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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecaana Show.

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I'm here with George Bagbee. How are you doing, George,

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I'm doing well.

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Speaker 2: I've been traveling a lot today and I'm back at

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home again and ready to talk reconstruction.

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Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, first time on the show. Please tell everybody

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a little bit about yourself, tell them your story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I call myself George Bagbee. I am a content creator.

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I'm a guest on a lot of other people's shows,

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and I've got a YouTube channel on which I've recorded

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a lot of readings. That's just what I do mostly

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on my YouTube channel. I have a small press that

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I've started called Tall Men Books. You can get more

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information about that through my pinned posts on my Twitter handle.

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My twitter handle is at tall Men Books. I've republished

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or initiated the first publication of six books now with

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several more in the works. My focus so far has

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been mostly on the reconstruction of the Southern States after

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the Civil War. So my first book that I republished

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was Walter L. Fleming's Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama,

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and I have published another number of other books on

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the subject.

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Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, Well, that's what we're here to talk about today.

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We're going to talk I want you to, you know,

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talk about reconstruction, and we're going to get the history

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of that, the background behind it, and we're going to

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lead up to the reaction that some men in the

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South decided to take. So why didn't you tell us

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a little bit about what the conditions were right after

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the war ended?

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Speaker 2: Indeed, well, the conditions immediately following the war are extremely

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uncertain and quite dire in most Southern communities. So let

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me let me outline to what it's like. The South

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has virtually no cities, with the exception of New Orleans.

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New Orleans is exceptional for so many different reasons. It's

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that's a sizable city. But the rest of Southerners live

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out in rural conditions and are engaged directly in agriculture.

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That is, the vast majority of the Southern population. The

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vast majority of white Southerners own farms up until the

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Civil War. This is an important thing to understand. We

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have a competing narrative about American history that was popularized

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by the genius the travel writer and landscape architect of

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Frederick Law Olmsted. Frederick Law Olmsted traveled around the Nabellum

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South and popularized a mistaken idea that white Southerners could

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be divided into two groups, and those were the aristocratic

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landlord lords of all creation, who lived in palaces and

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owned hundreds of slaves apiece, and the poor white trash

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who predominated in the rural districts. That's a mistaken idea

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about the Nbellum South. The vast majority of white Southerners

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were what we might describe as small holding yeoman farmers.

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We know from the eighteen sixty census, which gives us

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a huge amount of detailed information about this period. We

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know from the eighteen sixty census that somewhere between twenty

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and twenty five percent of Southern whites, that's just the

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whites owned slaves. Of that number, a small percentage in

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the single digits are what we might describe as planters.

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So those are the lords of all creation, and also

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the very famous Southern elites that were statesmen and military

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leaders and things like that. People like Andrew Jackson and

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Thomas Jefferson were of that planter group. So they're a

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very important group, and they did tend to own large

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numbers of slaves, but the vast majority, vast majority of

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Southerners were just small farmers who owned their land outright

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after the war. Initially, the condition of the slaves is

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in question until the reconstituted Southern governments ratify the Thirteenth Amendment,

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and the thirteenth Amendment ends slavery in mid eighteen sixty five.

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Up until that point, there is an awful lot of

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speculation that there is going to be some kind of

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compensated emancipation or some kind of colonization effort headed by Washington, DC,

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some plan for the freedmen and their future that never materializes.

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There is never any plan. What happens is they are emancipated,

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and then everyone tries to decide what happens next, and

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this results in an awful lot of conflict and dissatisfaction.

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The visceral impact of the war is that somewhere somewhere

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around one quarter of the Southern male population of military

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age is dead. In eighteen sixty five, A quarter of

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the white male military age population is dead. Another twenty

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percent or so are wounded and returned home they've survived

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their wounds. A great number of those are amputees, so

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we're talking about at minimum, the loss of about forty

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percent of the of the useful labor of the white population.

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That there's argument about some of these numbers, but that's

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that's a modest survey. I'm I'm low balling this.

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Speaker 1: That starts crossing over into twentieth century numbers where you'll

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see thirty percent of a pop of the male population

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just gone.

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Speaker 2: Indeed, it's it's absolutely devastating. Another another big problem that

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pops up afterwards is the radical dispossession of a lot

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of the small property owners. So the fact that the

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elites get dispossessed is not very surprising because they bet

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their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on independence and they lost.

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So the elites property, their mansions, their bank accounts, their

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portable possessions, all of those things get seized as a

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matter of course in the war. But what happens after

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the war is very drastic. It's the gutting of the

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middle class in the South, basically the confiscation of the capital,

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most of which is held in land. Not to say

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that the slave the end of slavery and the uncompensated

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emancipation is also so a massive blow at southern capital.

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I'm just kind of bypassing that here. What happens immediately

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after the war is the federal government imposes four years

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of back taxes on the property owners. So this is

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this affects the white farmers predominantly and those that cannot pay,

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you know, and this is an extremely tall order for

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most of them, being that their sons are dead or

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they have their limbs amputated, they can't bring wealth out

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of the land. And then there's the portion of them

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that had slaves that are accustomed. You know, they have

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a track of land and the way to get wealth

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out of it is to work the slaves on it.

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That's not working for them anymore that they don't have

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that labor relationship worked out, and this is extremely inefficient

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at this time. So that means that a huge number

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of farms go up for tax sales. In the first

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couple of years after the war, you have a massive

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movement of the white population from freeholding farmers into people

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whose only asset is their ability to labor for wages.

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So you see the proletarization of a massive number of

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whites in the South, and this in effect puts them

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on the same economic level as the freedmen. And this

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is an important thing to understand because previous to the war,

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seventy five to eighty percent of white property owners and

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their and their family members Okay, I'm counting in their

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women and children in that figure. Like seventy five to

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eighty percent of white Southerners didn't own slaves. They lived

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on independent farms, the vast majority of them. There is

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a subset that are squatters, that are vega bonds that

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move from place to place and live in the mountains,

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don't necessarily have title to the land that they're on.

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There is always a group of people like that, but

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they are a minority. There's another minority that are working

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people that work for wages, that have useful skills. Most

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of these people are in cities exempting them. The vast

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majority of White Southerners are farmers. They are reduced to

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working for wages. Now, another one of the problems in

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the post war South is that all of the banks

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have failed. Every bank in the South fails in eighteen

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sixty five. So I try to point this out to

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folks when I take them on tours. I will walk

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through the financial district in the French Quarter in New

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Orleans where all the Antebellum banks were, and the buildings

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are all still there. It's a very interesting street corner.

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And I described to them the importance of these banks

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in an agricultural society and kind of the disproportionate role.

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Strangely enough, considering Southern attitude, the Jeffersonian attitude towards banks,

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they don't like banks. They are very suspicious of the

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activities at banks. Banks are nevertheless an extremely important element

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in an agricultural society where the majority of the population

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only sees profit once a year at harvest time. Then,

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as now, farmers are disproportionately reliant on credit for their

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day to day operations. They aren't like working people that

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get paid weekly or monthly or bi monthly or whatever

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it is. They don't have money flowing through so often. Now,

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this made them averse to a consumer sort of economy,

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because they don't have a lot of money flowing through.

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Like people out on the farm far away from a

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city might not ever handle money. It was quite possible

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if you lived as an independent farmer, that you would

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very seldom or never handle currency. You might you might,

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uh you know, settle your accounts once a year when

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you went to the market with your crop in the city.

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So but nevertheless, they were relying on credit. They relyingt

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relying on lines of credit. So at the end of

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the war, the failure of all the banks meant that

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the entire population was reduced to a barter economy. At

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the exact same time, the entire population loses access to credit,

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has no financial institutions they can work with. Most of

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them have lost all their capital. Unless they've managed to

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hold onto the farm by hooker by crook, or they've

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buried gold in their backyard, most of them have no capital.

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And this is the precise moment at which the United

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States as a unified entity is totally embracing a free

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labor economy where everyone is supposed to be receiving wages

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for services rendered. That doesn't work. That is highly dissatisfying

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to everyone involved. What that meant was that the proletariat,

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the people who only had labor to exchange for their livelihood,

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they don't have any other capital. They don't have land.

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They have to make contractual arrangements to work on a farm,

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to work for someone who owns a farm for a

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long period of time, not for a week, not for

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a month, but for a harvest season, for a whole

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season until after the harvest, and they they don't get

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wages at the time of the harvest. Instead, they get

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a portion of the profits of the harvest, so they

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have to market it and it's dependent on what the

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crop is going to sell for. In exchange for that

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contractual arrangement, they basically get a form of a form

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of labor very analogous to slavery, with several several bad

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features that weren't there in slavery, to be quite frank.

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For instance, you have people that are reliant upon you

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that cannot perform labor. You have young children, you have

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a you have an amputee son who's a war veteran,

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he lost his legs or something. He can't perform another

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day's work in his life. He's reliant upon you. You

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have a super annuated relative in your in your family,

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you have your your grandmother who lives with you, who's

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reliant upon you. All right, in slavery, they are all

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accounted for taking care of I know, I know that

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people get really been out of shape about this. Don't

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take my word for it. Just go read about it.

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Go read eugenejen A Vesey. Go read Role Jordan Roll,

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Go read Stanley and Ingerman Time on the Cross. Go

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read Old Rich Phillips American Negro slavery. Go read about

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how the institution of slavery worked. People that were injured

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as slaves couldn't be killed. That was against the law,

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and it was treated as murder. All right, Just because

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your slave gets injured or gets sick, you still have

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to take care of him. When your slave gets old,

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you still have to take care of them. There are examples,

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are really weird examples of people selling a super anniated

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slave and giving a stipend to the buyer, so it's

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actually a reverse sort of transaction. Instead of the buyer

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giving the seller money, the seller is actually giving the

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buyer money because cost money to maintain the life of

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the slave. We have examples like that. Normally it's impossible

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to get rid of an old slave or an injured slave.

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You just have to take care of them. So under slavery,

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they have housing, they have food, they have some measure

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of care and provision whether or not they can do

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the work. In the system of sharecropping, if you can't

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do the work, you get no benefits. Therefore, sharecroppers that

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have dependents of the amputee son, the super annuated grandmother,

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they have a big drain on their resources. So in

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sharecropping they would get a cabin, not surprisingly, it was

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probably a former slave cabin. They get rations, not surprisingly,

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this is identical to the former slave rations, and they

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get less benefits. And if you get injured on the job, well,

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hopefully you've got a family member that cares whether you

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starve to death, and they will take you into their

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hut and they will feed you whatever rations they can spare.

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For this reason, very interestingly, in the Federal Writers Project

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in the nineteen thirties, when the Roosevelt administration sends journalists

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out to interview former slaves and ask them about their lives,

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you get a lot of very interesting information from these

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oral accounts. These are very elderly slaves, former slaves at

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that point. They frequently talk about the period of reconstruction

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as a time where they're very happy to be free.

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But they also speak of the time as worse than

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slavery economically, far more stressful, more uncertainty, things like that.

240
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So sharecropping, sharecropping is a dreadful situation. It's important to

241
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understand that the vast majority of the former slaves are forced.

242
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I don't think it's I don't think it's wrong to

243
00:19:19,799 --> 00:19:23,079
use the term forced, at least in an economic sense.

244
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If they did not want to starve, they had to

245
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enter into one of these contractual labor agreements that many

246
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:34,000
of them thought as worse than slavery. And from a

247
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certain perspective, we might say that's that's reasonable to think

248
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of it that way. But also the vast not vast majority,

249
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:48,720
but sixty to seventy percent of the white population is

250
00:19:48,759 --> 00:19:54,200
reduced to that status as well. All Right, so they formally,

251
00:19:54,279 --> 00:19:59,960
before the war, we're talking about seventy five eighty percent

252
00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:03,920
the white population own their own farms and are not

253
00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:09,759
engaged in slavery. After the war, sixty to seventy percent

254
00:20:09,759 --> 00:20:15,559
of them become sharecroppers. So this is a massive, a

255
00:20:15,759 --> 00:20:23,880
massive reduction in economic status. Okay, enough of enough of

256
00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:29,480
the labor problems. Suffice to say that it's so dissatisfying

257
00:20:29,559 --> 00:20:33,640
that a great number of the freedmen who are formerly

258
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slaves are inclined to leave their labor agreements when they

259
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see what the conditions are like. And given that they've

260
00:20:45,599 --> 00:20:49,839
been filled with all sorts of promises about life and

261
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:55,559
freedom and the advantages of a free economy working for wages.

262
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Of course, no one in the North can imagine a

263
00:20:58,640 --> 00:21:03,240
free economy without WI ages, no one in I guess

264
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:06,319
nobody in the world had really done much of that before.

265
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In an agricultural society like the South. There's so much

266
00:21:11,400 --> 00:21:13,720
about that that doesn't make any sense, But no one

267
00:21:13,960 --> 00:21:15,680
was really thinking about how it was going to work

268
00:21:15,720 --> 00:21:17,640
at the time. They said, no, it must happen now

269
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for humanitarian purposes. We don't have time to plan. So

270
00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:24,680
they got what they asked for, and then with these

271
00:21:24,680 --> 00:21:32,240
problems result, a lot of these freedmen leave their their

272
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:38,200
contracted conditions of employment. Now they also can't sign a contract.

273
00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:42,519
Most of them are making marks, all right, they're making

274
00:21:42,519 --> 00:21:46,400
an X, and there's some kind of some some places

275
00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:49,599
they try to notarize this and stuff like that. There's

276
00:21:49,640 --> 00:21:53,119
a certain legal procedure that's possible. But this is also

277
00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:57,119
all going on, you know, in very remote locales through

278
00:21:57,279 --> 00:22:02,799
the South, which is not it's not easy accessible. So

279
00:22:02,839 --> 00:22:08,759
they're wandering away and leaving the landholders in a terrible situation.

280
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,480
So the ones that are that we're able to hold

281
00:22:11,519 --> 00:22:18,039
onto the land overwhelmingly white, virtually all of them white,

282
00:22:18,200 --> 00:22:20,119
and who else is in the picture. At this point,

283
00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:27,880
you have a really important group of new white Southerners

284
00:22:28,599 --> 00:22:32,519
that we refer to as carpetbackers. Now it's another term

285
00:22:32,559 --> 00:22:34,680
that people get all bent out of shape about. Let

286
00:22:34,680 --> 00:22:39,880
me explain. A carpetbacker is a Northerner who comes south

287
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:44,960
during or immediately after the war to take advantage of

288
00:22:45,039 --> 00:22:50,079
the circumstances in the post war South. And I would

289
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:56,119
like to I would like to acknowledge the benefits of this. Initially,

290
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:00,880
the South is berift of capital. It is extraly important

291
00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:04,519
that we have investors coming in who can pay wages,

292
00:23:05,119 --> 00:23:12,440
who can afford to rebuild things without banks involved. They

293
00:23:12,559 --> 00:23:14,960
they come down from all over the place, they have

294
00:23:15,039 --> 00:23:17,960
a little money, they show up at a tax sale,

295
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:24,880
they can make aggressive bids, and they can buy former

296
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:29,119
cotton plantations for pennies on the dollar, and they can

297
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:32,839
afford to pay the weight the wages of the operation,

298
00:23:33,519 --> 00:23:38,160
and they're able to keep the economy of the South running.

299
00:23:38,799 --> 00:23:41,319
So I want to acknowledge that if it if the

300
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:45,000
carpetbaggers had not come south when they did. Had not

301
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:48,519
injected the capital into the economy and gotten the farms

302
00:23:48,559 --> 00:23:52,240
working again when they did, then we would have seen

303
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,240
far worse famine in the South. There would have been

304
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:57,240
a farm worse offering.

305
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:00,799
Speaker 1: Are you going to go over or do you know

306
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:05,240
who would have been the money behind some of these people.

307
00:24:06,039 --> 00:24:09,519
I mean, it sounds like a It sounds like an

308
00:24:09,599 --> 00:24:12,839
eighteen hundreds version of like what black Rock is doing now.

309
00:24:14,319 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, they become landlords all around the South. They

310
00:24:20,359 --> 00:24:25,279
start some very prosperous businesses. I know down here in Louisiana,

311
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:30,480
carpetbaggers come in and restart the sugar industry, which is

312
00:24:30,519 --> 00:24:36,519
extremely profitable and requires industrial plant to operate. You have

313
00:24:36,599 --> 00:24:40,880
to grind and granulate the sugar on the premises of

314
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:47,799
the plantation. Even today, the sugar mills are in close

315
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:52,960
proximity and well spaced out in sugar country. You can't

316
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:55,559
take the sugar very far before you have to process it.

317
00:24:55,559 --> 00:25:00,519
It spoils too quickly. So they rebuild this stuff and

318
00:25:00,599 --> 00:25:04,200
they get this industry working again, and because it's such

319
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,480
a high profit industry, they're able to pay the workers'

320
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:12,359
wages down there, so they become a new capitalist class

321
00:25:13,480 --> 00:25:16,759
in the South. But they've got another advantage as well.

322
00:25:17,519 --> 00:25:21,000
Not only are they economically ambitious, but they are the

323
00:25:21,039 --> 00:25:24,319
only white people in the South that are allowed to

324
00:25:24,319 --> 00:25:30,119
hold office thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment

325
00:25:30,599 --> 00:25:36,279
says that former officials and military leaders in the Confederate

326
00:25:36,279 --> 00:25:41,559
States are not allowed to hold office. And this means

327
00:25:41,599 --> 00:25:44,960
that anyone that has any connection, and no one has

328
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:48,640
to dig very far to find connections. Virtually all Southerners

329
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:54,319
were engaged in the purchase of war bonds. Virtually all

330
00:25:54,559 --> 00:25:57,759
white Southerners were engaged in the war effort. If not

331
00:25:58,079 --> 00:26:03,240
their own sons going off to war, then it was

332
00:26:03,279 --> 00:26:05,839
their you know, it was their nephew, it was their cousin.

333
00:26:07,799 --> 00:26:09,839
It doesn't take much of an accusation. I don't I

334
00:26:09,839 --> 00:26:13,440
don't really know how that would work legally to connect

335
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:18,759
these people to the Confederate war effort. But they're they're

336
00:26:18,759 --> 00:26:22,039
basically disenfranchised from participating. And and to make it even

337
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:27,240
even worse, once Congress takes over, once the radical Republicans

338
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:33,079
in Congress take over reconstruction, once they they initiate the

339
00:26:33,119 --> 00:26:37,640
impeachment of President Johnson, which is its own its own story.

340
00:26:39,599 --> 00:26:44,559
The South is treated as conquered military territory and subjected

341
00:26:44,599 --> 00:26:48,640
to martial law. And the Southern States are divided into

342
00:26:48,880 --> 00:26:54,599
military districts, and though they they have a nominal civil government,

343
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:59,279
the military governors who are all former Union generals, and

344
00:26:59,319 --> 00:27:03,920
sometimes they're brutal Union generals, like Philip Sheridan who burned

345
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:08,039
up the Shenandoah Valley. Philip Sheridan was put in charge

346
00:27:08,039 --> 00:27:14,160
of Louisiana and Texas, which was military District number seven.

347
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,880
Maybe I forget the numbers of the districts. Is much

348
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:22,119
easier to say Louisiana and Texas. But Philip Sheridan was

349
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,519
put in charge of that area, and he could overrule

350
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,480
any executive in the area. He could overrule the governors,

351
00:27:29,519 --> 00:27:33,920
he could overrule the mayors, he could over overrule any

352
00:27:34,039 --> 00:27:38,359
any executive decision maker in the area. So he was

353
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:43,519
ultimately the guy in charge. And they didn't have trial

354
00:27:43,599 --> 00:27:49,279
by jury, they didn't have habeas corpus. This is all.

355
00:27:49,319 --> 00:27:52,160
This is all very important. I remember when when I

356
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,920
was I had a fellowship with the World War Two

357
00:27:55,960 --> 00:28:04,000
Museum and we all got sent to Hawaii. I was

358
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:09,960
part of various discussions and lessons about martial law in Hawaii.

359
00:28:11,079 --> 00:28:15,319
And I had all of these leftist public school teachers

360
00:28:15,759 --> 00:28:19,759
moaning and groaning about how civil rights got suspended in

361
00:28:19,799 --> 00:28:25,079
Hawaii for so long during the war with the Japanese,

362
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:28,839
and they were so paranoid about Japanese Americans. And I said, well,

363
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:33,839
you're forgetting another episode of this reconstruction, and that they

364
00:28:33,839 --> 00:28:36,359
had never heard that there was martial law in the

365
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:39,079
South after the Civil War that lasted so long. It

366
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,880
lasted until eighteen seventy six, when the last pieces of

367
00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:44,160
it were finally dismantled.

368
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,519
Speaker 1: But what was the name of the act? I can't remember.

369
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,799
It was named after a German I think what was

370
00:28:50,839 --> 00:28:53,279
the name of the act that basically made all property

371
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:59,880
part of the state. I used to know it by heart.

372
00:29:01,519 --> 00:29:02,279
Speaker 2: I don't know this one.

373
00:29:03,039 --> 00:29:06,359
Speaker 1: It's been years, been years years. I'll try and look

374
00:29:06,359 --> 00:29:07,640
it up while you go on.

375
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:13,319
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So we've we've talked a lot about

376
00:29:13,519 --> 00:29:19,319
the legal, the industrial circumstances of the post war South.

377
00:29:21,039 --> 00:29:25,759
Things are extremely bad and also very uncertain. You may

378
00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:31,480
remember UH Lincoln very famously in his second inaugural address,

379
00:29:31,599 --> 00:29:34,039
he says that he wants to bind up the country's

380
00:29:34,079 --> 00:29:37,720
wounds with malice towards none and charity for all. And

381
00:29:38,319 --> 00:29:43,799
he also he also makes a couple of important communications

382
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:49,079
the month of his assassination when he's talking about pardoning Confederates,

383
00:29:50,359 --> 00:29:54,799
he's talking he was he was always very consistent about

384
00:29:55,079 --> 00:30:00,279
the Confederate armies disbanding and the Southern States sending their

385
00:30:00,319 --> 00:30:07,920
representatives back to Congress, the idea being that they never

386
00:30:08,119 --> 00:30:13,720
left the Union. They're still in the Union. Secession is impossible. Okay.

387
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:16,519
This is one of the one of the things that

388
00:30:16,599 --> 00:30:23,960
makes studying reconstruction maddening and very irritating for virtually everyone.

389
00:30:24,079 --> 00:30:27,759
And I understand the frustration people have here, but I

390
00:30:27,759 --> 00:30:29,960
also think it's very important and I'm trying to I'm

391
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:32,839
trying to popularize it. People need to know about these things.

392
00:30:34,640 --> 00:30:38,240
It's that it doesn't make any sense the way that

393
00:30:38,319 --> 00:30:42,799
it was done. It really doesn't make any sense. The

394
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:47,319
Southern States, under the authority of Congress, after they've defanged

395
00:30:47,359 --> 00:30:54,400
President Johnson, they're treated as conquered military territory, and they

396
00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:00,680
the representatives voted on by those Southern governments. Immediately after

397
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:06,599
the war, they immediately elect former military and Confederate officials

398
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,880
because those are the leaders of the voting population of

399
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:15,599
the South. The men in uniform and in office in

400
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:18,480
the Southern, in the Southern Confederacy during the Civil War,

401
00:31:18,599 --> 00:31:23,200
are the actual leadership of the South. When they get

402
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:30,119
sent to Congress in eighteen sixty five, the radical Republicans

403
00:31:30,119 --> 00:31:33,279
who've been running everything in the federal government for the

404
00:31:33,359 --> 00:31:37,799
last four years and are extremely bitter and paranoid about

405
00:31:37,839 --> 00:31:44,480
the assassination of Lincoln, they deny them their seats and

406
00:31:44,599 --> 00:31:48,519
send them home. Now, this is a certain level, this

407
00:31:48,599 --> 00:31:51,200
makes good sense because I mean, I mean, we can

408
00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:56,799
understand why this is happening. Georgia elected former Vice President

409
00:31:56,920 --> 00:32:02,720
Alexander Hamilton Stevens as their senator, and we expect him

410
00:32:02,759 --> 00:32:09,160
to join Thatadius Stevens and Senator Sumner of Massachusetts. Is

411
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:11,519
he actually going to sit in the same body as

412
00:32:11,559 --> 00:32:16,880
those men. No, they will murder him before they allow

413
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,119
that to happen. And so it's no surprise that they

414
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:23,519
close the door for these people. But does that mean

415
00:32:23,559 --> 00:32:26,240
that the Southern states actually left the Union? Well, it's

416
00:32:26,279 --> 00:32:31,839
an academic question. In short, they're treated as conquered military territory.

417
00:32:33,079 --> 00:32:36,799
Now we get to a very interesting part. Let's shift

418
00:32:36,839 --> 00:32:43,279
gears at this point in time Republican leadership with people

419
00:32:43,519 --> 00:32:50,200
like the famous, the famous Hater of Congress, Thaddeus Stevens,

420
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:57,720
the brutal and bloodthirsty Thus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and people

421
00:32:57,759 --> 00:33:02,839
like Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who Preston Brooks famously caned

422
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:08,799
back before the war, and other radicals Benjamin Butler, the

423
00:33:08,839 --> 00:33:15,359
famous General Benjamin Butler, famous famously nicknamed Beast Butler by

424
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,079
the indignant women of the South who he had insulted

425
00:33:18,160 --> 00:33:23,279
and given his men licensed to sexually assault in New Orleans.

426
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:30,400
He becomes Senator from Massachusetts as well. These vindictive radical

427
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:40,440
Republicans start making utterly preposterous and irresponsible speeches claiming that

428
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:46,200
the white population of the South, the disloyal ex Confederates,

429
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:54,119
our traders deserve the Hangman's news, should be expelled from

430
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:59,240
the territory, should be forced to immigrate. They are openly

431
00:33:59,359 --> 00:34:08,559
talking of ethnically cleansing conquered Southern territory and seizing all

432
00:34:08,639 --> 00:34:15,320
the property and transferring that to the freedman. In doing so,

433
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:22,400
they will make the loyal freedmen a permanent Republican voting

434
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:26,000
base in the South and the Party of the Union.

435
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,360
According to Thaddeus Stevens, who spoke very openly about this,

436
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:35,400
the Party of the Union will be the American Party,

437
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:41,880
dominating all of the federal government going forward with that

438
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:45,599
permanent stock of voters. Now, this is very interesting because

439
00:34:45,679 --> 00:34:52,599
we talk these days about ethnic loyalties of demographics to

440
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:57,199
political parties, and this is something that is that is

441
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,960
talked up quite a bit at that time. So it's

442
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:02,559
very useful to look at that and to look at

443
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:08,719
promises and patronage that are involved with that, even during reconstruction.

444
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:13,440
It's a very useful object lesson however, and this is

445
00:35:13,480 --> 00:35:22,599
a very important point. This is an existential sort of pledge.

446
00:35:21,559 --> 00:35:29,199
The continued existence of an entire distinct demographic in the

447
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:34,599
United States is threatened by this proposal. Now they are

448
00:35:34,599 --> 00:35:39,079
not talking about exterminating them, they're talking about forcing them

449
00:35:39,079 --> 00:35:44,639
to immigrate, but that is ethnic cleansing. And how many

450
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:49,039
people might die under these circumstances, being that they're already

451
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:54,840
facing famine. The Union Army is already distributing rations military

452
00:35:54,920 --> 00:36:01,840
rations to the civilian population in several southern regions. Interestingly,

453
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:04,760
and I don't want to get sidetracked on this, the

454
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:10,400
reconstruction Governor of Mississippi later on, several years later, estimates

455
00:36:10,599 --> 00:36:14,440
that a significant portion of the black population of Mississippi

456
00:36:14,519 --> 00:36:18,320
starves to death in the years following the end of

457
00:36:18,360 --> 00:36:22,760
the war. That's still a big open question. We don't

458
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:25,079
really understand what's going on there. We don't have those stories.

459
00:36:25,119 --> 00:36:29,000
We don't know. Over in South Carolina, something like one

460
00:36:29,119 --> 00:36:33,119
tenth of the black population of South Carolina disappears between

461
00:36:33,159 --> 00:36:37,639
eighteen sixty and eighteen seventy. That's tens of thousands of individuals.

462
00:36:38,239 --> 00:36:41,599
There is some reason to think that they starved at

463
00:36:41,639 --> 00:36:46,360
some point, either during the war or immediately after. It

464
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:50,360
wouldn't be at all surprising to discover that is true.

465
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:52,800
But the problem is we don't know that for sure,

466
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:55,360
so we can't say that for sure. But we do

467
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,400
know that there are large portions of the black population

468
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:02,920
that disappear in the records in this period. They were

469
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:05,320
there in the census of eighteen sixty, they aren't there

470
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:07,559
in the census of eighteen seventy, and we do not

471
00:37:07,760 --> 00:37:11,679
know what happened to them. We assume they're dead or

472
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:16,320
they're across the country under another name, which is possible

473
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:22,199
but also unlikely. Anyway, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner. They talk

474
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:28,000
about forty acres and a mule for every freedman. That

475
00:37:28,039 --> 00:37:34,559
would require the confiscation of property in the South, the

476
00:37:34,639 --> 00:37:39,599
dispossession of ex confederates in the South. The radical Republicans

477
00:37:39,599 --> 00:37:44,400
say this is all justified based on treating ex confederates

478
00:37:44,440 --> 00:37:48,000
as traders. They have no rights, they have no citizenship.

479
00:37:48,159 --> 00:37:50,000
We don't have to charge them in a court of

480
00:37:50,079 --> 00:37:54,119
law and do a legal procedure. We can just confiscate. However,

481
00:37:54,920 --> 00:38:00,599
most irresponsibly, most cynically, and I must insist on this point.

482
00:38:00,639 --> 00:38:04,840
This was a cynical ploy. This was a political move

483
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:12,920
to win a short term loyalty of the black Southern population.

484
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:21,159
Because none of these irresponsible cretns who promised these things

485
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:25,840
in Congress, people like Benjamin Butler, people like that Eus Stevens,

486
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:31,840
none of these bloodthirsty cretns ever actually put a bill

487
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:35,719
to vote on the subject. So if it was a

488
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:38,599
serious political proposal and they actually wanted to do it,

489
00:38:39,199 --> 00:38:42,599
they actually wanted to do like the purgation of Kulaks

490
00:38:42,679 --> 00:38:46,719
in the South, they never put their money on the

491
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,679
table and actually made a serious proposal to do it.

492
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:57,639
And this meant that it was nothing more than a

493
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:05,840
demagogic rumor of incredible political consequences. All right, So the

494
00:39:06,639 --> 00:39:13,320
next stage, if you will, the Republican Party. During the war,

495
00:39:13,599 --> 00:39:18,559
in eighteen sixty two, a bunch of elite Philadelphians form

496
00:39:19,039 --> 00:39:23,519
a fraternity. I like telling stories of fraternities. It's an

497
00:39:23,519 --> 00:39:27,360
awful lot of fun. This one still exists. It's called

498
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,239
the Union League, and it's in Philadelphia, and it's one

499
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:34,920
of the premier elite fraternities that still exists today. I

500
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:39,920
understand they can keep their membership of a certain caliber

501
00:39:40,639 --> 00:39:44,719
through their very high initiation prices. If you want to

502
00:39:44,800 --> 00:39:47,639
join today, it might cost you fifty grand or something

503
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,960
just as an initiation fee. So they keep the riff

504
00:39:52,079 --> 00:39:54,719
raff out that way. But they have an awesome clubhouse

505
00:39:54,760 --> 00:39:58,760
and things like that. It's pretty cool just as a fraternity.

506
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,920
But they were they called themselves the Union League. They

507
00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:06,719
were a Republican club, and they were formed as a

508
00:40:07,079 --> 00:40:12,320
fraternal aid association to help Union veterans and to support

509
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:18,000
the war effort, in particular Lincoln's reelection, and then during

510
00:40:18,039 --> 00:40:22,639
reconstruction they became a very important force of Republican politics

511
00:40:22,639 --> 00:40:27,360
in the South, which is an important sidetrack. The Republican

512
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,159
Party did not exist in the South in eighteen sixty

513
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,559
It did not have any organization in the South. Now,

514
00:40:35,039 --> 00:40:40,280
some people say, well, if they could have just grabbed

515
00:40:40,920 --> 00:40:45,360
enough people to formally incorporate as the Republican Party in

516
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:47,920
southern states, then Abraham Lincoln would have gotten a few

517
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,519
votes in the Southern states. Well, maybe so, but they

518
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:55,000
didn't even have that level of organization to recognize the

519
00:40:55,039 --> 00:40:59,079
Republican Party in states like Virginia, in states like Georgia,

520
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:04,599
in the states that became the Confederacy, and border states

521
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:10,639
like Kentucky. Abraham Lincoln did not receive a single vote

522
00:41:11,880 --> 00:41:15,920
in eighteen sixty one or in eighteen sixty when he

523
00:41:16,039 --> 00:41:21,480
ran that he was inaugurated in sixty one. There was

524
00:41:21,519 --> 00:41:26,119
no organization on the ground. The Union League had the resources,

525
00:41:26,639 --> 00:41:31,760
had the connections with the elites that they planted the

526
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,639
Republican Party on the ground in the Southern states by

527
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:39,760
organizing two, well, let's say three important groups in the South.

528
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:47,760
Number one the newly enfranchised freedmen. No surprise. Okay, hey

529
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,840
y'all sign up here, We're gonna get you forty acres

530
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:54,000
in a mule We're gonna seize the property of the

531
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:57,199
ex Confederate whites and we're gonna give it to you,

532
00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:02,840
and you'll all be farmers. Okay, So it's a massive

533
00:42:03,079 --> 00:42:09,800
land grab, redistribution plant, massive wealth transfer plant. Okay. Second

534
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,920
group is carpetbaggers from the North, many of whom are

535
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:18,119
already Republicans, but not all. Okay, I'm interested in giving

536
00:42:18,159 --> 00:42:21,360
the carpetbaggers their due. All right, we can understand why

537
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:25,119
Southerners hate it and load them, why it became a byword,

538
00:42:26,159 --> 00:42:29,360
et cetera, et cetera. I want to acknowledge all that,

539
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:31,039
but I also want to give them their due. They

540
00:42:31,039 --> 00:42:34,159
weren't all Republican radicals, and they did serve a useful

541
00:42:34,159 --> 00:42:39,719
economic role. Okay. Third is what we call scalawags. The

542
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:47,079
scalawags are Republicans or they become Republicans. They are ex

543
00:42:47,440 --> 00:42:56,199
Confederate Republican converts who join the Republican effort in this

544
00:42:56,519 --> 00:42:59,559
on the state level and later on the federal level.

545
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:04,559
In the s Outh. Among them are some really interesting people.

546
00:43:05,079 --> 00:43:11,000
Uh people like General James Longstreet, uh Lee's trust trustee

547
00:43:11,039 --> 00:43:18,039
lieutenant people like oh, I'm forgetting his name now, Edward

548
00:43:18,159 --> 00:43:22,480
Porter Alexander there he is the chief of Artillery in

549
00:43:22,559 --> 00:43:27,800
the Army of Northern Virginia. Other other people, General William

550
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:33,159
Mahone of Virginia, one of the great stalwarts of the

551
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:37,599
Siege of Petersburg, becomes a Republican during reconstruction. We call

552
00:43:37,719 --> 00:43:41,880
these these men scallawags. And that is another term of

553
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:49,599
of uh disapprobation. Uh another slur. It's like it's like

554
00:43:49,679 --> 00:43:54,599
a synonym FI trader. Okay, Uh. Southerners who become Republican Okay,

555
00:43:54,679 --> 00:43:57,079
So those are the people the Union League is appealing to.

556
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:02,559
The Union League organizes here are military groups across the South.

557
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:11,039
To make things even more harry, the federal garrisons in

558
00:44:11,199 --> 00:44:17,840
the Southern States are made of mostly United States colored troops.

559
00:44:20,599 --> 00:44:25,679
So the federal soldiers that intervene on behalf of the

560
00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:28,719
Republican state governments in the South. Now that the ex

561
00:44:28,840 --> 00:44:34,000
Confederate Democrats have been proscribed and forbidden to participate the

562
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:40,840
state governments, the local governments become Republican dominated. If you

563
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,920
could just imagine what would happen in a place where

564
00:44:44,039 --> 00:44:48,679
you have outlawed the opposition party. They cannot vote, they

565
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:52,760
cannot run for office. They must apply for a presidential

566
00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:59,840
pardon to participate. They have no habeas corpus, they have

567
00:45:00,079 --> 00:45:03,480
have no trial by jury. If they have a problem,

568
00:45:03,639 --> 00:45:06,159
they have to go to the Union general who's in

569
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:13,320
charge of the court's martial, who you know as a Confederate.

570
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:17,280
They killed that union general's nephew, they killed that Union

571
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:19,800
general's brother. They've got a lot of bad blood, and

572
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:21,519
he is not going to give them a fair shake.

573
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:28,119
And under these circumstances, everyone would agree that's that's natural.

574
00:45:28,639 --> 00:45:31,039
More or less, you could not expect a fair shake

575
00:45:31,119 --> 00:45:39,320
in this system. And the freedmen who own nothing, who

576
00:45:39,440 --> 00:45:44,320
are eighty to ninety percent illiterate, who do not know

577
00:45:44,480 --> 00:45:48,800
the law, who do not have any tradition of civic responsibility,

578
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:52,519
they haven't been trained for this role. And now I'm

579
00:45:52,559 --> 00:45:55,239
not here to disparage them, Okay, I'm here just to

580
00:45:55,480 --> 00:46:03,039
try to explain what's going on. They are now the electorate,

581
00:46:04,400 --> 00:46:08,840
they have the ability to elect officials. Now let me

582
00:46:09,079 --> 00:46:12,880
let me explain what this results in. Not only is

583
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:19,039
the Union League arming freedmen, organizing them into paramilitary groups

584
00:46:19,639 --> 00:46:25,840
led by demagogic carpetbackers. So Northern nurse who have just

585
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:30,519
come down, just bought property, can run for office. Are

586
00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:37,840
now leading armed groups of black freedmen with the with

587
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:42,679
the rallying cry forty acres in a mule for every freedman,

588
00:46:43,679 --> 00:46:50,400
let's seize it from the white farmers and the government.

589
00:46:51,639 --> 00:46:56,239
The nominal government is made up of Republicans voted in

590
00:46:56,639 --> 00:47:03,079
by the freedmen. The the white electorate who ran everything

591
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:10,280
up to this point are disenfranchised, are forbidden to participate,

592
00:47:11,559 --> 00:47:17,159
are turned around and sent home. When they are elected nominally,

593
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:27,519
they are They're put in this this alarming, terrifying situation

594
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:33,800
where they are listening to speeches in their towns. They're

595
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:37,280
listening to speeches saying we will dispossess the white population,

596
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:41,079
we will force them into exile, we will see them

597
00:47:41,159 --> 00:47:47,199
all leave. To give you an example of the results

598
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:55,880
of this, of this ploy, you see really wild characters

599
00:47:56,519 --> 00:48:02,719
like Henry Clay Warmouth elected as governor in Louisiana. Henry

600
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:06,360
Clay Warmouth is a guy that I I have some

601
00:48:06,519 --> 00:48:11,800
affection for as a Louisiana character, and I like characters

602
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,119
in my own state. Henry Clay Warmouth is one of

603
00:48:15,159 --> 00:48:18,119
the most infamous men ever elected to office in the

604
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:24,920
United States. He was accused of stealing his company's payroll.

605
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:29,639
He was in an Illinois regiment in the war. For

606
00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:37,039
whatever reason, I believe he got a presidential pardon. I don't.

607
00:48:37,079 --> 00:48:39,920
I don't know the details of his court martial, but

608
00:48:40,039 --> 00:48:44,880
he was court martialed or corruption, he was released and reinstated.

609
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:50,920
Weird situation. So a man of controversy at the least, Okay,

610
00:48:51,039 --> 00:48:53,840
whether or not he actually did something. During the war.

611
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,800
He becomes a carpetbag character in Louisiana. He's only in

612
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:01,400
his twenties. I heard I forget just how old he

613
00:49:01,519 --> 00:49:05,199
is when he's elected governors, but he is a young firebrand.

614
00:49:07,559 --> 00:49:10,440
The center of politics at the time. And also the

615
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,719
post war capital of Louisiana is New Orleans. Baton Rouge

616
00:49:14,760 --> 00:49:17,679
has been utterly destroyed, and it's years before the capital

617
00:49:17,719 --> 00:49:21,599
moves back up the river. So New Orleans is capital.

618
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:28,760
Henry Clay Warmouth gives outrageous speeches to the freedmen in

619
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:31,519
New Orleans. Why would he speak to a white audience.

620
00:49:31,599 --> 00:49:38,159
They've all been disenfranchised, basically, okay, his speeches. In his speeches,

621
00:49:38,199 --> 00:49:42,679
he promises that he will, as governor, invent a machine

622
00:49:43,119 --> 00:49:46,119
that will trade the blood of a black man for

623
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:48,840
a white man's blood, so he will make them white

624
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:54,559
on the inside. He repeats this promise a couple of times,

625
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,119
and when he's speaking to a group of white Republicans,

626
00:50:00,039 --> 00:50:02,880
he plays it off as a great joke and they

627
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:07,840
all laugh, not surprisingly because he never had any intention

628
00:50:08,039 --> 00:50:11,920
of doing anything on that front. No one imagined such

629
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:15,239
a thing as possible. But it does give us a

630
00:50:15,239 --> 00:50:19,519
little insight into what did the black electorate want. They

631
00:50:19,599 --> 00:50:23,400
wanted to be like white people. They wanted to be competent, educated,

632
00:50:25,159 --> 00:50:28,760
you know, equal on the inside. That's what they wanted,

633
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:32,480
and that's what they voted for, and they got Henry

634
00:50:32,559 --> 00:50:37,400
klay Warmuth, who becomes a multi millionaire on a salary

635
00:50:37,519 --> 00:50:39,840
of like twenty thousand a year or something. He becomes

636
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:44,679
a multimillionaire in his first couple of years. When newspapers

637
00:50:44,679 --> 00:50:48,280
interview him about this, he says, yeah, I'm corrupt. Corruption

638
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:52,119
is the fashion. Everyone's doing it. I just do it better,

639
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:57,480
and you're jealous. So he's really in your face about it.

640
00:50:59,159 --> 00:51:04,239
He has the audacity, and my goodness, is the man audacious.

641
00:51:04,400 --> 00:51:11,000
You can't help but admire his spunk, his brazenness. He

642
00:51:11,159 --> 00:51:14,440
writes a memoir after his term of office, and he

643
00:51:14,519 --> 00:51:21,760
does something very interesting. He describes his tumultuous administration where

644
00:51:22,079 --> 00:51:25,199
he is finally impeached. Even though he is the Republican

645
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,639
carpetbag governor. The Republicans themselves have too much problem with him,

646
00:51:29,679 --> 00:51:33,360
and they impeach him and replace him with arguably the

647
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:39,480
first black governor in American history PBS Pinchback PBS pinchback,

648
00:51:39,519 --> 00:51:44,599
and interesting Louisiana character not elected, but was lieutenant governor

649
00:51:44,679 --> 00:51:49,559
under Warmouth and was what was it, governor pro tempore

650
00:51:50,559 --> 00:51:54,400
of Louisiana, first black governor in America because Henry Clay

651
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:58,920
Warmouth was removed from office by impeachment. Warmouth writes in

652
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:06,800
his memoirs that his opposition is so scary that the

653
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,559
white population of Louisiana should be thankful it was him

654
00:52:09,639 --> 00:52:16,880
and not someone else. He describes the New Orleans Tribune Party.

655
00:52:18,039 --> 00:52:22,079
So the New Orleans Tribune starts out as Les Union,

656
00:52:22,519 --> 00:52:26,920
which is the very first African American owned newspaper in America.

657
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:31,679
It started in eighteen sixty two during the Federal occupation

658
00:52:31,760 --> 00:52:38,840
of New Orleans as a French French newspaper directed at

659
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:45,760
the the African American French speaking population of New Orleans.

660
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:48,480
So these are really interesting set of people. There are

661
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:53,719
a lot of freedmen among this group. They've been free

662
00:52:54,119 --> 00:52:58,599
for many years before the Civil War. They have resources,

663
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:03,360
enough resources to start newspaper. They are literate and they

664
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:08,639
are writing in French, specifically for the French, the French

665
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:12,400
literate Black population of New Orleans. So this is a

666
00:53:12,559 --> 00:53:17,159
very niche set of people. They're all Roman Catholic as well,

667
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:19,280
which is also very interesting. They're all black, but they're

668
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:25,159
all Roman Catholic. Their editorial line is fascinating. They reform

669
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:27,760
after the war as a dual language newspaper. They start

670
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:31,599
writing in English and they call themselves the New Orleans Tribune.

671
00:53:33,119 --> 00:53:37,440
Their editorial line is that the post war South should

672
00:53:37,639 --> 00:53:43,400
take as its model Hati, which is not surprising because

673
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:49,320
that is where these people came from. What they propose

674
00:53:50,199 --> 00:53:54,679
is a race war, and they're proposing it in print,

675
00:53:55,159 --> 00:53:58,719
in black and white in New Orleans. They have enough

676
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:04,960
clout to distribute their paper to every registered Republican in

677
00:54:05,039 --> 00:54:10,400
the state of Louisiana at state expense. They got a

678
00:54:10,599 --> 00:54:16,440
subsidy from the carpetbag government to distribute this newspaper all

679
00:54:16,559 --> 00:54:20,559
across the state, and that's how they're able to stay

680
00:54:20,559 --> 00:54:22,760
in business. And evidently it was pretty good business. So

681
00:54:23,679 --> 00:54:27,960
Henry Clay Warmouth, they're also distributing it to people in Congress. Okay,

682
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:31,079
they're distributing it to the Republicans up in Congress and DC.

683
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:38,079
So they're publicizing all kinds of propaganda anyway, Henry Clay

684
00:54:38,119 --> 00:54:40,960
Warmouth says, Okay, y'all don't like me. You think that

685
00:54:41,039 --> 00:54:45,119
I'm so bad. This was your alternative and I was

686
00:54:45,199 --> 00:54:47,079
holding them at bay so that they couldn't do what

687
00:54:47,159 --> 00:54:49,320
they wanted. And we all know what happened in Haiti's

688
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:53,280
so you can't hate me too much. And he's got

689
00:54:53,360 --> 00:55:00,280
a point. So Henry Clay Warmouth, who survives on until

690
00:55:00,639 --> 00:55:05,800
the Huey Long administration before he dies and is quoted

691
00:55:06,039 --> 00:55:11,440
disparaging Huey Long, thinks Huey Long is an amateur, a

692
00:55:11,639 --> 00:55:15,760
very funny guy. I like to eulogize Henry Clay Warmouth

693
00:55:16,159 --> 00:55:23,800
at Metarie's cemetery. So promise is made. The radical Republicans

694
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:28,800
are making these outrageous, very dangerous promises. The Union League

695
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:32,119
is formed. They have paramilitary groups they are intimidating people

696
00:55:32,519 --> 00:55:35,199
on election day. They are marching in the street, they

697
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:39,159
are doing military drills. They are saying they will confiscate

698
00:55:39,199 --> 00:55:43,519
property by force if necessary. There is no legislation for this,

699
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:51,440
but everybody knows that the situation is increasingly dangerous. And

700
00:55:51,599 --> 00:55:55,559
then something very interesting happens, and now I need to

701
00:55:56,519 --> 00:55:58,360
to shift gears once again.

702
00:56:00,079 --> 00:56:00,519
Speaker 1: The clan.

703
00:56:02,440 --> 00:56:06,320
Speaker 2: Now this is going out all over the internet, so

704
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:10,440
I want to be very clear here. I am interested

705
00:56:10,519 --> 00:56:13,280
in the history of the period, and I'm trying to

706
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:18,960
explain what's going on, and I'm trying to give clear exposition.

707
00:56:21,199 --> 00:56:26,719
When people talk about the clan, people get very emotional.

708
00:56:29,039 --> 00:56:32,800
I would like to say at the Oddset, I encourage

709
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:35,039
you to believe whatever you want to believe about the Clan,

710
00:56:35,719 --> 00:56:37,599
and I'm not here to tell you otherwise. If you

711
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:40,800
feel that it was something, I want you to believe

712
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:44,440
that it was that thing. Now I'm I'm going to

713
00:56:44,519 --> 00:56:48,239
try to talk about what was going on, right and

714
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:51,280
I want to be clear based on my understanding of

715
00:56:51,440 --> 00:56:54,519
the evidence, and I've worked a lot in this, so

716
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:57,079
I think I know something about what I'm talking about.

717
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:06,480
Right ahead, in eighteen sixty six or thereabouts in Pulaski, Tennessee.

718
00:57:08,000 --> 00:57:13,719
A member of the bar had a meeting with other

719
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:17,599
elites from the neighborhood. So he was an ex Confederate.

720
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,320
His friends were all ex Confederates, and they decided that

721
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:30,840
they were going to form their own secret paramilitary vigilante organization,

722
00:57:32,199 --> 00:57:36,719
and they picked as their name, the Ku Klux Klan. Now,

723
00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:41,199
there is an awful lot of debate among the scholars

724
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:45,079
about just where the name came from. I don't mean

725
00:57:45,159 --> 00:57:48,559
to go into that right here, but there were actually

726
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:56,519
several of paramilitary civil defense. You might say, okay, now

727
00:57:56,559 --> 00:58:02,800
I'm already in trouble. Civil defense. They were advocates for

728
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:08,760
the interests of their communities. They most of them had

729
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:13,440
military experience. They didn't have to train for this. They

730
00:58:13,519 --> 00:58:18,760
already had weapons. They didn't have to make special efforts

731
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:23,400
to arm. They already had experience and skill. But they

732
00:58:23,519 --> 00:58:29,719
formed secret societies for the defense of their communities in

733
00:58:30,039 --> 00:58:37,159
this time of great uncertainty and a special threat. In Louisiana,

734
00:58:37,880 --> 00:58:41,559
the Klan did not predominate. It was an organization called

735
00:58:41,599 --> 00:58:46,199
the Knights of the White Camellia, and there were other

736
00:58:47,239 --> 00:58:50,599
organizations as well. The Knights of the Golden Circle is

737
00:58:51,119 --> 00:58:54,960
another organization that seems to have its roots before the

738
00:58:55,039 --> 00:59:01,039
Civil War, but it seems to persist very interestingly. The

739
00:59:01,679 --> 00:59:09,639
the guy in Pulaski who organized the Klan, allegedly he

740
00:59:10,519 --> 00:59:15,360
was a very prominent member of the Masonic lodge. And

741
00:59:15,519 --> 00:59:21,360
so they already know, Oh, here we go, Judge Thomas M. Jones. Okay,

742
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:27,360
that was his name. He was prominent in the Freemasons.

743
00:59:27,840 --> 00:59:31,280
So they already knew a lot about secrecy and how

744
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:39,000
to keep their initiation and activities secret, and they incorporate

745
00:59:39,639 --> 00:59:42,519
some of that. It's not the same thing, Okay, the

746
00:59:42,599 --> 00:59:45,280
Klan is not the Freemasons, and no one should no

747
00:59:45,360 --> 00:59:51,480
one should confuse the two. But they they obviously pick

748
00:59:51,599 --> 00:59:53,960
up on a number of these those traits of a

749
00:59:54,119 --> 00:59:58,039
secret society and initiation and ritual and things like that.

750
01:00:01,239 --> 01:00:05,719
The clan is mostly active in the Upper South. It's

751
01:00:05,800 --> 01:00:11,000
very active in Tennessee, of course, where it's formed, Alabama,

752
01:00:12,079 --> 01:00:18,199
Northern Mississippi, North Carolina. It is not active in Virginia

753
01:00:19,239 --> 01:00:22,639
as an example, and Virginia is really a special case

754
01:00:22,679 --> 01:00:26,800
for many reasons. Very first Southern state to re enter

755
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:31,119
the Union on equal terms, first Southern state to have

756
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:35,559
the military withdrawn and the restoration of civil law, the

757
01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:39,800
end of martial law, the restoration of trial by jury. Okay,

758
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:45,360
So Virginia is a very special example, and that certainly

759
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:47,800
has something to do with the lack of the presence

760
01:00:47,840 --> 01:00:53,480
of the clan there. These things are connected. Right. If

761
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:57,920
you don't if you don't have civil law, and if

762
01:00:58,000 --> 01:01:02,559
the enforcement of the law is not equal among the citizenry,

763
01:01:04,559 --> 01:01:14,599
then vigilanteism arises in a vacuum of executive power. Organization

764
01:01:16,039 --> 01:01:20,280
is a necessity and anevitability. People will organize and fill

765
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:25,639
that vacuum. And the clan is an example of this,

766
01:01:26,280 --> 01:01:32,800
of this commonly understood political principle about order in society. Now,

767
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:37,719
in that statement, I'm I'm probably beyond the pale for normies,

768
01:01:37,960 --> 01:01:41,280
right there, So be it. If you want to blackbot

769
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:45,000
list me for that, that's fine. That's that seems to

770
01:01:45,079 --> 01:01:49,719
me what's going on, And plenty of historians of the

771
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:56,639
period would agree. Interestingly, I republished, or or I published,

772
01:01:56,679 --> 01:01:59,400
actually for the first time, a collection of monographs by

773
01:01:59,519 --> 01:02:04,480
Walter AL. Fleming. I titled it Southern Concerns. The shorter

774
01:02:04,599 --> 01:02:10,440
writings of Walter L. Fleming In that volume Fleming is

775
01:02:10,519 --> 01:02:15,559
talking about the organization of the clan, and he says,

776
01:02:16,239 --> 01:02:21,239
there are a great many examples of the organization of

777
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:29,840
ethnic interests, even in secret, in the history of Europe,

778
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:34,920
and he names several in particular. I think it's I

779
01:02:34,960 --> 01:02:41,119
think it's fascinating he names Italian groups and German groups.

780
01:02:42,840 --> 01:02:44,679
I don't have them in front of me right now,

781
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:47,559
but that is a very interesting point that he makes,

782
01:02:47,599 --> 01:02:53,159
and he says, this is a European characteristic. Europeans do that,

783
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,159
and no one should be surprised that it happened under

784
01:02:58,199 --> 01:03:02,119
these circumstances in the South after the war. So that's

785
01:03:02,239 --> 01:03:05,119
that's a curious thing right there. They weren't just going

786
01:03:05,239 --> 01:03:08,559
to take it lying down, Okay, So what did they do?

787
01:03:10,559 --> 01:03:17,159
There is a very practical element in the clan's campaign

788
01:03:17,960 --> 01:03:24,280
of intimidation and violence, and whatever whatever we might think

789
01:03:24,320 --> 01:03:28,920
about the justice of this, I want to I want

790
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:32,000
to be clear. It was a campaign of intimidation and violence,

791
01:03:32,119 --> 01:03:36,039
and it was outside of the law, and the law

792
01:03:36,199 --> 01:03:39,000
had been withdrawn in some sense, a military law had

793
01:03:39,039 --> 01:03:42,760
been imposed. Even even without all that taken into account,

794
01:03:42,800 --> 01:03:46,519
it was a campaign of intimidation and violence. What's going on? Okay.

795
01:03:47,559 --> 01:03:52,800
The one of the most practical elements going on here

796
01:03:54,159 --> 01:04:00,760
is the unfaithfulness of sharecroppers. We talked about this at

797
01:04:00,800 --> 01:04:07,800
the beginning of our conversation. The sharecroppers have been initiated

798
01:04:07,880 --> 01:04:15,079
into this new makeshift industrial regime for an economy that

799
01:04:15,480 --> 01:04:21,920
is overwhelmingly agricultural and has no capital and no one

800
01:04:22,079 --> 01:04:29,840
has the credit to pay wages. It's impossible under this regime.

801
01:04:30,719 --> 01:04:34,960
Many of the former slaves are describing conditions that they

802
01:04:35,039 --> 01:04:39,840
call worse than slavery, and they are peons, and no

803
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:44,199
one denies this. Okay, this was an utterly miserable condition

804
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:50,039
to be in. They were promised far more. And the

805
01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:53,360
demagogues in their communities are saying, you don't have to

806
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:57,079
put up with this, And they say, okay, I am

807
01:04:57,360 --> 01:05:01,840
skipping town, I am getting up and I'm leaving. Now

808
01:05:02,039 --> 01:05:06,400
what can they go to? I'd I'd like to make

809
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:10,360
one thing quite clear, Northern states do not want them

810
01:05:10,440 --> 01:05:13,679
there and are taking serious political and practical measures to

811
01:05:13,800 --> 01:05:18,159
keep them from coming. At the very same time, and

812
01:05:18,519 --> 01:05:22,199
this is another another confounding thing about reconstruction, at the

813
01:05:22,360 --> 01:05:28,480
very same time that the Republican congressmen in Washington are

814
01:05:28,599 --> 01:05:32,400
saying that all the slaves have been freed, and all

815
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:35,960
the slaves are citizens, and with the fifteenth Amendment, they

816
01:05:36,079 --> 01:05:39,320
all have the right to vote. They are they're enforcing

817
01:05:40,639 --> 01:05:47,239
military territories who they say, or conquered provinces to ratify

818
01:05:47,280 --> 01:05:50,400
amendments to the Constitution that makes no legal sense at all,

819
01:05:52,079 --> 01:05:55,119
but they are unwilling to do those things in their

820
01:05:55,280 --> 01:06:01,840
own native states. States like Ohio and Indiana, States like

821
01:06:01,920 --> 01:06:08,199
Oregon prohibit the immigration and settlement of free blacks, and

822
01:06:08,320 --> 01:06:12,360
that was the case before the Civil War. So these

823
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:15,559
laws eventually come off the books. Nevertheless, these northern states

824
01:06:15,639 --> 01:06:20,559
remain incredibly antagonistic to freedman immigrating. And there's virtually none

825
01:06:20,599 --> 01:06:25,559
of that that happens. That happens mostly with the phenomenon

826
01:06:25,599 --> 01:06:30,199
we call the Great Migration that happens decades later anyway,

827
01:06:31,199 --> 01:06:36,840
mostly in the twentieth century. Actually, anyway, the clan, the

828
01:06:36,960 --> 01:06:47,079
clan goes to faithless sharecroppers, black sharecroppers primarily. There are

829
01:06:47,159 --> 01:06:50,840
cases of the clan attacking white people, that is, mostly

830
01:06:51,119 --> 01:06:58,000
carpetbaggers and scallawags, but the clan goes to faithless sharecroppers

831
01:06:58,039 --> 01:07:01,239
to intimidate them. And how do they do it, well,

832
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:05,199
it's the characteristic view that we have, if we have

833
01:07:05,320 --> 01:07:08,920
any cultural impression of this at all. They dress up

834
01:07:09,119 --> 01:07:15,320
as ghosts, They ride around, they hoot and holler uh.

835
01:07:15,480 --> 01:07:23,400
They are impersonating the ghosts of dead Confederate soldiers on

836
01:07:23,599 --> 01:07:28,960
a mission of vengeance. That's what they're doing. That's how

837
01:07:29,000 --> 01:07:35,440
they describe themselves. This is all very interesting. Let me uh,

838
01:07:35,639 --> 01:07:42,320
let me read you a example of a clan communicate.

839
01:07:43,840 --> 01:07:48,159
So the Klan, they they're very interested in playing off

840
01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:56,760
the superstitions of the freedmen population, so they they dress

841
01:07:56,800 --> 01:08:02,760
up as ghosts. They they seem go in for sleight

842
01:08:02,840 --> 01:08:08,800
of hand and magic tricks. For instance, a klansman shows

843
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:13,960
up at a sharecropper's hut. There's some reason that he

844
01:08:14,440 --> 01:08:18,039
goes there. We don't really know why the klansman goes there,

845
01:08:18,119 --> 01:08:21,640
but the Klan is very targeted in their actions. Apparently

846
01:08:22,279 --> 01:08:25,439
we have the testimony of the sharecropper on this measure.

847
01:08:26,720 --> 01:08:29,720
Congress opens an investigation and we have an awful lot

848
01:08:29,760 --> 01:08:33,680
of testimony about the activities of the Klan. The klansman

849
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:36,319
shows up at the sharecropper's cabin and asks for a drink.

850
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:41,439
He's dressed in white sheets with a pointy white hat. Right,

851
01:08:42,239 --> 01:08:45,920
so he's dressed rather like a ghost, kind of ghostly looking.

852
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:50,479
He picks up a bucket of water and apparently drains

853
01:08:50,600 --> 01:08:53,720
the entire bucket of water and asks for more. So

854
01:08:53,880 --> 01:08:57,319
he performs something that apparently looks like a superhuman feet.

855
01:08:58,119 --> 01:09:03,600
He says, I haven't drunk a drop since Chickamauga. Okay.

856
01:09:03,920 --> 01:09:06,520
So it's like he's he's the ghost of a dead

857
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:14,399
Confederate and he's he's thirsting like like Lazarus in the parable. Okay,

858
01:09:14,520 --> 01:09:18,560
like he's thirsting in hell, roasted over fire or something.

859
01:09:19,199 --> 01:09:24,279
And he he performs these things. And there are there

860
01:09:24,319 --> 01:09:28,000
are accounts. We have testimony. This is testimony given to

861
01:09:28,079 --> 01:09:32,039
a congressional committee by sharecroppers, by freedmen in the South,

862
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:38,199
that klansmen can dismember themselves. They pick up their limbs

863
01:09:38,319 --> 01:09:43,199
off the ground and carry them away. They can take

864
01:09:43,279 --> 01:09:48,319
off their heads and walk around headless. So there are

865
01:09:48,399 --> 01:09:52,640
these these spooky Halloween magic tricks that they're said to perform.

866
01:09:53,760 --> 01:09:57,000
They burn crosses. This is one of one of their tricks.

867
01:09:57,039 --> 01:09:59,960
I don't I don't know why this has any special significance,

868
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:01,760
but this is something they're very well known to do.

869
01:10:03,279 --> 01:10:08,720
They ride around on horseback with flowing robes and torches

870
01:10:08,800 --> 01:10:13,159
in hand, hooting and hollering and pledging vengeance on those

871
01:10:13,319 --> 01:10:19,800
that violate the code. You know, honor doing what you

872
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:25,119
say you're going to do. Here is a clansman communicate. Now,

873
01:10:25,319 --> 01:10:31,680
imagine every every spelling is every spelling possible is made

874
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:34,159
with a k Okay, So they're being kind of ham

875
01:10:34,640 --> 01:10:38,479
ham fisted on this. They're they're playing up the absurdity

876
01:10:39,199 --> 01:10:41,800
on some level. These these are obviously literate people, but

877
01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:46,760
they're they're also they're playing something up and making a

878
01:10:46,840 --> 01:10:51,119
game out of it. The ku Klux Klan are called

879
01:10:51,199 --> 01:10:57,079
upon to custigate or kill any colored cusses who may

880
01:10:57,279 --> 01:11:02,920
approve the constitution being concocted by the contemptible carpetbaggers at

881
01:11:02,920 --> 01:11:10,840
the capitol. Okay, so just as just as an example,

882
01:11:13,399 --> 01:11:20,680
the clan runs amok around the South. They have massive rallies,

883
01:11:22,199 --> 01:11:25,880
sometimes in the daylight. In places like Huntsville, Alabama, there

884
01:11:25,960 --> 01:11:29,880
is a huge clan rally in the daylight. Thousands of

885
01:11:29,920 --> 01:11:39,680
people show up and they are saying, let's see, they're

886
01:11:39,720 --> 01:11:44,439
saying that they do not want outsiders in their government.

887
01:11:45,800 --> 01:11:49,600
They do not want outsiders running their communities against their

888
01:11:49,640 --> 01:12:00,279
own interests. They are particularly indignant about illiterate members of

889
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:06,239
their state government and local government, in particular school school

890
01:12:06,279 --> 01:12:12,640
officials being illiterate. This this is a really interesting thing.

891
01:12:14,199 --> 01:12:17,479
One of these, one of these clan messages occasionally that

892
01:12:17,680 --> 01:12:22,079
the clan will publish things in southern newspapers to let

893
01:12:22,119 --> 01:12:25,159
their intentions be known and to make warnings and threats.

894
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:31,600
One of these, one of these communicates famously says that

895
01:12:32,439 --> 01:12:37,159
ignorance is the curse of God, and that any illiterate

896
01:12:37,520 --> 01:12:44,119
member of the school organizations, which is obviously freedmen that

897
01:12:44,239 --> 01:12:48,119
were appointed to those positions by a friendly Republican administration,

898
01:12:49,760 --> 01:12:55,399
any illiterate member of the local or state government needs

899
01:12:55,520 --> 01:13:03,199
to resign or flee. And the threat is quite obvious.

900
01:13:03,319 --> 01:13:07,279
And this of course works its way out in extra

901
01:13:07,520 --> 01:13:14,960
judicial lynchings of offenders. So it's quite clear here what's

902
01:13:15,039 --> 01:13:19,760
going on. But I'd like to make something a little

903
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:26,640
more clear, and that is class differences in the white population.

904
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:33,840
Sea Van Woodward in his excellent work The Strange Career

905
01:13:34,079 --> 01:13:38,159
of Jim Crow, which everyone should read, is very short

906
01:13:38,399 --> 01:13:42,000
and it's very clarifying. It's about the origins of segregation.

907
01:13:44,840 --> 01:13:53,279
Woodward writes about the class distinctions regarding the freedmen in

908
01:13:53,439 --> 01:14:01,880
the post war South. He writes that the slave owners,

909
01:14:02,279 --> 01:14:08,279
the former slave owners, who are mostly of the old

910
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:13,439
Southern elite set, we could describe them as aristocrats. They

911
01:14:13,640 --> 01:14:19,800
have a distinctly conservative line towards the freedmen. So the

912
01:14:19,960 --> 01:14:27,520
minority of dispossessed Southern elites have a very conservative approach

913
01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:34,439
towards the former slaves and tend to favor their political integration,

914
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:42,520
their social integration obvious to everyone. If the slaves will

915
01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:48,319
stay in America, if the freedmen, pardon me, if the

916
01:14:48,399 --> 01:14:51,720
freedmen have a destiny as American citizens, then there must

917
01:14:51,760 --> 01:14:57,000
be some training for them to be responsible citizens. And

918
01:14:58,319 --> 01:15:00,960
however you want to call this the the former slave

919
01:15:01,039 --> 01:15:08,239
owners had, as in slavery, a paternal feeling towards the

920
01:15:08,399 --> 01:15:12,600
former slaves, as they did when they were actually slaves

921
01:15:12,640 --> 01:15:18,760
and they were actually responsible for their basic necessary needs

922
01:15:18,800 --> 01:15:24,000
of life. They continued to feel that way after emancipation,

923
01:15:25,039 --> 01:15:28,840
so they tended to take a more conservative political line. Now,

924
01:15:29,199 --> 01:15:32,800
in spite of this, we see elite Southerners in a

925
01:15:32,920 --> 01:15:37,800
couple of states join these vigilante organizations. But I think

926
01:15:37,840 --> 01:15:42,680
a good example of the sort of Southern elite involved

927
01:15:42,720 --> 01:15:48,199
in the clan would be Nathan Bedford Forest. Nathan Bedford Forest,

928
01:15:48,359 --> 01:15:54,720
famous cavalry commander, military genius, hero of Tennessee, was a

929
01:15:55,119 --> 01:15:59,920
self educated entrepreneur who engaged in many forms of business,

930
01:16:00,119 --> 01:16:03,359
including slave trading, which put him kind of at the

931
01:16:03,399 --> 01:16:09,760
bottom of Southern polite society. All right, slave traders were

932
01:16:09,840 --> 01:16:14,119
not welcomed into the higher circles in the South. Nevertheless,

933
01:16:14,720 --> 01:16:22,199
Forrest is a fascinating character. He forms cavalry units in

934
01:16:22,319 --> 01:16:28,640
the war. He brings his capable slaves with him on

935
01:16:28,800 --> 01:16:34,800
his campaigns. He offers his slaves manumission for their service.

936
01:16:35,399 --> 01:16:38,800
They serve loyally by his side. They fight by his

937
01:16:39,000 --> 01:16:41,960
side under his own authority. He arms them and trains them,

938
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:46,399
and they fight along his side. When Forrest Is finally

939
01:16:46,840 --> 01:16:51,520
dies and is buried in Memphis after the war, he

940
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:58,600
is buried by a with a procession of black freedmen

941
01:16:59,000 --> 01:17:04,840
in Memphis who fondly remember him. That's that's a fascinating

942
01:17:05,359 --> 01:17:10,880
episode in in uh the the Saga of Nathan Bedford Forest.

943
01:17:11,560 --> 01:17:15,640
Speaker 1: And they and recent and in recent years, he and

944
01:17:15,720 --> 01:17:22,479
his wife were disinterned in Memphis, and uh yeah, their

945
01:17:22,600 --> 01:17:27,000
grave is I visited his grave, his he and his

946
01:17:27,079 --> 01:17:30,319
wife's grave recently there at a varied a a Confederate

947
01:17:30,399 --> 01:17:32,880
museum in Colombia, Tennessee.

948
01:17:34,239 --> 01:17:39,720
Speaker 2: Is that the sons of Confederate Veterans establishment there in Columbia.

949
01:17:41,159 --> 01:17:45,119
Speaker 1: I believe that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so

950
01:17:45,359 --> 01:17:49,479
it was also the statue, the huge statue of him

951
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:51,359
on his horse is there too. Yeah.

952
01:17:52,319 --> 01:17:58,760
Speaker 2: Oh did they rescue that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, uh it.

953
01:18:00,800 --> 01:18:02,920
I got into history because I like the people that

954
01:18:03,000 --> 01:18:09,159
I read about, and I disagree with plenty of them. Okay,

955
01:18:09,359 --> 01:18:12,039
it's not that I agree with everything they said or did,

956
01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:17,520
but they're dynamic. They did something. What did you do?

957
01:18:19,600 --> 01:18:23,680
You know? Are you the equal of these people? Who

958
01:18:23,760 --> 01:18:28,199
among us could claim to be their equal? So it

959
01:18:28,399 --> 01:18:30,279
just rends my heart to read about things like that.

960
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:34,479
But anyway, yes, very important point. Yeah, it's quite the

961
01:18:34,520 --> 01:18:38,960
contrast to his recent history. The fate of his corpse.

962
01:18:40,399 --> 01:18:46,920
But Forrest Forrest was the wizard of the clan in Tennessee.

963
01:18:47,079 --> 01:18:49,239
He did not found it, but he came to be

964
01:18:49,319 --> 01:18:56,000
in charge of it. Very interestingly. The clan, though it

965
01:18:56,239 --> 01:19:00,520
has elites, in it. Initially we talked about the judge

966
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:06,119
in Pulaski that allegedly formed it. And it attracts Southern

967
01:19:06,199 --> 01:19:15,560
elites in certain areas once the once the violence gets underway,

968
01:19:16,880 --> 01:19:23,720
Southern elites are increasingly alarmed by it and increasingly disinclined

969
01:19:24,039 --> 01:19:30,680
towards it. All right, Forest, Now the sources that we

970
01:19:30,840 --> 01:19:35,079
have about Forest and his role as the Imperial Wizard

971
01:19:35,239 --> 01:19:38,359
of the Clan, which is a very high official in

972
01:19:38,439 --> 01:19:41,239
the clan. The clan has lots of really wild names.

973
01:19:42,119 --> 01:19:46,039
A regular member of the clan is a ghoul. Officers

974
01:19:46,119 --> 01:19:51,760
in the clan are called Grand Exalted Cyclops, a titan,

975
01:19:53,399 --> 01:19:58,359
a wizard. You know, it has all these really wild names. Again,

976
01:19:58,920 --> 01:20:02,640
the purpose is to playoff of superstitions, all right, And

977
01:20:02,760 --> 01:20:07,840
communicates from the clan frequently read like dispatches from demons

978
01:20:07,920 --> 01:20:12,279
in hell, and they play up that aspect, Okay. They

979
01:20:12,960 --> 01:20:17,880
they speak in code, they're talking about days and hours,

980
01:20:18,199 --> 01:20:21,399
and they're they're publishing these things in newspapers, so members

981
01:20:21,439 --> 01:20:23,399
of the clan will know what they're saying, but no

982
01:20:23,479 --> 01:20:27,479
one else will know. And they talk about the Dismal Hour,

983
01:20:28,880 --> 01:20:35,720
the hour of hell fire, the caves of the wicked,

984
01:20:36,399 --> 01:20:41,039
and they use like all sorts of weird mythological terminology.

985
01:20:41,399 --> 01:20:44,960
That's actually a code that the members would understand, but

986
01:20:45,119 --> 01:20:49,000
no one else would. So it's it's a curious thing anyway,

987
01:20:50,239 --> 01:20:53,680
the regular member being a ghoul, like a ghost, like

988
01:20:53,760 --> 01:20:58,199
a zombie. Right, it tells you a bit about what

989
01:20:58,960 --> 01:21:02,640
the act was all about about, and how they were

990
01:21:02,680 --> 01:21:09,239
playing off the fears of the freedmen in particular. But

991
01:21:09,359 --> 01:21:12,880
what was I saying? Oh, Forrest, Forrest attempted to disband

992
01:21:13,119 --> 01:21:23,560
the clan in sixty eight sixty nine. This was not successful. Now,

993
01:21:23,760 --> 01:21:27,560
the reason for it is very interesting, and that is

994
01:21:27,680 --> 01:21:39,760
because the dispossessed small farmers were particularly antagonistic towards the freedmen. Now,

995
01:21:40,279 --> 01:21:44,239
let's remember just what happens to them, and let's have

996
01:21:44,720 --> 01:21:49,439
let's have a bit of understanding. Okay, things don't happen

997
01:21:49,640 --> 01:21:53,439
in history just because you can divide all of humankind

998
01:21:53,640 --> 01:21:58,359
into people who are pure of heart, who have no

999
01:21:58,600 --> 01:22:01,680
ill motives in their soul, and there are people who

1000
01:22:01,920 --> 01:22:05,319
are encouragably evil and can only do wicked things, and

1001
01:22:05,439 --> 01:22:09,159
they must be utterly destroyed and cannot be negotiated with all. Right,

1002
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:16,520
that is a completely blinkered view of humanity. That's not

1003
01:22:17,039 --> 01:22:23,159
how people are. People are all mixtures of good and evil.

1004
01:22:24,800 --> 01:22:29,000
Every person has a dark part in them that can

1005
01:22:29,119 --> 01:22:35,439
come out in certain circumstances. Okay, we're all sinful, we're

1006
01:22:35,479 --> 01:22:40,199
all falling. Okay, this is a basic Christian understanding. And

1007
01:22:40,439 --> 01:22:43,239
some of us are more virtuous than others as well. Okay,

1008
01:22:43,359 --> 01:22:47,800
but none of us are totally good. And a true saint,

1009
01:22:48,640 --> 01:22:51,439
a saint will tell you that he has evil in

1010
01:22:51,600 --> 01:22:56,640
his heart. A true saint will go to confession for this. Okay,

1011
01:22:57,840 --> 01:23:01,600
so let's keep that in mind. The Ku Klux Klan

1012
01:23:02,079 --> 01:23:06,000
is made of human beings who are doing things in

1013
01:23:06,119 --> 01:23:12,000
response to circumstances that we can understand. There I go again,

1014
01:23:12,279 --> 01:23:15,640
saying something that is extremely controversial. I think that this

1015
01:23:16,840 --> 01:23:21,520
is obvious. I truly do. I think this is obvious.

1016
01:23:22,319 --> 01:23:26,039
And that doesn't mean that I think that lynching people

1017
01:23:27,720 --> 01:23:30,119
is a good thing. I don't think that extra judicial

1018
01:23:30,279 --> 01:23:33,079
killing is a good thing. I don't want that. I

1019
01:23:33,159 --> 01:23:39,000
think that should be avoided at at a great sacrifice,

1020
01:23:39,119 --> 01:23:44,760
it should be avoided. But also we need to understand

1021
01:23:44,800 --> 01:23:49,920
the circumstances and reconstruction are unprecedented. When have Americans lived

1022
01:23:50,000 --> 01:23:54,520
under circumstances such as these, and we can understand why

1023
01:23:54,560 --> 01:23:58,279
people are doing what they're doing. All right, So when

1024
01:23:58,840 --> 01:24:06,319
Forrest attempts to disband the clan, it is unsuccessful initially. Okay,

1025
01:24:07,279 --> 01:24:12,079
Forrest again calls for the disbanding of the clan when

1026
01:24:12,239 --> 01:24:16,239
the military government ceases in the South after the election

1027
01:24:16,399 --> 01:24:19,319
of Rutherford B. Hayes, or at least the corrupt bargain

1028
01:24:19,600 --> 01:24:23,560
that makes Rutherford B. Hayes the president. Okay, that is

1029
01:24:23,720 --> 01:24:29,039
when the clan is disbanded. But it's first, the first

1030
01:24:29,039 --> 01:24:33,079
attempts of Southern elites to disband it fails. And that

1031
01:24:33,439 --> 01:24:38,600
is because the white population of the South that didn't

1032
01:24:38,680 --> 01:24:42,520
own slaves before the war, they have been reduced to

1033
01:24:42,640 --> 01:24:47,800
the same level as the former slaves economically, and they've

1034
01:24:48,039 --> 01:24:53,479
been reduced to a level lower than them politically, and

1035
01:24:53,640 --> 01:25:00,680
they are resentful. And these are precisely the people, especially

1036
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:06,199
the lower class. Okay, And I I want to be

1037
01:25:06,319 --> 01:25:09,359
I want to be frank about this. Uh. I mentioned

1038
01:25:09,760 --> 01:25:17,840
Frederick Law Olmsted, the great Northern genius who designed Central

1039
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:22,000
Park in New York City, and it's called the father

1040
01:25:22,119 --> 01:25:28,600
of landscape architecture. Remarkable man, great American travel writer. I

1041
01:25:28,960 --> 01:25:31,319
don't really call him a historian. He was mistaken on

1042
01:25:31,399 --> 01:25:33,600
too many things and is too much of a bad

1043
01:25:33,640 --> 01:25:39,560
influence in that regard. But genius and Frederick law Olmsted

1044
01:25:40,199 --> 01:25:44,119
came up with the term poor white trash to describe

1045
01:25:44,680 --> 01:25:52,520
the lower levels of white Southern society, antabellum society. These

1046
01:25:52,680 --> 01:26:00,720
people are quite vindictive, and they are they are I

1047
01:26:00,840 --> 01:26:05,039
think more represented among the ranks of the Klan. Now

1048
01:26:06,319 --> 01:26:10,159
they're the foot soldiers, if you will, all right, and

1049
01:26:10,319 --> 01:26:13,520
they do not have scruples when it comes to violence,

1050
01:26:13,600 --> 01:26:19,439
so they are more of the Scotch Irish persuasion. So

1051
01:26:19,560 --> 01:26:23,000
they're representing a certain element of that heritage, which is

1052
01:26:23,359 --> 01:26:28,920
a fighting heritage, which is a much more independent sort

1053
01:26:28,960 --> 01:26:34,439
of heritage, has a long history of being on the

1054
01:26:34,520 --> 01:26:39,680
outside of law and polite society and things like that.

1055
01:26:41,680 --> 01:26:47,279
They are used to as they are today by the way,

1056
01:26:47,680 --> 01:26:52,319
they are used to very unfavorable comparisons between them and

1057
01:26:53,079 --> 01:26:59,760
the African American population, and they don't like that, and

1058
01:27:00,319 --> 01:27:04,600
they are quite active in the clan, all right. So

1059
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:10,000
this is uh, this leads, as I said before, to

1060
01:27:10,279 --> 01:27:17,479
a massive congressional investigation, and that produces a huge amount

1061
01:27:17,479 --> 01:27:23,359
of information that we have on the Klan we it's

1062
01:27:23,399 --> 01:27:26,239
a it's got to be a dozen volumes of testimony.

1063
01:27:26,960 --> 01:27:31,680
I've seen condensed versions of it. It's an awful lot

1064
01:27:31,720 --> 01:27:38,119
to weighe through. I would recommend sources on that, but

1065
01:27:38,640 --> 01:27:42,079
there everything is out of print. So give me a chance.

1066
01:27:42,119 --> 01:27:45,319
I might bring some of that back into print. But uh,

1067
01:27:45,840 --> 01:27:49,359
that'd be awesome. Yeah, I'm I'm really hoping to get

1068
01:27:50,520 --> 01:27:56,600
Flemings volumes about documents related to reconstruction back into print. Again,

1069
01:27:58,000 --> 01:28:01,520
who who likes reading primaries so is on reconstruction? Folks,

1070
01:28:01,640 --> 01:28:06,239
raise your hands for me. I'm working for you. I

1071
01:28:06,680 --> 01:28:11,359
love I love doing these nerdy, autistic things, and I

1072
01:28:11,399 --> 01:28:14,439
don't know who I'm doing it for. Encourage me, folks,

1073
01:28:14,520 --> 01:28:18,119
go buy my books. But anyway, but.

1074
01:28:18,319 --> 01:28:20,520
Speaker 1: Sure, I'm sure you could sell them to museums, you

1075
01:28:20,560 --> 01:28:25,079
could sell them through the certain institutes. Yeah, I'm sure that.

1076
01:28:25,439 --> 01:28:28,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just don't want to bring the hammer down

1077
01:28:28,039 --> 01:28:31,319
on them here. I don't want anyone going and persecuting

1078
01:28:31,359 --> 01:28:34,760
them because they're buying books from me. But I I'm

1079
01:28:34,800 --> 01:28:43,960
making headway on that front. Interestingly, Nathan Bedford Forrest actually

1080
01:28:44,239 --> 01:28:50,199
testified to the Congressional Committee, and they did not know

1081
01:28:50,520 --> 01:28:54,560
at that time, nobody knew that he was the Imperial

1082
01:28:54,640 --> 01:29:00,840
Wizard of the Klan in Tennessee. Yet they had the

1083
01:29:00,960 --> 01:29:04,600
Congressional Committee had the good fortune to get his testimony

1084
01:29:05,119 --> 01:29:08,560
concerning the Klan, and they asked him questions about it,

1085
01:29:08,640 --> 01:29:13,000
and he answered, And my knowledge of this i've read.

1086
01:29:13,159 --> 01:29:15,520
I have not read his testimony. I do not have

1087
01:29:15,760 --> 01:29:19,960
that book. I've read quotes from his testimony and the

1088
01:29:20,119 --> 01:29:25,279
assessment of historians on his testimony. The idea of the historians,

1089
01:29:25,319 --> 01:29:28,520
the consensus that I've read of the historians is that

1090
01:29:28,880 --> 01:29:33,079
he did not perjure himself in his testimony. He claimed

1091
01:29:33,159 --> 01:29:35,479
ignorance on a number of points, but he did not

1092
01:29:35,720 --> 01:29:38,800
perjure himself, nor did he reveal his role in the clan,

1093
01:29:38,880 --> 01:29:42,600
which is really quite clever. He was a very cunning man,

1094
01:29:42,800 --> 01:29:47,119
and he handled himself well. Anyway, Here is a quote

1095
01:29:47,159 --> 01:29:53,840
from Forrest on the composition of the clan. My information was, okay,

1096
01:29:54,000 --> 01:29:56,720
that's interesting. It's like, oh, well, I don't I don't

1097
01:29:56,720 --> 01:30:02,640
actually know like other people told me. My information was

1098
01:30:03,439 --> 01:30:07,279
that they admitted no man who was not a gentleman

1099
01:30:08,359 --> 01:30:11,720
and a man who could be relied upon to act discreetly,

1100
01:30:12,880 --> 01:30:16,479
not men who are in the habit of drinking, boisterous men,

1101
01:30:16,800 --> 01:30:22,479
or men liable to commit error or wrong. All of

1102
01:30:22,560 --> 01:30:28,760
that is pretty fascinating because although I've i've really, i've

1103
01:30:28,840 --> 01:30:36,159
really gone after the boisterous Scotch Irish cure the Mountain

1104
01:30:36,239 --> 01:30:42,760
people where clan activity is particularly particularly egregious, we might

1105
01:30:42,840 --> 01:30:48,199
say those are my people. By the way, Okay, I've

1106
01:30:48,239 --> 01:30:50,439
got a lot of Scotch Irish ancestry, and I'm not

1107
01:30:50,720 --> 01:30:55,760
I'm not castigating them, as you know, categorically or anything.

1108
01:30:55,960 --> 01:30:57,840
They're my people, and I know I know the people

1109
01:30:57,920 --> 01:31:03,760
I'm talking about. I'm familiar with them. The record of

1110
01:31:03,800 --> 01:31:08,439
the Klan is also something that speaks for itself. Clan

1111
01:31:08,560 --> 01:31:13,319
members did not reveal who was involved. They were very

1112
01:31:13,399 --> 01:31:20,840
well disciplined, They would not give up their comrades. They

1113
01:31:21,039 --> 01:31:27,479
maintained a strict secrecy. Their activities remain very obscure to us,

1114
01:31:27,840 --> 01:31:32,399
as does their membership. Now that's from this period. Now

1115
01:31:32,479 --> 01:31:35,399
I want you, I want you to note there are

1116
01:31:35,600 --> 01:31:42,159
several incarnations of the clan. There are at least three,

1117
01:31:43,640 --> 01:31:46,039
and I'll tell you a bit about the second one

1118
01:31:46,119 --> 01:31:48,760
in a moment. Just for the sake of clarity, it's

1119
01:31:48,840 --> 01:31:52,720
important that I make that point later. The second klu

1120
01:31:52,800 --> 01:31:56,479
Klux Klan is distinct from the first, and that's an

1121
01:31:56,520 --> 01:32:00,720
important point. But it is very important to note that

1122
01:32:00,760 --> 01:32:06,800
the Ku Klux Klan is active in states with martial law,

1123
01:32:08,279 --> 01:32:13,279
states who are deprived of habeas corpus, trial by jury

1124
01:32:14,079 --> 01:32:20,720
and regular civil government, and the first klu Klux Klan

1125
01:32:21,279 --> 01:32:28,479
of Reconstruction is disbanded when martial law is ended in

1126
01:32:28,640 --> 01:32:34,399
those jurisdictions, and during that time the clan does not

1127
01:32:34,600 --> 01:32:38,159
reveal its membership, and their actions remain very obscure and

1128
01:32:38,239 --> 01:32:43,760
secret and are still a mysterious subject to this day.

1129
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:49,319
There actually aren't very many sources on them. We do have,

1130
01:32:51,159 --> 01:32:55,800
we do have some really interesting material, like oaths that

1131
01:32:55,960 --> 01:32:59,880
were recalled by members after the disbandment of the Klan,

1132
01:33:02,479 --> 01:33:10,239
newspaper communicates of the Klan, other interesting things. Let's see,

1133
01:33:14,399 --> 01:33:21,039
I'm looking for a quote or two. Now, okay, here's some.

1134
01:33:21,199 --> 01:33:24,760
Here's some interesting things that These are not bits from

1135
01:33:24,800 --> 01:33:27,960
the Klan. This is from the Knights of the White Camellia,

1136
01:33:28,119 --> 01:33:32,720
which was which was established in Louisiana and did exist

1137
01:33:32,800 --> 01:33:37,079
in some other places like Texas, The Knights of the

1138
01:33:37,079 --> 01:33:44,760
White Camellia had a preamble. This is a constitution adopted

1139
01:33:44,840 --> 01:33:50,720
in eighteen sixty nine, so during reconstruction, and i'll I'll

1140
01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:54,520
just read some things here as an example, all right,

1141
01:33:56,359 --> 01:34:01,159
whereas radical legislation is subversive of the principles of the

1142
01:34:01,239 --> 01:34:05,199
government of the United States. By radical legislation, they're talking

1143
01:34:05,199 --> 01:34:11,600
about radical Republicans, subversive to the principles of the United

1144
01:34:11,600 --> 01:34:15,800
States as originally adopted by our fathers. And whereas our

1145
01:34:15,880 --> 01:34:19,560
safety and our prosperity depend on the preservation of those

1146
01:34:19,640 --> 01:34:25,479
grand principles and believing that they can be peacefully maintained, Therefore,

1147
01:34:25,560 --> 01:34:30,479
we adopt the following One questions to be asked of

1148
01:34:30,560 --> 01:34:33,880
the candidate. Do you belong to the white race? Two?

1149
01:34:34,560 --> 01:34:37,479
Did you ever marry any woman who did not or

1150
01:34:37,600 --> 01:34:40,800
does not belong to the white race? Three? Did you

1151
01:34:40,880 --> 01:34:44,760
ever promise to marry any woman but one who belongs

1152
01:34:44,800 --> 01:34:45,439
to the white race?

1153
01:34:46,479 --> 01:34:46,640
Speaker 1: Four?

1154
01:34:47,319 --> 01:34:51,319
Speaker 2: Do you believe in the superiority of your race? Five?

1155
01:34:51,840 --> 01:34:54,600
Will you promise never to vote for any one for

1156
01:34:54,760 --> 01:34:58,319
any office of honor, profit, or trust who does not

1157
01:34:58,520 --> 01:35:02,479
belong to your race? Six? Will you take a solemn

1158
01:35:02,479 --> 01:35:06,199
oath never to abstain from castigating from casting your vote

1159
01:35:06,600 --> 01:35:11,359
in any election in which a candidate shall be opposed

1160
01:35:11,399 --> 01:35:14,279
to a white man, attached to your principle, unless we're

1161
01:35:14,319 --> 01:35:18,600
prevented by severe illness or any other physical disability. All right,

1162
01:35:18,880 --> 01:35:26,479
so we see the basic racial antagonism involved here, and

1163
01:35:26,680 --> 01:35:30,760
this is not It doesn't seem to me at all

1164
01:35:31,000 --> 01:35:35,640
surprising given the circumstances. This was their form of government

1165
01:35:37,199 --> 01:35:45,079
in status quo anti and defeat in the war did

1166
01:35:45,199 --> 01:35:51,960
not change their minds. And to go back in conclusion,

1167
01:35:52,239 --> 01:35:54,680
I'm trying to wrap things up here, to go back

1168
01:35:55,760 --> 01:36:07,000
to a earlier point the now I'm now, I've lost

1169
01:36:07,079 --> 01:36:08,680
my train of thought. I'm sorry.

1170
01:36:10,199 --> 01:36:14,800
Speaker 1: Take your time. You're providing a ton of information and

1171
01:36:14,960 --> 01:36:16,039
it's valuable.

1172
01:36:17,319 --> 01:36:25,119
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm missing, I'm missing the point that I

1173
01:36:25,279 --> 01:36:28,319
was that I was searching for just then. So let

1174
01:36:28,399 --> 01:36:31,640
me let me instead wrap up another loose end. And

1175
01:36:31,800 --> 01:36:37,840
that is the second plan. So as I said before,

1176
01:36:39,399 --> 01:36:42,920
and this is an important thing to note. When the

1177
01:36:43,159 --> 01:36:48,319
military garrisons are finally withdrawn from the South in eighteen

1178
01:36:48,520 --> 01:36:55,760
seventy six, the clan is disbanded. Now we have it

1179
01:36:55,960 --> 01:37:01,399
on several authorities that it is so in including Union

1180
01:37:01,640 --> 01:37:10,279
Republican authorities who have been rounding up, literally rounding up

1181
01:37:10,680 --> 01:37:15,319
thousands of people suspected of membership in the Klan in

1182
01:37:15,760 --> 01:37:23,600
the eighteen seventies. This is so egregious, This is such

1183
01:37:23,640 --> 01:37:34,159
a wild abuse of criminal power in the reconstruction South

1184
01:37:34,640 --> 01:37:40,000
that entire towns, all the able bodied men in these

1185
01:37:40,079 --> 01:37:49,399
towns are are getting away. They get they get spooked

1186
01:37:49,720 --> 01:37:53,279
that there is going to be arrayed by federal forces

1187
01:37:53,840 --> 01:37:57,760
to round up people suspected of participating in clan activities,

1188
01:37:58,359 --> 01:38:06,039
and they all ski town. So this increases the uncertainty

1189
01:38:06,399 --> 01:38:10,560
and the dynamism of the time. There are stories of

1190
01:38:10,720 --> 01:38:16,319
farmers that are working with a saddled horse nearby in

1191
01:38:16,479 --> 01:38:23,159
case Marshalls show up trying to arrest them. The vast

1192
01:38:23,279 --> 01:38:27,359
majority of these people accused of membership or participation in

1193
01:38:27,439 --> 01:38:31,199
the Klan. This is over ninety percent of the ones

1194
01:38:31,439 --> 01:38:39,920
arrested are released without without any conviction. There isn't enough

1195
01:38:39,960 --> 01:38:44,399
evidence about them. So this is a really extraordinary period.

1196
01:38:44,560 --> 01:38:48,960
Congress passes special legislation to enable this. The radical Republicans

1197
01:38:49,000 --> 01:38:51,960
are interested in rounding up these people, they are very

1198
01:38:52,079 --> 01:38:58,079
unsuccessful in doing so. Once military reconstruction ends with their

1199
01:38:58,119 --> 01:39:02,239
election of Rutherford Hayes. The troops are withdrawn and the

1200
01:39:02,319 --> 01:39:06,520
Klan disbands. Now I wanted to give you a resource

1201
01:39:06,600 --> 01:39:11,119
on that. I'm going to quote from one hundred American

1202
01:39:11,359 --> 01:39:14,079
The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in

1203
01:39:14,079 --> 01:39:20,359
the nineteen twenties by Thomas Pegram. This is a mainstream work.

1204
01:39:21,640 --> 01:39:24,279
He does not claim to be partisan. Actually he's quite

1205
01:39:24,319 --> 01:39:32,720
the opposite. The Ku Klux Klan was liquidated. Here's the quote.

1206
01:39:33,159 --> 01:39:38,960
Hiram Evans, who was the Imperial Wizard of the Klan

1207
01:39:39,159 --> 01:39:42,760
in the nineteen twenties. All right, so he is he

1208
01:39:43,000 --> 01:39:47,720
is the leader of the second Klan. He said, the

1209
01:39:47,880 --> 01:39:51,840
old Klan was liquidated when its work was finished. The

1210
01:39:51,960 --> 01:39:59,920
new Klan has no essential connection with it. Thomas Pegram

1211
01:40:01,479 --> 01:40:05,000
also says the second Clan was born in nineteen fifteen,

1212
01:40:05,720 --> 01:40:08,800
and it did not prosper until nineteen twenty one. So

1213
01:40:09,840 --> 01:40:15,039
many of our many of our visions or cultural impressions

1214
01:40:15,199 --> 01:40:19,159
of the Ku Klux Klan come from vintage newsreel footage

1215
01:40:19,920 --> 01:40:25,319
of the clan with American flags, marching on the National

1216
01:40:25,479 --> 01:40:37,640
Mall and such things, really wild things. The brain just

1217
01:40:37,720 --> 01:40:39,880
freezes up at these images. We don't know what to

1218
01:40:39,920 --> 01:40:41,680
make of them. We don't know what's going on, and

1219
01:40:42,520 --> 01:40:46,079
a large degree we really don't know what that is

1220
01:40:46,159 --> 01:40:49,359
all about. It's its own subject and it's an interesting subject,

1221
01:40:49,600 --> 01:40:56,159
but it ought to be distinguished. These are people that

1222
01:40:56,359 --> 01:41:02,760
are a generation removed from reconstruction. Also, whatever else we

1223
01:41:02,880 --> 01:41:04,880
might say about the Klan, and there's so much more

1224
01:41:04,920 --> 01:41:09,640
that could be said about it. The Klan, the Second

1225
01:41:09,720 --> 01:41:16,680
Clan is much more active in the North. The North

1226
01:41:16,960 --> 01:41:22,600
is where the clan actually takes over state governments like Indiana.

1227
01:41:23,600 --> 01:41:26,279
The Second klu Klux Klan actually takes over the government

1228
01:41:26,319 --> 01:41:30,399
of Indiana, and I believe the government of Oregon as well.

1229
01:41:31,159 --> 01:41:39,399
So being being where I am and not claiming any

1230
01:41:39,479 --> 01:41:43,680
knowledge of a place like Oregon, I look at the

1231
01:41:43,840 --> 01:41:50,279
modern radicalism and vigilanteism in Portland, for instance, and I think, oh,

1232
01:41:51,479 --> 01:41:55,359
they they have always had this disposition. Uh, They've just

1233
01:41:55,560 --> 01:42:00,640
changed their ideology or something. So I don't know, I

1234
01:42:01,239 --> 01:42:05,239
know knowledge of what goes on out there. I think

1235
01:42:05,279 --> 01:42:08,319
it's a beautiful place and I wish it better than

1236
01:42:09,239 --> 01:42:17,640
paramilitary groups marching around and causing disruption. So yeah, with

1237
01:42:17,840 --> 01:42:24,239
with all that said, I I appreciate your your tolerance

1238
01:42:24,319 --> 01:42:27,479
of my long rambles here. It's a fun subject. I

1239
01:42:28,359 --> 01:42:32,520
like talking about reconstruction, and I hope that this has

1240
01:42:32,600 --> 01:42:36,520
been some somewhat enlightening for our audience here.

1241
01:42:38,840 --> 01:42:41,840
Speaker 1: Absolutely, there were things that you had mentioned that I

1242
01:42:41,960 --> 01:42:46,520
had no I thought I had a good understanding of reconstruction,

1243
01:42:46,600 --> 01:42:49,760
and there was a lot there that was that was enlightening.

1244
01:42:50,399 --> 01:42:54,119
Thank you, And I mean you you have an open

1245
01:42:54,880 --> 01:42:59,079
invitation to come back on the show whenever, and we'll

1246
01:42:59,199 --> 01:43:01,479
just figure out another their topic. I've heard you speak

1247
01:43:01,520 --> 01:43:02,079
on other topic.

1248
01:43:02,079 --> 01:43:03,680
Speaker 2: I've heard you speak on diverse topics.

1249
01:43:04,000 --> 01:43:07,159
Speaker 1: So yeah, it does and always have to be uh

1250
01:43:07,600 --> 01:43:11,159
be on the South or something related to American history.

1251
01:43:11,239 --> 01:43:16,800
I heard the the one that mister Burden uh redid

1252
01:43:17,119 --> 01:43:21,439
recently your your reading of a letter on uh on Zionism,

1253
01:43:21,560 --> 01:43:24,039
and uh yeah, that was that was impressive.

1254
01:43:24,560 --> 01:43:28,399
Speaker 2: Oh, indeed, that one has been very popular. I was.

1255
01:43:28,479 --> 01:43:32,960
I was really lucky to find Whitney Webb's article, and

1256
01:43:33,399 --> 01:43:38,920
I certainly want to give her credit there. I was

1257
01:43:39,039 --> 01:43:42,560
just reading material that I had found. I'm very interested

1258
01:43:42,640 --> 01:43:48,079
people people often ask me about more resources on political

1259
01:43:48,239 --> 01:43:53,079
Zionism in America. If you know of more articles that

1260
01:43:53,600 --> 01:43:56,520
should be publicized. I would love to hear from you.

1261
01:43:56,800 --> 01:44:00,680
Go find me on on X and D m me

1262
01:44:01,399 --> 01:44:05,359
and tell me what other things I should produce on

1263
01:44:05,520 --> 01:44:10,880
political Zionism in America, where Zionism among the evangelicals, I

1264
01:44:10,920 --> 01:44:14,239
would like to know about it. But yes, thank you,

1265
01:44:14,800 --> 01:44:20,119
I appreciate that, and I do want to make further

1266
01:44:20,199 --> 01:44:23,399
efforts to let people know more about these things.

1267
01:44:24,600 --> 01:44:28,119
Speaker 1: Well, remind people where they can buy your books or

1268
01:44:28,199 --> 01:44:29,760
anything else you want to point them too.

1269
01:44:30,920 --> 01:44:34,920
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. I have a YouTube channel. If you

1270
01:44:34,960 --> 01:44:38,159
look for George Bagbee on YouTube, you can find me there.

1271
01:44:38,399 --> 01:44:42,800
I read a variety of of essays. Mostly occasionally I

1272
01:44:42,920 --> 01:44:51,000
will I will monologue on a special subject. I have

1273
01:44:52,119 --> 01:44:59,319
Twitter handle at tall Men Books, which I'll send to you, Pete.

1274
01:45:00,000 --> 01:45:03,279
Hopefully you would mind putting that on the description of

1275
01:45:03,359 --> 01:45:07,199
the video so that people could find it. Pinned to

1276
01:45:07,439 --> 01:45:12,760
my Twitter profile. You will find links where you can

1277
01:45:12,960 --> 01:45:18,560
purchase the books that I have republished, including The Civil

1278
01:45:18,600 --> 01:45:23,199
War and Reconstruction in Alabama by Walter L. Fleming and

1279
01:45:23,479 --> 01:45:28,479
also History of Reconstruction in Louisiana by John Rose Ficklin,

1280
01:45:29,520 --> 01:45:34,279
among other volumes. And thank you very much.

1281
01:45:34,439 --> 01:45:38,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, of course, let's do this again very soon.

1282
01:45:39,039 --> 01:45:40,159
Thank you. I appreciate it.

1283
01:45:40,239 --> 01:45:42,479
Speaker 2: Have a good evening, thank you, thank you. It's a

1284
01:45:42,520 --> 01:45:43,279
pleasure to join you.