WEBVTT - Part Two: X-Mas Special: The Heroes Who Ended The Slave Trade

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<v Speaker 1>Also media.

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<v Speaker 2>Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the podcast where every

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<v Speaker 2>year I buy Sophia weapon. It's also about bad people,

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<v Speaker 2>except for this episode. Well, this week we're doing a

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<v Speaker 2>reverse episode about some heroes, the people who ended the

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<v Speaker 2>British slave trade and eventually the whole Atlantic slave trade.

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<v Speaker 2>And you know, they're good people. We haven't talked about

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<v Speaker 2>them yet. We've only talked about bad people so far.

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<v Speaker 2>Episode one was really a lot of bad stuff in

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<v Speaker 2>one and I do apologize for that. On the Christmas week, our.

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<v Speaker 1>Guest today is is big ship Guy James Stow.

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<v Speaker 2>Big big boat Man James big Stout, Captain James.

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<v Speaker 1>Stow, James Stout, Sir Captain James Stowe.

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<v Speaker 3>Not one of those things again, never been near a king.

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<v Speaker 3>But yeah, I do like to go into I get

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<v Speaker 3>very m well, but I don't let that stop me.

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<v Speaker 2>No, I'm not.

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<v Speaker 3>We did we see sickness.

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<v Speaker 2>If I've learned one thing about the history of sailing,

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<v Speaker 2>no one has ever let being sick stop them from

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<v Speaker 2>getting out a boat.

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<v Speaker 3>You can't. You got to power through it.

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<v Speaker 2>Speaking of powering through it, you know we just got

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<v Speaker 2>the horrible case of the Zorg and the mass murder

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<v Speaker 2>that happened on board it, and then a lawsuit by

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<v Speaker 2>the Gregson syndicate saying we should get money for those

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<v Speaker 2>people we murdered, which a British court ruled, yeah you should.

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<v Speaker 2>So that's where things ended in Part one. In Part two,

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<v Speaker 2>some people are going to get mad about this. Now,

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<v Speaker 2>there was no coverage of Gregson v. Gilbert at the

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<v Speaker 2>time of the court case. It was legally a minor

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<v Speaker 2>civil trial over an insurance dispute, and there was really

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<v Speaker 2>no reason to believe that anyone aside from the parties involved,

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<v Speaker 2>were paying attention to what happened in court or cared

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<v Speaker 2>about what had happened aboard the Zorg. But one anonymous

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<v Speaker 2>person watched the proceedings that day, March sixth of seventeen

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<v Speaker 2>eighty three, and they were horrified by what they saw.

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<v Speaker 1>Right.

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<v Speaker 2>There's some theorizing in the book The Zorg about who

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<v Speaker 2>this person might have met, but we don't really know.

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<v Speaker 2>It was just someone was there that day who had

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<v Speaker 2>a conscience and who viewed Africans as human beings. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>And a lot of stuff that happened, of a lot

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<v Speaker 2>of very important stuff is going to result from the

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<v Speaker 2>fact that one person with a conscience was there that

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<v Speaker 2>day right now. A little less than two weeks after

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<v Speaker 2>the judge in this case issued his ruling, this person

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<v Speaker 2>published an anonymous letter in two major newspapers, The Morning

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<v Speaker 2>Chronicle and The London Advertiser. The letter noted that the

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<v Speaker 2>Zorg still had four hundred and twenty gallons of water

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<v Speaker 2>left when it put into port in Jamaica, and thus,

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<v Speaker 2>as the underwriters argued, there was quote no necessity for

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<v Speaker 2>a conduct so shocking to humanity. This is our only

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<v Speaker 2>first person account of the court proceedings, and the author

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<v Speaker 2>of this anonymous letter claims that quote the narrative seemed

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<v Speaker 2>to make every person present shudder. He lamented that, in

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<v Speaker 2>spite of this, the jury voted in favor of the

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<v Speaker 2>Gregson Syndicate. The letter then takes some more philosophical turn,

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<v Speaker 2>with the author wishing some man of feeling and genius

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<v Speaker 2>would give poetical language to the last thoughts of one

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<v Speaker 2>of the ten enslaved men who chose to kill themselves

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<v Speaker 2>after seeing their little brothers and sisters hurled into the ocean, quote,

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<v Speaker 2>whose indignation made him voluntarily share death with his countrymen

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<v Speaker 2>rather than life with such unheard of English barbarians. The

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<v Speaker 2>letter then concludes with this paragraph, it is certainly worthy

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<v Speaker 2>of observation that our legislature can every session find time

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<v Speaker 2>to inquire into and regulate the manner of killing a partridge,

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<v Speaker 2>that no abuse should be committed, and that he should

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<v Speaker 2>be fairly shot. And yet it has never been thought

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<v Speaker 2>proper to inquire into the matter of annually kidnapping above

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<v Speaker 2>fifty thousand poor wretches who never injured us, by a

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<v Speaker 2>set of the most cruel monsters that this country can

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<v Speaker 2>send out pretty unsparing.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's pretty good right too. Yeah, yes, I make

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<v Speaker 3>it a good point.

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<v Speaker 1>We ever, do we ever found out who wrote this?

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<v Speaker 1>Or does it stay anonymous?

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<v Speaker 2>Again, it's we don't really know the author. Sidharth Kara

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<v Speaker 2>has a theory as to who it is. But it's

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<v Speaker 2>not like it's it's we don't know. We simply don't know.

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<v Speaker 2>We never really will.

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<v Speaker 1>To a point, I think it's cool that two newspapers

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<v Speaker 1>printed it.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it's good that they printed. Again, there's sentiment,

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<v Speaker 2>there's abolitionist sentiment. There's people of like conscience and care

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<v Speaker 2>who are informed and know how bad it is. They're

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<v Speaker 2>just not really unified yet. Right. There's there's you know,

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<v Speaker 2>a small organization of like Quakers, but for the most part,

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<v Speaker 2>most of the people who are like upset about slavery

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<v Speaker 2>aren't together yet, right, And this it's it's over this

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<v Speaker 2>case that they're going to get stitched together. Right. So

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<v Speaker 2>letter finds an audience, but first mostly with England's small

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<v Speaker 2>Quaker anti slavery movement, but it doesn't cause an immediate

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<v Speaker 2>broader uproar on its own. However, it succeeds in reaching

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<v Speaker 2>the one person who, it turns out most needed to

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<v Speaker 2>hear it, a freedman named Olata Equiano. And this guy

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<v Speaker 2>is one of the coolest dudes I have ever heard of.

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<v Speaker 2>This is a fucking Equiano is a fascinating man. Have

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<v Speaker 2>you heard about this person, James.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'd love to assign Equiana to my undergraduate courses. Yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. His book is fantastic book. Yeah, and you can

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<v Speaker 2>find it online. It's free. Right, we'll be quoting from

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<v Speaker 2>it some here. A fascinating person. So Equiano had been

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<v Speaker 2>born around seventeen forty five in Ebo, part of modern

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<v Speaker 2>day Nigeria, which was then part of the Kingdom of Benin,

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<v Speaker 2>and although He claimed his village was only nominally controlled

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<v Speaker 2>by the king, right that like, yeah, we have a king,

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<v Speaker 2>but he's not really a factor in daily life, which

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<v Speaker 2>is probably accurate. As a young boy, he'd never heard

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<v Speaker 2>of white men, or Europeans, or even the ocean. His

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<v Speaker 2>father was a village elder and held a high position

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<v Speaker 2>in local government. As a child, allowed us seems to

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<v Speaker 2>have had a keen eye for injustice. Because of his

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<v Speaker 2>father's position. He spent a good deal of time watching

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<v Speaker 2>court proceedings and later wrote that adultery for women was

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<v Speaker 2>often punished by slavery or death. Quote. The men, however,

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<v Speaker 2>do not preserve the same constancy to their wives which

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<v Speaker 2>they expect from them. It's one thing you see Battaloda

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<v Speaker 2>is that is he is a thinker. This is not

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<v Speaker 2>a man who just accepts like, oh, yeah, adultery, you

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<v Speaker 2>gotta kill a woman if she does that. He's a

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<v Speaker 2>man who's like, but the guys are all cheating and

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<v Speaker 2>nobody cares about that. It seems unfair. Yeah, he's an

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<v Speaker 2>empathetic and intelligent man. He was aware of slavery from

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<v Speaker 2>a very young age. You had to be in the

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<v Speaker 2>part of Africa he lived because there are slave slavers

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<v Speaker 2>running rampant. He later wrote about stout Mahogany colored men

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<v Speaker 2>from the Southwest who traveled through town to trade firearms, gunpowder,

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<v Speaker 2>and other goods. Quote, they always carry slaves through our land,

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<v Speaker 2>but the strictest account is exacted of their manner of

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<v Speaker 2>procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Sometimes indeed

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<v Speaker 2>we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners

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<v Speaker 2>of war or such among us that as had been

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<v Speaker 2>convicted of kidnapping, or adultery or some other crimes which

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<v Speaker 2>we esteemed heinous. Now, these are his recollections of how

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<v Speaker 2>he thought that, how he justified things as a small child. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>This is not how he feels about the matter as

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<v Speaker 2>an adult. And in fact he cut it makes he

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<v Speaker 2>as to clear in his autobiography that his belief that like, well,

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<v Speaker 2>these guys, you know, they're not allowed to just take

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<v Speaker 2>slaves willy nilly, right, you know, we make sure that

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<v Speaker 2>they that they're not just that's not accurate. Right, That's

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<v Speaker 2>the thing he learns, unfortunately not long later in his childhood. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>and he does note at the time that like, well,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, my dad told me that, yeah, it's Okay,

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<v Speaker 2>we always make sure that you know, they're not just

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<v Speaker 2>grabbing people off the street at random, you know, when

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<v Speaker 2>they come through. But he knows, like they always carry

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<v Speaker 2>these big empty sacks with them. I wonder what those are,

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<v Speaker 2>four jeez for Christmas stuff. Yeah, he's a child, so

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<v Speaker 2>he doesn't really see that as a warning sign until

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<v Speaker 2>it was too late. Now there is like that there

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<v Speaker 2>is some basic knowledge that they are in danger, because

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<v Speaker 2>he writes that during the day, when the grown people

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<v Speaker 2>leave town to work the fields, the kids would assemble

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<v Speaker 2>to play, and at least one kid at any given

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<v Speaker 2>time would have to stand watch, would like climb up

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<v Speaker 2>a tree to watch for kidnappers who quote sometimes took

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<v Speaker 2>those opportunities of our parents' absence to attack and carry

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<v Speaker 2>off as many as they could seize. So, first off,

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<v Speaker 2>you get a really good glimpse in Equiato's book as

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<v Speaker 2>to like what the slave trade has done to daily

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<v Speaker 2>life and like these small villages in this part of

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<v Speaker 2>Africa where it's like, yeah, the kids just know that

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<v Speaker 2>you always have to be aware that, like kidnappers might

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<v Speaker 2>come and steal all of you. Yeah, yeah, that's a

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<v Speaker 2>real danger. Yeah again, I'll make it up this time, no,

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<v Speaker 2>he writes, quote, one day, as I was watching at

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<v Speaker 2>the top of a tree in our yard, I saw

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<v Speaker 2>one of those people come into the yard of our

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<v Speaker 2>next neighbor, but one to kidnap, there being so many

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<v Speaker 2>stout young people in it. Immediately on this I gave

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<v Speaker 2>the alarm of the rogue, and he was surrounded by

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<v Speaker 2>the stoutest of them, who entangled him with cords that

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<v Speaker 2>he could not escape till some of the grown people

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<v Speaker 2>came and secured him. So this is, you know, a

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<v Speaker 2>positive end. And this is his first direct encounter with slavers,

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<v Speaker 2>but it's not going to be his last. Not long

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<v Speaker 2>after this, he and his sister are minding the house

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<v Speaker 2>while their parents are away. Two men and a woman

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<v Speaker 2>jump over the walls, steal them both their mouths, and

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<v Speaker 2>sprint off with them into the woods. For the next

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<v Speaker 2>few days, they're taken through the woods, bound and gagged.

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<v Speaker 2>During the day, he wrote that the only comfort we

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<v Speaker 2>had was in being in each other's arms all that

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<v Speaker 2>night and bathing each other with our tears, And this

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<v Speaker 2>single comfort was not to last. Long quote. The next

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<v Speaker 2>day proved of a greater sorrow than I had yet experienced.

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<v Speaker 2>For My sister and I were then separated while we

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<v Speaker 2>lay clasped in each other's arms. It was in vain

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<v Speaker 2>that we besought them not to part us. She was

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<v Speaker 2>torn from me and immediately carried away. Well, I was

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<v Speaker 2>left in a state of distraction not to be described.

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<v Speaker 2>I cried and grieved continually, and for several days I

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<v Speaker 2>did not eat anything but what they forced into my

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<v Speaker 2>mouth so horrific. It's pretty bad. Yeah, he's taken first

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<v Speaker 2>to a village several days away while he is purchased

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<v Speaker 2>by a local chieftain. And that's the thing he's this

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<v Speaker 2>is not like a often you're taken straight to the

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<v Speaker 2>coast where you're sold. You're now a slave and you

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<v Speaker 2>will be sold around like a lot of these people.

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<v Speaker 2>Do just stay in Africa, right and maybe get free

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<v Speaker 2>or maybe don't. But he is a slave two local

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<v Speaker 2>Africans for a while.

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<v Speaker 3>Right.

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<v Speaker 2>His first owner is a local chieftain who treats him

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<v Speaker 2>really well and he thinks has adopted him into the family. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>he works as a blacksmith assistant. He spends the next

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<v Speaker 2>month gaining their trust, and his plan is I want

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<v Speaker 2>to escape, right, It's like I'm going to get their

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<v Speaker 2>trust so I can make an escape attempt. This doesn't

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<v Speaker 2>pan out, though, and he's ultimately bought and sold several times.

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<v Speaker 2>He learns three languages as he journeys across Africa, and

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<v Speaker 2>he ends up in a coastal village where he is

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<v Speaker 2>sold onto a slave ship. Now, up to this point,

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<v Speaker 2>he always emphasizes and it's kind of a weird part

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<v Speaker 2>of the book, but he's really emphatic. I was always

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<v Speaker 2>treated well. People were not mean. I mean what they're

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<v Speaker 2>doing selling separated from his sister, selling, But they're not cruel.

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<v Speaker 2>They're not yelling at him, they're not treating him as

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<v Speaker 2>a subhuman. Right, They're just doing this awful thing to him.

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<v Speaker 2>And as an eleven year old, it's really weird for

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<v Speaker 2>him because they're being so nice while they do this

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<v Speaker 2>awful thing. Like it's kind of a headbuck, right. And yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>he generally enjoys good food and is kept relatively healthy

0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.400
<v Speaker 2>this whole time. Right, And this ends as soon as

0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.040
<v Speaker 2>he's sold onto a slaving vessel. Right. Quote. I was

0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:10.480
<v Speaker 2>soon put down under the decks, and there I received

0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.920
<v Speaker 2>such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never

0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.720
<v Speaker 2>experienced in my life. So that with the loathsomeness of

0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.240
<v Speaker 2>the stench and crying together, I became so sick and

0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.320
<v Speaker 2>low that I was not able to eat, nor had

0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.160
<v Speaker 2>I the least desired to taste anything. I now wished

0:11:23.160 --> 0:11:25.880
<v Speaker 2>for the last friend death to relieve me. But soon

0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.440
<v Speaker 2>to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables,

0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:30.200
<v Speaker 2>and on my refusing to eat, one of them held

0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:32.600
<v Speaker 2>me fast by the hands and laid me across I

0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:34.880
<v Speaker 2>think the windlass and tied my feet, while the other

0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.200
<v Speaker 2>flogged me severely. I had never experienced anything of this

0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.880
<v Speaker 2>kind before, and although not being used to water, I

0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:43.240
<v Speaker 2>naturally feared that element the first time I saw it.

0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.720
<v Speaker 2>Yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings. I

0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:47.680
<v Speaker 2>would have jumped over the side, but I could not.

0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.640
<v Speaker 2>And besides, the crew used to watch us very closely,

0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:52.679
<v Speaker 2>who were not chained down on the decks, lest we

0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:54.600
<v Speaker 2>should leap into the water. And I have seen some

0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:58.240
<v Speaker 2>of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting

0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:02.640
<v Speaker 2>to do so, and hourly whipped for night eating. Now

0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:05.840
<v Speaker 2>he is again eleven as this is happening to him.

0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.640
<v Speaker 2>This is about seventeen fifty six, when he's transported first

0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.520
<v Speaker 2>to the West Indies, where he witnesses the auctioning of

0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:15.040
<v Speaker 2>slaves to plantation owners. But he's not sold himself because

0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.640
<v Speaker 2>he's really sick, like he's just not worth anything in

0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:20.080
<v Speaker 2>the eyes of these people, because he seems like he's dying.

0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:22.640
<v Speaker 2>So the Dutch take him back on board the slave

0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.520
<v Speaker 2>ship and take him to America, and he gets better

0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.120
<v Speaker 2>enough during that time that he's sold to a Virginia

0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.959
<v Speaker 2>plantation owner. He gets kind of, within this horrible situation,

0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:34.880
<v Speaker 2>one of the better jobs you can get, where he's

0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:36.840
<v Speaker 2>working as a house slave, so he's able to kind

0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:38.720
<v Speaker 2>of he's not laboring in the field. He's able to

0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:42.439
<v Speaker 2>recover his strength more effectively, right, because he's it's less

0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.560
<v Speaker 2>physically nightmarish work, and he gets better enough, and he's

0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.280
<v Speaker 2>just proves to be very intelligent too, so he's got

0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:51.640
<v Speaker 2>a lot of value to him. And he's sold again

0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.000
<v Speaker 2>to the captain of a British merchant vessel named Henry Pascal.

0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.520
<v Speaker 2>It's Pascal who gives him his European name, Gustavas Vasa,

0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:02.480
<v Speaker 2>and sometimes you'll see him and he would go by

0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.199
<v Speaker 2>Vasa periodically throughout his life as well as Equiano, right

0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.000
<v Speaker 2>but yeah, Pascal gives him this name and takes him

0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:10.640
<v Speaker 2>to England, and for a while things seem to be

0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.000
<v Speaker 2>going really well. He's taught about Christianity. He makes like

0:13:14.040 --> 0:13:16.439
<v Speaker 2>a friend with a local boy who's about his age,

0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:19.560
<v Speaker 2>like a white boy, and they're actually very good friends.

0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:23.040
<v Speaker 2>The kid dies like two years later, but they like

0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:25.640
<v Speaker 2>he's adamant that, like, no, this kid was like really,

0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:29.719
<v Speaker 2>we were very close. He helps him learn English, and

0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:33.959
<v Speaker 2>because he's so smart, Equiano attracts wealthy British patrons, these

0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.080
<v Speaker 2>like two I think older ladies pay for him to

0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.680
<v Speaker 2>go to school, and so he's obviously kind of thinking

0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.640
<v Speaker 2>I've lucked out. I might just kind of get out

0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.640
<v Speaker 2>of the whole slavery thing and be like English, right,

0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:49.120
<v Speaker 2>like maybe that's my future. Because Cascal seems to be

0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.960
<v Speaker 2>treating him well, He's got these local ladies who are

0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:54.280
<v Speaker 2>like paying for you know, he seems to have fallen

0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:59.240
<v Speaker 2>into a good situation. And then out of nowhere, Pascal

0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:02.040
<v Speaker 2>takes him back to see right, and so they spend

0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.120
<v Speaker 2>some time on voyages together and he's still kind of

0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.560
<v Speaker 2>being treated more like a servant. They're engaged in like

0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.800
<v Speaker 2>pirates attacks several times like, he helps defend the ship

0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.920
<v Speaker 2>in several desperate battles. They travel the oceans of the world,

0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:18.680
<v Speaker 2>and Alouda says that at this time he feels a

0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.080
<v Speaker 2>growing loyalty and affection for Pascal, who he believes has

0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.000
<v Speaker 2>been so kind to him, because he plans to free

0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:28.000
<v Speaker 2>him one day, right, So he he's really like as

0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:30.920
<v Speaker 2>loyal to this dude as he can because he thinks that, like,

0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:34.760
<v Speaker 2>I found a good one, right Unfortunately he has not,

0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:40.120
<v Speaker 2>that is not the case. In an article for documenting

0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:43.440
<v Speaker 2>the American South on Aquiano, Jin Williamson summarizes he is

0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.920
<v Speaker 2>shocked at an abrupt betrayal during a layover in England,

0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.160
<v Speaker 2>when Pascal has him roughly seized and forced into a barge.

0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.360
<v Speaker 2>Pascal sells Equiano to Captain James Duran, the captain of

0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:54.680
<v Speaker 2>a ship bound for the West Indies. Days by his

0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.600
<v Speaker 2>sudden change in fortunes, Equiano argues with Captain Duran that

0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.680
<v Speaker 2>Pascal could not sell him to me, nor to anyone else.

0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:02.960
<v Speaker 2>I have served him many years, and he has taken

0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.760
<v Speaker 2>all my wages in prize money. I have been baptized,

0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:07.440
<v Speaker 2>and by the laws of the land, no man has

0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.480
<v Speaker 2>a right to sell me. After Duran tells Equiano he

0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.760
<v Speaker 2>talks too much English and threatens to subdue him. Equiano

0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:16.160
<v Speaker 2>begins service under a new master, for he is too

0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:18.320
<v Speaker 2>well convinced of his power over me to doubt what

0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:21.280
<v Speaker 2>he's said. Right, So he's like, but like, I did

0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.160
<v Speaker 2>all the stuff I'm supposed to do. I feel like

0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:25.280
<v Speaker 2>I'm English now. And he's like, if you keep talking English,

0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:26.800
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna beat the shit out of you, right, Like

0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:31.320
<v Speaker 2>that's what happens. Yeah, So he's taken back to the

0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.640
<v Speaker 2>West Indies. He endures the nightmare trip down the Middle

0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:39.080
<v Speaker 2>Passage a second time, which is just an unthinkable hell

0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.120
<v Speaker 2>to have to do twice. He writes of seeing white

0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.680
<v Speaker 2>members of the crew gratify their brutal passion with females

0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.960
<v Speaker 2>not ten years old on the journey, right. In other words,

0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:54.480
<v Speaker 2>they're just raping any big female that is on the boat, right.

0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:56.840
<v Speaker 2>They don't care about age, you know, Like that's the

0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.240
<v Speaker 2>kind of men who are doing this, right. Yeah. Once

0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:02.680
<v Speaker 2>he arrives in the Caribbean, he is horrified that he

0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:04.800
<v Speaker 2>will be sold to a plantation into a life of

0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:08.680
<v Speaker 2>quote bondage, misery, stripes, and chains. But here again he

0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.680
<v Speaker 2>meets with this crazy good luck with it's this weird

0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.160
<v Speaker 2>situation where he's in like the like this horror the

0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.520
<v Speaker 2>worst least lucky situation he could be in, but within

0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.280
<v Speaker 2>that situation, he has crazy luck. Like I don't know

0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:21.880
<v Speaker 2>how else.

0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:24.480
<v Speaker 3>To describe it, because it's like one in ten million, right,

0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:26.920
<v Speaker 3>Like this happens to millions and millions of people. One

0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.680
<v Speaker 3>of them had this unique set of circumstances, and we're

0:16:29.840 --> 0:16:33.160
<v Speaker 3>uniquely intelligent to be able to, yes, to take advantage

0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:35.000
<v Speaker 3>of it in the way that he was, right, take

0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:36.120
<v Speaker 3>advantages a wrong word.

0:16:36.160 --> 0:16:38.920
<v Speaker 2>But like well yeah, but like like even people who

0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.040
<v Speaker 2>would have been as smart but maybe aren't good with languages,

0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:43.200
<v Speaker 2>probably wouldn't have had the success he has. Right, that's

0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.360
<v Speaker 2>a separate kind event. Like he's just a bunch of

0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:48.960
<v Speaker 2>shit happens, and he's a good writer. He is a

0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.280
<v Speaker 2>really good writer. Yeah, yeah, maybe not I don't know

0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:53.480
<v Speaker 2>about at this point, but yeah, yeah.

0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:55.320
<v Speaker 3>No, But there's not much shit from that period that

0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.120
<v Speaker 3>I can assign in whole to undergraduates in twenty twenty

0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:00.640
<v Speaker 3>five and have them being like that's fucked, Like it

0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.000
<v Speaker 3>makes people feel things still centuries later.

0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:06.640
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's really powerful. Yeah, I do really recommend reading

0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:08.480
<v Speaker 2>it because, among other things, it's just there's a lot

0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:10.040
<v Speaker 2>I mean, the early portions of the book are just

0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.560
<v Speaker 2>a lot about life in that part of Africa at

0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:14.399
<v Speaker 2>the time that you're not gonna run into a lot

0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:15.560
<v Speaker 2>of first hand accounts of.

0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:17.280
<v Speaker 3>No, it's interesting.

0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:27.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So again within this horrible situation, he gets crazy

0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:30.280
<v Speaker 2>lucky again because the next person to buy him is

0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:33.359
<v Speaker 2>a Quaker, and again most a lot of Quakers are

0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:37.879
<v Speaker 2>anti slavery. This guy, Robert King, clearly isn't totally against slavery,

0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:40.639
<v Speaker 2>but he's also still a Quaker, right, And he's like

0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:42.440
<v Speaker 2>a merchant or something. I don't know exactly what he's

0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:45.720
<v Speaker 2>there to do, but he sees he once recognized as Wow,

0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:47.720
<v Speaker 2>this kid is smart as hell, and he's he already

0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:50.080
<v Speaker 2>speaks a ton of languages. There's a lot I can

0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.920
<v Speaker 2>have him do. So the King starts having Equiana work

0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.760
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of different jobs, and he starts like basically

0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:00.320
<v Speaker 2>assigning him out to like subcontract and with other guys.

0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.240
<v Speaker 2>And some of these guys are like fairly decent and

0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.359
<v Speaker 2>are like, hey, what if we hired you to do

0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.720
<v Speaker 2>extra side work and pay you personally for it, and

0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.560
<v Speaker 2>King is like, yeah, you know, I have no problem

0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:13.600
<v Speaker 2>with you making money on the side, right, why not?

0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:16.520
<v Speaker 2>And so these guys like both teach him how to

0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.080
<v Speaker 2>train him up and help him like learn these different trades,

0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:22.199
<v Speaker 2>and he's able to make side money. And so he

0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.959
<v Speaker 2>takes this side money and he starts buying and selling

0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:28.280
<v Speaker 2>goods with the money that he makes, right and basically

0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:31.480
<v Speaker 2>turning his salary into even more money. And he does

0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.359
<v Speaker 2>well enough at this that in seventeen sixty six, when

0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:36.840
<v Speaker 2>he's arout twenty one, he's able to buy his freedom,

0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:38.919
<v Speaker 2>and he does. Robert King allows him to do this,

0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.320
<v Speaker 2>which he didn't have to do. So again he's he

0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.080
<v Speaker 2>got into like the luckiest part of a bad situation

0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.840
<v Speaker 2>he could be and yeah, he's able to he becomes

0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.199
<v Speaker 2>a free man. He's free after this point. So he

0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:52.919
<v Speaker 2>spends the next several years taking work on merchant ships

0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.480
<v Speaker 2>because that's what he knows how to do, and he

0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.119
<v Speaker 2>travels around the world. In seventeen seventy three, he becomes

0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:00.639
<v Speaker 2>one of the first Africans to visit the Arcticano wrote

0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.840
<v Speaker 2>and corresponded widely and generally he's like an adventurer. This

0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.480
<v Speaker 2>guy lives an amazing life, like he's one of the

0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:11.840
<v Speaker 2>most incredible people who ever lived. Now the whole time, though,

0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:15.560
<v Speaker 2>is his life is going well, right, he remains troubled

0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.080
<v Speaker 2>with the inhuman institution of slavery that had robbed him

0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:21.320
<v Speaker 2>of his childhood and his family. You know, he knows

0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:24.159
<v Speaker 2>this is still going on. He's still angry about it,

0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:27.480
<v Speaker 2>and so he starts meeting during the times when he's

0:19:27.520 --> 0:19:30.080
<v Speaker 2>back in London, he starts meeting with and befriending some

0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:33.000
<v Speaker 2>of the small number of Englishmen who opposed the institution

0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:36.640
<v Speaker 2>of slavery. And after reading that op ed, he comes

0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.720
<v Speaker 2>across this article about what's happened on the Zorg. He's

0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.560
<v Speaker 2>sick with horror and fury at what has happened. I mean,

0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.720
<v Speaker 2>it's just an awful thing, and he has personal experience

0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:48.320
<v Speaker 2>with being on those boats, so it's much He knows

0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:50.960
<v Speaker 2>much better how awful it is than an average person

0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.920
<v Speaker 2>reading it, and he wants to do something. However, he's

0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:56.200
<v Speaker 2>also a practical guy. He knows that even a freed

0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.600
<v Speaker 2>black man has zero political power and influence in England

0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:01.239
<v Speaker 2>at the time, so if he's going to have an

0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.399
<v Speaker 2>impact on the situation, he's going to have to be

0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.560
<v Speaker 2>cunning about it. One of Equiano's friends is a writer

0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:10.840
<v Speaker 2>and a lawyer who's also like an early abolitionist named Granville.

0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:13.320
<v Speaker 2>Sharp and Sharp is going to be the second of

0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.160
<v Speaker 2>our heroes for this episode. One of the coolest dudes

0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.080
<v Speaker 2>to ever live, really like just an actual great man.

0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:22.520
<v Speaker 2>Born in Durham in seventeen thirty five, Granville was the

0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.840
<v Speaker 2>middle Ish child of fourteen. Five of his eight older

0:20:25.840 --> 0:20:28.920
<v Speaker 2>brothers survived early childhood, which means his parents were better

0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.040
<v Speaker 2>than average. His family was working class, and as a

0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:35.159
<v Speaker 2>youth he was apprenticed to the owner of a fabric store. However,

0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:36.840
<v Speaker 2>he turned out to be one of those kids who's

0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.080
<v Speaker 2>just like irrepressibly smart, right like he is not going

0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:44.200
<v Speaker 2>to work at the fabric store, you know in Granville

0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.040
<v Speaker 2>this expresses itself this he's a debate kid. He's the

0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:49.360
<v Speaker 2>good kind of debate kid, but he has this pathological

0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.280
<v Speaker 2>need to debate with his peers to the extent he

0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.840
<v Speaker 2>is so committed to this that he makes a Jewish

0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.400
<v Speaker 2>friend and they start having like good natured arguments about religion.

0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.560
<v Speaker 2>And because he wants to argue better with his Jewish friend,

0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:04.440
<v Speaker 2>he learns Hebrew and becomes a fluent speaker of me

0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:07.320
<v Speaker 2>in order to argue about like the Tora with his

0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:08.119
<v Speaker 2>Jewish friend.

0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:10.840
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's perfect, totally. Yeah.

0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:12.439
<v Speaker 2>When he makes a friend who's a member of a

0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.520
<v Speaker 2>weird Greek Christian sect, he learns Greek for the same reason.

0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.240
<v Speaker 2>Like again, like Equioto, He's one of these guys. He

0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:23.399
<v Speaker 2>just picks up languages. He's just crazy smart. Yeah. In

0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.080
<v Speaker 2>seventeen fifty seven, he gets a job as a clerk

0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:28.159
<v Speaker 2>in the Ordnance Office, which is, so far as I

0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:30.960
<v Speaker 2>can tell, is like a mid level bureaucratic position. This

0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:33.520
<v Speaker 2>leaves him with ample free time, which he spends idly

0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:36.840
<v Speaker 2>studying the law and presumably learning more languages in order

0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.560
<v Speaker 2>to argue with his friends. One of his older brothers

0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:41.440
<v Speaker 2>is a doctor who hold and you get the feeling

0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.560
<v Speaker 2>this is like a family of good people because his

0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.639
<v Speaker 2>older brother, the doctor, runs a free clinic out of

0:21:46.640 --> 0:21:50.239
<v Speaker 2>his house for the poor of London, right yeah, and

0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:53.160
<v Speaker 2>Granville periodically will just like show up to hang out

0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:55.560
<v Speaker 2>with him and his patients and like talk. There's not

0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:57.640
<v Speaker 2>TV at the time, what else are you gonna do? Right?

0:21:58.600 --> 0:22:00.879
<v Speaker 3>That podcast? No podcasts?

0:22:00.960 --> 0:22:04.520
<v Speaker 2>Right? Yeah? So Granville shows up one day in seventeen

0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.600
<v Speaker 2>sixty five, the year before Equiano bias his freedom, and

0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.240
<v Speaker 2>he happens to meet a black and slaved person named

0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.520
<v Speaker 2>Jonathan Strong. Strong had been taken from Barbados to London

0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:18.080
<v Speaker 2>by his owner, slave trader, David Lyle. He was fifteen

0:22:18.160 --> 0:22:23.119
<v Speaker 2>or sixteen when Lyle has him baptized. Now, religion is

0:22:23.119 --> 0:22:25.680
<v Speaker 2>confusing at the best of times, and Strong, like many

0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.960
<v Speaker 2>enslaved people, misunderstood the purpose of baptism and was under

0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:32.280
<v Speaker 2>the impression that now that this was done, he was

0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:35.720
<v Speaker 2>a free person because he had been baptized. Right, you

0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:38.639
<v Speaker 2>can't hold Christian as a slave, right, that'd be fucked up.

0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:44.000
<v Speaker 2>Pretty weird, pretty weird. And so he tells Lyle, well, like,

0:22:44.040 --> 0:22:48.439
<v Speaker 2>I'm free now, right, And Lyle, being a slave owner

0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.200
<v Speaker 2>and trader, doesn't have a great control over his anger,

0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:54.680
<v Speaker 2>and just immediately pistol whips this adolescent boy nearly to death.

0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:57.199
<v Speaker 2>He beats him so badly with the butt of a

0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.960
<v Speaker 2>handgun that Strong goes temporarily blind and can barely walk

0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:04.600
<v Speaker 2>up right. So, and you get the feeling he just

0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:07.560
<v Speaker 2>loses his temper and beats this kid nearly to death

0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.080
<v Speaker 2>because He's immediately like, oh shit, I killed him, and

0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:11.879
<v Speaker 2>he just tosses him out onto the street like a

0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:14.920
<v Speaker 2>piece of trash. He's like, well, he's not worth anything anymore. Bye.

0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:19.720
<v Speaker 2>So somehow this dying boy manages to crawl or find help,

0:23:19.720 --> 0:23:22.720
<v Speaker 2>and he gets to Granville's brother's free clinic where his

0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:25.560
<v Speaker 2>immediate injuries are treated, but it's clear he needs more treatment,

0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:27.720
<v Speaker 2>and it just happens to be on a day that

0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:31.000
<v Speaker 2>like Granville Sharp is there with his brother, and so

0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:34.160
<v Speaker 2>he and his brother take Jonathan to a nearby hospital

0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:36.680
<v Speaker 2>and pull their money to pay for him to stay

0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:39.760
<v Speaker 2>there for four months and recover. And when he's released,

0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:42.119
<v Speaker 2>because they're just treating him like a freedman at this point,

0:23:42.359 --> 0:23:45.040
<v Speaker 2>they find him paying work with a Quaker pharmacist they knew,

0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:48.320
<v Speaker 2>so they get this guy to the hospital. He heals,

0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:51.200
<v Speaker 2>he recovers pretty well, and they find him a job

0:23:51.240 --> 0:23:54.600
<v Speaker 2>and he starts living a life right like he's an independent,

0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:58.160
<v Speaker 2>free person making money For a year in change. Things

0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:01.879
<v Speaker 2>are pretty good for Strow. But then in seventeen sixty seven,

0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:05.959
<v Speaker 2>his former owner Lyle sees Jonathan on the street and

0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.720
<v Speaker 2>is like, he's alive and healthy, and he gets really

0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:12.480
<v Speaker 2>fucking angry. How dare that boy have the temerity to

0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:15.679
<v Speaker 2>survive my beatings and not hand himself back over to me.

0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:23.159
<v Speaker 2>He stole himself, Basically, he stole himself. Yeah, so Lyle

0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:25.400
<v Speaker 2>doesn't want to deal with Strong anymore, but he works.

0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:27.120
<v Speaker 2>He says like, Hey, I own this guy and he's

0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:29.200
<v Speaker 2>really healthy. You just got to go get him if

0:24:29.200 --> 0:24:31.760
<v Speaker 2>you give me thirty pounds. So he like sells this

0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:35.000
<v Speaker 2>guy and then he hires slave catchers to abduct Strong

0:24:35.040 --> 0:24:39.600
<v Speaker 2>out of his new life. Yeah, so you really stand up,

0:24:39.600 --> 0:24:43.680
<v Speaker 2>gut great dude. Months of conflict, Well, Granville Sharp, who

0:24:43.680 --> 0:24:45.480
<v Speaker 2>has been stranging the law, is like, you can't do this.

0:24:45.800 --> 0:24:48.280
<v Speaker 2>He's a free man now. You can't make him leave.

0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:51.280
<v Speaker 2>You can't take him to another foreign country, right, Like,

0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:55.560
<v Speaker 2>you can't do that. So there's a conflict follows. There's

0:24:55.640 --> 0:24:58.080
<v Speaker 2>like this goes on for a while before like the

0:24:58.119 --> 0:25:00.879
<v Speaker 2>court case actually resolves, and at one point during the proceedings,

0:25:01.119 --> 0:25:04.240
<v Speaker 2>Lyle challenges Sharp to a duel, and Sharp's like, let's

0:25:04.240 --> 0:25:09.520
<v Speaker 2>settle this in court. Basically. At another point, lawyers that

0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:13.240
<v Speaker 2>Granville consulted warned him that English law saw slaves's property

0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:15.960
<v Speaker 2>even once they were taken onto English soil, and Sharp

0:25:16.000 --> 0:25:17.680
<v Speaker 2>has a law a moment of horror where he's like,

0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:19.880
<v Speaker 2>there's no way the laws of my beloved England are

0:25:19.880 --> 0:25:23.400
<v Speaker 2>this bad. So he spends the next like two years

0:25:23.680 --> 0:25:27.439
<v Speaker 2>making himself an expert in the law and fighting this case,

0:25:27.520 --> 0:25:30.040
<v Speaker 2>fighting Lyle and the man Lyle had sold Strong to

0:25:30.160 --> 0:25:35.040
<v Speaker 2>James care and he eventually wins Strong's legal defense, wins.

0:25:35.080 --> 0:25:38.320
<v Speaker 2>This is a significant case in like British like legal history,

0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:42.480
<v Speaker 2>and it's the kind of thing where they win Strong's freedom,

0:25:42.880 --> 0:25:45.520
<v Speaker 2>but they don't get a ruling that alters English law

0:25:45.520 --> 0:25:49.280
<v Speaker 2>and respect to the rights of enslaved people. Right, So

0:25:49.320 --> 0:25:52.880
<v Speaker 2>it's good because Strong doesn't have to be sold into

0:25:52.960 --> 0:25:56.960
<v Speaker 2>slavery again, but it also doesn't like, it doesn't go

0:25:57.000 --> 0:25:59.560
<v Speaker 2>any further right, and Sharp is disappointed by this, and

0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:02.760
<v Speaker 2>because by this point, after a two years of fighting

0:26:02.800 --> 0:26:05.800
<v Speaker 2>this case and immersing himself in the law, Granville Sharp

0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:08.960
<v Speaker 2>has become, in Sidharth Kara's words, the first British person

0:26:09.000 --> 0:26:12.040
<v Speaker 2>to devote his life to the extirpation of slavery, and

0:26:12.119 --> 0:26:15.640
<v Speaker 2>his influence actually goes beyond that. Though it's wild how

0:26:15.680 --> 0:26:20.360
<v Speaker 2>influential this motherfucking dude is One of Sharp's overseas friends

0:26:20.440 --> 0:26:24.040
<v Speaker 2>is an American of some notoriety named Benjamin Franklin, and

0:26:24.080 --> 0:26:26.280
<v Speaker 2>in is oft time, Sharp had a habit when he

0:26:26.359 --> 0:26:29.160
<v Speaker 2>wasn't fighting slavery, he would write essays that were often

0:26:29.160 --> 0:26:31.960
<v Speaker 2>published as pamphlets or tracts, and he sends one of

0:26:32.000 --> 0:26:35.360
<v Speaker 2>these pamphlets to his buddy Benjamin Franklin, which lays out

0:26:35.400 --> 0:26:38.720
<v Speaker 2>Sharp's argument that Americans shouldn't be taxed if they don't

0:26:38.720 --> 0:26:40.280
<v Speaker 2>have parliamentary representation.

0:26:45.119 --> 0:26:48.679
<v Speaker 3>This dude's like at the center of the global history.

0:26:49.040 --> 0:26:51.800
<v Speaker 2>It's fucking a mazing, Like, yeah, just writing a lot

0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:55.159
<v Speaker 2>of letters and absolutely changing the forest of gum history.

0:26:57.160 --> 0:26:59.200
<v Speaker 2>He's like a really smart Forest Gump.

0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:01.960
<v Speaker 3>Yeah yeah, yeah, Forrest Gump done a whole lot of

0:27:02.040 --> 0:27:03.119
<v Speaker 3>very more impressive stuff.

0:27:03.800 --> 0:27:07.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, It's just I I didn't know much anything

0:27:07.760 --> 0:27:09.840
<v Speaker 2>at all really about Grandville Sharp until I started this,

0:27:09.920 --> 0:27:12.399
<v Speaker 2>and like, yeah, we should probably talk more about this guy.

0:27:12.960 --> 0:27:15.440
<v Speaker 3>Yes, dude, probably should be on money or something.

0:27:15.760 --> 0:27:19.080
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, twenty pound note.

0:27:19.560 --> 0:27:21.399
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, we got some people who already shouldn't be

0:27:21.440 --> 0:27:25.000
<v Speaker 3>on money. Probably switch them out. Yeah, it'll be fine.

0:27:25.080 --> 0:27:27.840
<v Speaker 3>It's like those people, I'm sure, I mean, Robert you

0:27:27.880 --> 0:27:30.120
<v Speaker 3>and I have experienced this together. When when you are

0:27:31.040 --> 0:27:34.680
<v Speaker 3>working in conflict zones, sometimes you will often the people

0:27:34.720 --> 0:27:38.439
<v Speaker 3>who you work with are like the most remarkable people,

0:27:39.200 --> 0:27:42.800
<v Speaker 3>Like you speak several languages, and they and like, yeah, you.

0:27:42.800 --> 0:27:46.400
<v Speaker 2>Taught ourselves yourself Chinese because you were bored after learning English.

0:27:48.119 --> 0:27:53.879
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, and yeah, like your grasp of our culture and

0:27:53.960 --> 0:27:56.840
<v Speaker 3>politics and the way we talk it is perfect. Yeah,

0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:59.600
<v Speaker 3>and you're the same in five other languages. And you

0:27:59.600 --> 0:28:01.959
<v Speaker 3>can all you about domestic issues in the US with

0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:05.720
<v Speaker 3>me with a great degree of intelligence to many American people.

0:28:06.119 --> 0:28:09.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and who have like devoted their life in between

0:28:09.520 --> 0:28:12.600
<v Speaker 2>like the stuff they're doing with you to like rescuing

0:28:12.760 --> 0:28:15.959
<v Speaker 2>other people and like helping to provide like emergency medical

0:28:16.000 --> 0:28:18.600
<v Speaker 2>care or get food to different like yeah, yeah.

0:28:18.440 --> 0:28:21.080
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, you'll find out that Yeah, on Sundays they

0:28:21.119 --> 0:28:25.040
<v Speaker 3>rescue puppies from fucking burnie buildings, and like it just

0:28:25.200 --> 0:28:26.919
<v Speaker 3>fits perfectly with who that person is.

0:28:27.240 --> 0:28:29.280
<v Speaker 2>I'm so tired after my work week. I just sit

0:28:29.359 --> 0:28:30.520
<v Speaker 2>on the couch in the weekend.

0:28:30.720 --> 0:28:33.120
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, how do I become more like.

0:28:33.280 --> 0:28:37.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah. Grandville Sharp is one of those like, well, fuck,

0:28:37.560 --> 0:28:40.360
<v Speaker 2>I'm not getting enough done guys, right and equianoist. To

0:28:40.600 --> 0:28:44.080
<v Speaker 2>be honest, they're both like Jesus Christ, Like I wouldn't

0:28:44.120 --> 0:28:48.880
<v Speaker 2>believe you if you were in a story. So uh.

0:28:49.000 --> 0:28:52.400
<v Speaker 2>Sharpe's primary focus in the years after the Strong case

0:28:52.520 --> 0:28:54.320
<v Speaker 2>was in expanding his studies as a lawyer so he

0:28:54.320 --> 0:28:57.320
<v Speaker 2>could make an unimpeachable legal case for banning slavery. In

0:28:57.360 --> 0:29:01.000
<v Speaker 2>seventeen sixty nine, he publishes a tract titled A Representation

0:29:01.080 --> 0:29:04.280
<v Speaker 2>of the injustice and dangerous tendency of tolerating slavery or

0:29:04.320 --> 0:29:06.560
<v Speaker 2>of admitting the least claim of private property in the

0:29:06.560 --> 0:29:09.480
<v Speaker 2>persons of Men in England. He wasn't good at titling.

0:29:09.520 --> 0:29:11.320
<v Speaker 2>He was good at a lot of stuff, but not titles.

0:29:12.400 --> 0:29:15.080
<v Speaker 2>This became one of the first popular arguments against the

0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:18.040
<v Speaker 2>system of slavery in England, not just arguing that it

0:29:18.080 --> 0:29:20.040
<v Speaker 2>was a moral but that it was foreign to the

0:29:20.080 --> 0:29:23.120
<v Speaker 2>spirit of an and intention of British law and cultural values.

0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:23.360
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:29:23.400 --> 0:29:25.239
<v Speaker 2>That's a key part of his argument is that like

0:29:25.800 --> 0:29:28.960
<v Speaker 2>this isn't really English, right, Like we shouldn't based on

0:29:29.000 --> 0:29:31.480
<v Speaker 2>the things we say about our shared values. This is

0:29:31.560 --> 0:29:34.440
<v Speaker 2>not a natural thing for us to be doing. Right,

0:29:34.720 --> 0:29:36.600
<v Speaker 2>Why are we so committed to this? Is it just

0:29:36.760 --> 0:29:37.760
<v Speaker 2>venal profit it is.

0:29:38.240 --> 0:29:41.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, I wonder if there's a modern analogy for that, roebit.

0:29:43.720 --> 0:29:45.800
<v Speaker 2>What's interesting here, though, is that Sharp is not just

0:29:45.920 --> 0:29:49.240
<v Speaker 2>wish casting a legal argument, right. His extensive study of

0:29:49.280 --> 0:29:51.600
<v Speaker 2>the law had found precedent as far back as fifteen

0:29:51.640 --> 0:29:54.480
<v Speaker 2>sixty nine for the assertion that slavery was not legal

0:29:54.560 --> 0:29:56.280
<v Speaker 2>on British soil. Now, I'm not going to go into

0:29:56.320 --> 0:29:59.959
<v Speaker 2>detail about centuries old British court rulings and rulings of

0:30:00.160 --> 0:30:02.120
<v Speaker 2>like kings and shit, but there are cases from the

0:30:02.120 --> 0:30:04.760
<v Speaker 2>sixteen hundreds to the seventeen hundreds that back up this argument.

0:30:04.840 --> 0:30:06.520
<v Speaker 2>And one thing that was definitely true is that no

0:30:06.720 --> 0:30:09.560
<v Speaker 2>law was ever passed in England to make it legal

0:30:09.600 --> 0:30:12.880
<v Speaker 2>to own Africans. That's never there's never like a law

0:30:12.920 --> 0:30:15.200
<v Speaker 2>that just says you can do this. Yeah, people just

0:30:15.240 --> 0:30:17.680
<v Speaker 2>start doing it and they're like, well, this is property.

0:30:18.000 --> 0:30:19.600
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's happening though.

0:30:20.240 --> 0:30:23.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. The best pro slavery advocates could do was point

0:30:23.600 --> 0:30:25.840
<v Speaker 2>out a seventeen twenty nine legal opinion in which an

0:30:25.840 --> 0:30:28.120
<v Speaker 2>Attorney general had argued that the legal status of a

0:30:28.120 --> 0:30:31.120
<v Speaker 2>slave didn't change just because they set foot in England, right,

0:30:31.160 --> 0:30:33.240
<v Speaker 2>which is something but it's not the same as like

0:30:33.280 --> 0:30:34.960
<v Speaker 2>there being a lot saying you could do this.

0:30:35.080 --> 0:30:38.080
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, right, right, you can't point it as a slavery act,

0:30:38.280 --> 0:30:42.160
<v Speaker 3>yeah exactly. Even like when we go back in American history,

0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:45.400
<v Speaker 3>like when we're looking for like when shuttle slavery begins,

0:30:45.440 --> 0:30:49.240
<v Speaker 3>you can see cases where there are like indentured servants,

0:30:49.320 --> 0:30:52.400
<v Speaker 3>right and as a form of punishment that terms of

0:30:52.480 --> 0:30:56.240
<v Speaker 3>service are extended. But then it appears that the black

0:30:56.280 --> 0:31:00.680
<v Speaker 3>people's terms of service are not extended, presumed because they

0:31:00.680 --> 0:31:04.840
<v Speaker 3>are assumed to be in servitude for their entire life

0:31:04.920 --> 0:31:07.680
<v Speaker 3>by nature of who they are. Right, But we can't

0:31:07.680 --> 0:31:10.800
<v Speaker 3>point to a this is when they decided it was

0:31:10.840 --> 0:31:12.720
<v Speaker 3>going to be like that, and those were the rules.

0:31:12.960 --> 0:31:17.160
<v Speaker 2>Right right yep. So Granville comes into the seventeen seventies

0:31:17.200 --> 0:31:21.120
<v Speaker 2>well armed to argue that slavery is not really legal. Next,

0:31:21.160 --> 0:31:24.400
<v Speaker 2>per Mike Kay's piece for antislavery dot Org in seventeen

0:31:24.440 --> 0:31:27.320
<v Speaker 2>seventy two, Sharp defended James Somerset, a slave who had

0:31:27.400 --> 0:31:29.920
<v Speaker 2>escaped and been recaptured. This proved to be a crucial

0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:32.640
<v Speaker 2>test case, as Sharpe argued that slavery itself was unlawful

0:31:32.640 --> 0:31:35.960
<v Speaker 2>in Britain. Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice and presiding judge,

0:31:36.000 --> 0:31:38.280
<v Speaker 2>was reluctant to reach a conclusion on whether the right

0:31:38.320 --> 0:31:40.880
<v Speaker 2>to property outweighed the right to freedom, and tried to

0:31:40.920 --> 0:31:43.680
<v Speaker 2>persuade the parties to settle out of court. When this failed,

0:31:43.680 --> 0:31:45.960
<v Speaker 2>he attempted to word his decision so that he freed

0:31:46.000 --> 0:31:50.160
<v Speaker 2>Somerset without setting a precedent. Despite Mansfield's efforts, most observers,

0:31:50.160 --> 0:31:52.880
<v Speaker 2>including other judges, thought that the effect of the judgment

0:31:52.960 --> 0:31:54.960
<v Speaker 2>was to free slaves that were brought to Britain, and

0:31:55.000 --> 0:31:57.320
<v Speaker 2>that this provided a legal avenue for many slaves to

0:31:57.360 --> 0:32:00.800
<v Speaker 2>obtain their freedom. So this is the kind of the

0:32:00.800 --> 0:32:03.080
<v Speaker 2>case where Mansfield is doing everything he can for this

0:32:03.240 --> 0:32:06.280
<v Speaker 2>not to have any wider effect. But all people here

0:32:06.360 --> 0:32:12.680
<v Speaker 2>is that like, well this guy got freed, right, Yeah, yeah,

0:32:12.760 --> 0:32:17.440
<v Speaker 2>I feel like this makes me free, right. So large

0:32:17.480 --> 0:32:19.920
<v Speaker 2>numbers of enslaved people in England start fleeing their masters

0:32:19.920 --> 0:32:22.479
<v Speaker 2>in an errant belief that slavery had ended on the island.

0:32:22.720 --> 0:32:26.200
<v Speaker 2>Many abolitionists who misunderstood the ruling celebrated it as a

0:32:26.240 --> 0:32:29.160
<v Speaker 2>sign of the fundamental justice and equality of English law.

0:32:29.480 --> 0:32:31.760
<v Speaker 2>Judge Mansfield had to issue a note that the case

0:32:31.840 --> 0:32:35.240
<v Speaker 2>was only really relevant to a specific niche situation, which

0:32:35.280 --> 0:32:38.320
<v Speaker 2>caused Ben Franklin to joke that English abolitionists were celebrating

0:32:38.360 --> 0:32:40.720
<v Speaker 2>the majesty of their legal system for its virtue and

0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:45.200
<v Speaker 2>quote setting free a single negro right where he's like, okay, guys,

0:32:45.240 --> 0:32:47.560
<v Speaker 2>like it's good, but like maybe calm down a little bit,

0:32:47.720 --> 0:32:52.040
<v Speaker 2>you know, Yeah, this is this is one guy. There's

0:32:52.040 --> 0:32:56.240
<v Speaker 2>still a lot of guys. It's did a net negative

0:32:57.040 --> 0:33:00.560
<v Speaker 2>now this this judge, the Earl of Mansfield, is a

0:33:00.600 --> 0:33:03.200
<v Speaker 2>really interesting guy because not only is he the judge

0:33:03.240 --> 0:33:04.960
<v Speaker 2>in the Somerset case, he's going to be the judge

0:33:05.000 --> 0:33:08.040
<v Speaker 2>in the Zorg case. This isn't weird because he's one

0:33:08.080 --> 0:33:09.880
<v Speaker 2>of the most significant figures in the whole history of

0:33:09.920 --> 0:33:12.080
<v Speaker 2>English law. He's the judge for a lot of big

0:33:12.120 --> 0:33:15.120
<v Speaker 2>cases at the time, right. But he's a particularly interesting

0:33:15.160 --> 0:33:17.960
<v Speaker 2>guy to rule on cases like this because he has

0:33:18.040 --> 0:33:22.360
<v Speaker 2>no child of his own, but he's raising his illegitimate niece,

0:33:22.600 --> 0:33:25.360
<v Speaker 2>Dido Bell as his daughter, and she is a black

0:33:25.400 --> 0:33:30.000
<v Speaker 2>woman of mixed race. Right, So he is simultaneously repeatedly

0:33:30.040 --> 0:33:33.720
<v Speaker 2>being like, enslaved people are property and my ruling should

0:33:33.720 --> 0:33:36.320
<v Speaker 2>not be seen to free anyone, and is also clearly

0:33:36.360 --> 0:33:39.560
<v Speaker 2>capable of understanding that they're human beings because he is

0:33:39.600 --> 0:33:44.480
<v Speaker 2>a black woman, right, And there's all there are a

0:33:44.480 --> 0:33:47.240
<v Speaker 2>couple of moments where because he's never talks in a

0:33:47.240 --> 0:33:49.680
<v Speaker 2>way that's very sympathetic to this, but there's a couple

0:33:49.720 --> 0:33:51.800
<v Speaker 2>of rulings where it's like, well, maybe this is where

0:33:52.200 --> 0:33:54.600
<v Speaker 2>his sympathy moved him a little bit. Not to give

0:33:54.640 --> 0:33:56.160
<v Speaker 2>him much credit, because I don't think he's a very

0:33:56.240 --> 0:33:59.440
<v Speaker 2>nice guy, but it's a really he's a really interesting

0:33:59.520 --> 0:34:04.560
<v Speaker 2>judge too, trying this case right now, and again he

0:34:04.640 --> 0:34:07.200
<v Speaker 2>is not considered a friendly judge. Sharp considers him a

0:34:07.240 --> 0:34:10.319
<v Speaker 2>deeply hostile judge in fact, and in the Zorg case,

0:34:10.400 --> 0:34:14.600
<v Speaker 2>Mansfield has no trouble ruling that enslaved Africans are property anyway.

0:34:14.640 --> 0:34:17.480
<v Speaker 2>By the time we hit seventeen eighty three, Sharp is

0:34:17.520 --> 0:34:19.920
<v Speaker 2>well established as the guy to talk to if you're

0:34:19.920 --> 0:34:23.960
<v Speaker 2>trying to defend or create writes for enslaved people in England. Right,

0:34:24.560 --> 0:34:26.319
<v Speaker 2>And so it's not hard to see why our friend

0:34:26.360 --> 0:34:29.520
<v Speaker 2>a lot of Equiano would like Granville Sharp right, seems

0:34:29.560 --> 0:34:34.000
<v Speaker 2>like a pretty natural friendship. And so once Equiano reads

0:34:34.000 --> 0:34:36.360
<v Speaker 2>that article about the Zorg case, he does the seventeen

0:34:36.440 --> 0:34:38.880
<v Speaker 2>hundreds equivalent of pasting a link to a news article

0:34:38.880 --> 0:34:40.880
<v Speaker 2>in the group chat, and he like sends a copy

0:34:41.080 --> 0:34:44.880
<v Speaker 2>to his friend Granville Sharp. Granville writes in his diary,

0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:47.600
<v Speaker 2>Gustavas Vasa called on me with an account of one

0:34:47.719 --> 0:34:50.279
<v Speaker 2>hundred and thirty negroes being thrown alive into the sea

0:34:50.360 --> 0:34:53.839
<v Speaker 2>from on board an English slave ship. And this is

0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:57.400
<v Speaker 2>the start of a process that is going to like

0:34:57.560 --> 0:35:00.479
<v Speaker 2>terminate in the creation of the first mass move against

0:35:00.520 --> 0:35:04.480
<v Speaker 2>slavery in British history, right, Like this is the inciting instant,

0:35:04.520 --> 0:35:09.040
<v Speaker 2>is Equiano sending this letter to Granville Sharp, So Sharp

0:35:09.160 --> 0:35:11.400
<v Speaker 2>hits the ground running. He starts meeting with the lawyers

0:35:11.440 --> 0:35:14.080
<v Speaker 2>who represented the insurers in that case and is like, Hey,

0:35:14.160 --> 0:35:16.440
<v Speaker 2>I think we can file an action against the Gregson

0:35:16.480 --> 0:35:19.040
<v Speaker 2>Syndicate and request a new trial. And I think we

0:35:19.080 --> 0:35:22.920
<v Speaker 2>can win that new trial because we didn't really have

0:35:22.920 --> 0:35:24.880
<v Speaker 2>a full trial last time. If we really make a

0:35:24.920 --> 0:35:27.200
<v Speaker 2>thing of this, we can make them go through discovery

0:35:27.320 --> 0:35:29.040
<v Speaker 2>and we can look at the log books and the

0:35:29.080 --> 0:35:32.080
<v Speaker 2>other documentation kept by the crew of the Zorg, right,

0:35:32.360 --> 0:35:34.600
<v Speaker 2>and we can see did they really need to kill

0:35:34.640 --> 0:35:35.280
<v Speaker 2>those people?

0:35:35.840 --> 0:35:36.080
<v Speaker 3>You know?

0:35:38.120 --> 0:35:41.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? He also starts barraging influential figures in the country

0:35:41.600 --> 0:35:44.239
<v Speaker 2>with letters demanding the Admiralty Court charge the crewmen of

0:35:44.280 --> 0:35:46.000
<v Speaker 2>the Zorg with murder. He's going to do this the

0:35:46.040 --> 0:35:48.160
<v Speaker 2>rest of his life. It never works, but he does

0:35:48.320 --> 0:35:53.160
<v Speaker 2>keep trying, right. Most of his efforts don't bear fruit,

0:35:53.239 --> 0:35:55.719
<v Speaker 2>but he succeeds in getting a hearing over a motion

0:35:55.880 --> 0:35:58.360
<v Speaker 2>to set a new trial, and this hearing is scheduled

0:35:58.360 --> 0:36:01.200
<v Speaker 2>for May twenty first, seventeen eighty three, less than two

0:36:01.239 --> 0:36:04.759
<v Speaker 2>months after the first trial. Greg's and v. Gilbert, which

0:36:04.800 --> 0:36:07.600
<v Speaker 2>is the hearing is not going to be a tiny,

0:36:08.120 --> 0:36:11.759
<v Speaker 2>largely ignored case. It's going to be a major court thing,

0:36:11.880 --> 0:36:14.520
<v Speaker 2>with exacting notes taken on court proceedings and a huge

0:36:14.560 --> 0:36:17.920
<v Speaker 2>amount of media attention covering every twist and turn. Sharp

0:36:18.000 --> 0:36:20.360
<v Speaker 2>is not technically the lawyer here, but he's basically acting

0:36:20.360 --> 0:36:23.239
<v Speaker 2>as an advisor to the defense council, which consisted of

0:36:23.320 --> 0:36:26.720
<v Speaker 2>three lawyers. The most important of these was a fellow

0:36:26.760 --> 0:36:31.120
<v Speaker 2>named Samuel Haywood. And Haywood's a really interesting person. He

0:36:31.200 --> 0:36:33.600
<v Speaker 2>was born in Liverpool in the seventeen fifties. He went

0:36:33.640 --> 0:36:37.640
<v Speaker 2>to Cambridge and he comes from like a very rich family, right,

0:36:37.640 --> 0:36:39.759
<v Speaker 2>I mean he goes to Cambridge, right, and he's rich

0:36:39.800 --> 0:36:43.560
<v Speaker 2>because his dad, Benjamin is a slave merchant in Liverpool

0:36:43.719 --> 0:36:47.360
<v Speaker 2>and his younger brother, also Benjamin, Benjamin Arthur, is a

0:36:47.400 --> 0:36:51.160
<v Speaker 2>slave merchant in Liverpool. And over like the years they'd

0:36:51.160 --> 0:36:53.400
<v Speaker 2>been doing this, something like one hundred and thirty different

0:36:53.400 --> 0:36:57.560
<v Speaker 2>slave voyages had been financed and operated by the Heywood family. Right,

0:36:57.800 --> 0:37:00.920
<v Speaker 2>they had transported at least a According to Sidharth Kara,

0:37:01.040 --> 0:37:04.320
<v Speaker 2>they had transported something like forty two thousand enslaved people,

0:37:04.680 --> 0:37:06.640
<v Speaker 2>like over the course of their time in this industry.

0:37:07.320 --> 0:37:09.279
<v Speaker 2>And in fact, the Heywoods had invested in at least

0:37:09.280 --> 0:37:12.680
<v Speaker 2>one slave ship with William Grigson with like the Grigson Syndicate.

0:37:13.000 --> 0:37:15.080
<v Speaker 3>Right, Oh wow, Yeah.

0:37:15.120 --> 0:37:19.440
<v Speaker 2>So this is a kid whose money and who's child

0:37:19.560 --> 0:37:22.240
<v Speaker 2>like schooling and stuff is paid for by slave money,

0:37:22.440 --> 0:37:25.520
<v Speaker 2>and he's an abolitionist by now. He fundamentally objects to

0:37:25.560 --> 0:37:29.440
<v Speaker 2>the slave trade, right, and so he just he like

0:37:29.520 --> 0:37:32.480
<v Speaker 2>when he's representing the underwriters in this case, he is

0:37:32.520 --> 0:37:35.200
<v Speaker 2>probably pissing off his family. So it's just very interesting, Right,

0:37:35.600 --> 0:37:37.839
<v Speaker 2>Chris is a kid from slave money who's like, nah,

0:37:37.840 --> 0:37:41.439
<v Speaker 2>this is bad nah r. Just if anyone ever says

0:37:41.480 --> 0:37:43.440
<v Speaker 2>people who grew up in that culture, couldn't know what

0:37:43.560 --> 0:37:44.239
<v Speaker 2>was wrong.

0:37:44.480 --> 0:37:50.120
<v Speaker 3>Like, yeah, yeah, dude, this guy here's a dude, I'm.

0:37:49.920 --> 0:37:51.720
<v Speaker 2>Not I don't know that if he was like a committed,

0:37:51.800 --> 0:37:53.960
<v Speaker 2>full on abolitionist, because a lot of these guys were

0:37:54.040 --> 0:37:56.279
<v Speaker 2>just anti the slave trade and thought that that was

0:37:56.320 --> 0:37:58.680
<v Speaker 2>the like the Middle Passage stuff with the trianglear was

0:37:58.719 --> 0:38:00.920
<v Speaker 2>the worst part of it. But that's still a better

0:38:01.000 --> 0:38:04.960
<v Speaker 2>than not being against that, right, it's a step yeah.

0:38:04.360 --> 0:38:07.200
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And it's an unusual position still in the brave

0:38:07.239 --> 0:38:09.600
<v Speaker 3>one to us at that time, right, right, if you're

0:38:09.680 --> 0:38:12.240
<v Speaker 3>visiting a whole family a slave trader is yeah.

0:38:12.320 --> 0:38:15.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So from the jump, there are some uncomfortable tensions

0:38:15.560 --> 0:38:18.080
<v Speaker 2>behind the scenes. In this case, the insurers and their

0:38:18.120 --> 0:38:21.160
<v Speaker 2>counsel benefited from Granville Sharp's lobbying and legal mind, but

0:38:21.160 --> 0:38:24.520
<v Speaker 2>they're not on the same side precisely. The insurers are

0:38:24.600 --> 0:38:27.759
<v Speaker 2>slavery profiteers. They don't want the trade to end. They

0:38:27.800 --> 0:38:30.560
<v Speaker 2>don't want abolition yeah yeah, making money off of it, right,

0:38:30.640 --> 0:38:32.960
<v Speaker 2>they just don't want to pay money. In this case,

0:38:33.440 --> 0:38:35.520
<v Speaker 2>Sharp is on board with them because he also doesn't

0:38:35.560 --> 0:38:38.120
<v Speaker 2>want Gregson to get a bunch of money for killing

0:38:38.200 --> 0:38:40.680
<v Speaker 2>these people or for his people killing these people, but

0:38:40.760 --> 0:38:43.000
<v Speaker 2>he also sees this case fundamentally as a way to

0:38:43.040 --> 0:38:46.120
<v Speaker 2>set further precedents on the road to ending the slave trade. Right,

0:38:46.160 --> 0:38:47.840
<v Speaker 2>he is thinking about this from the jump that that

0:38:48.120 --> 0:38:50.960
<v Speaker 2>I am doing this because it's a step to something better.

0:38:51.600 --> 0:38:51.719
<v Speaker 1>Now.

0:38:51.800 --> 0:38:54.960
<v Speaker 2>Judge Mansfield tries to deny that possibility from the outset

0:38:55.000 --> 0:38:57.800
<v Speaker 2>of the trial, insisting that this case is purely regarding

0:38:57.840 --> 0:39:01.360
<v Speaker 2>the insurance policy on the Zong or the zoo. Mansfield

0:39:01.400 --> 0:39:03.839
<v Speaker 2>insists the case of the slaves was the same as

0:39:03.880 --> 0:39:07.360
<v Speaker 2>if horses had been thrown overboard, and for the most part,

0:39:07.480 --> 0:39:10.080
<v Speaker 2>the actual arguments in the case do not rely on

0:39:10.160 --> 0:39:13.200
<v Speaker 2>enslaved Africans having more rights than a horse. Right. That

0:39:13.360 --> 0:39:15.600
<v Speaker 2>is kind of what's going on here. The central legal

0:39:15.680 --> 0:39:18.200
<v Speaker 2>question is not was it bad that they killed these people?

0:39:18.600 --> 0:39:22.880
<v Speaker 2>It's did these people have to die because disasters that

0:39:22.920 --> 0:39:25.480
<v Speaker 2>the Zorg's crew were not in control of had caused

0:39:25.480 --> 0:39:27.840
<v Speaker 2>a situation where it was impossible to keep them alive?

0:39:27.960 --> 0:39:28.120
<v Speaker 1>Right?

0:39:28.440 --> 0:39:30.600
<v Speaker 2>Is this a situation where there was no other option,

0:39:30.680 --> 0:39:32.480
<v Speaker 2>where people were going to die one way or the other,

0:39:32.760 --> 0:39:35.160
<v Speaker 2>and they were trying to save a portion of the

0:39:35.360 --> 0:39:38.840
<v Speaker 2>of the crew and the cargo or was this a

0:39:38.960 --> 0:39:42.480
<v Speaker 2>case where the people operating the ship had fucked up

0:39:42.680 --> 0:39:47.200
<v Speaker 2>constantly and unnecessarily murdered a bunch of people and were

0:39:47.200 --> 0:39:49.880
<v Speaker 2>now trying to get insurance money to cover up the

0:39:49.880 --> 0:39:53.080
<v Speaker 2>fact that they fucked up? Right? Which of these is

0:39:53.400 --> 0:39:54.200
<v Speaker 2>what happened here?

0:39:54.320 --> 0:39:54.480
<v Speaker 3>Right?

0:39:55.040 --> 0:39:57.279
<v Speaker 2>And to be clear, if you approach the case of

0:39:57.280 --> 0:40:00.320
<v Speaker 2>the Zork from just that standpoint, ignoring the crime against himanity,

0:40:00.560 --> 0:40:02.520
<v Speaker 2>the gregs and Syndicate and its employees are in the

0:40:02.520 --> 0:40:05.799
<v Speaker 2>wrong right because they did fuck up repeatedly and horribly. Yeah,

0:40:05.880 --> 0:40:09.360
<v Speaker 2>you know, you do not have to be like morally

0:40:09.440 --> 0:40:11.520
<v Speaker 2>against Slaver to be like, well, but like, no, guys

0:40:11.680 --> 0:40:14.120
<v Speaker 2>didn't know what the fuck you were doing. You just

0:40:14.200 --> 0:40:16.279
<v Speaker 2>threw them over. But you had four hundred gallons of

0:40:16.320 --> 0:40:17.160
<v Speaker 2>water on the boat.

0:40:17.960 --> 0:40:18.759
<v Speaker 3>Yeh uh.

0:40:20.120 --> 0:40:23.560
<v Speaker 2>You know who else has a lot of water? Hm?

0:40:23.840 --> 0:40:24.880
<v Speaker 3>I can make a guess.

0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:28.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah the spot. This podcast is sponsored entirely by the

0:40:28.680 --> 0:40:35.120
<v Speaker 2>Pistachio Farmers of Central California. Jesus, you know, yeah, pistachios.

0:40:35.239 --> 0:40:37.439
<v Speaker 2>We've got enough water probably Yeah?

0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:38.600
<v Speaker 3>Fuck the Colorado River.

0:40:39.200 --> 0:40:43.719
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Actually, it's doing okay right now, happy for it

0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:46.239
<v Speaker 2>at an all time high, which means climate change is soft.

0:40:46.680 --> 0:40:48.480
<v Speaker 3>Oh good, I'm glad it'd be worried about that.

0:40:49.080 --> 0:41:02.920
<v Speaker 2>Yep, we did it, and we're back so diligent cross examination.

0:41:03.280 --> 0:41:06.000
<v Speaker 2>You know, early in the court proceedings, here comes across

0:41:06.000 --> 0:41:08.600
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of examples of the crew of the Zorg

0:41:08.800 --> 0:41:12.400
<v Speaker 2>fucking up hideously, right, it finds out because they're talking

0:41:12.520 --> 0:41:15.839
<v Speaker 2>to Stubbs and they're talking to that to his first mate,

0:41:16.160 --> 0:41:19.200
<v Speaker 2>and Stubbs admits, like a bunch of shit he shouldn't

0:41:19.239 --> 0:41:22.760
<v Speaker 2>on the stand including it, like wait, wait, you guys

0:41:22.760 --> 0:41:26.120
<v Speaker 2>sailed past other islands that had water but didn't because

0:41:26.120 --> 0:41:28.360
<v Speaker 2>you were like worried that they might have been taken

0:41:28.440 --> 0:41:31.200
<v Speaker 2>by like an enemy who would take your boat, but

0:41:31.239 --> 0:41:33.560
<v Speaker 2>you didn't know. And he just went past the islands

0:41:33.560 --> 0:41:37.239
<v Speaker 2>that were full of water. And then he admits that, like, well,

0:41:37.280 --> 0:41:39.760
<v Speaker 2>we thought we had enough water when we passed those islands,

0:41:39.760 --> 0:41:41.919
<v Speaker 2>but then we looked inside and realized that the water

0:41:42.000 --> 0:41:43.560
<v Speaker 2>barrels weren't as full as we thought. It was like,

0:41:43.600 --> 0:41:48.239
<v Speaker 2>you didn't check on your water. You didn't check to

0:41:48.320 --> 0:41:52.040
<v Speaker 2>see if you had enough water. It seems like a

0:41:52.040 --> 0:41:55.960
<v Speaker 2>pretty important thing to check. Yeah. Likewise, the lawyers point

0:41:55.960 --> 0:41:58.840
<v Speaker 2>out that the Gregson sindicate had a responsibility to hire

0:41:58.880 --> 0:42:01.759
<v Speaker 2>a competent captain. Not only was Collins would not that,

0:42:02.200 --> 0:42:04.560
<v Speaker 2>but when he got sick, he passed on command to

0:42:04.600 --> 0:42:08.520
<v Speaker 2>a demonstrably incompetent man. When a skilled sailor and navigator

0:42:08.600 --> 0:42:11.280
<v Speaker 2>was locked in his room forbidden from doing his job,

0:42:11.560 --> 0:42:14.760
<v Speaker 2>it was not the sea's fault or the underwriter's responsibility

0:42:15.000 --> 0:42:17.440
<v Speaker 2>if the syndicate hired a captain who couldn't And this

0:42:17.560 --> 0:42:22.720
<v Speaker 2>is a line from the court case, tell Hispaniola from Jamaica, Wow,

0:42:25.160 --> 0:42:26.200
<v Speaker 2>burn on the dead.

0:42:26.000 --> 0:42:28.280
<v Speaker 3>Guy good in the eighteenth century.

0:42:30.160 --> 0:42:32.479
<v Speaker 2>Now, much of the case came down to the fact

0:42:32.480 --> 0:42:35.040
<v Speaker 2>that further interrogation of the ship's stores and the actual

0:42:35.080 --> 0:42:37.719
<v Speaker 2>documentation of their journey showed that when they landed in

0:42:37.800 --> 0:42:40.239
<v Speaker 2>Jamaica they had days of water left, and if they'd

0:42:40.239 --> 0:42:43.600
<v Speaker 2>been close to running out, there were again multiple islands

0:42:43.600 --> 0:42:45.680
<v Speaker 2>they could have gone to to get their water within

0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:49.200
<v Speaker 2>a day or so. In addition to that, on the stand,

0:42:49.480 --> 0:42:52.440
<v Speaker 2>Stubbs revealed that it had rained several times near the

0:42:52.560 --> 0:42:54.600
<v Speaker 2>end of the journey and he'd failed to have the

0:42:54.640 --> 0:43:03.000
<v Speaker 2>crew collect rain water. Stubbs really continues to us, should

0:43:03.040 --> 0:43:07.040
<v Speaker 2>we get water now, let's just kill some more guys sorry,

0:43:07.080 --> 0:43:09.160
<v Speaker 2>kill some more women and children. Yeah.

0:43:09.760 --> 0:43:10.040
<v Speaker 3>Fuck.

0:43:11.920 --> 0:43:14.359
<v Speaker 2>So this case, which had been rushed through the first time,

0:43:14.480 --> 0:43:17.759
<v Speaker 2>on second viewing seemed much more disturbing, even to skeptics

0:43:17.760 --> 0:43:20.560
<v Speaker 2>like Mansfield. The dark question that hovered over the whole

0:43:20.560 --> 0:43:24.359
<v Speaker 2>proceeding was this, if not out of necessity, why would

0:43:24.360 --> 0:43:26.440
<v Speaker 2>Stubbs and the crew have thrown one hundred and thirty

0:43:26.480 --> 0:43:30.040
<v Speaker 2>people overboard? And the answer that people kept thinking was

0:43:30.120 --> 0:43:33.560
<v Speaker 2>probably the obvious one, is this, after a too long

0:43:33.640 --> 0:43:36.640
<v Speaker 2>journey on a slave ship crammed with twice its maximum occupancy,

0:43:36.840 --> 0:43:40.000
<v Speaker 2>without enough food or enough water, and disease and dimmick,

0:43:40.480 --> 0:43:43.360
<v Speaker 2>many of the enslaved people on board were too sick

0:43:43.440 --> 0:43:47.080
<v Speaker 2>and visibly ailing to fetch much of a price at auction.

0:43:48.040 --> 0:43:52.000
<v Speaker 2>So if you just kill them, the insured value is

0:43:52.080 --> 0:43:56.439
<v Speaker 2>higher than what they would sell for. Jeez, we don't

0:43:56.440 --> 0:43:58.880
<v Speaker 2>know that that's what was going on, but this is

0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:04.480
<v Speaker 2>what people start talking about, and it's not an unreasonable proposition. Yeah, no,

0:44:04.719 --> 0:44:11.200
<v Speaker 2>pretty ghastly yeah yeah, ghostly right, And this changes the

0:44:11.200 --> 0:44:13.120
<v Speaker 2>thinking of a lot of people like Mansfield, who are

0:44:13.160 --> 0:44:16.040
<v Speaker 2>not abolitionists, but who are like, oh shit, but if, like,

0:44:16.320 --> 0:44:19.120
<v Speaker 2>if we established this precedent, people might just start murdering

0:44:19.200 --> 0:44:22.720
<v Speaker 2>ships full of enslaved people to just get the insurance money.

0:44:23.160 --> 0:44:25.959
<v Speaker 2>And that seems like a nightmare, Like that's even bad

0:44:26.040 --> 0:44:28.319
<v Speaker 2>to me, and I kind of suck ass, you know.

0:44:30.719 --> 0:44:34.719
<v Speaker 2>So this fact is shaking even to guys like Judge Manfield,

0:44:34.719 --> 0:44:37.280
<v Speaker 2>and he ruled quote to be sure, what mister Haywood

0:44:37.280 --> 0:44:40.080
<v Speaker 2>has observed is a very material circumstance. So many negroes

0:44:40.120 --> 0:44:42.840
<v Speaker 2>thrown overboard after the rain came, without any account of

0:44:42.880 --> 0:44:45.360
<v Speaker 2>how they came to do it. It is so uncommon

0:44:45.360 --> 0:44:47.680
<v Speaker 2>a case. I think, upon the ground of re examination,

0:44:47.800 --> 0:44:49.840
<v Speaker 2>it ought to go to a new trial. And he

0:44:49.880 --> 0:44:53.120
<v Speaker 2>grants a motion for retrial. Now this is never to be.

0:44:53.360 --> 0:44:56.920
<v Speaker 2>There's not a second trial because William Grigson, head of

0:44:56.960 --> 0:44:59.840
<v Speaker 2>the slaving syndicate, decides that a second trial is not

0:45:00.000 --> 0:45:02.719
<v Speaker 2>go well, right, and it's just gonna waste money. So

0:45:02.760 --> 0:45:06.840
<v Speaker 2>let's just cut our losses and return to operating the

0:45:06.880 --> 0:45:10.880
<v Speaker 2>slave trade at a massive, massive level. His insurers celebrate

0:45:10.920 --> 0:45:14.319
<v Speaker 2>their victory. But you could be forgiven for seeing that

0:45:14.440 --> 0:45:18.640
<v Speaker 2>at this point the case is like an overall mixed

0:45:18.680 --> 0:45:21.399
<v Speaker 2>bag or even a wash for the cause of abolitionism, right,

0:45:21.480 --> 0:45:25.960
<v Speaker 2>because you know the people who one are still involved

0:45:26.000 --> 0:45:29.960
<v Speaker 2>in the slaving industry. No one has attained any additional rights.

0:45:30.040 --> 0:45:33.040
<v Speaker 2>No one's ruled that enslaved people are human beings. They're

0:45:33.080 --> 0:45:36.840
<v Speaker 2>still the same as cargo. Right, how is this? You

0:45:36.840 --> 0:45:40.080
<v Speaker 2>could see someone, especially like a political radical at the time,

0:45:40.120 --> 0:45:42.080
<v Speaker 2>being like, this is the worst kind of incrementalism. You've

0:45:42.080 --> 0:45:45.160
<v Speaker 2>achieved nothing. Right. You can see how someone might think

0:45:45.200 --> 0:45:47.480
<v Speaker 2>that that is not the case. And in fact, part

0:45:47.480 --> 0:45:50.160
<v Speaker 2>of why I think the story's important is it illustrates

0:45:50.440 --> 0:45:54.000
<v Speaker 2>how critical small and seemingly pyrrhic victories can be in

0:45:54.040 --> 0:45:57.279
<v Speaker 2>pursuit of sweeping social change. First off, well, there's no

0:45:57.400 --> 0:46:00.600
<v Speaker 2>second trial. The fact that a retrial was grand means

0:46:00.600 --> 0:46:03.000
<v Speaker 2>that slave merchants had been given a warning. You can't

0:46:03.040 --> 0:46:06.000
<v Speaker 2>just kill people and claim their insurance money on them. Right.

0:46:07.480 --> 0:46:10.120
<v Speaker 2>And then, as Sidharth Kara writes and the Zorg, even

0:46:10.160 --> 0:46:12.239
<v Speaker 2>if just for a moment, the Africans who lay at

0:46:12.239 --> 0:46:14.880
<v Speaker 2>the bottom of the ocean thousands away were seen as people,

0:46:15.000 --> 0:46:17.680
<v Speaker 2>not property, and Kerr is arguing that this causes kind

0:46:17.680 --> 0:46:20.040
<v Speaker 2>of a perceptual shift in a lot of people who

0:46:20.080 --> 0:46:22.680
<v Speaker 2>can't help as they're hearing how horrible what this is,

0:46:23.280 --> 0:46:26.600
<v Speaker 2>sympathize with these people who are still legally just property,

0:46:26.800 --> 0:46:30.720
<v Speaker 2>and that that's an important shift. But the larger victory

0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:33.560
<v Speaker 2>in the case was that it had started the process

0:46:33.680 --> 0:46:37.680
<v Speaker 2>of gathering together and galvanizing great legal minds, writers and

0:46:37.760 --> 0:46:41.360
<v Speaker 2>agitators towards pursuing an end to the slave trade in

0:46:41.400 --> 0:46:44.560
<v Speaker 2>an organized fashion, right, And that's what we're going to

0:46:44.560 --> 0:46:48.240
<v Speaker 2>talk about in part three. But I should conclude today

0:46:48.280 --> 0:46:50.719
<v Speaker 2>by saying a little about our main villains for these episodes,

0:46:51.120 --> 0:46:55.280
<v Speaker 2>William Grigson and Robert Stubbs. During the first case, Stubbs

0:46:55.320 --> 0:46:57.400
<v Speaker 2>had high hopes of getting a job with the syndicate

0:46:57.440 --> 0:47:00.000
<v Speaker 2>and perhaps even support to regain his lost gold by

0:47:00.040 --> 0:47:02.920
<v Speaker 2>helping Grickson make good on the slaves that they'd killed.

0:47:03.160 --> 0:47:06.399
<v Speaker 2>When this failed, he gets cut loose. Now Stubbs never

0:47:06.440 --> 0:47:09.080
<v Speaker 2>makes it back to Africa. He scrapes together a meager

0:47:09.120 --> 0:47:11.240
<v Speaker 2>living for the next few years, and he dies aged

0:47:11.280 --> 0:47:14.439
<v Speaker 2>sixty and seventeen eighty seven. In his will, he gives

0:47:14.640 --> 0:47:17.960
<v Speaker 2>gave his son George all my wearing apparel, which wasn't

0:47:18.000 --> 0:47:20.080
<v Speaker 2>much used to the boy who never made it back

0:47:20.120 --> 0:47:24.160
<v Speaker 2>from Africa and died there earlier that same year, age nineteen.

0:47:25.160 --> 0:47:30.759
<v Speaker 2>All Stubsy one more, one more real piece of yah.

0:47:31.520 --> 0:47:35.360
<v Speaker 3>His kid, his clothes, his old man clothes.

0:47:35.600 --> 0:47:37.880
<v Speaker 2>He literally does. He doesn't give his kids any money.

0:47:37.880 --> 0:47:39.680
<v Speaker 2>I don't think he has much, but he's like already

0:47:39.719 --> 0:47:41.840
<v Speaker 2>paid to raise him. Why would I give him money?

0:47:43.280 --> 0:47:45.240
<v Speaker 3>Paid the ship that one kid off to Africa?

0:47:46.080 --> 0:47:47.279
<v Speaker 2>Jesus, what a piece of shit?

0:47:47.760 --> 0:47:50.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, what a what a could Yeah find his grave

0:47:50.680 --> 0:47:52.400
<v Speaker 3>and piss on it if you're in the region.

0:47:52.480 --> 0:47:55.320
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if you can find it, pee on it. William

0:47:55.320 --> 0:47:58.200
<v Speaker 2>Gregson unfortunately lives into eighteen hundred when he dies aged

0:47:58.239 --> 0:48:00.560
<v Speaker 2>seventy nine, after having financed more than one hundred and

0:48:00.600 --> 0:48:03.759
<v Speaker 2>fifty slave voyages that tore nearly sixty thousand Africans from

0:48:03.760 --> 0:48:07.839
<v Speaker 2>their homes. Roughly sixteen percent of these people died en route.

0:48:07.880 --> 0:48:11.040
<v Speaker 2>Gregson died wealthy and respected, having never been called to

0:48:11.040 --> 0:48:14.040
<v Speaker 2>account for his crimes against humanity, which is a bummer.

0:48:14.880 --> 0:48:15.720
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that sucks.

0:48:15.840 --> 0:48:18.600
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure his descendants aren't still rich today.

0:48:19.920 --> 0:48:21.920
<v Speaker 3>I'm not sure that's something you can be so sure of,

0:48:22.040 --> 0:48:25.279
<v Speaker 3>rob It. I think that's a good chance they might be.

0:48:26.000 --> 0:48:28.479
<v Speaker 2>No. The of the moral arc of the universe bends

0:48:28.480 --> 0:48:30.720
<v Speaker 2>towards justice, James, Ah.

0:48:30.960 --> 0:48:34.040
<v Speaker 3>But it moves slowly as a problem. It moves real

0:48:34.160 --> 0:48:37.759
<v Speaker 3>fucking slow, a little bit too slowly sometimes because if

0:48:37.760 --> 0:48:39.399
<v Speaker 3>someone give it a bit of a gidea up, you know.

0:48:39.600 --> 0:48:41.560
<v Speaker 2>And it's less of an arc and more of like

0:48:41.640 --> 0:48:43.400
<v Speaker 2>one of those one of those needles they have on

0:48:43.480 --> 0:48:46.839
<v Speaker 2>like a seismograph. So it's just like jumping back and forth. Yeah,

0:48:46.920 --> 0:48:47.560
<v Speaker 2>pretty often.

0:48:47.640 --> 0:48:51.000
<v Speaker 3>Sure doesn't seem to be bending in the direction recently.

0:48:51.200 --> 0:48:56.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I don't know, man, Yeah, that's the story.

0:48:56.760 --> 0:49:01.040
<v Speaker 1>Oh, stubbsy man, stubbsy.

0:49:01.160 --> 0:49:04.359
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, at least he died reasonably young, like he could

0:49:04.360 --> 0:49:05.880
<v Speaker 3>have made it to one hundred that the other dude, No,

0:49:06.000 --> 0:49:06.719
<v Speaker 3>can't imagine what.

0:49:06.880 --> 0:49:09.200
<v Speaker 1>When I was sixteen seventeen eighty seven.

0:49:10.080 --> 0:49:12.160
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean he lives longer than poor little George.

0:49:12.600 --> 0:49:14.399
<v Speaker 2>That's right, he lives longer than his son.

0:49:15.160 --> 0:49:19.239
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, what a fucking did Yeah, he presumaly doesn't even

0:49:19.280 --> 0:49:23.080
<v Speaker 3>know who's died because he gives that few shits. Yeah.

0:49:23.320 --> 0:49:27.280
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Like, here have some old shirts, kid.

0:49:27.480 --> 0:49:31.120
<v Speaker 3>My old clothes. Wow, that I wore as I fucked

0:49:31.160 --> 0:49:33.080
<v Speaker 3>up again and again over a series of fuck ups

0:49:33.120 --> 0:49:34.320
<v Speaker 3>that lasted my dire life.

0:49:34.600 --> 0:49:36.080
<v Speaker 1>Oh I'm glad that guy is dead.

0:49:36.960 --> 0:49:37.319
<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm.

0:49:37.520 --> 0:49:39.200
<v Speaker 3>We all are I think, Yeah.

0:49:39.120 --> 0:49:41.160
<v Speaker 1>James, do you want to plug your book real quick?

0:49:41.680 --> 0:49:44.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you won't encounter any any stubsy type characters. But

0:49:44.680 --> 0:49:46.799
<v Speaker 3>there's some heroes in here. I think, some people who

0:49:46.800 --> 0:49:50.200
<v Speaker 3>have done some really remarkable things. Yeah, I wrote this

0:49:50.480 --> 0:49:53.120
<v Speaker 3>about anarchists at war. It's called Against the State. You

0:49:53.160 --> 0:49:55.680
<v Speaker 3>can pre order it from ak Press. You can hear

0:49:55.680 --> 0:49:59.279
<v Speaker 3>about some people trying to build a better world less

0:49:59.320 --> 0:50:04.279
<v Speaker 3>incrementally than this in many cases, kind of with a

0:50:04.320 --> 0:50:09.359
<v Speaker 3>bit more I guess kinetic means. But nonetheless, I think

0:50:09.480 --> 0:50:12.319
<v Speaker 3>like there's some stories and things that we can learn

0:50:12.560 --> 0:50:15.200
<v Speaker 3>in our much less violent lives from these people and

0:50:15.280 --> 0:50:17.120
<v Speaker 3>the way they organize and the way that they have

0:50:17.239 --> 0:50:20.359
<v Speaker 3>gone about things, And people will read it and enjoy it.

0:50:20.840 --> 0:50:22.280
<v Speaker 2>You can buy it from ak Press.

0:50:22.880 --> 0:50:25.799
<v Speaker 1>Pre order link will be in the episode change should.

0:50:26.120 --> 0:50:29.000
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah you should. Yeah, don't buy it from Jeff Bezos.

0:50:29.480 --> 0:50:31.560
<v Speaker 3>He's not as bad as some of the people on here,

0:50:31.560 --> 0:50:32.399
<v Speaker 3>but not a great dude.

0:50:33.000 --> 0:50:36.520
<v Speaker 2>Not a great dude. And yeah, you know, until next time, folks, well,

0:50:36.560 --> 0:50:38.720
<v Speaker 2>which we will be like tomorrow. But just in general,

0:50:38.800 --> 0:50:41.000
<v Speaker 2>I guess as you look at out how fucked up

0:50:41.040 --> 0:50:46.800
<v Speaker 2>things are, remember that things change pretty quickly, and the

0:50:46.960 --> 0:50:50.400
<v Speaker 2>evils that seem entrenched and impossible to fight generally aren't,

0:50:50.520 --> 0:50:54.600
<v Speaker 2>and that even victories that seem pyic or meaningless can

0:50:54.880 --> 0:50:57.759
<v Speaker 2>lead to much greater things, just by virtue of the

0:50:57.800 --> 0:51:00.600
<v Speaker 2>fact that through the act of fighting, people are brought

0:51:00.600 --> 0:51:05.759
<v Speaker 2>together who become capable of fighting more effectively even greater injustices.

0:51:06.600 --> 0:51:11.480
<v Speaker 2>So keep fighting and again, piss on that guy's great

0:51:11.520 --> 0:51:12.160
<v Speaker 2>if you find.

0:51:12.000 --> 0:51:18.880
<v Speaker 1>It, Yeah, Yeah, Behind the Bastards is a production of

0:51:18.920 --> 0:51:21.959
<v Speaker 1>cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit

0:51:21.960 --> 0:51:25.680
<v Speaker 1>our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on

0:51:25.719 --> 0:51:29.239
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0:51:29.640 --> 0:51:33.040
<v Speaker 1>Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes

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<v Speaker 1>every Wednesday and Friday.

0:51:35.120 --> 0:51:35.839
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0:51:35.920 --> 0:51:40.280
<v Speaker 1>Channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind the Bastards