it's like the same guy.
Speaker 3: It's like, how can that be possible? Like the coincidence is.
Speaker 4: There Long Street? Is it Grant's wedding? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: it's just like NonStop and there's always They're just always
Speaker 4: kind of running into each other. And as I'm listening
Speaker 4: to it, we just would not have those kinds of connections.
Speaker 1: The country would have been. I want to say, Josh,
Speaker 1: can you look up how many people were in America
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five. I want to say it was
Speaker 1: around it was under fifty million. I think maybe even
Speaker 1: thirty million. That's what I want to say. But like
Speaker 1: that's a yeah, small country. I mean, that sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But when you start having multi
Speaker 1: iterations that have interacted with each other. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a smaller group of people.
Speaker 2: Thirty five approximately thirty five million.
Speaker 1: Wow, thirty five millions. So now we have three hunts,
Speaker 1: so we're ten times as big.
Speaker 4: Now, how many people are in live in New York
Speaker 4: City today?
Speaker 5: Uh huh metro area.
Speaker 1: More than twelve fifteen. So while we're looking up that
Speaker 1: stat this episode, when I think about the Civil War,
Speaker 1: the Emancipation Proclamation is like a big, a big thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to learn about it. I really didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about it.
Speaker 2: Twenty million in the metro area currently twenty.
Speaker 1: Million, so they were you know, yeah, everybody in New
Speaker 1: York each other.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying everybody knows each other, but that is
Speaker 4: that it's almost the size of one of our biggest cities.
Speaker 4: You know, it's two thirds of sizes.
Speaker 2: Bulldozers make him a little snarky.
Speaker 1: I think he's been a.
Speaker 4: Little bit snippy with me today. And I think it's
Speaker 4: the bulldozer. I think it's the power. This is gonna
Speaker 4: We're gonna have to be careful, Clay.
Speaker 1: And when I'm out on that machine, it's just me
Speaker 1: machine and the trees they're going down.
Speaker 4: Well, he better not treat me that way.
Speaker 1: No, no tree with the gravers. The Emancipation Proclamation. Oh
Speaker 1: that's right, yes, yes, that's what we're talking about. So Brooks,
Speaker 1: doctor Brooks Blevins was my guest and he's he's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite historians. Just a great guy, super knowledgeable.
Speaker 1: He's really the historian of the Ozarks. He is the
Speaker 1: he's the guy in the Ozarks, but he knows the
Speaker 1: Civil War really well. He was. He was a fun guest.
Speaker 1: He'll make an appearance I think in the next episode
Speaker 1: as well. But what stood out to you guys in
Speaker 1: the Emancipation Proclamation number four of the Bear Grease Civil
Speaker 1: War summer? What stood out to you?
Speaker 4: I think for me it's you know, I have a
Speaker 4: the trical version of history and and so you think
Speaker 4: about you think about these big documents in terms of Lincoln,
Speaker 4: you know, wanting to free the slaves, and then you
Speaker 4: get in there and it's like, no, Lincoln had I mean,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure he did, Like you know, Brooks says
Speaker 4: that he he made you know, he migrated towards the
Speaker 4: abolition side. But really he's trying to hold together a
Speaker 4: lot of different things, keeping the Europeans from joining forces
Speaker 4: with the Southerners. He's also navigating this law that gives
Speaker 4: them jurisdiction as a I mean, we're in the weeds
Speaker 4: of public policy when we're saying I have no right
Speaker 4: to pass a law that says that people in the
Speaker 4: north can't have slaves. But I can say that people
Speaker 4: who are actually fighting, uh you know these this or
Speaker 4: that has succeeded, they can Yeah, and I can treat
Speaker 4: him as as a what was it an war contraband Yeah,
Speaker 4: I can't remember, but it was. I mean like he
Speaker 4: really had a brilliant mind to be able to actually
Speaker 4: use she really was and to be able to pull
Speaker 4: together all those different all those different pieces. But it
Speaker 4: isn't theatrical at all. It's not it's not anything like
Speaker 4: the and it's it's incredible. I mean, it's a huge
Speaker 4: step and it makes the war about slavery. But to me,
Speaker 4: it was interesting to hear just all the different backdrop
Speaker 4: of all the decisions that were made, and it's actually
Speaker 4: you're walking through this complex little mindfield trying to operate
Speaker 4: within the bounds of the law, trying to get every
Speaker 4: the right people on your side. Trying to and in
Speaker 4: the process making everybody mad in the process. No one
Speaker 4: is happy with this. The abolitionists weren't happy with it,
Speaker 4: but it actually did move the war in a very
Speaker 4: specific direction that that ultimately allows for freedom. But that
Speaker 4: it took, it took some weaving.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not always it. I think when I
Speaker 1: first heard all this, I was like, oh, Lincoln may
Speaker 1: not have been that personally interested in the freedom of
Speaker 1: the slaves. You know, it appears these political things are there,
Speaker 1: but there are things in life too where multiple things
Speaker 1: are true at the same time, and so you know,
Speaker 1: he it appeared that it was a political move to
Speaker 1: win the war, but it also felt like in the
Speaker 1: way that he spoke, which he was a politician, that
Speaker 1: it really became very deeply meaningful to him. And it
Speaker 1: just so happened, Hey, this is also going to keep
Speaker 1: the Europeans out, it's going to give us more soldiers,
Speaker 1: and it's going to you know, remove the labor force
Speaker 1: from the South. And I happened to really want to
Speaker 1: do this from a Cuban level.
Speaker 4: No shade on Lincoln at all in that statement, just
Speaker 4: recognizing this isn't quite the well.
Speaker 1: That's the shade that I would have thought that.
Speaker 4: Disney version of events that it's super complex, and to
Speaker 4: me it also it actually shows his brilliance as a
Speaker 4: as a lawmaker, as a policy It's what I like
Speaker 4: about Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Like Lincoln as far as like American heroes and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. I've got a picture of Lincoln hanging in
Speaker 3: my office. Like I liked Lincoln. He wasn't a perfect man.
Speaker 3: You know the episode you did on Lincoln. It's like,
Speaker 3: I agree with all that. He had a lot of
Speaker 3: nasty statements in there. And that's what politicians have when
Speaker 3: they're trying to win office. They've got a lot of
Speaker 3: nasty things they say and do when you put it
Speaker 3: against the backdrop of history as it progresses. But he
Speaker 3: was on a journey, and that's what I like about
Speaker 3: him is by the time you get to eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty four, emancipation comes out, he is starting to
Speaker 3: see things. He's still a politician, but he's seeing himself
Speaker 3: in a play of deeper history going on. He's seeing
Speaker 3: him his place even before God, Like he becomes a
Speaker 3: lot more religious by the end of his life, where
Speaker 3: he's seeing I have a part to play here, not
Speaker 3: just in this nation, but before God. And he starts
Speaker 3: using more more biblical language and describing more things, and
Speaker 3: in a weird way, I'm almost glad he was assassinated,
Speaker 3: because I would hate to have seen what would have
Speaker 3: come after, and to see that the hero become who
Speaker 3: he probably would have become during the reconstruction period.
Speaker 1: Wow. I never thought about that.
Speaker 3: But to me, he's a fascinating character because he was
Speaker 3: trying to do the right thing by the end of
Speaker 3: it all.
Speaker 1: Man, Jeff, that's a that's an interesting way to think
Speaker 1: about it. I've I've almost like not looked forward to
Speaker 1: get into the end of this because I know Lincoln's
Speaker 1: going to die, you know, and just.
Speaker 4: How it's just a surprise for people.
Speaker 1: I'm like Nate Barghetsi, It's like, man, when I watch
Speaker 1: history movies, I'm as surprised as anyone. No, just the
Speaker 1: human tragedy of this guy that did this thing and
Speaker 1: became such a great leader and then dies like a
Speaker 1: week after Appamat I think it was it was within.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a weak yea five or.
Speaker 5: Six days April, let me think, Yeah, it.
Speaker 3: Was not long.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that until the summer. I knew it
Speaker 4: was soon after. I did not realize it was a
Speaker 4: week after.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but right as I think, five days after the
Speaker 3: actual surrender down Georgia, except still to come after appomatics.
Speaker 1: But he died at the highest point in his in
Speaker 1: his life, Yeah, up until that point. And that's the
Speaker 1: way we remember him, right, And I mean what, I
Speaker 1: don't know what good that does him necessarily, Well.
Speaker 3: It created a lot of equity in the from the
Speaker 3: political perspective for the radical Republicans at the time to
Speaker 3: do a lot of stuff with reconstruction. Maybe they went
Speaker 3: too far too fast, but because they were able to
Speaker 3: kind of like when JFK died, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff people were able to do from his agenda.
Speaker 3: It's like, hey, you can't oppose a dead man, you know,
Speaker 3: And so they were able to get things accomplished. And
Speaker 3: they did that with Lincoln at the time.
Speaker 5: There's two movies if you all have seen him, they're
Speaker 5: really good. The one, what's the one about the thirteenth Amendment?
Speaker 5: Is that called Lincoln?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you seen the movie part of it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's pretty slow movie.
Speaker 3: I think you'll like it more after you know the history.
Speaker 3: If you've read the history, I think you like it better.
Speaker 5: And you'll see the emancipation as like the next step
Speaker 5: in his journey.
Speaker 1: Do you think that was accurate though, because the part
Speaker 1: that I watched I was kind of like, that's the movie,
Speaker 1: not what Brooks Blevin said.
Speaker 5: Well, I haven't seen it a long time. But you know,
Speaker 5: another movie that's really good is what's it called The Conspirator,
Speaker 5: the one about conspiracy then the Public Defendant of the Conspirators. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's a really good movie that really captures the the
Speaker 5: environment after that assassination and National Treasure too, Lincoln in.
Speaker 3: It trilogy Lincoln Conspiracy and Natural Treasure too.
Speaker 5: But anyway, you know, the Civil War, we always try
Speaker 5: to like package it up, you know, but when you
Speaker 5: really know history, it's like the chaos kicks in another
Speaker 5: gear and bloodshed continues and people people forget about that,
Speaker 5: and uh yeah, the reconstruction was a wild time and
Speaker 5: a lot of it was due to the nature by
Speaker 5: which not just the war ended, but Linking getting assassinated,
Speaker 5: and it's it would be very interesting to think about
Speaker 5: what it would have been like with him around. It
Speaker 5: might have been also chaotic. The extreme radical Republicans might
Speaker 5: have butchered him because because he was so tactical and
Speaker 5: didn't move things fast, and when he died, like Jeff's saying,
Speaker 5: they really took the opportunity to like, all right, we're
Speaker 5: going to change things now, and it had this whole
Speaker 5: other backlash. Not saying that that was bad, but it's
Speaker 5: just the reality that there was a lot of chaos
Speaker 5: after the Civil War.
Speaker 3: M yeah, there were. Well we're getting into construction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, totally no topic.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe we can have the reconstruction fall.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things about history is finding something
Speaker 3: I didn't know, and like the with the Civil War,
Speaker 3: the more you read, the more you discover I saw
Speaker 3: this totally wrong. And that's what I like about Lincoln.
Speaker 3: That's what I like about the Emancipation Proclamation, about McClellan
Speaker 3: and tetum stuff like that. It's like, oh, wow, I
Speaker 3: had no idea this was actually what was going on
Speaker 3: because I was raised to believe this one thing. Not
Speaker 3: with an agenda in mind, necessarily, but I just it's like,
Speaker 3: this is new stuff, and that's what makes history fun
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 4: Sixteenth that I read and this is a decade old statistic.
Speaker 4: Sixteen thousand books have been written about the There's been
Speaker 4: more than one book a day written about the Civil
Speaker 4: War since it happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an average podcast, say said sixty thousand.
Speaker 4: Okay, that might have got my number wrong, but more
Speaker 4: than one book a day.
Speaker 1: It was. It was my putt, it was your.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening right now.
Speaker 1: The number sounded high to me though, but that's that
Speaker 1: was what I found, is that there had been sixty
Speaker 1: thousand books written about the man.
Speaker 3: And there's photos because the First War, we've got photographs.
Speaker 3: Here's what I'm waiting for. This is kind of like
Speaker 3: what I'm excited about. With all the chaos going on
Speaker 3: with AI and everything like that. This is the one
Speaker 3: thing I'm looking forward to where AI can generate. At
Speaker 3: some point it's going to happen where it can generate
Speaker 3: images for me to put on a pair of goggles
Speaker 3: and I can see like almost like stepping back in
Speaker 3: time because there's so much data that's available with all
Speaker 3: this history books, the photos where I could put on
Speaker 3: a pair of goggles or whatever and I could watch
Speaker 3: Antietam happen, like literally be right there because it's got
Speaker 3: all the data that's just so Jeff Bezos or whoever's
Speaker 3: out there, go go make that happen.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking, you can just plug in a whole
Speaker 1: book and well make me.
Speaker 2: A movie actual images.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I want to step back in time and
Speaker 3: look in because we've got the images. You can you
Speaker 3: can make.
Speaker 1: The amount of electricity that would take Jeff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then we go back to the Yeah, then
Speaker 5: you just feel dirty.
Speaker 3: And my grandkid's looking my dad was an evil My
Speaker 3: granddad was an evil man. Looking he's in this cobalt.
Speaker 2: I looked to see if I had any any Civil
Speaker 2: War history, and it's not. We're all just Germans, which
Speaker 2: have no dark stains on their history.
Speaker 1: So that's.
Speaker 5: One thing that was interesting, Clay is whenever you had
Speaker 5: said that even your brothers were less interested than you
Speaker 5: in the same household, and that was really interesting to me,
Speaker 5: just like what makes a person so deeply want to
Speaker 5: connect with that, Because you're right, it's everywhere, especially in
Speaker 5: the South.
Speaker 1: And it makes me.
Speaker 5: Think of this time my wife and and girls we
Speaker 5: were in a hotel in Denver and just swimming in
Speaker 5: the pool and like hanging out, and there was this
Speaker 5: lady there and somehow we got talking and she figured
Speaker 5: out what from the South and so on, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden she got real quiet, and she was
Speaker 5: just like, I'm a directors sending of Jefferson Davis.
Speaker 1: And you were like, why'd you tell me that I'm
Speaker 1: a spy.
Speaker 5: I haven't known you for five minutes.
Speaker 1: That she felt connected to you because you're.
Speaker 5: From the South, and she wanted to share that but
Speaker 5: was like kind of ashamed of it, but like proud
Speaker 5: of it. And that's like, I'm like the awkwardness that
Speaker 5: you just initiated, like I actually get because.
Speaker 2: I've grown up in the South. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we were at We're at a restaurant in the
Speaker 1: delta of Arkansas, deeper in the South than we are
Speaker 1: here last week, and I was I was talking Josh,
Speaker 1: Missy and I went on a mission to go interview
Speaker 1: someone in miss I won't talk about what the episode
Speaker 1: is going to be about TBD, but but we're talking
Speaker 1: about the Civil War. And so we're at this restaurant
Speaker 1: and I guess I talk loud at restaurants.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're just relaying the information in a very passionate way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm telling the guys we're eating with.
Speaker 4: Clear you do talk loud.
Speaker 5: Thanks for bringing this up, Josh.
Speaker 1: So. But I was I was talking about the Civil War,
Speaker 1: telling the guys we're eating lunch with the Waltz what
Speaker 1: was going on, And all of a sudden I hear
Speaker 1: a lady from twenty feet away, like like it was
Speaker 1: one table, but there's way over there, and she said, now, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, she didn't even she didn't even like, go, hey,
Speaker 1: I have something to add to your conversation. She just
Speaker 1: she just said and she said, hey, hey, you know
Speaker 1: that Lincoln asked Robert E. Lee to be the general
Speaker 1: for the for the main Union Army, right, you know?
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I heard that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so you know, make sure it's on the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she was. People are are passionate about the
Speaker 1: Civil War, no doubt.
Speaker 3: Especially in the South.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, yeah, I think they. I think there's places
Speaker 1: in the North where they are as well.
Speaker 4: But are you considering Maryland in the North?
Speaker 1: Well, I haven't thought that. I don't know. So what
Speaker 1: I'll ask again, Jeff has Misty's given hers? I think
Speaker 1: Jeff has you could you could go again though, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to. But what what stood out to you
Speaker 1: about about this episode. Anything stand out, josh Ben.
Speaker 5: I do know a lot about emanicipation proclamation, but a
Speaker 5: couple of thoughts. Number two, to tie in this whole
Speaker 5: thing about branding. Whoever termed it emancipation proclamation and the
Speaker 5: rhythm that was genius? Well, and those guys like, it's
Speaker 5: a lot easier.
Speaker 1: Than the proclamation of eighteen you know, emancipation probably that
Speaker 1: word means to be set free? Is that right? So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna emancipate this bird out of a cage?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And that And it's funny because as you learned you
Speaker 5: talk about the podcast, it didn't exactly do that, but
Speaker 5: it's the branding and the way it sticks with people
Speaker 5: kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: That is interesting.
Speaker 5: But number two, I the stuff about the foreign diplomacy
Speaker 5: that I had not that had not really sunk in
Speaker 5: with me. And I did learn that, and that was
Speaker 5: super strategic and interesting to think about. And I knew,
Speaker 5: I knew all of the courting the South did for
Speaker 5: those alliances, but I had not thought about the timing
Speaker 5: of that really like took a you know, delta blow
Speaker 5: to them.
Speaker 2: That was that was interesting for me. M Joshua, did
Speaker 2: you learn well, I think that I was. I can't
Speaker 2: say that I've ever had this passion for the for
Speaker 2: the Civil War. It was not something that was really
Speaker 2: talked about in our home and and uh my, you know,
Speaker 2: my my parents were from the North, from the North.
Speaker 2: They were from Michigan, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean, not a big but they didn't
Speaker 1: come to America until after the war, right, so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't they, That's what you and and right.
Speaker 2: After the war, it's like the eighteen eighties, yep, is
Speaker 2: when my German ancestors came in. So the way which
Speaker 2: you know, now that I'm listening to the podcast, I've
Speaker 2: wanted to be like, you know, what would it have
Speaker 2: been like in post Civil War, you know, as a
Speaker 2: post Civil War immigrant, you know. So I'm I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm learning a lot because I feel like my
Speaker 2: knowledge of the Civil War was basically just what I
Speaker 2: learned in grade school and high school, and and uh
Speaker 2: it never really it never felt like anything that had
Speaker 2: identity for me. So going going through it following the podcast,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm learning a lot now that I'm
Speaker 2: an adult and I see the impact that it's had
Speaker 2: on people's lives and for generations but learning that, I'll
Speaker 2: tell you one of a couple of things that were
Speaker 2: surprising to me is I didn't realize that the amount
Speaker 2: Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in areas where he didn't have jurisdiction.
Speaker 2: I mean that was like, what like, it's kind of
Speaker 2: like gotcha journalism, Like that's what I felt like when
Speaker 2: I when I heard that, it was almost like I
Speaker 2: had to rewind it and be like, did I hear
Speaker 2: what I thought I heard? And so that was surprising
Speaker 2: to me. I didn't realize that. And then, just like
Speaker 2: Ben talking about learning the that this wasn't just a
Speaker 2: you know, I think, I think there's this grandiose, larger
Speaker 2: than life view that we have of these big you know,
Speaker 2: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation. It
Speaker 2: is just you see it as this this big thing
Speaker 2: that just freed the slaves. I had no idea the
Speaker 2: background of all the areas that the strategy behind this,
Speaker 2: you know, basically page and a half document that was political, ethical,
Speaker 2: foreign relations, I mean all that kind of stuff. The
Speaker 2: impact that it had on that, and it really like
Speaker 2: it surprised me and gave me greater appreciation for what
Speaker 2: that like, what was what all went into that? And
Speaker 2: just you know, I really believe that that there are
Speaker 2: things that happen in our history that that are kind
Speaker 2: of ordained. And I feel like this thing was more
Speaker 2: than Lincoln, Like, I feel like it was there was
Speaker 2: a design in it from our creator that created things
Speaker 2: that happened. And so I was really I was really
Speaker 2: impacted by hearing all that.
Speaker 1: So well, you remember when Lincoln said that he'd made
Speaker 1: a deal with God that if they if they won,
Speaker 1: if they won a battle or maybe even wanted to
Speaker 1: antiet them, that he was going to release it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And he said that, yep.
Speaker 3: The the idea all men are created equal in the
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence. I was talking about this last week
Speaker 3: with some folks, how like we don't quote the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence in laws and court cases anything like that.
Speaker 3: It's not a it's not like the Constitution. It's the
Speaker 3: moral foundation of America, especially the preamble there. And so
Speaker 3: by the time we get to the Civil War, it's
Speaker 3: like it's being tested and the South is even saying,
Speaker 3: especially like the Vice President Jefferson Davis, are saying, hey,
Speaker 3: we're not all created equal. This is what's wrong. We're
Speaker 3: going to get this right this time, and they redesign
Speaker 3: what this is all going to be about. And Lincoln
Speaker 3: with the Gettysburg Address when he comes out in eighteen
Speaker 3: sixty three, you know that it's fought July first, third,
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty three. In the Gettysburg Address, he quotes that again,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like re establishing this is the
Speaker 3: moral cause. It's not just propaganda. It's not just saying,
Speaker 3: you know, my hearts and minds. He's saying, this is
Speaker 3: the moral foundation. And that's always made me think that
Speaker 3: there was from my position, a position of faith, that
Speaker 3: God is saying. God was saying, OK, take another stab
Speaker 3: at it. You know your this is the second chance
Speaker 3: of reboot. What will you do with it now? Because
Speaker 3: he kind of rebooted everything right there with that act
Speaker 3: and with that speech the moral foundation of America.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it. I thought another here
Speaker 4: in Brooks describe the Civil War as the dividing line
Speaker 4: in our history. I mean it really that was I
Speaker 4: saw that in all my classes, you know, I saw
Speaker 4: in college you get to choose either before Civil War
Speaker 4: history or after Civil War history. And it never occurred
Speaker 4: to me this may not be their way. The rest
Speaker 4: of the world divides up it and it really was
Speaker 4: a significant a significant time in the US where some
Speaker 4: of those ideals really were not fulfilled. You know, there's
Speaker 4: still there's still challenges to them, but we're solidified as
Speaker 4: a conscious part of our vision for for equality and
Speaker 4: for mankind that I would say have had a significant
Speaker 4: impact on humankind since then. Miles to Go, Yeah, ye,
Speaker 4: Miles to Go. But it was a good start, Yeah,
Speaker 4: good start.
Speaker 3: I liked it when y'all talked about the method of fighting. Yes,
Speaker 3: I enjoyed that part because it when you I remember
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, there was a TV mini
Speaker 3: series called The Blue and the Gray, which is actually
Speaker 3: a pretty good historical mini series. It's not that great acting,
Speaker 3: but i've watched it since then. It's like, this is
Speaker 3: a pretty good telling of the Civil War. But I
Speaker 3: remember watching it when I was a kid and seeing
Speaker 3: them march into battle and it's like, this is stupid.
Speaker 3: What are y'all doing this for. It's like someone takes shelter,
Speaker 3: take cover.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah, ducks walk out there while they're shooting man. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it was really kind of Grant, who changed a
Speaker 3: lot of that ulysses as Grant and that before the
Speaker 3: Civil War, you'll see people all saying they're going to
Speaker 3: be the Napoleon of the West. There's a guy down
Speaker 3: in South America, Simone Boulevard. He says that Santa Anna
Speaker 3: in Mexico. He's claiming, I'm gonna be the Napoleon in
Speaker 3: the West. George McClellan in the Civil War, he's saying,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be the Napoleon of the West. Little Napoleon
Speaker 3: is what he tried to call himself, try to get
Speaker 3: people to nickname him, and it doesn't work. And then
Speaker 3: after the Civil War, nobody's thinking about Napoleon because nobody
Speaker 3: wants to fight like Napoleon fought anymore, because now we've
Speaker 3: got industrial warfare going on and it's a it's a
Speaker 3: different ballgame.
Speaker 1: I thought JD's comments about people look back at the
Speaker 1: way that the war and Iran has been fought and
Speaker 1: they go, Wow, I can't believe that they did stuff
Speaker 1: like that, because Yeah, my question to him was, just
Speaker 1: like these guys just know they're gonna die right like
Speaker 1: the carnage. That that's what stands out to me most
Speaker 1: about all this Civil War information it's just just the carnage.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a soldier, it just feels like
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna lose a limb or die or or well,
Speaker 1: or die disease, and it just feels so it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: And then to understand that it was the increase in
Speaker 1: technology and then the old style of formations and battle
Speaker 1: techniques met at this really awkward time because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they could shoot rifles which had you know,
Speaker 1: spiral in the barrel, rifled bullet that was much more
Speaker 1: accurate to the longer distance. You know. I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting that it was the last war that horses
Speaker 1: were a big part of, you know, just because at
Speaker 1: two hundred yards the horse is an easy target. I've
Speaker 1: met a lot of horses died. Yeah, So yeah, that
Speaker 1: was interesting. That was interesting about how they fought. But well,
Speaker 1: we've got we've got at least one more episode, at
Speaker 1: least one more for sure, one more for sure maybe,
Speaker 1: and who knows.
Speaker 4: Well, the summer's not over yet, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, it's still hot folk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would probably appreciate this because of your podcast
Speaker 1: and whatnot. But when I think about when I do
Speaker 1: a series on something, I feel like it's almost like
Speaker 1: writing a book that you kind of put on the shelf,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of work that you did, you know,
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to I just wanted to do
Speaker 1: this justice. In my mind, this bear Greece episode on
Speaker 1: the Civil War fits right in with the Mississippi River. Okay,
Speaker 1: not that they have any connection, but I just one
Speaker 1: day woke up. I was like, Man, I'm forty four
Speaker 1: years old, don't know anything about Mississippi River. This is
Speaker 1: not going the.
Speaker 2: Way I'd have done that a lot in your life.
Speaker 2: When you kill the bear, You're like, I don't know
Speaker 2: anything about this bear. I'm gonna find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So well it's been beneficial for you to claim
Speaker 4: and recognize it and and go find answers. You know,
Speaker 4: some people are ignorant don't know.
Speaker 2: It, yep, and some people are and don't care.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Well, any any other thoughts, anything else stand out to
Speaker 1: you in the in the other episodes, or just any
Speaker 1: It's just it's just free time from the Covids hot seat.
Speaker 3: From George McClellan. I think we need to talk about
Speaker 3: George McClellan. Okay, just a little bit.
Speaker 1: This guy was just uh now tell tell everyone who
Speaker 1: he was.
Speaker 3: He was the head of the Union Army. Okay, he's
Speaker 3: the legion for.
Speaker 5: Grand Army before Grant Virginia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's just horrible.
Speaker 4: Every time they refer to him and anything.
Speaker 2: It's just yah.
Speaker 1: Now, guys, would you talk about him like this?
Speaker 3: I would have talked.
Speaker 2: I feel like I feel like that's what Judy Newcom
Speaker 2: would say. Now you'll be nussed. Tell guys he.
Speaker 3: Actually Lincoln got so sick of him at one point
Speaker 3: that he actually fired him because the guy just wouldn't fight.
Speaker 3: They say he was great at getting the army supplied,
Speaker 3: the Union Army supplied, getting him set up to go fight,
Speaker 3: but then he just wouldn't fight, and it's like chance
Speaker 3: after chance of the fighting and it just doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: So Lincoln eventually fires him. There's a disaster that happens.
Speaker 3: I can't remember which battle it was, but he has
Speaker 3: to bring McClellan back because he's very popular with the
Speaker 3: soldiers at the time because he's getting them food. He
Speaker 3: comes back and then he's just always trashing Abe Lincoln.
Speaker 3: Like he runs against him for president in eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: He's running on the Democratic ticket against the Republican Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3: He's just not a good guy at all. There was
Speaker 3: a rumor at one point. I read this in a
Speaker 3: biography on Robert E. Lee. There was a rumor that
Speaker 3: McClellan had a plan And again this is just a
Speaker 3: rumor and it's kind of contested, but that had a
Speaker 3: plan that he was going to meet up in battle
Speaker 3: with Robert E. Lee and the two of them would
Speaker 3: actually form a truce and march into Washington together and
Speaker 3: just a clear piece and we're going to go back
Speaker 3: to the way it was that day after secession began.
Speaker 3: You all can secede. We're going to do all that.
Speaker 3: It's just a rumor, but it was enough to get
Speaker 3: Abraham Lincoln out there to go have a talk with
Speaker 3: him about it. It's like, hey, this is this actually going
Speaker 3: to happen, or what's your story? He goes Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 3: goes to visit him one night at his house and
Speaker 3: he's not there, so he just waits for him with
Speaker 3: one of his I think it's with Edward Stanton, and
Speaker 3: McClelland comes in, sees who it is and goes up
Speaker 3: to bed, leaves the President sitting in the living room
Speaker 3: and it's like, wow, you are just a piece of work.
Speaker 3: And Robert E. Lee, when after the war they asked
Speaker 3: him who was the most formidable general, who is the
Speaker 3: greatest of the Union generals, he said Georgian McClellan to
Speaker 3: be sure. Wow, imagine because he knew he could take
Speaker 3: him pretty easy. That's what I've always figured.
Speaker 1: It's like he wanted like he was.
Speaker 4: I think he probably didn't want to give the guy
Speaker 4: that beat him, yeah, the credit. There's other things that
Speaker 4: Robert E. Lee said, particularly at his surrender, and that
Speaker 4: indicates that he wasn't too high on you, and that
Speaker 4: the guy that actually beat him a lot of credit.
Speaker 3: M and then so, but his big claim to fame
Speaker 3: is Antietam. You know, he did win a tactical victory.
Speaker 1: You know that was when he had the plans.
Speaker 3: He had the plans in his hand, and he could
Speaker 3: have just he probably could have defeated Lee's army at
Speaker 3: that time. And instead he takes a tactical victory and
Speaker 3: then sends letters homes to his wife about how great
Speaker 3: a job he did. It's like, wow, you should read
Speaker 3: his letters. They're just amazing. He's a piece of work.
Speaker 1: He really thought he was he was really special.
Speaker 3: He was assured of that he was special.
Speaker 4: I think inside the Civil War, you see how how
Speaker 4: important the army was to political advancement. And to me,
Speaker 4: he's one of these guys that just really highlights these
Speaker 4: these people were not in it for for love of
Speaker 4: the fight, you know, they were in it for the
Speaker 4: advancement it could potentially bring them, and it crippled them.
Speaker 4: I mean they just weren't able to they weren't able
Speaker 4: to do what they needed to.
Speaker 3: Do, particularly in the North.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of political generals that.
Speaker 4: Went closer to DC. Yeah, and you know, if you
Speaker 4: work in politics, you know that closer to capital city
Speaker 4: things are different. Those are like professional meeters people who
Speaker 4: live around capital cities. Not exclusively, I don't want to
Speaker 4: alienate half of your audience, but a lot of times
Speaker 4: I remember talking to someone and I was traveling to
Speaker 4: a capital city for a meeting, and he said, you're
Speaker 4: going all the way up there for a meeting. I said, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean they just I mean you've got to be
Speaker 4: in the room, and they keep calling these meetings. And
Speaker 4: he said, I find that people there really love to
Speaker 4: meet they're really good at just meeting. And the insinuation
Speaker 4: was the people who are away from the there, you know,
Speaker 4: we're the ones getting the work done and the people
Speaker 4: in closer to there. But I think it's a pretty
Speaker 4: It's something I've observe. The closer you are to a
Speaker 4: capital city, the more likely you are to be a
Speaker 4: meter not a general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Lincoln would. He would. There's a book, Another
Speaker 3: Team of Rivals. It's my favorite biography on Lincoln. But
Speaker 3: it's he would write these letters and it wasn't just
Speaker 3: to McClellan, but it was two different people who were
Speaker 3: just trashing them all the time. He would write these
Speaker 3: letters and just let them have it. It's like you.
Speaker 3: He wrote a letter to McClellan once, he said, if
Speaker 3: you're not planning to use the army to fight, would
Speaker 3: you mind if I borrowed it? Yes, yeah, But then
Speaker 3: he would to close the letter. He would just put
Speaker 3: unsigned unsent and put it in a file, and he
Speaker 3: wouldn't send the letter, and so he would kind of
Speaker 3: vent his frustrations. Posterity gets to read it, but he
Speaker 3: wouldn't send it at the time.
Speaker 5: Wow, yeah, they're like my POSTERI will no I'm hallelious.
Speaker 2: Let's just say that Robertie Lee's posterity didn't know we'd
Speaker 2: be writing reading letters to his wife.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's alter ego.
Speaker 1: Oh yep. All so interesting and uh it's gonna get
Speaker 1: more interesting the next episode. I'm really looking forward to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am to be good.
Speaker 1: M m. Well, hey, this has been great, Ben, thanks
Speaker 1: for coming. Enjoyed it, really appreciate it. You're gonna look
Speaker 1: good in some covis.
Speaker 5: Can't wait?
Speaker 1: Yeah you can. You know. I always tell people you
Speaker 1: don't have to get a pair of cowboy boots. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. You get a nice pearl snap shirt.
Speaker 2: It's like a poster boy hat.
Speaker 4: You can get your wife a nice denim shirt, nice
Speaker 4: western shirt.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 5: I always come repping, repping the sneakers, yeah, Ben, Like
Speaker 5: I always like to say, I like to be ready
Speaker 5: to run if I need to. Ben, you're a big runner.
Speaker 5: You've been training for a marathon. I am running a lot.
Speaker 5: These aren't my running shoes. These are my Bear gree
Speaker 5: sneakers because they have bear colors.
Speaker 3: H If you want.
Speaker 5: I'm not into running in boots, but I'll go trust
Speaker 5: them on I mean, those are some good dress beets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are these are this is this is something
Speaker 1: that they have.
Speaker 2: I do like dress.
Speaker 5: I do like dress boots. I'll wear you once in a while.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm hmm. All right, guys, well I really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: Acre Grinner. Check out the Burger's YouTube channel. Keep really
Speaker 1: appreciate everyone listening and sharing the podcast Keep the Wild
Speaker 1: Places Wild, because that's where the bears are