Historically High - The American Civil War

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

160 years...thats not a long time. That's still relatively recent history. A four year long Civil War fought in the United States when the county was still trying to find its footing. A war that could have very easily and very nearly ripped the county apart. We're covering it from soup to nuts, What caused the secession? Why did the Union struggle so early despite the industrial and numerical advantage? What do we remember and misremember about Lincolns position in the conflict. We cover it all or we try to. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Okay, this is going to tie into this, so this might be a good starting point. You know when it reads you, they read the letters that they found or kept? How the language was so, like, flowery and just sounded good? My dearest Barbara. I don't know if that sounds good, but I know what you mean. It sounds probably. Yeah, like, my dearest Barbara, time is passing so slowly. It is though the fires of war have consumed every ounce of my will and my regard.

I do not know if I will have ever. and make it back to the love and embrace of your arms. It was, but now, like, if someone writes a letter home, you're just like, it fucking sucks here, man. We're getting shot at all. But I'm also wondering if it's, like, kind of, like, cherry-picking it. Like, they just pick the best-sounding ones,

like, the ones that people kept long enough to, like, survive. Yeah? Because, like, no one's going to save one that's just, like, Dear Ruby, I miss your sweet boobs. Please try to sketch me a picture and send it to me on the front. Maybe I can get it in nine months if it ever finds me. If it doesn't find me, it's finding some other soldier

and it'll at least, you know, make him happy. Yeah, let alleviate some of his woes. Hopefully the union doesn't get a hold of it because I don't want them seeing Rebel Boom. Yeah. It doesn't make much sense because those guys at that time, I feel like had the least amount of time to, like, jure stuff up and make it flowery

and, like, long-winded. Here's the other thing is like, what do you think the, like, the literacy in education was at that point? Very low. So you don't think that these letters are coming from, like, your normal, like, infantry guys. These are probably coming from people that were probably, like, officers or at least more educated people to even have the fact of being able to write a readable letter. Well, and not only that, I just found out in doing this research, dog tags were invented because of this. They weren't there. Wait, so they did have dog tags here or did not?

No, this is the reason we have dog tags now is because there were so many people killed during the Civil War. What they would do to try to figure out who it was was they would actually write down their name in like their home state and their wife and shit. And then they'd pin it to the inside of their coats. So if they were shot on the battlefield, they'd be able to find it. Like dog tags just weren't a thing. So there's a billion people, well, not a billion, but a fuck a load of people. that are buried in like Gettysburg and all that shit where they would just... Oh yeah, like unknown unmarked graves or unknown graves?

Yeah, and I don't know if you... Or if you're a researcher, do you like try to find that and dig those up and be like, is there a piece of paper? Can we put some families to rest? Isn't there like a tomb of the unknown soldier or something like that? Is that a memorial or something that was created for the Civil War? I don't know. Because I know there's talk about, you know, you have like Grant's tomb and everything like that. but I want to say like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

It's in Arlington and D.C. I've been there and seen it I think it's for... I thought it was for foreign wars But it could be Maybe it just applies to all of that stuff No, no, no, no, no. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is an actual unknown soldier.

Okay, so Tomb of the Unknown Soldier 100 years war after the World War I unknown spirit I don't know, what am I fucking reading here? The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier's historical monument dedicated to deceased U.S. service members who remains have not been identified. So maybe that's just for everything. Technically no.

Oh, no, it's World War I. We aren't talking U.S. soldiers here. Yeah, it just says honor glory. Oh, an American soldier. It just says an American soldier. So, but anyway, if you haven't already figured it out from what we've already said, we are going to attempt to tackle the Civil War.

Now, whether we keep this, is one episode or two episodes, that is still up in the year at this point, because there is a lot to cover. I think we should get a high five for getting this done in, too. The, why, like, I get the, you, okay, so in school, you have usually world history, and then you have a year at some point in high school. U.S. history, I think it's like eighth grade. I think mine was maybe, seven. Mine might have been freshman year.

but anyway, like, how much time do you think you spend on the Civil War in high school? Not enough. Usually, it seems like shit was like two weeks. Like you had a unit for like two weeks on something and you'd have to like make a display. I didn't think I got two weeks. Because I either, and I don't feel like I forget a lot of stuff. Like, weirdly enough, the stuff will at least remind you if you hear something. You're like, oh, I probably heard something like that.

There was just stuff that came up during this where I was like, how do you like gloss over or miss this kind of stuff. I would probably say, for me, it was 70% new. Yeah, probably close to that. And then there's other things that were probably like 20% of you hear somebody's name. You're like, oh, that's why that's that way. Oh, that's why this street's named Antietam. Or oh, that's why the hotel is named Sheridan.

Yeah. Like, it all finally clicks and makes sense. So. I hope that's why Sheridan or how Sheridan got their names. I don't think it was. You don't think he stole like a bunch of Confederate treasure and like went home and it's just been wealth coming up to the family. It's not to say that that's not someone that wasn't related to that person. Just like wasn't one of the guys.

It was MacArthur. And then he was like the descendant of the guy, the admiral in World War II. Oh. Something like that. There's so many fucking names here too, man. Between both sides that it's weird. and it seems like the Confederacy, the people in charge stay in charge much longer

than the people in the union. It's just a fucking revolving door for the fucking generals and shit in the union, which will explain why it fucking drags out for as long as it did. So if there's any argument for immigration to ever be made in this country and why it's a great thing,

it's strictly for the last names. Because there's so many people back then when it was just straight, white people, everybody had the same fucking last name. There's like four Johnstons. There's like three Johnston. It's either Johnson, Johnston, and just like different variations of the same fucking name. So every time you see a Lee or like a Greenberg or something like that, I'd be like, hey, thanks for being here. I don't want to have the same name as everybody else.

So kind of getting to the, before we even get into the actual start of the Civil War, there's so much lead up to it. The actual Civil War, kind of the official, timeframe would be 1861 to 1865, but because of the multiple causes that caused it, and of course, what do they teach you in school? What's the number one cause of the Civil War? Slavery. Okay. And I mean, although... It's just the answer. Yeah, but at the same time, it's not as it is that, but that's like what you, if you're talking about like north, south, south, south slavery, north, no slavery, and it was just a clear cut, no gray area in the middle,

it really isn't that. It was because of slavery, but if you're looking at the concessions that were trying to be made prior to the actual Civil War kicking off, it was just at a point where it was kind of like, eh, like you guys can keep doing this a little bit, we just don't want to expand it.

Like, it wasn't just stop slavery right now, and then they were like, fuck it, we're out. were seceding. It wasn't that simple. And I think that that's what it kind of gets boiled down to. I kind of see what you mean. I would still say that the overarching just cause of it is slavery. Well, yeah, 100%. That's just the dumb person answer. But like you say, if someone gave you one word to describe it, yes, slavery. But what I'm saying is that like it wasn't just the North. Because what I feel like it does is we get into this mindset throughout history where it's just like, good and bad, but you also have to look at the fact that even the good guys.

Bad. It's still bad. Yeah. And that's a good question to ask a normal person is do you think the Civil War started before the Emancipation Proclamation or do you think the Emancipation Proclamation started before the Civil War? Or was the reason the Civil War happened?

Yeah. Because to the lay person, and I'm not saying anybody out there, if you know, you know, good for you. But it's not that, It was about slavery in that way. It was kind of like slavery was a strategic use later on to free the slaves. Like the proclamation declaration happened as almost a weapon to use during the war.

Like an ultimatum or like it finally got to the point where it just had to be said. Yeah. There was too much kind of like not flip-flopping, but it was something that had to be said to like concrete the position. But it was, I mean, I do believe it was truly strategically used. Oh, yeah, 100%. And the thing is, is it's not as simple as the Emancipation Proclamation, just being like, no slavery. Because that's not what it actually was. It had a lot of conditions, and we're going to get into those.

So let's go ahead and just go back a little bit even before that. So did you know that the first instance of slavery, slaves being brought from Africa over to the United States was in 1619? I think it was a Dutch ship came over with like 20 slaves to Virginia. There's a great documentary on it, and I think it's on Hulu. It's called the 1619 project. Okay. So that was the first instance of bringing African slaves over to and being sold into like the original 13 colonies. And kind of the whole reason for it was the South economy was based on,

or slave labor slave labor being used for farming and the main south in the crop or the main crop of the south it was kind of a combination of like probably like tobacco but the big one was cotton you know what the bigger one was back then

rice was it yep South Carolina and everywhere along that coastline where you kind of that marshy area they used to flood some of the waters that would come the rivers would dump into the ocean and they would make rice patties out there

and they would manufacture rice. That was like America's first big cash crop. I didn't know that. So eventually it kind of positions over to, and some of this, what we're going to discuss some of the other causes and the other things that really bumped up slavery were kind of unintentional.

So you had two types, this sounds weird, but you had two types of cotton. Apparently you had green seed cotton or something like that. And then you had another type of cotton. The main difference between the two is green seed cotton. It wasn't economically viable to grow it because it took so long to pull the seeds out of it. Whereas I'm going to just call it non-green seed cotton or whatever.

The other type, that could only grow essentially kind of in a coastal area along the south. And that was the one that you could just run it through rollers. You could actually run the cotton puffs through rollers and it would just extract the seeds. Well, and this was after the invention of the cotton. No. No? So here's what I'm getting now. Oh, so the cotton gin came later, but this was prior to.

Correct. Okay. So you could only grow, and this is why cotton wasn't as big in the south, because you could only grow this actual usable cotton kind of along the coast. Well, what happened is Eli Whitney came along, and he was a, he was a Yale-educated guy from the north, and he came down to work on a plantation. I think he went down to work as a teacher, eventually started working on. on a plantation with this other guy that went to Yale.

And this guy was like, hey, if someone could develop a method of being able to turn this green seed cotton into a profitable crop where we didn't have to sit there. And like, because even when they had slave labor, they still couldn't produce the actual cotton to then be sent to either the north for textile factories to be made into like, you know, cotton thread and clothes and stuff, or they could send it overseas. They couldn't get these seeds out. So it made that green seed cotton non-profitable. but the other cotton couldn't grow inland in the south.

So Eli Whitney ends up coming up with this super, I don't know how it didn't get developed before this, but he comes up with the cotton gin, and that's kind of Eli Whitney's claim to fame. Also, did you know Eli Whitney developed like guns and stuff like that? He also manufactured guns. He went back north and created like a gun company or something like that. It wouldn't surprise me.

The American way feels like back then to make a bunch of money and then go make guns, because you know that the Revolutionary War wasn't the end of it. No. So he develops the cotton gin. It's this really simple device. They said it had like four parts, and it could very easily separate the seeds from this green seed cotton. What that basically opened up the door to do, he patented the thing too. And I didn't know patents existed back then.

Well, the thing was so simple that like cheap knockoffs and all this stuff could be really mass produced. So it wasn't just like Eli Whitney had to then go sell it to all of these other plantations. They just copied it, and it basically created this cotton boom, where now cotton could be grown throughout the entire South and be extremely profitable. So much to the, so much so that it, at one point, by 19, or sorry, by 1850, America grew three quarters of the world's cotton supply, provided it. And how this ties into slavery is essentially when the founding fathers were, you know, creating the documentation, both the bill of rights, all of that stuff. They very purposely left out the word slavery.

I think they put persons in servitude or something like that. To put it bluntly, they all own slaves. Yeah. So when you have somebody who's writing the Constitution and Declaration and everything like that that happened that they did, they were slave owners at the time. That was just the way of life that they felt. Not saying that it was right. No, no, no.

And I'm not saying that I'm separating to the degree of ownership of how many slaves or anything like. that. What I'm saying is that slave ownership in the north tended to not be to the degree in the South because they weren't using slaves in the manner for like field work. It was like having house slaves like butlers like chauffeurs, things like that. Not saying there's a difference between owning somebody. It's both incredibly wrong. Yeah, one is too many in this case. Exactly. What I'm saying though is I think that's why the North was able to essentially not have such a fit about essentially not owning slaves. Is it there, Their industry and their economy was basically textiles, manufacturing, things like that.

It was more industrialized than the South. The South was more rural on farms. That's why essentially they had such a hard on for slavery. Yeah, a more populous city that can't grow things with the kind of climate that doesn't have that, those people are going to be manufacturers. Exactly. And there was really no gap in the line between the South and the North in that way because it was basically the South would produce the cotton, send it up north. the North and the manufacturers would create the clothing, then it would kind of just fall into the economy that way. So the North was still sort of okay with it because it depended on cotton.

Yeah, they were relying on that product and everything. Well, one of the things when the founding fathers were essentially drafting the documents is I'm not sure if it was Jefferson or whoever it was, but they had the intention of essentially halting slavery and they expected it to kind of die out. because part of it was kind of the cotton thing. It's because this other cotton couldn't be profitable. So there was actually, in I think from like 1790, until Congress banned the slave trade from Africa in 1808, the Southerners imported 80,000 African slaves.

They kind of expected prior to the cotton gin for slavery to just kind of die out. They expected it over a course of many, many years, mass slavery was going to kind of kind of. to become extinct. Cotton gin completely changed that because now you have these enormous plantations that are able to be created in the deep south where, yeah, you don't need the slaves to pick, essentially the seeds out of the cotton, but you still need them to harvest the cotton after its process to bail it to do all that kind of stuff. So it created even a more, what am I trying to say here, even a larger need. Demand. There you go. A larger demand for slaves. So I want to give the founders the

benefit of a doubt. The word expected, I feel like, is a little bit heavy to use. I think hope is probably the better word. Yeah. Because again, up until their dying days, Jefferson still had slaves, Washington still had slaves. A lot of the founding fathers did. And that was sort of their idea was when I die, I will release my slaves and then all kind of be released emotionally. With Lincoln coming in, you know, to this story and everything like that, our timing is off because we even did one on, you know, the founding fathers. And we talked about fucking Washington, 10 owning slaves and everything. How far is this removed from the drafting of the documents?

Because that was 1780, something is when... 1787, wasn't it? Was when the... Not the Constitution, but the... I think that was the Constitution. Was it? The Declaration of 1776. And I think it was 10 years after.

Okay, there you go. So, I mean, there's still some time for them to hope that hopefully this just kind of like works its way out. Because, you know, this is almost 80 years later after that when this thing kicks off. Like you said, it's a hope. But at the same time, they're kind of... of like, well, we're going to be dead and we'll just release our slaves. So, I mean, our hands are clean.

Like, it doesn't work like that. They could have done more. It was one last confession before they died. And then God was like, hey, you're cool. Go to heaven. Pretty much. So, again, you now have this insane demand for slavery in the South. So they're not going to be on board with getting rid of this shit.

And basically, during the American Revolution, Northern states actually began passing laws to gradually abolish slavery. A lot of that movement was done by like Quakers and I think Puritans because they believed biblically that owning slaves was was wrong, was morally wrong. One of the few times that I agree with like a biblical thing. But yeah, I mean, it goes without saying that that's fucking wrong. That if all men are created equal like it says in our fucking founding documents, then that right there should abolish it. You know, should have had it abolished. Quakers seem cool to shit.

They're very, very decent people for. simple, but it seems like they kind of have, they got the right, the right intentions. I agree. So by 1804, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, what you think of if you're thinking about that, those East Coast, you know, northeast states, they had actually passed laws to try to abolish slavery as much as they could at that point. But again, then after Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, that kind of fucked it up. So there were, I'm sorry, I'm looking, I got a lot of fucking notes here, man.

I'm trying to sound like I'm reading stuff. So by, in 1790, there were only six slave states in 1790. By 1860, there were 15 slave states. Now, that's not to say that some of the previously existing non-slave states, they may have changed, but that also had the creation of some states as well because I think we had the Louisiana purchase somewhere around that time and then some northern states

we're starting with the Louisiana purchase you also had some creation of northern states you had like Missouri being created Louisiana I think yes no I'm not sure about that but then they did the Dakotas and all that they had to break that up Michigan Wisconsin all that kind of stuff Illinois obviously where Lincoln's coming from

well and just on that same train I'm sure you'll probably get to it. But every time one of those new states was created, we had Congress at this point. We had a solid set up government. A system of representation for the states. And every single time a new state came on board, there was always an argument as to whether that state had the ability to be a slave state. That was the central cause, I think. It was all, this was all politics. Correct. If we're taking slavery as the ward on top of the umbrella and then we're working down the pyramid. What it kind of boils down to is one of the central causes was over whether

slavery would be allowed to expand into the Western territories. And that's a huge deal because of the representation that happens in government every time you would get in this, we have to just stop it here. We've got to make this point very clear. This was at a time when the Whig Party and the Democratic Party were both the two ruling parties. Whig Party dropped out, I think, before Buchanan got elected? Something like that. And then the Republican Party was more of a minor. And then that kind of took the place to where then we had those two.

But there were still multiple political parties at this point, which actually is what led to Lincoln, one of the things that got Lincoln elected. Yeah. So in this day and age, there was the new Republican Party, which was kind of a grouping of other smaller parties. There were conservative Republicans. There were radicals.

There were moderate. It's a lot like there is today that people try to say and act like that. It's flipped though at this point in time. Yeah. It's what you would think of. The Republican Party is what you think of what the Democratic Party is today. The Democrats or Dixiecrats, I think, is kind of what it's referred to as today. The Democrats were what you would expect.

If you're thinking of north and south, even like we have today, blue states, red states like that, flip them around. So Republicans were blue. In the north. Democrats are in the South. And I'm not sure we'll have to get into that whole party flip thing because it seems very interesting. I want to say it was right around the 1970s, maybe 60s, that we had the big flip.

So when we refer to Democrats, we're referring to people from the south, when we refer to Republicans, we're talking about people from the north. And it'll be easier once we get into just saying Union and Confederacy, you'll kind of understand that. But there was also a very large smattering of Democrats that were still in the north,

that were sort of sympathizers, I would say. Some of them were, I think they were called fire eaters. Was the name that I saw for the politicians that were sort of like either Republican supportings of the South or Democrats that were up north? Okay, gotcha. Also, one of the things, too, is part of this boiled down to representation in how people were counted as the populace. So one of the big things in Congress that they were arguing is you had the House of Representatives to where the House of Representatives like it is today is dictated by the population. That's how many representatives you get. a big thing here is that the southern states didn't want to consider slaves as equal individuals,

as people. They wanted to include them as property, except when it came to counting them as part of the population, which would increase their number of representative seats in Congress. So I can't remember what the name of the compromise was. Three-fifths. Okay. I was going to get to that, but I wasn't sure if that's what it was referred to. It's the three-fifths compromise, which essentially the northern state said, you can count them as part of your population when it comes to representation, but they're each going to count as three-fifths. Now, my understanding of that... Three-fifths of a human being.

That's... And the reason they weren't... Fuck, it's so fucking, like, weird to talk about this because we're two white guys sitting here talking about fucking slavery. And the whole thing is just a shitty subject, but it is... This is what we're talking about this for us, because this is what led to the end of it or the beginning of the end for it. when they were talking about three-fists, they were using that because in a way to limit the South's power in Congress to basically say that, okay, so you're not going to let these people actually have representation, but you want them to count for representation. Like, you don't let them vote. You don't let them have any say or anything like that. But you want us to count them to give you more power to then do what you want, which is essentially keeping them more.

Yeah. So the three-fifths compromise was put into law or however you want to say it. Lincoln was, was he a senator from Illinois? He was a one-term senator. Then he, I think, had enough of that and went into law. And by all account, it seems like a very sharp individual. I think he knew the law very well. And so the 1860 presidential election is coming up. And one of the big gripes that the South had that they used for part of their secession was during this election. So it's like we have kind of today. You have the Democratic primary.

You then have the Republican primary flipped around again. Red primary, blue primary. I think it was just conventions. Was it? I know that he ran against someone to be the primary runner for that. Is that what I'm getting at? to find who was going to run to represent that party. He ends up beating, was it Van Buren?

I can't remember who he ends up beating, but Lincoln ends up becoming the nominee for what would essentially be the Union or the Northern States. Again, everyone is all part of the United States at this point. This was prior to the secession. And then you have, who was it the Southern States put up or the Democratic Party?

I can't remember who that was that they put up. Regardless is... Yeah, look it up real quick, and I'll kind of go back over a couple of the things that happened. So like we were talking about, when you have territories that are then becoming states, you have to figure out when a state comes on board or they had to figure out if it was going to be a slave state or a free state.

Now, every single time this came up, there was always an argument about it. It came to the point to where I think they drew a parallel line from like the Ohio River or something all the way over through California. They used the Ohio River for the, part of it and then it just extended that line out. Yeah.

So this understanding was that anything above it was going to be a free state, anything below it was going to be a slave state. And excuse me, this is before the war with Mexico. This is before we actually inherited California. And I think before Texas got most of its land, maybe something like that. Don't quote me on that. But we're not doing the top. That's not our topic. Yeah.

Yeah. So the South just didn't have as much land. So they were more concerned about that being unfair. And that was sort of the start of that there have been multiple secession attempts or threats from the north and the south. Both of them have tried to pull out of this deal before. They don't know that it's just like a bad marriage and we just got to stay together for the kids. Yeah, I don't know what the, I don't know what the comparison for land was. but I do know that the north did have the higher population, though, as well.

Because it was more industrialized. It wasn't, you know, per square mile or per capita. The north was, you had, you know, you still had New York. You still had all those larger cities. They were originally settled, too. They were developed and originally settled. So as these territories start becoming states, there was a concern from the south that there were going to be more free states.

And the free states would then try to implement control over the slave states and eventually try to end slavery, which again, as we pointed out, was their kind of major economic driver. That's what stirred the spoon for the earth. Yeah, stirred the spoon for them. Another thing that happened was when Kansas came on board, there was something called Bleeding Kansas.

It happened between 1854 and then the lead up 1861. And it was just a violent confrontation that happened between pro-slavery and anti-slavery people. It was just a fight for the state. slave status. Luckily, the anti-slavery people won and Kansas did become a state as

anti-slavery. There was a thing about Missouri too, wasn't it? Is that the slave rebellion at Harper's Ferry? That was Missouri, wasn't it? I think the slave rebellion was back in Virginia. But a similar guy that did it,

John Brown. He It was October 16th, 1859, and John Brown's raid was the raid that was at Harper's Ferry. I think it was 11 indentured slaves, one free slave, one escaped slave, and I think the rest of them were white fellows. But they tried to break into the armory at Harper's Ferry in order to arm slaves for an uprising.

That got quelled out very quickly. But John Brown was looked at as a good dude. He was looked at as somebody who tried to do something. Glenn, or, wow. Dread Scott was the other one. That's right. The Dred Scott ruling was that slavery would continue into the territories. Like I said, man, there's so much shit going on at this point.

And, you know, the bulk of this is, of course, going to be the Civil War. We're just trying to kind of lead the run up and kind of set the stage. Also, to be clear, all of these things that we just mentioned, that are happening are happening because the founders that said, well, we think slavery is going to peter out at some point. They just kicked the can down the road. They weren't going to be the ones to enslave. They didn't put pen to paper about this.

They were just like, we hope that, like, you know, we hope what we writ down, somebody's going to, this is the whole point. Like when people talk about, like, drafting new shit and everything like that, this is kind of goes to support that. Like, they're at some point hoping people are going to pass additional legislature that alters the stuff that they that they drafted. They're not drafting everything for seeing everything in the future. Some people like to fucking believe that it's to be followed all this documentation written

fucking 250 years ago, whatnot. These people didn't know about robots. Yeah. He beat, so Lincoln defeats Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge. Oh, okay, that's right. So Breckenridge was the vice president of Buchanan. Okay. So kind of the, duh, choice for the Democrats, grab the vice president.

So here's the thing. So Lincoln ends up winning the popular vote and the electoral vote with just under 40% of the popular vote, which I know that that doesn't sound like winning it. Here's the thing. Breckenridge was the Southern person. Yeah. But there was also a Northern Democrat that had been elected to. So there were three people, I believe. It might have been four.

I think it was actually four. So that's how Lincoln ends up winning. It's not like today where we just have, you know, Democrat Republican independent or whatever. It's usually there were multiple people under this. So he wins popular. Huh? There's a bull moose back then. Yeah.

So he wins 40% of the population were just under, and it totaled 1,866. And then he got 108, 80 electoral votes. So he ends up winning. Now, the big gripe from the southern states, some of them, Lincoln wasn't even on their. They didn't even put him on the ticket. So they wanted to gripe that they didn't vote for Lincoln. so they weren't receiving proper representation within the president's office. Well, here's the thing, too.

You didn't even put him on the ticket. This is your fault you didn't. So even if people wouldn't have voted for him, you can't claim that if anything, he was at a disadvantage, even, that he wasn't even on their ticket. So they use this as, you know, a huge kind of gripe and everything. He might have been on a small number in certain areas in the South. There were just some states that didn't. They said he received like less than 1% in the areas where he was even on the ticket. So he won despite all of this.

And one of Lincoln's, you know, big things was that he said that he wasn't, he won the election. And part of it was he was opposed to slavery being allowed to expand. He didn't run on essentially ending slavery. That's where I think kind of you were talking about with the whole emancipation proclamation, the timing of that. It wasn't like he just came out as part of his. you know, campaign strategy of that is like, this is what the platform I'm running on. He just said, where it currently exists, I have no plans to make any changes to it. But we're not going to allow this institution to essentially continue into these new states

that are being formed in the union. So he, he had a concession. He, of course, had to make those concessions because people in the North did own slaves. But at the same time, like you're saying, kicking the can down the road. I think part of him is also kicking this can down the road of being like, well, if I can limit it to this area, maybe it'll just kind of peter itself out eventually. Lincoln was a complicated guy when it came to slavery because he said many times personally he wasn't for slavery. He thought that it was a disgusting act. But he also being the lawman that he was and being a lawyer and understanding, you know, somebody who would really be interested in the writings of the constitution, he did believe that it was protected by the constitution as it was currently written

for there. It's, you know, it's the never meet your heroes type thing when you start looking into people. So this is not at all me bashing on Lincoln. I still think Abraham Lincoln was an incredible individual. What he went through to try to preserve the union, that was his first and foremost goal was preservation of the union. And he made some concessions that I don't agree with and a lot of other people didn't agree with. But all of his decisions, he actually had a quote. I'm going to try to find it in these fucking notes here, is that part of one of the things that he said, again, preservation of the union, he said if he could save the union without freeing any slaves, he would do it. And if he could do it by freeing all the slaves, he would do it, or a combination. He wasn't married. He wasn't married.

to any ideology in terms of that, whether he personally was against it or anything like that. As the president, he felt his rule was preserving, you know, this nation that was still, you know, less than 100 years old. And I fucking hate to say it. It's, that's probably the biggest feather that I can think of in Lincoln's cap is to try to leave as much personal biases out of something to the point to where you, You can be adamantly against it. But if that's what's the best for the country, that's what you do. So it would be nice to see somebody in politics to have the good of the country and the preservation of the union.

It's what they say. It's meeting the needs of the many as opposed to the needs of the few, regardless of what your personal position on it is. They even had, and so at this point, this was kind of the catalyst that had the southern states start drawing up documents for articles of secession. Yeah, they absolutely hated Lincoln. And this wasn't, like we said before, there were so many reasons leading up to this that this was going to happen. Lincoln was just the easiest way out for him. He was the easiest way where they could demarcate the line and say, this guy is against our future, gaining more seats and gaining more power. All it was was a power struggle.

Yeah. And he was just kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. They hated Lincoln. They just basically put that line in the sand. said you get elected, you win, we're out. So few possible resolutions that came up to prevent Southern succession. One was the Missouri Compromise. A lot of these things have compromise in them.

That's essentially what the fucking articles say they are. So the Missouri compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and then had Maine be a free state. Oh, that's what the Missouri compromise was. Yeah, which, so Missouri being, if you look at them at kind of a border, would we be considered border. state here. Like, of course, Maine is going to already be a free state. It's the fucking furthest one north. There'd be the, that to me kind of seems like less of a compromise on the northern

side and more of a, you know, a better result for the southern side. So that one was kind of a compromise leading toward the south. It prohibited slavery in the remaining Louisiana purchase lands. So. Yep. And then there was also one, the compromise of 1850 would make California. a free stay, which at this point, California was fucking huge. It encompassed what would be like Nevada, New Mexico, that whole area.

I think they already had the goldbrush, maybe? Yeah, I think so. Another thing that's what populated, and that's what actually got California to become a territory or a state or whatever it was. Another thing that I didn't know about this, did you know that the Transcontinental Railroad was started during the Civil War? It would make sense because it would be needed to essentially transport troops and everything like that.

How crazy is that, though, that we're starting a major countrywide project while we're still in the throes of these civil war? Did you know that fucking Congress and all that kind of stuff was still intact during the Civil War? Like there were still representatives from the South in Washington, D.C., still arguing legislature and all that kind of shit. Yes. Hmm. Yeah. Even though they had their own system, and I'll get to that here in a second. Yeah, there's still a Confederate Congress and all that.

So California would be a free state. This is, again, the compromise of 1850. it would ban the slave trade in D.C. while still allowing slavery there. So pre-existing slavery would be allowed, but they would ban the actual slave trade there. Apparently, that compromise did not stick, and South Carolina voted to secede first

on December 20th, 1860, what they considered the cotton states, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas. They followed in January and February of 61. And then the Confederate States, States of America was officially established February 4th, 1861. Jefferson Davis was elected the president, Alexander Stevens, the VP. And Alexander Stevens, he looks like just a fucking villain.

He has the look of somebody that you would think would be the fucking villain in a James Bond movie. Ugly motherfucker, weasley-looking asshole. And he, I'll get the nuts and bolts of it here. I'm not going to say verbatim and everything. but he came out with essentially he drafted, or at least had a heavy hand in drafting, what they would consider the Southern Constitution. And the Southern Constitution basically very, very specifically stated that slavery was the right of the Southern states based on the fact that the white race was superior in every way to the

black race and that they're by that right, that allowed essentially slave owners the right to hold these inferior people in servitude. And that was a cornerstone. That was like one of their big pillars of this constitution for the South with that was like a God-given right for them. This was the motherfucker that said that they were actually doing black people a favor by bringing them into a society. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Bad guy. really creepy uncle vibes too. Yeah, so Alexander Stevens, just a fucking total,

total piece of shit. And then finally, prior to the kickoff, do you have anything else prior to the first shots? Yeah, possibly the most important thing for the union was there were slave states

that decided not to go. Maryland was one of them that was a slave state that decided to stick with the union. Yeah. I believe it was Kentucky was another one. There was a time when I think

like some of them stuck with the union initially and then after the Emancipation Proclamation, I think they lost a couple. No. They didn't? No, there's some very interesting wording that we'll talk about when it comes to the Emancipation Proclamation. But I think it was Kentucky,

maybe Missouri. Missouri was like a half and half thing where it was being fought over. Like that was a really hotly contested because there was an area within Missouri that we'll get to because it controlled essentially the Missouri River flowing right through it. That was essentially a huge

like economic requirement because of the trade that it allowed up and down the Missouri River. And not only Missouri River, but the Mississippi as well. Those were both two very, very important waterways in the Civil War. I think I'm thinking of the Mississippi because the Missouri's then branches off and head.

That's what heads up into essentially the Pacific Northwest. Or kind of in that direction. Okay. Yeah. Because the Mississippi is the one that cuts it north the south. Longest river in the country. Yeah.

The Missouri is actually. Missouri's longer. Mississippi's bigger, wider. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, the Mississippi River was a major port and it was a major hub for people trying to transport anything as far as goods, materials. So if you're building, you know, different forts and shit like that, but also food. Oh, yeah.

Food and rations were very, very important. Oh, yeah. think we kind of see throughout this whole thing that part of the reason that the South Peter's out is just because of the campaign to tear out any farms or any sort of sustenance that they could get to. And if you're thinking about it too, if you have to get something from the East Coast over to that area like the Western expansion, the easiest way to do it isn't going to be going overland. You've got to cross the Appalachians, all that kind of stuff. you're going to just put it on a boat, sail it down around Florida, and then up into the Gulf of Mexico or whatever it was called at that point, and then up essentially the Mississippi River to supply everything there.

So, I mean, it was a strategic, like, it was very strategically valuable for whoever kind of held the choke points or held the control of that. So getting to the Battle of Fort Sumter, this was what they kind of consider the official kickoff of the Civil War. And the reason that we're doing this now is because Civil War both start. in April and also ended in April four years later. So it felt like kind of a fitting time to knock this thing out. We've been doing this for almost a year.

And I guess getting ready to tackle something this fucking heavy was, it was just a long time coming. Yeah, we got some fun one coming up though. The anniversary is coming up. Yes. So just before we start, there were four slave states that did stay in the union. It was Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Okay.

So all very important because it kind of gives a buffer to. to the union, whereas they're not coming into free states. We're still using them. Because Maryland, I believe, was sort of a buffer between Virginia to get to D.C. Well, it's in D.C. is in Maryland. Isn't it between Maryland and Virginia? No, it's, it's in Maryland. Okay. So Fort Sumter, and this is kind of, now at this time, it wasn't just like the Confederacy established itself, and they pretty much kicked out anyone who was still loyal to the union. This is at a time, too, when before the Confederacy established, essentially the army is the Army of the United States. It's the Continental Army or whatever they call it at that point. So you have all of these forts that are in the South that are what would be officially Union forts or Northern forts. And so kind of the first order of business for the South and the Confederacy is to kind of take control of all of this. So there was a guy named Major Robert Anderson. And And he was stationed essentially in Charleston, South Carolina.

And there was a bunch of forts around Charleston Bay or Charleston Harbor, whatever it was. It was a huge port for bringing in, you know, anything and everything. Yeah. And in the middle of Charleston Harbor was this place called Fort Sumter. It was an island in the middle of the harbor. There was a fort built on to it. But there were forts all around the harbor. So initially, Anderson was stationed at this fort that was on.

land and then kind of seeing the writing on the wall. I don't know if he got letters or something like that. I assume he got some type of letter from, you know, Lincoln or the command structure from the union, moved his men to Fort Sumter. And on, it was before April 12th, it was before the first shots were fired.

Basically, he knew that he was going to be under attack or he had to hold this fort, but they only had enough like provisions and supplies for, I think, two weeks. So very, very few rations for those people. And not a lot of guys either.

And so Lincoln tries to send in a ship to essentially resupply them and the forts now being held by the Confederacy open fire on this ship and force it to eventually retreat without being able to resupply them. And so Lincoln basically gets on the horn whatever way he can communicate by fucking writer or messenger or whatever gets a hold of the South Carolina governor at this time and is like, hey, I need to resupply this fort, but I'm not. going to send any type of war materials. I'm just sending food for these guys. Just rations. Just rations for these guys. And basically, Jefferson Davis ordered the fort to be taken before it could be resupplied with this. And on April 12th, the Confederacy opens fire on this fort and overall fired about 4,000 shells at the fort in one day. It started at 4.30 in the morning. So before dawn. What's even more fucking incredible is this fort's getting just hammered from all sides. It's, you know, it's a horseshoe around.

It's a bay. So it's getting hammered from all sides. No casualties. They fucked up this fort. None of the, none of Anderson's men died. But they eventually were able to get his men out of there somehow. I don't know if they surrendered before. Wave the white flag.

And it's like, get us a boat in here and get us the fuck out. So April 15th, three days later, Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers to fight for the next 90 days. I don't know what the deal was with that is he's just thinking like hey we're going to squash this thing in three months He he had a very firm vision that this was going to be a quick He was going to quell the uprising he was going to send his troops down there They were going to knock down this rebel force that was coming and this was going to be the end of it South Carolina and everybody else was going to be like hey Just kidding it did the exact opposite it only pissed them off more

Now when we start talking about these numbers this is just something to keep in line that blows me away. The standing U.S. Army at the time, Continental Army, whatever, like you say. We'll just call it Union Army going forward. Union Army. Well, for the country, though. So for America, before the secession happened, the standing army in the United States was 16,000 people.

That was the standing army for the whole country, who was 16,000 people. Now, keep that in mind when we start talking about, A, casualties that happened during wars, like separate wars, and then just as a total. And the other thing, too, is it's not like, at this point, too, when he eventually on May 3rd, after realizing that that's not enough people and not near long enough, he puts an additional call in for 42,000 more volunteers for a period of three years. Again, that's going to pale in comparison to the number of people that actually participate in the Civil War overall, even on the union side just alone. But he, the states were essentially kind of in charge of raising these militias. and so most of the like different armies

it wasn't like the Union Army it was the Union Army but in this army was like the Army of the Potomac and that was like the one that kind of stayed around the area of like DC and kind of that area of course like the Potomac but then you also had like the army or regiment of Wisconsin of Illinois and all this stuff who were then coming down to go ahead and start fighting this

I think that was probably the biggest mistake You can't really say misstep because they're bodies and they want to do it. But you have all these people coming in and these militias or these state militias, state armies, things like that. Training never all going to be the same, if any. It's just going to be some fat dude with a gun usually that's going to roll up and be able to do it. So you don't have discipline on your side.

You don't have unity on your side because you have all these different factions within the Union Army and within the Confederate Army. It just, there was no like uniformity. to anything. Yeah, there wasn't a standard, essentially, like of the armed services. Here's what I was actually thinking about when you were talking about at the other states. So shortly after Lincoln calls for this buildup, these 42,000 for three years, shortly after that, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina joined the Confederacy. So that's what prompted them, him calling for additional troops.

That's what scared him into joining. And then kind of as a reward for Virginia, kind of joining the side of the Confederacy, the Confederate Capitol is actually moved to Richmond, Virginia. This blows my mind. It's fucking arrogance. It is, but you also move. So you have D.C. in Maryland, which is a border state of Virginia. You then move the Confederate capital 108 miles away from D.C.

So it's not like you, like, I don't know what you, you had to, they had to reward Virginia somehow for coming over to their side. but at the same time you're like, you can't like move a little bit deeper into the south or anything like that. Like to me, that just like, I'm not saying, you know,

be smarter. I am saying that. I'm like, why would you not make it in the deepest part of the most defensible part? You're basically putting it 108 miles from the capital of your enemy at this point. Well, if Richmond is the capital of Virginia, which I think it is,

it's going to be best to probably reward the capital city. but at the same time, I think there was a measure of like, hey, we're going to put ourselves as close to you as possible is almost like you're not going to be able to touch us. It was a flex. Yeah. It was an overconfidence because at that time, people in the South really believe that a lot like we see now with like pro gun owners and people that don't like guns. There was a belief in the South that for every one Southerner they could take on like four Northerners. Yeah. Like, the northerners were just pussies.

Yeah. And that was a major understatement, just a major, I guess, underestimation by the rebels. And I think... Big old miscalculation. Yeah, just a huge. And not only that, we see at certain times where, like, the 4 to 1 ratio, if that's really staying true, we're about to test it because America's military was so... I'm going to fuck that up a lot. The Union military was so much bigger than the Confederate military.

Well, then here's... And you mentioned Missouri. little bit earlier. So Missouri actually did stay with the union, but there was some type of Confederate coup that happened that then took control. So they drove, I think, union forces or whoever was essentially a union loyalist, drove them to basically like the northern part of Missouri. And then they had control for most of it. And then Kentucky was actually like, fuck it, we're staying Swiss and this, we're staying neutral until they actually got invaded by the Confederacy. And then they're like, no, fuck that we're siding with the union. So that's what kind of ended up drawing the battle.

lines. There was something that Lakin said, it's not word for word, but I think he said something like, I'll take my chances with God, but I know that we won't win without Kentucky. Something like that. Like he was, because Kentucky was their key to the Mississippi. Yeah. Well, and then also, so West Virginia around this time is actually formed by the Union loyalist and splintered off from other Virginia. I like that. I like that West Virginia is like now. But this didn't, this didn't happen until 1863, a couple years actually into the war. When West Virginia had had enough and they just wanted out.

We're not with them. Yep. We're not with them. We're our own thing. We're just west of them. North Virginia, South Virginia. Whatever you want to call it. So over the four years of the war, there were 237 named battles that were fought. And that's not to say what little skirmishes happened and everything like that. So

that's just to kind of put out there. And again, that kind of probably, I'm not sure what the number in comparison to World War II would be, because World War II was worldwide. There was battles happening everywhere. But what I'm saying is that 237 named battles that were fought during this. That doesn't count just like little skirmishes. But this is where this makes me think back to when you hear some of the names of these battles.

You remember in the office where Dwight's trying to convince everybody about the Battle of Shrewp farms and everything, there were literally battles that were the Battle of Hawkinson's Farm or something like that, just because it happened to occur near the Hawkinson's Farmhouse or some shit. it and that was how they identified stuff. Well, even when the, uh, the, uh,

when the surrender was signed, it was just signed in some dude's house. It was a courthouse. Are you sure? It was, uh, I thought it was the owner. Appomatics.

Yeah, it was appomatics. I don't think it was a courthouse. I'm pretty sure that it was a guy's house. Really? In apomatics. Yeah. He was like a,

a treasurer or something like that. And they just decided to meet on the floor. I thought it was like a government. building, but it might have been someone that worked for the government to let them use the house. These things just happened in the middle of nowhere. And I think I would probably bet that the Civil War had more battles just because, and it's something that we're going to talk about, the ability to travel and to move in and out of places quickly and slowly, it was just all slow all the time.

Because you were on foot, you had horses. Very rarely would you have like a rail line or anything like that? But you also have artillery, which is literally just cannons on two wheels. and that's all dependent on what the conditions of roads, bridges, rivers that you could forward or build a bridge across. If it rained too much the night before and the road was washed out or muddy, you couldn't move your troops. Like all of this was so dependent on people moving around by foot when they could move around by foot. This, you know, World War II, you didn't, most of your soldiers were on foot, but you also had mechanized elements that trucks and able to transport and all that kind of stuff. planes to do, you know, parachute drops when you had to do that.

All foot or all horses. And it makes you think that the reason there were so many battles is because they would probably try to trudge off together. And then they'd meet each other like a mile down the road and they're like, fuck, what are you doing here? And he's like, what are you doing here? Like, okay, let's go again. Round two. We'll see who does it. And then they'd retreat a mile.

And then they'd move forward a mile and they'd be hitting them again. All right. So now that we're actually into the fighting, I do have to take a bathroom break before we actually get into the thick of it. Good. All right, back at it. This may be a couple bathroom break or so. Bear with us. Okay, so getting to the first actual, like, one of the first proper battles.

Now, listen, if we sat here and tried to go through all of the battles and engagements, this would be a month-long podcast, if not more. So we're just going to kind of, we're not glossing over them, but we're just going to kind of hit some of, like, the first or more significant ones and then kind of talk about, like, changes that were made in command structure. and it's going to be a lot of union changes. There will be future episodes on things like Gettysburg and different larger wars. This is just kind of glossing over.

They were all important at some point or another, but these are just the ones that we kind of picked out. So you have pretty much, you have multiple fronts in this war, but you kind of have too. You have the western side and then you have kind of the eastern side. No, no, no, no. We don't use the word side. This is like my favorite word in all of war. Theater. Theater.

Okay, you have the Western Theater and then the Eastern Theater. I fucking love it. I don't know why. The Union Army, their Western Theater, they're commanded by, and probably the most recognized name here, aside from Lincoln. Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. Grant. And Grant was a great technician, great tactician and battlefield commander. Like the booze, too.

Huh? Like the booze, too. He liked the sauce. The Eastern Army in the Eastern Theater for the Union was led by, initially by George McClellan. Now, George McClellan was He was excellent at training and organizing Basically what you would consider an excellent trainer

And he was great at logistics About getting the army together gathering them But wasn't great once the fucking lead started flying You want him running basic training You don't want him out on the battlefield I always think of it Did you ever see, did you ever watch Band of Brothers? Uh-uh

Okay, so David Schwimmer, Ross from friends So he's the guy that trains Easy Company and he trains him really hard and really well, but as soon as he got into combat, didn't know what the fuck he was doing. And eventually they take him out of command and they're like, we're going to send you to the training school and that's just kind of going to be your spot. That kind of reminds me essentially of who McClellan,

kind of the character, the kind of person he was. I wish they just would have sent him to a training center. He comes back at this terribly. So many times. So many fucking times. So McClellan planned to use Chesapeake Bay to basically move his forces. And at this point, they're just like, why don't we just fucking move on Richmond? It's like 108 miles away. We can see it.

I just ran there the other day. Let's just fucking end this thing quick. So he ends up going, using Chesapeake Bay to move on Richmond. He's able to move his men far enough down to where, I think, like, 38 miles to where there's 70 miles from Richmond. And he landed at Yorktown with like 55,000 men. And let's see, the Confederate general, they always had like Brigadier General. there's like majors and everything like that. So I'm just going to say general just for to make it simpler.

General Magruder had 13,000. Huge advantage for the union here. Well, Magruder ends up tricking him and held him off for a month until he eventually Magruder received reinforcements. Even with that, oh no, sorry, it wasn't Magruder that received reinforcements. He holds him off with 13,000 men until fucking McClellan receives reinforcements. then eventually they retreat back to Richmond. McClellan eventually reached Richmond already for a siege.

And this was called the Battle of Seven Pines. General Johnston, going to be a big player here for the Confederacy. There were multiple General Johnstons. Yeah, okay, well, first General, I'll just say first General Johnson that we talk about here. A live General Johnson. Yeah. Because the other one didn't fare so well. So he ends up getting wounded.

And this had to be the most advantageous wounding for the Confederacy. because he's replaced by a guy named Robert E. Lee. And was the Battle of Seven Pines, was that where Stonewall gets his name? It was during one of these very, very early engagements that this guy, what was Stonewall Jackson's first name? I can't remember. I don't know why.

General Jackson or whoever he was. Samuel L, right? Samuel, Stonewall Jackson? Definitely not Samuel Jackson. They wouldn't have let him in command. but I want to say Bull Run was when he got Stonewall because that was kind of his first

I think appearance appearance where that's right That's when it was yep you're right on that So This guy General Johnson gets wounded gets replaced by Robert Lee Lee attacked McClellan And was basically over Over the course of like seven or eight battles Basically pushes McClellan's forces back further from Richmond

And then they just kind of have to like dig in and establish a position. They're not trying to retreat all the way back because they still think that they can take Richmond. And this was the July 1st Battle of Malvern Hill in 1862. Confederate forces pressed all day against strong union positions and the unions holding firm. There were, and most of these battles,

I'll just list off casualties and you'll kind of see how it adds up. 5,600 Confederate casualties to 2,100 Union casualties. The union still had to pull back at night for protection and Richmond couldn't be taken. So basically at this point, Lincoln's like, and Lincoln's, you know, war captain or whatever, it's like, you had like four times the troops that these guys had and you couldn't get and take Richmond. And so McClellan is kicked in the ass out and replaced by a guy named John Pope. So this is early on, they're already like, nope, you're out. Well, McClellan had quite a few other battles before that because, you're, you're not. he was, that was in 1862, right?

Yeah. So he was Bull Run in 1861, just a million, or no, that was McDowell. He had had other opportunities where he just wasn't going to go forward in advance until seven pines had happened. He was just, he was so worried about protecting his guys and that there wasn't a loss of life. And not that that's not important because it truly is. He just didn't know how to use his numbers. Yeah.

And you'll see with some of these battles in the death counts that end up, the U.S. Jesus Christ, the union will be called the victor of some of these battles. Their casualty counts will almost double the amount of the rebel counts because there's just that many more soldiers there. And here's the thing, too, is I think there's sometimes a misunderstanding of what a casualty is. a casualty doesn't necessarily mean dead. Casualty is essentially someone that's either killed or wounded to where they can no longer participate in the battle. So, I mean, and so it's still the same.

You're still knocking this many soldiers essentially out of, you know, fighting's shape. But yeah, like you said, kind of going back prior to him being kicked out, McClellan being replaced and everything, you had the first battle of bull run. What was it also called the first battle of Manassas? I think so. Yeah.

And that's where Stonewall Jackson essentially comes in. He gets his nickname because he's holding, I think, like a small hill. And was there an actual stone wall? Or is it just that his men held the line in the manner of a stone wall? And then that's how he ended up getting the nickname. Yeah, I believe they were like the left or the right flank. Yeah. And they just refused to let the union around.

Yeah. So they just were like a stone wall that would protect. And again, we're going to be kind of jumping. There's going to be an action that's happening between the dates that were stating engagements by different various factions, we can't even attempt to describe these battles because the movements and how many different, like, regiments there are and everything like that.

Some of the bigger battles we can talk about, like, little points. But, I mean, when you're talking about this, it's like, this force held, you know, butt-fuck hill, and this force was over here on, like, lesser Weiner Mountain. And it's just, like, all these things that are named after, like, a clump of trees that just happened to be, like, nearby. Yeah, some guy that was just walking through the valley, he's like, butt-fuck hill.

I butt-fucked on that hill. That's the hill. So at this point, after John Pope gets in, that is, sorry, Pope starts moving south. Lee took Stonewall and sent him around to cut off and surround Pope. They moved at night and basically were able to intercept a union message somehow. They snuck around Pope. And I think that was when the second battle of Manassas, Bull Run occurred.

And during that time, Pope underestimates, you know, Lee and also Stonewall's tactics and basically loses to the Confederacy. And again, so Pope is then replaced by McClellan again. So like, hey, maybe McClellan learned his lesson. We're going to go ahead and put him back in charge. Because again, McClellan is so good at organizing and training and everything that they, I don't know if they figured he just would kind of learn some tactics or kind of learn from his mistakes. So they end up putting him back in command.

His guys loved him. He was like the ultimate players coach. There wasn't a groundswell of troops that were like, get McClellan out of here. He's fucked up. McClellan's pressures came more from the president and from the powers that be in Washington than it did from the army. The army, his troops were always a little bit sad because as soon as they would start gaining ground, he would play it safe and he would try to pull back. There was never a chase where he had anybody on the run. He never pressed his advantage, it seemed like.

Yep. He was always trying to keep distance to make sure that people were still alive, which again, not the worst thing. Terrible strategy when you're in a war. So Lee decides, now that he has some momentum on his side, is Lee actually invades Maryland by. crossing the Potomac. And this is where, I don't think we had anything up there before the Battle of Antietam, right? Well, the seven days battle that finally ended

McClellan's career. Okay, yeah, go ahead. The seven days battle took place June 25th for July 1st and 1862. It took place along the Virginia Peninsula. So like you said, they crossed over to the north, been repelled back. This took place in Virginia.

so this was south of the Mason Dixon line. And I think Lee's whole army was called the Army of Virginia or something like that. I think that's what they referred to his big group, his army group as. Yeah, and he's the one that's calling all the shots basically now, but he's just in charge of them. So he had, McClellan had 100,000 Union soldiers. He had a very large amount of people ready to fight. He had a huge numerical advantage.

Yeah, and Lee's troops just drove them back and drove them out of the peninsula, basically, and he retreated. That was where Lincoln had just had enough. He's like, dude, you can't have 100,000 troops, and I think that they outnumbered them by like 45,000, something like that at this point in time. And Lee's troops just pushed them back. They were better trained, but in the end, it was just McClellan not being able to match wits with Lee and win a battle. He could get hard. He couldn't finish. Yeah, yeah, and that's really what it was.

There was no, he was a guy that would run 93 feet up the court and then throw it off the backboard. He just could never do it. So once he gets taken out of it, I think he has sort of an axe to grind with Lincoln. And again, he will be back, unfortunately. So at this point, the Battle of Antietam, this is one of the larger battles that people, you know, heard about. Or if you're just kind of studying the Civil War, takes place September 6th. No, no, I was wrong. What?

Antietam was the one that got McClellan fired. Is Antietam the one that got MacLeon fired? Okay. It was a little foreshadowed. McClellan was out the door at one of these. So Battle of Antietam, the casualties on the Union side, oh, I'm sorry, the total casualties for Antietam were four times what the Americans suffered at Normandy. Four times during this one battle.

However, during this time, Lee ends up retreating back across the Potomac. but McClellan fucks up again and this was his fuck up as he didn't press he essentially they could have the understanding from Lincoln and his you know his war cabinet was that had he pressed against Lee it would have been possible to either take out Lee

or remove essentially Lee from the field and remove his army's ability to make war but he lets him escape again and he's able to go back and essentially recover and kind of reconsolate his troops Lee was the head of the snake for the south yeah if you get Rid of Lee, they're just going to flail.

The entire time. He was the guy. Yeah, Jefferson Davis was the president, but he just kind of let Lee run the show. Like what you think of like Eisenhower during World War II for the Allies, that's kind of like what Lee was for the Confederates. And I mentioned this to you again.

The Congress is still functioning during all of this shit. I don't know how that works. I don't know either. Like, I don't get it. Did you also know that Karl Marx was alive at this time. This was during the time when Karl Marx was alive. We can't play these games about when people were alive because it just blows my mind. I know. It's like the Picasso thing. The Picasso thing blows my mind. The only reason I mentioned it is because I saw something that

made note of him actually like kind of following the war. He was living, I think, in England at the time or in Britain somewhere. And he had written down some things about like, because the world is paying attention to this. Oh, yeah. Not only because it's not just, you know, American manufacturing that's supplying all of these like weapons and uniforms and everything like that like different sides have like are getting ship from like overseas and everything like rifles and all that kind of stuff so other countries strategically are paying attention to this because you're also looking at the united states if they weaken themselves enough throughout this whole thing what's to stop another country from moving in and taking us over well and i think maybe less that is more of

the South was trying to get England's attention and say, hey, you need to back us, come help us out, send us some supplies. And to the Union's credit, they had the bigger Navy force. And also to the Union's credit, the Navy was integrated with free black men first at the beginning of the war. But they set up blockades around the South. So if any ships were to be coming in to try to get, like send any rations, any weapons, anything like that to the south, they were already being picked off by the union.

So that was kind of keeping them separate. But in every one of these wars or battles or skirmishes, whatever it was happening, as soon as Lee would win, they would kind of feel like they were getting a bit closer to getting an ally because if they could prove, England's not going to support a loser. So if they can keep winning and strategically keep kind of not really gaining ground but not losing ground at all. when do you back the winner?

And then you get in for the spoils of war and everything. Yeah. And I'm sure England would have made a very nice deal with the South. There was even an instance where... Well, they're providing three quarters of the cotton for the entire world at this point. It's not like it's not an economical advantage either. Why not ship that to England and have England be that supporter? Because South Carolina needs somebody to manufacture this, England's the next best thought.

Did you also know that Antietam was the first battle to be documented by photography? there's photographic pictures, yes. In 1862? Yep. And whoever was the photographer, I can't remember their name, but they had a gallery then that they established in the north, and they had situations where, like, as horrible as this is, where people would come and view the gallery

and would find out that their fathers or husbands or sons were dead. That's how they found out is they would be able to see pictures. I think it wasn't the best then Kind of going back to McClellan So the big thing Like we're talking about McClellan All go no finish But he basically refuses to go

On the offensive I think is the biggest thing And he gets replaced by Ambrose Burnside Perhaps the greatest mutton chop mustache combination In the history of the world That's sideburns are named after Ambrose Burnside Yeah Before we get into him

Five days after Antietam, we have the introduction of the Emancipation Proclamation. Okay. So now we got to go down that road a little bit. This is, I felt like it was sort of cool in the beginning as to how the whole idea started. So like we said, emancipation wasn't on the minds for the first basically two years of this war. Well, here's the thing too. So kind of leading up to, and it kind of had Antietam is kind of a catalyst for the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a reason for it.

Exactly. So Lincoln has been started to feel the pressure from abolitionists and from the north for emancipation. There's already, you know, it's already been enacted in some places in the north. But he basically needed a big victory first, or it would seem like a desperation move, him just trying to go ahead and free the slaves to maybe cause an uprising in the south or something like that. We'll get there. Yeah. I'm telling you, I got you here.

This is very interesting. So Antietam was actually, Antietam was because it forced leader. retreat, it was considered a northern victory. So that was what Lincoln was kind of waiting for in order to go ahead and enact the Emancipation Proclamation. So again, like you said, September 22nd, 1862. Yeah, the wheels of motion in this whole thought process for him started in 1861. And May 1861, I believe he was a general, Ben Butler.

He was commanding down in Fort Monroe, and I believe it was Virginia. And there were three slaves that had crossed out of a rebel camp. They, the rebels, the Confederacy didn't allow black people to be enlisted in the army, but they would bring slaves in to kind of clean up camp. To do the work, essentially, to free up essentially the soldiers to do the soldiering. So three of them escaped in the night. They made it to Fort Monroe. They talked to Butler.

Butler's like, come on in. We'll take care of you. Come on in. so in May a soldier from that camp from the Confederacy came up and they're like hey man we're uh we're missing three slaves they escaped from camp uh do you know anything about that and butler's like yeah i got them like sweet dude bring bring them back let me have them um they're actually the uh general slaves he brought them in as the uh to kind of clean up the camp they decided to escape they were helping dig down

ditches for us and do all that kind of stuff. And Butler goes, uh, yeah, I'm not going to give them back. And at this point in the country's time, anybody within the union, if there were slaves that had crossed into free states, there was a law saying that the slave holders were able to pursue them up into free states to bring them back. Butler goes, I'm not going to send them back. There's like, no, bro, you have to. Like, this is the rule. You have to do this. There's a law against it. He's like, Oh, it's the, like you were just shooting at us literally like hours ago. And now you're, you're wanting, you're wanting us to do something for you? Well, yeah.

And he hits him with it. He goes, you know, international law says that if there are any, if there's any contraband that is seized by a warring army against someone they're fighting against, that's legally allowed to be theirs. So last time I checked, you guys seceded from our. country, you're technically a foreign agitator. We're going to go ahead and keep these slaves. So that was the first instance where the army actually stepped in and was like, no, they weren't emancipated, they weren't freed. They were able to work inside of that camp, though, and they were actually paid wages.

So they were basically freed at that point. They were protected by that camp. Then this got everybody really fired up. Like, everybody's like, holy shit, I can't believe this happened. It's adding a new element to it now. Yeah. and in Missouri in August in 1861 John C. Fremont issued a proclamation

that all slaves of all rebels in Missouri would be freed Lincoln's like holy shit dude we didn't talk about this can't do that not going to happen but that got everybody fired up like holy shit something big is happening in May 1862 David Hunter

who was over in he was another general he was over in coastal South Carolina and into coastal Georgia did the exact same thing. He's like, all the slaves in the rebel side are free. You guys can go. Lincoln steps in again. He's like, yo, calm down.

I'm the only guy that can make this decision. Congress started to really get into this August 6th, 1861. They passed something called the First Confiscation Act, which said that owners of slaves in military service involved in supporting the war effort to be freed. So anybody that was in the, Confederate Army, all their slaves were to be freed. This was something that our Congress came up with, and it's kind of like we're trying to

send some messages because they know that any desertion is going to come up north. If you can get that desertion, we can start talking them into bringing them into our army. We're starting to form segregated troops of black soldiers to be able to go down and fight. Like strategically thinking from like an infrastructure, if you don't have your workforce, to work to go ahead and produce food, whatever, you know, ammunition, weaponry, gun, all that kind of stuff, you're essentially weakening your enemy's infrastructure. It's like in, you know, in World War II when you're bombing factories and stuff like that. You're trying to weaken their ability to make war.

Rations, anybody that's picking food or anything like that, they're going to be gone. So then we get to March 1862. Congress forbade all union commanders from returning any slaves back to their owners. slaves weren't technically freed because they were used in the camps but they were paid a wage. So they weren't set free, but they also didn't have to go back abiding by that. It's not the best case scenario, but it's much better than the alternative of them being returned back. April 1862 after March, Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia altogether with the caveat of paid compensation for every person that gave up slaves. the numbers

like dollar amounts you're thinking yeah I think yeah I thought I heard some like 300 500 is what I heard okay which if you do the math on it probably today

you would have to think it's got to be at least eight to ten times so you're talking about maybe $5,000 in compromise but it wasn't their market value it was just a portion of it because obviously

a slave is going to be worth his weight and gold yeah after we hit that we at June 1862 Congress abolished slavery in all U.S. territories. So moving forward, just like Lincoln was pushing, it's not going to happen in any territories.

If it's happening there, they will be freed. July 1862, Congress passed the second confiscation act, which was the same as the sort of like the first, but adding on to the first, it was that any slave that escaped from a rebel owner was free. So now it's pushing the, anybody involved with the war, your slaves are free. Now it's anybody that escapes and can make it up to the north.

We're going to consider you a free man. So you're not going to be chased, anything like that. You get here, you're free. And also at that same month, Lincoln's like, hey, man, kind of want to do this emancipation proclamation thing. Let's make this happen. and one of his advisors, just like you were saying, said, didn't see it coming.

Not a bad idea. But let's wait until we get to a place where we can actually win a war. Yeah. Yeah. So it doesn't look like this is a move that's coming out of desperation. It's going to be something that's coming out of power and a way that we can say, hey, we're winning this war. It's just an escalation of what's already kind of been going on at the time.

You just needed something to show. showed that like we're able to do this because we're on the upswing. Uh-huh. Yeah. So September 22nd, like we were talking about, he gives the preliminary proclamation. And the preliminary said, if rebels did not end the fighting and rejoined the union by January 1st, 1863, all, this is where words are very important. All slaves and rebellious states or rebel states would be free. Okay.

I have that. I just want to make sure we're not contradicting. other. It's there was a caveat and this was that's the second one the compromise. Yeah so we'll get to that. Um, the other part of it endorses voluntary colonization. Now, colonization was something that Lincoln believed in very strongly. And this is something where if you're white, I don't, I don't, I don't know how to say this. Um, so colonization basically is the thought of taking any freed black people or any black people in America and then sending them back to another colony,

which is where we get Liberia from in West Africa. It's basically like trying to say, hey, we screwed up, we're going to send you back there. The huge issue with colonization is... Did you see it was involuntary though? Yeah, it would be voluntary. They would try to push forward to say, hey, go do it.

Okay. So it was voluntary. We'll give you a pass, trying to move what this point was 4 million black people back to Africa seems like a very big task and not only that like you said in the beginning which set this up

perfectly it was like a perfect accent that you brought it up slaves were brought over from Africa beginning in 1619 so we're talking about 1861 now say 1865 they get all this that's so many generations removed from what they would have known in Africa that's not like one or two family members away No.

We're talking lineage. You've never even been there. Yeah. Your immune system isn't set up to kind of fight the... You don't have infrastructure. You don't have any type of support system to go there. It's almost... It's not as bad as essentially being in servitude.

But at the same time, you're just kind of like, well, what the fuck are we supposed to do over there? Like, I've never seen this place. With nothing that you know. Yeah. So it... In a way, I mean, it's... It's not slavery.

So that part is okay. everything after it's not slavery is just not something that would be tenable or feasible. So after that, he urges border states the ones that do have slave still. So Maryland, Kentucky, Rhode Island, or Delaware, and Missouri. And Mississippi, I think. Louisiana. Okay. It urged them to come up with a plan for emancipation on their own.

because they weren't rebel states. So the idea that slaves would be freed in rebel-held areas means that all the states that lined up with the union still technically could have slavery. Yeah, he made a point to say that like all slaves in border states, they weren't included in this, but I encourage those states to take it upon themselves to try to do something similar. I think there was a total they said that just by this proclamation, about three million slaves were freed by this law. Now, whether those were actually freed by the people, that's a different story. But I think what they say is this is the number of people that were applicable to the law itself. And basically this whole thing, it took the peace agreements off the table. Yeah.

Yeah, which seems like the peace agreement should have been off the table a long time ago. But now it's just kind of official. his last part of the preliminary that he gave was that all majors were given solely as military necessity. So he wanted to make sure that all those slave states that were still a part of the union knew that he wasn't coming up with this on his own. He wasn't coming up from sentiment

or from a push from the north. It's necessary for the preservation of the union. Yes, this was all necessary based upon the military actions that are being taken place. So we get to January 1st, 1863. He gives the official emancipation proclamation. All slaves would be freed in states, not controlled by federal troops. So did he gave the proclamation on the 22nd to be effective January 1st?

Yes. So that's when he gives the actual emancipation proclamation is on January 1st, marking the day that this is when they should be free. When it's enacted, when it's supposed to go into. Uh-huh. Okay. Because the union wasn't made whole again. The rebel states were still fighting. So like I say, all slaves in states not controlled by federal troops are free.

And this was kind of a big deal to say that because like we say, the states that were a part of the union were still federally controlled, therefore they had to come up with their own stuff. But as areas were brought in, so as we took land, it gave the ability of the federal. troops the Union troops to come in and say hey you guys are free keep going move in let them know that's where we get Juneteenth from because that was the last place where we did that in the episode it was the last place that Union troops or American troops they got the news essentially yeah yeah they got the news last so that was another kind of big thing was as they were able to move down that was how they would get the message across because then it would be federally controlled

then they would be freed this was basically the whole the biggest change in the war. Yeah. We turned from trying to create another harmonious union to being like, you know, freedom time. Yeah, it's when you feel that you're in a position of power, that you're like, okay, we have, we got, the cards are on our side. We have the better hand.

Again, this is one of those things that when you hear emancipation proclamation, you just think Lincoln, you know, got up there and the proclamation was just like, you're all free. it was like in a kernel of truth it was like that to a degree that applied to certain people but again it didn't apply to like the border states that he didn't want to piss off and force then to join the confederacy he was just kind of like hey except you guys but we hope you're going to do the right thing like we're all we're all done to do it over here hopefully you guys do it too yeah didn't free all slaves no so that's that's something that we were taught i think

in history classes that he did free the slaves we just never really asked why the word wasn't in front of slaves. Exactly. Again, during this time, you know, there's battles going on and everything like that, troop movements. Burnside at some point after the Emancipation Proclamation, he makes a move for Richmond. And Lee was in a position where Burnside had the ability to beat him to Richmond. Well, there was a delay.

He had to get across essentially a river. I'm not sure if it was the Potomac or if it was something close to Richmond. And his strategy was they were going to build essentially these, like floating docks like pontoons to get his troops across. They were supposed to be done and ready by the time he was ready to make this move. They got delayed for 17 days waiting for these pontoon, this bridge to be made. Which is an eternity. It is.

And so that provides ample time, essentially. He had 120,000 union troops ready to go on Richmond. But because of that 17 delay, day delay for these, this bridge pontoons or whatever, completely fucks up the plan. And so that plan is kind of Fubar at that point. He ends up still, even after the 17-day delay, he still tries to enact the plan and ends up just getting beat by leave badly. And at that point, per standard operating procedure, apparently for the union, he ends up getting replaced Burnside is out and gets replaced by Joseph Hooker. And it was just due to a few other questionable decisions that I guess Burnside had made. It wasn't that primarily.

You can't really blame him for, you know, these things shown up late. But he made some other really questionable battlefield decisions in which he had the numerical advantage over Lee and still got beat. So Burnside is out. Hooker's in. They get themselves a nice hooker. Much worse facial hair. Yes. But here's the thing.

What Hooker lacked in facial hair, he made up for in so many advantageous ways of what he actually did for the Union Army. So he implements all these improvements. to structure in soldiers' lives. He improved the union's cavalry units, which if you're thinking about it, these guys on horseback, these units could travel a lot faster, could sweep around to take the enemy's flanks

and things like that. Officer training, he improved that. He improved the food that the union soldiers were receiving. He improved essentially what they call the ambulance service or the medical treatment that they would receive. Don't quote me on it. I believe this is where hookers come from because he would allow women

of the closest nearing villages or cities into the camps at night to hook up with the soldiers. Really? I believe that is where the term hooker comes from. I'm an asterisk on that, but I would like to believe that's true. Yeah, hookers, hookers,

I believe is where that came from. That was what they were called. So I'm going to jump forward a little bit to, let's see, do you have anything prior to May 2nd, 1863? You have the battle of Fredericksburg. Fredericksburg was another loss for the union just kind of plain and simple they just got outworked again

I'm not sure who the commanding officer was that but I'm guessing Lee had something to do with the victory he seems to have his hand in every time the fucking union loses and this comes after the emancipation proclamation so we went from the highest highs and we just start stacking up losses and these skirmishes and these little battles

yeah I think you're talking into May 2nd so we would be into the Battle of Chancellorsville It's in Spotsylvania, county in Virginia. It lasted from the 30th to the 6th. Is that where we're at? Yeah. And this is Stonewall's last ride? Yep.

So, well, it's his last ride, but he doesn't go out like in a glorious southern death. No. So on May 2nd, 1863, I think they're prepping for the Battle of Chancellorsville. It's kind of getting all the troops and everything. So Stonewall Jackson rides out. I think he's doing scouting and he's riding back with a few of his guys. And he's riding back either in the evening or at night. And his troops mistake him for like a union unit moving in on him.

And he ends up taking friendly fire and taking two bolts of friendly fire in the arm. So his arm gets amputated. Then he gets pneumonia and dies eight days later. So they lose a pretty tried and true military commander here. And like Lee Stonewall was one of his guys. Like one of his, you know, one of his bottom bitches. Somebody that he could depend on to go out and get a job done. Yeah, strategically sound.

and so the Battle of Chancellorville happens and Hooker elects essentially to withdraw I'm not sure essentially what exactly the situation was there but I do know that in the majority I'm talking like 70, 80% of these battles the union has numerical advantage here

every battle that they go into it feels like they have a numerical advantage Oh actually hold on a second Hooker he elects withdraw And oh yeah they had Leighout number two to one And it was Hooker's fault It was his poor commanding I think in this situation

I'm again It's hard to keep up with all of this shit But Hooker even asks His like command structure That he's with like his lieutenants or whoever's below him What they should do and they're like We have the advantage we need to keep fighting and he's like Nah

I think we're going to go in pull back. You got those McClellan jeans in him and just immediately wanted to pull back. I don't understand it. So at this point, Lee, like you were saying, is just racking up victory after victory. And at this point, Lee's confidence is sky high. So he actually uses this momentum to invade the north again. And this is where we're moving into probably the most well-known battle of the Civil War. Do you have anything prior to Gettysburg? Siege of Vicksburg May 18th through July 4th Another shot

This was Warren County, Missouri Oh yes, we're heading west For this Okay So we're back in the Western Theater Okay so Kind of to preface this Whatever the Union is doing

On kind of the Eastern Theater Think the opposite For what's going on on the Western Theater They're fucking steamrolling Almost every engagement that the union is in with the Confederacy is just win after win and it's due to Grant. Grant's, this is where he cuts his teeth. This is where he makes his name.

This is why he becomes the guy that he becomes is because he is just whooping wholesale ass all through Tennessee, through Missouri, just everywhere. And he's got a boy with him. His number two, what would be like Stonewall is to, he's got this guy and it's, is it William to come to Sherman? Yep. This is my guy. Out of everybody in the Civil War, Sherman's my boy. I think the Sherman tank that was used in World War II is actually named after Sherman. Could be. I don't see why not. They should if it's not. So around the same time prior to, I think, or prior to Vic, or what am I saying? Oh, Gettysburg, right? Kind of around the same time, I think maybe a little bit prior to Gettysburg. So Grant has around 75,000 men and basically lay siege to Vicksburg, which is this city that's

It's on the Missouri or Mississippi River. Mississippi would be at that point, I think. One of the two. And it's basically, Vicksburg is on a bluff overlooking the river, but it's able to, because of that position, any type of like, the union can't get up river or anything like that. They can't get past this because they'll just take artillery fire. So Grant laid siege to Vicksburg with Union gunboats move up the river and start assaulting it as well. and they said that you could actually like the soldiers would be able to climb up on like a hill

and at night would be able to watch the gunboats launch mortar shells and everything into the city and you could track the shot through the air and see it land into Vicksburg. That's fucking awesome. The crazy thing about this too is these shells that they're launching you would think like when you think like

you see them like firing the cannons in like World War II battles they're not just like regular cannonballs. They've designed them this point where these are like exploding shot and they have all these different kinds of shot that they can use. So they would, how they would determine where these things were going to explode, they would have to know how much fuse was on it and they would clip the fuse and just have to like eyeball it in time and be like, that looks like 500 yards and be like how much, where's the and like, pull out the ruler and be like this is 500 yards worth of fuse and then just fucking

launch these shots in. Well, there has to be a certain amount of math in that too. Oh yeah. Like you have to know how fast that travels per second with how much gun powder you're using to fire them in order to dial that in. At the angle and the trajectory and all that kind of stuff. If it blows up 100 feet above the city, it did nothing. It's doing nothing. So Grant ends up taking Bixberg. And I think the guy that was protecting Bitzberg, the Confederate guy, he had sent some type of like parlay or letter to Grant or something like that asking for some type of like terms of surrender. And Grant basically just told him he's like,

the terms of surrender, you fucking surrender. Or he's like, or I'm taking fucking Vicksburg and leveling it. And so the guy that was in charge, his name was Pemberton. And Pemberton ends up surrendering 30,000 men to grant on July 4th. Great Independence Day. Oh, yeah. And so kind of getting back to Gettysburg is, so that was July 4th. Gettysburg takes place.

So they're happening almost at the exact same time, the siege in Gettysburg. Because Gettysburg is July 1st through the 3rd. of 63. Yeah, we also skipped over the Overland campaign too. Oh, I didn't see that over there. You read about that? Uh-uh. The trench that they dug? No. So, this escapes me. I forgot what badlet was. But during the Overland campaign, it was just a campaign where the union was just sending guys out and sending guys out and sending guys out, just not making any headway because the Confederate Army was entrenched. So we're thinking like no man's land type World War I stuff

where, you know, trench on this side, trench on this side, no man's land you try to charge out and you're getting cut down. Yep. Okay. You can't beat trench warfare at a certain point because they're entrenched in so any offensive, you're just going to be run right in. You're fighting for every square inch.

Their plan was, was they were going to dig a tunnel. They were going to dig a tunnel underground, and once they dug it underneath the lines, they were going to fill it full of explosives. Nope, that's not this. It's not that? Nope. That's not that battle.

That battle happens in, because, okay, you would have said that, I would have pointed out. It was, oh, I wrote down a whole bunch of it. Where the fuck was it? This is the beauty of doing your own research, folks. Well, this is also the beauty of having two people do research.

So that was Petersburg. Okay. That happens later. But yes, that we're going to talk at length of that because that is a fucking baller move. I like that. They fucked it up after the baller move. Well, yeah, it was a great idea, great execution until it came to like the phase B of the plan.

So jumping into Gettysburg, Lee's confidence is sky high. He invades north again, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Oh, that must have been 64. Is that what I'm thinking? It was because July, yeah, 63 is when Gettysburg happens. Yeah, back to Gettysburg. So Union Commander is General George Meade, Confederate, General, of course, it's got to be Lee. Strength of the Union was 104,000.

Confederate was about between, they said 71,75,000. And then artillery pieces, 360 on the Union side, 270 on the Confederate. So it just kind of builds in your mind the different strengths. Obviously, big advantage toward the Union here. First day, it ends up being a Confederate victory. We're going to go in and we're going to do Gettysburg on its own thing. So I'm not going to get too far into it. It was a huge battle.

It's probably one of the linchpin battles of the Civil War. best known ones just essentially due to the casualties and everything. And kind of something that shook Bob Lee's confidence, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The second, so first day is a Confederate victory. The second day ends up being a union victory. And the third day of it ends up being a resounding union victory. A lot of movement during this. Again, we're going to do its own thing. So we're not going to go too far into it. I just want to point out the casualties here. out of 160,000 men, there were 51,000 casualties.

Again, that's not just dead, but just a ton dead. Yeah, well, and again, just to go back to this, the standing U.S. Army prior to the Civil War was 16,000 people. And there were definitely more than 16,000 dead during this. This is just 51,000 people either dead or knocked out of,

like, wounded so much that they couldn't fight. Yeah, but that's, the union had mustered up a, force that was 10 times the size of the previous U.S. Standing Army, just on the Union says it, just out of the north that's fighting in one battle. So a third of the participants of this are casualties. I think that's why also it's so well known. So Lee tries to high tail it and starts to retreat.

There's this huge ambulance, you know, train, everything of all these wagons. And they get to the Potomac, but because rains have occurred within the last few days, it's completely impassable. So he has to basically sit there and try to defend until he's able to actually get people across the Potomac. Again, this is a situation I think if I think there were so many casualties that Mead felt that he couldn't pursue. He also didn't know that he couldn't get across the Potomac possibly. But I think again, if you have Lee that's not able to get any of his men across this river, they had him pinned. Had they just pushed him and taken Lee, it could have, you know, almost into, not ended the war, but you're taking the fucking king.

Or, you know, in chess, I guess, whatever. Kings are pretty much useless in chess. They can only move certain directions. I don't know anything about chess. You're taking a huge key component off the field. Well, yeah, because there's no Stonewall Jackson anymore. He's gone. Yeah.

So you have, I think Beauregard is still floating around in there. He's not a key player. You have another Johnston in there who also goes the way of Stonewall getting friendly fired himself coming up. You don't have anybody else that has the propensity for offense. Golden boy this entire time. Leeds your guy. He's your golden goose.

So also, kind of something that might not be known is the Gettysburg address. It's not like this took place right after Gettysburg. It actually took place in November on the 19th, four and a half months later after the battle. Smoke had cleared for sure. Yeah, definitely. And so we'll cover the Gettysburg address when we actually do Gettysburg and kind of get into the details of that. Next up, as far as larger battles, I'm just kind of looking down here. we have the Battle of Charleston, and that is commanded.

There was a guy that had taken place in other battles named PT something Beauregard. I think it was just, I just wrote him down as PT Beauregard. And then this guy on the union side named George Strong. This was a plan by Strong to essentially bring down men via the Union Navy to retake Charleston in the harbor, which the Confederacy pretty well fortified. This was the first instance of the 54th Massachusetts infantry, the first Northern Black Regiment commanded by a white guy named Colonel Robert Shaw, and Frederick Douglass had been kind of instrumental in getting this unit formed.

This is the movie that they created Glory for, right? I haven't seen Glory. I know that sounds bad. I should have seen Glory. I believe it is. I believe in the 54th Regiment. there was his son Frederick Douglass's son Louis he was a sergeant major

there also was a grandson of Harriet Tubman okay January 18th is and there's 600 men in this 54th Massachusetts infantry January 18th

they're able to go and land the troops and basically they land in this place it's called the Battle of Fort Wagner so I'm guessing it took place before Wagner the Confederacy was dug in pretty hard

And so I want to say at 54th, they land on like the wings of this. They're kind of on the flanks. And they basically charge forward, take an enemy position entrenched and then have to fall back. I don't know if they're, you know, just other opposing forces kind of regathered themselves and everything. A guy named Sergeant William Carney actually was able to, apparently this was a big thing as saving the colors. Because they would carry, you know, you had the guy standing pulling in the flag and everything like that. each regiment, it wasn't like they had their own flag, but they would have the flag itself for, you know, at this point, you don't, you have the union flag, which is similar to what we know today is the

star-spangled, you know, stars and stripes. So he ends up saving the 54th national colors, despite being wounded like three or four times, like the face, the legs and the arms. He saves it, crawls back to his brother's a few hundred yards and says something to the effect of it never touched the dirt or something like that. And he is eventually awarded the Medal of Honor. The 54th ends up losing like 272 men, though, out of the 600, including Lewis Douglas. And unfortunately, the attack is unsuccessful in Charleston doesn't fall to the union. But all accounts, these guys served with distinction. They were well trained,

you know, educated. They were exemplary in their service. And they also were kind of like a, as the union and free states saw the way that they were able to put up a fight and that they were able to hold out and do what they did, it earned so much respect in knowing that these, free black men were just as valiant and just as strong and just as tough as any other white soldier. It was the ultimate level of equality at that point in thinking that they weren't

going to be able to hold up their end. Well, here's the thing, too, is I think kind of in the same, this is, I don't know if I touched on these guys during the Tuskegee podcast, but I know I touched on the Harlem Hellfighters from World War II. These guys also were one of the inspirations essentially for the Tuskegee and kind of to show that they were capable of things. It wasn't just like these guys were the only unit. This actually encouraged then and actually was the proof in the pudding that other units, you know, African Americans, they called them like UTC. What was it?

It was units of color like something like that. But there was a term that they used for it could serve with distinction. Yeah. And just to throw that in there, out of the 2.2 million, Union forces 200,000 of them or 200,000 of them were black Free black men

It There were I believe it was 20,000 in the Navy So there were 180,000 Black soldiers that entered this fight for the union It's so many, man So kind of going forward a little bit more We have the battle of Chickamauga Funny name to say

September 20th, 1863, 34,000 combined casualties on this one between both the Union and the Confederacy. Numbers are starting to stack up these. They said as the war went on, basically the ability to deal death kept advancing and everything like that, not only with weaponry.

I'm not sure of the exact date, but I did some research because I wanted to see kind of what the capabilities of some of these weapons were. There were still musket balls, weren't they? They were, but what it essentially was is when they first started, they were smooth bore rifles,

which when it's a smooth bore, there's no rotation, accuracy is not right. They said that once they did rifled barrels, but they also had just the musket balls and everything. And also, you know, I'm sure musket balls were being,

the technology didn't have, you know, they were able to create lesser seams to, they said that they got more accurate, but a lot of these skirmishes and like the firing and stuff, these guys were within, you know, 50 yards, 50 to 100 yards is when they were just

fucking line up, you know, on the fucking flute and the drum. this is the perfect time to bring this up but I'm so glad that you did thinking about the way that they fought these wars back then is the it's so fucking frustrating shit ever we're talking about they had people that marched into battle holding the flags

no weapons you're doing fucking flags they had a drummer boy how do you not learn from the fucking American Revolution where you're just copying the British of having the lines and you get across from each other like here's the thing is I know that you have to shoot and then reload why are you not having like two or three guys carrying out like,

like wooden planks or like made of logs and just setting them in front and then being like, our job is to hold these in front of you. Why don't you get on a knee to make yourself less of a target when you're trying to fire or after you fire, maybe get down on the ground and start like lay down and start reloading and everything. Instead of just standing there and waiting for the enemy to just launch a fucking volley into you.

Or better yet, don't line up face to face on a battlefield. Yeah. Try doing something else because all you're doing is just lining up a row of targets. Your volley is still as effective. Like the whole point that they said is like, you know, technology. They had like sharp, each side had sharpshooters that could like actually pick off targets. But what's the difference if you have, I guess the whole point was if you charged a line and it was too spread out, guys could get through your line and everything.

But at the same time, like, if you're if they're like, well, you have to fire a tight volley, if all of you're aiming even from angles into the same mass of people, you're still getting the same effectiveness. Yeah. Either that or you know what, everybody, let's shoot to the right side and fire and just concentrate our fire at that side. If we knock them out, then we can reload, take what we take, fire on somebody else. It was too many fucking reenactments because, of course, it's all reenactments during the fucking documentary I'm watching. But the way that they do it too, where it almost looks like all of them fire at once and then they all stopped reload at the same time, here's kind of my thought process on it. Stagger, every other. Yes, because if you're shooting, here's the thing.

to the whole point of that you have your you know your first line of guys then you have your guys behind let the guys in front fire first wait a couple seconds until they said they could reload somewhere between 20 and 30 seconds because they would have um in those pouches it was not just the black powder that they're trying to put in everything would be put in there so you'd have first black powder in those paper rolls and then you would have the um fuck what's the ball on top of it yeah and you would jam that in. So you could do the shot. So you could do 15, I think they said between 20 and 30 seconds. Well, and after that, didn't you have to put a plug in the top of it? Yeah, but I mean, if you, you know, you had to tamp down the gunpowder, then you had to load the ball in. No, no, no. It was all,

they said all in the one paper cartridge. So they would roll and they would have these like 30 pre-rolls. They had pre-rolls. So basically they would have 30 of these pre-rolls and they would just reach in and and they would bite the top off of them, jam it in, stamp it. And then they would have to put the blasting cap on it and everything. But, fire, have your front line fire, wait 10 seconds, and then have the guys behind once they're halfway done reloading, fire another shot, because if you're the side that's taking fire and you're all firing at the same time, you're standing there for 30 seconds, not doing anything. If I'm getting a line of shot fired into me, and then I realize I'm trying to load and I have

10 seconds before the next fucking shots coming in, not 30, how many times is that 3 of? Or if the guy beside you ends up getting shot and you're just like, oh, fuck. And you're like, your reload time drastically increases for the, amount of times that people gets knocked down right here. Jesus Christ. It's just, you're panicking in a situation where you, it's like literally the worst time to panic.

Well, and then they were talking about so, um, cannon fire from a distance would be the same type of like clip the fuse. They would have some of that. They would have shot and everything. But then they would have the kind of shot like you're thinking with a shotgun. Yeah.

Or would blast out. Like a spray. Yeah. They said there was, they did one, not an example of it, but they, um,

kind of talked about one instance where, um, Line of Confederate troops are a big group of them were charging an artillery position, and these things were loaded with actual just like, like buckshot, kind of. And they said these things fired on them within about 15 feet, and it just blew them into pink mist. It's just disintegrated them. And they said it was just a cloud of pink. That it...

It's disgusting, but it's also very, very impressive. It's maddening, though. Yeah. The fucking way that they were doing this shit. So back to Chickamauga. Yeah. 34,000 combined. After this is when Grant's actually promoted to the commanding officer of all the Union armies.

And he makes his headquarters actually in Virginia, the part of Virginia that I guess the union now controls. And William DeCompson Sherman is actually promoted to lead all forces at Chattanooga, Tennessee. So I think he kind of probably steps into Grant's role and is leading that side of it. And at this point, it kind of sounds like they have Richmond not surrounded, but they're working. working to kind of create a surrounding of Richmond. It's in the site. They're trying to cut off Richmond from all supply lines. Exactly.

And then they're just going to slowly push in toward Richmond and get the circle smaller and smaller. May 8th is, oh, sorry, this kind of moves us into the 1864 campaign. And this is where there was some talk about it. And I think Grant had a discussion with Lincoln and some other, like, war cabinet people. And this is when they kind of enacted a couple different strategies. During the campaign, there was a campaign in 64, May 4th. I can't remember that was when like the Battle of Spotsylvania. Overland campaign.

Okay, that was the Overland campaign? Okay. There was a battle during that called the Battle of Spotslvania. And during that campaign, part of it, Overland and everything, there was Union 17,000 casualties. Confederate had 8,000 to 11,000 casualties during this whole campaign. And in the, on May 8th, oh, sorry, May 4th, that was the casualties alone on that day. May 8th was the Battle of Spotsvania. 18,000 union casualties to 12,000 union cat, or fuck, I keep mixing this up.

18,000 union casualties, 12,000 Confederate casualties. The reason that the union casualties were so high as they adopted this new tactic, because they could replace troops so quickly is they found they had this new tactic as if they could push the enemy line even if they were in highly defended positions they started making

instead just having you know like a line with maybe guys right behind it they would put like eight guys deep and so basically they wouldn't give them enough time to take out these lines and you would just charge them with mass amounts of people and it would allow them to overrun these positions

and so they were taking more casualties, but they were also taking more ground. Well, and this was, I think, the first true meeting of Grant and Lee. I think this was them head to head against each other. And when you're looking at casualty count and everything like that, you're strictly thinking about the war. Now, we had an election in 1860 that brought Lincoln to power. 1864 is going to be the next time that he's up for. re-election. So the most important thing, Lincoln knowing what's going on, you have the Democrats pushing for a, not a surrender, but peace talks. And you see these casualties mounting up left and

right. This is making Lincoln look bad because Lincoln is the one that put Grant in. Grant has a very bloody strategy, but also at this point in the war, it's less about where you're taking over and more about trying to bleed Lee's supply of people. That's what it was. Because you have deserters that are leaving in droves because they're seeing what's going on because you have, again,

the proclamation that is releasing and freeing slaves so you're having less supplies at home. Inflation is through the roof. I think at one point they said it was like 6,000%. At one point the Confederate dollar fell from just

the dollar value to like 12 cents. just fucking nothing, just pesos, for lack of a better term. Just pouring so much money into the war effort that they weren't able to make that up. And they don't have any food or anything like that because everybody that's running the farms and everything are engaged in war or their slaves have left. During this point, they raised the draft age.

I believe it was up to 50. So you have 50-year-old men out there on the field that are trying to fight. That wasn't popular anywhere. No. Union or Confederacy. started having to do this crap. It was a big deal. So Lincoln is out there with his guy, not wholly out there with him, but his heart is out there with Grant,

hoping that he's going to pull something out. Well, full well knowing that he just met his Democrat competitor, Democrat competitor, none other than George McClellan, who is coming back with vengeance. I don't know if he has some hate in his heart for Lincoln because Lincoln was the man that relieved him. but he was pushing towards trying to get a ceasefire in and trying to do peace talks, which at that point, looking at the situation, we've lost so many men on the union side where it's almost like sunk costs. You just have to see it through, but McClellan didn't want to.

Well, I think the big thing that lost for McClellan was his proposal for peace negotiations were based on recognizing the Confederacy's independence. So it went so counter. I think people like you were saying were so tired of the war on both sides. that when you're looking at it from that perspective, it's like, well, this guy, maybe we just need to end this. But then at the same time, I think there's also the thought processes of we've already come this far. I feel like we're getting closer and, you know, to a union victory. And I think part of that too was, I don't know how this was obviously not made public, but Grant and Sherman and Lincoln had met and decided in the spring of 1864 basically on what's called total war.

And the determination was made and Grant was like, hey, let me and Sherman kind of do this plan. We're going to not only, it wasn't a scorched earth, but it was kind of a scorched earth type thing where he's like, we need to not only hammer their army. He's like, but we're going to go ahead and hammer them from their infrastructure and basically eliminate all of their ability to make more. We're going to demoralize them so much that they have no choice but to surrender. Yeah, and during this Overland campaign in the beginning days, like you're talking about, Grant has these casualty numbers just adding up, adding up, adding up, adding up. And the Democrats are loving it. They're calling him the butcher.

They're saying that all this blood is on Lincoln's hands. Lincoln is seeing his hopes of re-election just basically drowned. He gets a letter from the front from Grant. Grant basically tells me, like, yo, I'm going to see this through on the front lines. We may not win this, but he goes, going to be out here until we get the job done. He said something like, I'll be out here all summer long. Yep. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, he's like, I'll be out here all summer long. And the thing that these were from a casual, there's casualty perspective, Confederate victories, but if you're

looking at it from an actual, like, strategic standpoint, they're union victories because it's not like the Confederacy is inflicting all these casualties and staying put. Yeah, they're inflicting these casualties, but they're seating ground. And a lot of land. And then the unions coming in and just mopping up and basically making it like any ground you give us, you're not coming back to fucking use this. And more important to that ground is Lee only has a certain number of soldiers left. So every time, every war that's fought, if Grant is losing twice or three times as many, that's still that third that's being lost by the Confederate Army is just shrinking the supply. It's much more valuable.

You have much less of a pool to pull from. So he can't afford to be losing these troops. So the plan overall is to take Atlanta, which was they consider it like the crown jewel of the South, the heartland of the South. It was like the manufacturing hub that made everything go. And so he tells Sherman, he's like, I want you to basically bring it in from the West and you're just going to start moving toward Atlanta. I'm going to start because he was based in Virginia. I'm just going to start pushing down and squeezing toward Richmond and kind of bringing it down. and we're just going to eventually surround Richmond and force this thing into a surrender.

So they make this plan. Lee kind of throws a little bit of a wrench into the plan. He basically, I don't know, I don't think it's desperation. I think he's just trying to go ahead and make a push to see if he can make like a Hill Mary. So maybe it was out of desperation. But he has a plan to push into Maryland basically in an effort to force Grant to withdraw and protect D.C. well it almost fucking worked because although it was a small small group of people grant or the Confederacy got into the outskirts of DC at this one fort I can't remember

it was oh Fort Stevens and basically they had to delay a day and it allowed reinforcements for the union to arrive but DC was being protected by wounded soldiers civilian soldiers it wasn't like these trained battalions or trained soldiers It was a militia, but not well trained. But they had very strong defenses because it's protecting your capital. Well, crazily enough, at the same time, Lincoln is touring Fort Stevens when it came under fire. And he was fired at by sharpshooters from the Confederacy. They didn't say how close the surgeon was to him, but a surgeon next to Lincoln got hit.

And someone was like, get down, you fool. And Mary Todd was there too with him. like they were there for morale to kind of like see the troops that were protecting and everything. And that was July 12th and 64. And so Grant's plan, again, kind of going back on this is to attack Richmond with his forces. Sherman's going to attack Atlanta to prevent Johnston's forces, different Johnston than very early on. But the same guy that got shot by his own people and was out of commission after being shot by friendly fire. And to prevent Johnson forces from then being free to come up and reinforce Lee.

So August 1864, like you were saying, that's the whole time when McClellan was nominated to oppose. And Lincoln ends up beating him and gets reelected. Well, we got some wars before that. Okay. So next one I have here prior to that happening is Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. That was June 27th, 64. That's Sherman. That's 15 miles from Atlanta.

He gets 15 miles and engages the union at this battle. had about 5,500 versus the Confederacy with 5,000, so very close in terms of strength. And the Confederacy also was already had prepared defenses. Sherman had to withdraw a little bit just to regroup. 2,000 Union troops ended up having to surrender that were caught. And during this time, I think they said it was kind of in a wooded area. And some of the shots from the artillery caused the woods to catch on fire. And there were all these troops, wounded troops that were trapped in this fire area.

and so the Confederate, whoever was in charge, the Confederate general waved a white flag and was like, come get these fucking guys. And he's like, we're going to jump in and get our guys. So they dragged him out of this fire area to keep them. And then literally as soon as that happened, they were like, and resume killing each other.

Game on. Yeah, game on. Pull the goals back out into the fucking middle of street. It's go time. So Sherman actually found a way to flank these guys and push Johnston even further back. July 20th, the first artillery shell. falls fall in Atlanta. Let's break for a second, take a P.

Sounds good. Jump in. All right, while we take a break from class and take care of some business, you can also take care of some business. If you don't follow us on Instagram or Twitter already, our Instagram handle is historically high pod. That's historically high POD. And our Twitter is historically high.

That's historically H.I. All right, and back to our show. All right, and we're back. I think this will be the last P-break. So we are going to knock this out in one. unlucky you. No promises, but maybe. All right, so we're Sherman.

This sounds like a movie. Sherman takes Atlanta. So. Shermanator. The Shermanator, baby. So in order to, they're launching artillery shells on Atlanta. And in order to take Atlanta, Sherman basically has to take out

all the railway lines going into Atlanta to take out their ability to go ahead and reinforce. Sherman neckties, baby. What? You didn't hear about Sherman neckties? No. So when they would be destroying these railways, in order to make sure that they were completely inoperable, they would pull up the rail lines so the steel, the actual tracks, and they would wrap the tracks around trees to make sure that they couldn't just put them back on and go.

And they were actually known as Sherman neckties where they had found actual railroad track tied in a bow, not a bow, but like a horseshoe basically around trees. So it's like, can't use these anymore. Fuck, I'd like to see how they did that. Yeah, dude. So he finds a way to go ahead and take out. It takes some prodding and some like trial and error. And he, I think he tries to use the cavalry to do it. They're not strong enough, not in the sense of bending it,

but like to actually overtake the enemy to do this. Finally ends up finding a way to do that. And then by September 2nd, Sherman actually takes Atlanta. He's not done, but he does need to take a little, little rest. He needs to take a little napy-pooh. So he rests for two and a half months. months. Well, with what they're about to do, he deserved it. And plus, taking Atlanta was a big blow. And not just on the battlefield. It's the jewel to the south band. I'm sure they had a lot of it. I'm sure they had a time trying to actually clear Atlanta and the entire area. This isn't a small town or anything like that.

Not just on the battlefield, but in the political kind of grand scheme of things, McClellan is, he's locked in. He's going to be the Democratic candidate. They already vote. voted him in at the convention he was going to be the one that goes up against lincoln he was going to be the one that beats lincoln he was running on the platform of peace talks in order just like you talked about to recognize the south as what they were that was his idea and mcclellan just wanted this all to be over so i believe mcclellan might have been from the south not positive on that but i think he maybe just saw an opportunity where lincoln as a like a juxtaposition to lincoln could be yeah but After this happens, McClellan is getting ready to accept the bid, put his name to paper, he's going to be the Democratic candidate, this news of Atlanta comes in. He finds out that the Crown Jewel of the South, as you said, has been taken, and he sees the writing on the wall. I got your, I got your fuels, bitch. There's some talk of a story. I forgot who it was that had said it, but he looked up at his battalion,

that he was with before that he had led, and he kind of started doing some mental math as to who he had known from there still, and if anybody was still alive, he looks down at the advisors for the Democratic Party, he goes, hey guys, I can't sign up for peace. I can't sign up for giving up. We've come too far.

I've lost a lot of good men that I've known, men that were in my battalion, my troops. Those guys are gone. I can't accept this. I can't accept a peace agreement. Does he flip and then support Lincoln? No, he doesn't flip, but he refuses to sign the platform that they were running on. I know there was a guy during that that was running against Lincoln as well.

That like, you know how there'll be candidates that pull a portion of the vote away from the main candidates? There was another guy that I think was going to pull some votes and he ends up then going back in the Lincoln's campaign. Okay. But yeah, McClellan basically has to agree with Lincoln on this point after seeing Atlanta fall because he sees the writing on the wall. He sees how close they are. He was in all these meetings. That's the thing, too. Like, Lincoln now has momentum.

Oh, yeah. He's like, we just took Atlanta. They're like, okay, you just took Atlanta. Like, we're getting close to this thing. And that basically carries him, besides Savannah, that's basically what carries him to. We all get into Solvanna. Yeah. We'll get into Savannah soon.

So two and a half month rest. And basically, after he gets his forces, um, gives him some time to recover. Basically, it's like, you boys want to see the ocean. and just fucking marches across Georgia and reaches Savannah December 1864 after he gets to Savannah he then turns north and he's like you boy seen South Carolina

and starts just marching up through South Carolina then marches up through North Carolina and basically at this point the jaws are starting to close tighter and tighter around Lee and Richmond well the cool part about what he's doing through this whole trek through down to the ocean then up to South Carolina, is they, in essence, have a slash and burn campaign. They're living off, yeah, they're living off the land.

Sherman doesn't get a good reputation for the shit that he's doing this whole time when he's marching up from Savannah. I would say justified, though. No, no, no, it is. I mean, it's not like, here's the thing. This was not a war where anyone was purposely targeting civilians on the other side. It was an army versus army thing. But that's a big difference from like future world's World War II.

is civilians were never really brought in here. There were a ton of, there weren't, comparatively, not a ton of civilian casualties compared to other wars. The city's got a little hairy, but... I mean, you're having to want... You're not a... It's fucking shot out of a cannon. You're not just like aiming this shit.

Not great aim. So Sherman's men, I mean, he's got a pretty large force. He said something like, he wrote a letter back to Grant or something like that. He's like, well, we marched on Atlanta with 5,000 head of cattle. We got to Savannah with 10,000 head of cattle. they were going into these plantations. There was a boo-hoo letter written from some plantation owner woman. It was like, they took the chickens, and they took my slaves and everything.

And it's like, yeah, I mean, I understand that you're not participating in this war, but you also are obviously one of the reasons that this is happening due to your ownership of the slaves. Oh, oh, no, they took the people that you own? Yeah. Oh, sorry. During this time, though, Sherman actually gathered. brothers a has a large group of like freed slaves that are following him yeah he's he's got a band of folks that are he they had to stay the i guess it's with this weird condition they had to stay

close enough to the army to be considered freed well they were the reason that they were free so they get out of that type of shit you're coming back and sherman wasn't exactly thrilled about this because you're you have a large large group of people that you're taking with you more more to feed and everything like that and so his his treatment like it wasn't great or anything like that. He was leading an army. He wasn't leading a refugee group. I know that that's callous to say.

I don't know if he was the originator of this, but he when asked about it, he just looks and he goes, war is hell. That was his justification for it. He's like also at the same time, he's trying to fucking end this thing and get to Richmond as quickly as possible. Well, and as they're coming up,

not to say that this is a major player, but we have to remember who started this. Yeah. And what state initially started this. That's South Carolina. So we're going to make them feel every single U.S. casualty or every, shit, every single union casualty that's happening. And to even a certain extent, I would say U.S. Because those people that are rebels are still going to have to become part of the union again.

So every one of those casualties is on South Carolina's head basis. There you go. Kind of jumping back to part of the Emancipation Proclamation, there was response to the Emancipation proclamation from the Confederacy, and they pretty much doubled down, and they said any white officers leading black troops would be killed, and any black soldiers would be returned to their owners for punishment. No prisoner exchanges. And I'm not sure this was, again, after the emancipation proclamation, Lincoln just said, fine, fuck it. No prisoner exchanges at all. And there were some instances during the Civil War where

there was mistreatment of prisoners on both sides. There was some camps and prison camps that got overcrowded. There was a lot of mistreatment on both sides. So I'm not saying bad on both accounts and everything like that. Double negative. But Lincoln's response was like, okay, so you're not doing any black prisoner exchanges? How about no fucking prisoner exchanges? And the thing was is there are

testimony and everything that basically most captured black soldiers. it never got to the point where they were returned to their owners for punishments. Basically, they would just be executed. And there were some Confederate soldiers. There's letters written back to their homes. And they were like, we saw this happening. We tried to stop it.

We were able to stop it a couple times. But basically they would just be, you know, there were, you know, black prisoners, you know, soldiers that were on their knees big and only to be told to get to their feet. And once they were on their feet were shot. So, I mean, it, again, war. I mean, war as hell is the most apt thing I can think of. Yeah. We are now on to Petersburg.

Yes. So Grant has this group of Pennsylvania coal miners. And Petersburg is close to Richmond. It's basically like you've got to get through Petersburg to take Richmond. It's, I don't know if it's a suburb or something like that. Are you looking at the distance? Yeah. So it's pretty fucking defended.

A lot of artillery, very defensible. so Grant has these Pennsylvania coal miners and he's like you guys are pretty good at digging mines so we're going to go ahead and dig a fucking mine 23 miles okay so we're going to dig a tunnel underneath this big Confederate gun battery and then we're going to fill this fucker with gunpowder and blow this thing up

when he was talking about this all I was waiting for because it sounded so fucking cool was like it didn't work yeah like the plan fell through something happened well and it almost almost didn't. Well, it didn't. You're getting to the fuse part? Huh?

You're getting to the fuse part? No. Oh, buddy. Okay, so go to that before I talked about what happened. So they fill it with gunpowder. Fill it with gunpowder. They send people underground to set a fuse up. They run the fuse all the way back.

Are we thinking this is like barrels? Are we thinking this is the barrel situation where you just stack and fucking barrels of gunpowder? Judging by the size of the hole that it made, it was a lot of gunpowder. So they run this big ass long fuse back, take it out of the hole. everybody's like, hey, step back. This is about to be big. Light the fuse. Everybody's standing there. I picture like Wiley Coyote with his fingers in his ears and they're all just waiting. Probably not the plunger. I wish it would have been a plunger. Not a plunger. It was probably somebody lighting it off of a cigarette.

And they're waiting. They're waiting. They're waiting. Everybody pulls their fingers out of theirs. There's like, there's no way that that didn't go yet. So who's going to go check it. Yep. So I'm pretty sure they drew straws. I don't know how they did it, but they sent two guys down in there. they found where the fuse had broken or something had happened. They relight it. I'm sure these two dudes, yeah, as fast as they came. That's what I was going to say. Is it like, Smith has a pretty good 40 time.

He's like, no, I don't. I got shot in the leg during that last engagement. I hate to bring this up. Fellas, I got shin splints. So they relighted it a second time. It ends up making it all the way through. The destruction is something that I never could imagine. So the explosion kills hundreds of Confederate troops.

And they said that it blew people hundreds of feet in the air. Yeah. And I want to believe that that's true. I know it's probably exaggeration, but hundreds of feet in the air. Oh, yeah. And it was so just the shock and explosion, it stunned the other Confederate troops or defenders so badly that they couldn't concentrate fire on the union attackers for 15 minutes. 15 fucking minutes during an attack is a fucking lifetime. Well, and do you have the size of the hole? it was how big was it? They said it was 30 feet deep I believe it was 60 feet wide and it was 100 feet long so a 30 foot deep crater into the ground I don't know that's like three stories

and probably would have been bigger hadn't been able to backfill it somehow because a lot of the blast damage probably or power came out with the mine you gotta think to 30 feet deep how much fucking gun powder is that gonna take?

It had to been kegs you got someone out there if they had you know the telescope or whatever, whatever it was. They're like, they just keep carrying barrels into this fucking hole. They're like, let them, I guess. Yeah, these dips chits are just burying there. Yeah, whatever.

I wonder if they were sitting there watching it and they're like, is that enough? Do you think we put enough down there? They're like, uh, put two or three more down there. We'll see what happens. And then the explosion happened. They all looked at each other like, I think we got enough. So here's the thing. The plan was to, so there was some debate on the plan.

What they were going to do is they were going to blow this thing and then send in men to each side of the crater to basically mop up and kind of hold position. The first plan was to send in an all-black unit. And I know how that sounds and everything like that. It's 50-50. I believe that

this is the one time that racism may have been a benefit. It would have. I know they come back and even say this. So I can't remember who steps in and says something. It is fuck. God damn it. I had it written. I thought it was Grant. No. It

was another guy. It was either, but it might have been Butler or Mead, but they come in and say, hey, we can't send in the, the black troops. And his reason wasn't like, they're not going to be able to pull this off. It's like, we can't be shown to essentially send in them as fodder to take all of the fucking damage. He's like, we got to send in like some white units. Well, some debate, though, if they were concerned that they weren't up to par and the same as the white guys, this is the one time the racism may have saved black people. No, it didn't. It might have saved them a little bit, but not entirely.

Not the beginning, but yeah, towards the end, bad. Well, they fucked up the plan because they didn't fucking charge in for 10 minutes of that 15 minute period. And then when they did fucking charge in, they charged into the crater, not around it. And with a crater this big, they were trapped in the fucking crater. And all of a sudden, the Confederates just come up above the rim of the crater and just start fucking massacring. then they're like okay send in the black units now and they sent them into the fucking crater and they get hammered too

there's no backing out because like we talked about in the stadium disasters episode when there's a stampede of people running one way and somebody falls everybody falls in nobody can come back out yeah um so at this same time there was a confederate cavalry commander can't remember his name was something early his last name was early and this is where i got and got confused on the share and Sherman thing. So Sheridan was a union cavalry commander. They were essentially doing these skirmishes, kind of not around Gettysburg, but like kind of up north a little bit. And he may have been the one that went back to protect DC too. Yeah, because he was with Grant. He was part of Grant's group. Well, what happened was early ends up surprising Sheridan and ends up like scattering his like union troops they had a bunch of artillery basically early gets his hands on all this stuff and is like great we got all this shit so early or not sorry sheridan wasn't there at the time he was

back in dc as soon as he heard this happening he rides out to his men and sees all of his men coming out of the woods on this road on each side of the road and like looking like you know they're going to go recover go set up camp as soon as his men see him right out they fucking throw on their hats, get their rifles up, and like, let's go. Well, apparently Early thought that they were just retreating. Sheridan leads them back in, and, like, all of Early's men are fucking, like, camped out just sitting there and come in and just fucking attack them. Getting caught with their pud in their hands.

And they end up gathering all of, like, their, they end up that defeat, the victory that Sheridan has against Early in that second engagement wipes out the defeat, and they regain all of this stuff. And it prevents early from even having a chance. to get back to try to reinforce Lee. So after that, that's when Lincoln is actually reelected. And in Peter's... It's a big win for him.

Oh, yeah. He gets to see this through not far enough, but he gets to see... We'll get to that. Yeah. I'm glad that he got to see the surrender. So Lincoln gets reelected. Lee has about, they said, 50,000 men in Petersburg. Grant had double.

and Sheridan now is able to start moving in and Sherman's still moving up from the south so on April 1st 1865 is this place called or this battle called the Battle of the Five Forks and basically Sheridan I think is like entrenched there and Lee out of his 50,000 men he sends like 12,000 men to go and attack this not a lot no

Sheridan ends of winning and taking 5,000 prisoners so he's lost you know that's what 10 more than 10% yeah pretty quick yeah about 10% of his not only the 12,000 I don't know how many of them 17,000 yeah so he was coming up on about 20% yeah so

one day after April 2nd petersburg and Richmond are abandoned Lee takes his men I'm not sure where they go I would imagine they just have to try to go toward the ocean or a little bit south because they're just going to run into Sherman well so yeah they Jefferson Davis realizes the writing's on the wall.

He sees what's going on. They know that they're going to make their move on to Richmond next. And they eventually, they catch Richmond, or they catch Jefferson Davis on a Sunday while he's at church. Somebody runs in, brings him a note. They say that Fredericksburg has fallen. Petersburg. Or Petersburg is fallen. He gets up out of his pew.

He walks around and everybody that's in the church. He didn't look happy about that. This probably isn't good. Goes back to his office, whatever it is, the South House, the South Out House. And he's sitting there, waits a couple hours, finally makes the address, says that they have to evacuate the city. Everybody's loaded up on trains. They're getting ready to go. And he just is like, he's watching the Confederacy fall at that point.

He knows that within a matter of days, there's going to be an issue. And I guess as they were leaving, there were people that were lighting parts of Richmond on fire because they didn't want the union to come down and take all their cotton and everything else because they believed that that was what this whole war was about. Yeah.

I think it was two days. Petersburg, Richmond, or abandoned on the second April 9th. Okay, so seven days. A week. A week. They're into Richmond. and they're putting out the fires because they... Oh, sorry, no.

You're right about that. I was getting to the surrender. Okay. The ninth is the surrender. So you're talking about something that happened prior to. Yeah. So within 48 hours, they swoop in. They take Richmond.

And at some point after that, I believe Lincoln comes down. And Lincoln actually sits in Jefferson Davis's chair and his desk. Okay, I didn't know this. So you're telling me something around now. I'm pretty sure it was Lincoln. I don't think it was grand. I'm pretty sure that it was Lincoln. because Grant was still pursuing Lee.

Oh yeah, I would imagine. Well, and at this point, Jefferson Davis is with him. Yeah. I would imagine. Lincoln goes down there. He travels. He sees Richmond. He's in Jefferson Davis's desk.

This is about a 90% sure that it was him that did this. And they've taken the capital of the Confederacy. This is Davis on the run. He did? Yeah, so apparently traveled there by a boat, at least part of the way. April 4th, two days after, yeah, after they evacuated Abraham Lincoln and his son, Tad. Tad Lincoln? Never hear a lot about Tad Lincoln, do you?

Visit the smoldering ruins of the South's former capital. As they stepped ashore, they were instantly recognized by the former slaves who greeted them ecstatically. Of course, why wouldn't you? How cool is that? How good of a feeling is that for Lincoln to be able to go sit in Jefferson Davis's office in his chair and know that... He just walks in, he's like, this place is a shithole. Yep, this place sucks. I can't believe this is what they were trying to fight for.

That's a monster flex. And Davis, as he gets away, sends out, we will fight this fight to the end. This isn't over yet. We must try to still overcome fully knowing that it's over. It's a victory lap before the actual victory lap. I mean, he didn't get a victory lap. So that was kind of his. Well, and Lincoln was crazy enough to stand up while there was artillery fire coming in.

He's definitely down to go hang out in Richmond when he knows that it's been taken over. So on April 9th, this is when Lee eventually surrenders to Grant at Appomatics. And I'm just... It was. It wasn't that smooth. Lee tried to put up a fight, didn't he? They went to battle for a day or two before they finally made the surrender, because Lee had sent him over one last, like, hey, let's try to hash this out.

Here's the terms. So that was actually, it wasn't like the surrender. for the Confederacy, they're saying he was the most significant surrender to take place during the Civil War. He surrendered only his army of Northern Virginia to Grant. And then some other Confederate forces, some large units had yet to surrender before President Andrew Johnson. Ooh. He had to take over because we had to. God damn it.

Yeah, but basically after Lee surrenders, that's just it. It's just mop-up duty at that point. You're going to these other armies and you're sending somebody else in to talk to the Confederacy. You're saying, hey, I know that you guys want to duke this out. And I know you want to go. Guess what? Lee surrendered. I don't know if you guys know that yet.

So it's pretty much over for you. The cavalry's not coming. And that's a huge blow to all these different other small bands because it's just over. What are you fighting for? Lee's gone. Lee's been defeated. Your ace in the hole is out. Where are you guys going to go?

Yeah. You have to surrender. We're just going to wipe you guys out. Sherman is still coming up from the south. I don't even know if he got there before this even happened. So it's not like you're not fucking surrounded. We get to hop a boat and try to head off across the ocean. And I don't know if you guys know this yet.

You don't want to run into Sherman. No. Sherman's not going to be nice. Sherman has a lot of people with him that do not like you. So here's something that I don't think is really pressed enough. No. in a U.S. history is again, this is April 9th, the least surrenders to Grant, and April 15th is actually when Lincoln gets assassinated. So six days, this guy has seen this entire thing through,

stuck to his guns, and he just wants to take in a show. He's like, I'm feeling good. I feel like, my preservation of the union has been successful. I know we got to rebuild. A lot of sleepless nights ahead of me. Me and Mary, we're going to go catch a show at Ford's Theater. Yeah, and that's really what it was. Because he, not to cut you off, but before they went and saw that show, he gave an address and he wasn't talking about victory.

He wasn't talking about the union's defeat of the Confederacy. He was talking about bringing the country, back together. Yeah, he was talking about how to reconstitute the union, how to move forward. He wasn't rubbing anybody's faces into it. All he was doing was just praising the ability that we can get back to some sort of normalcy. Unfortunately, there was a man in that audience that really didn't like what Lincoln was saying. John Wilkes Booth, I don't know if you've heard of him, sort of a big deal. He was very, very deeply supportive of slavery. Excuse me, he loved the South.

And he, I mean, he wasn't going to stand for it. So, I mean, as everyone is probably pretty aware, Lincoln's sitting up in a balcony. I can't remember what play they're watching. But John Wilkes Booth pops into the back of the booth, puts a gun to Lincoln's back of his head. Lincoln didn't die right there. No.

He survived until the next morning. Yeah. So hopefully he was unconscious and didn't know what was going on. sure it was like from the way I think it's one of those old derringers I think that's how he snuck it in it's just one of the little they call him pea shooters but I mean you puts it to the back of someone's head you launch a fucking slug in the brain close is close but so Lincoln's assassinated man like he doesn't he's not even alive to see the actual Confederate surrender I mean he sees the whole thing through again we're talking about a guy that preservation of the union is is first and foremost to keep this country together yeah he's he made some concessions that I don't agree with, but it's easy to armchair, fucking armchair quarterback this thing when you don't have that kind of pressure on you to try to keep everybody together. And, but I mean, when they say Lincoln ended slavery, he was definitely, if you're looking at

to give a number one spot to the biggest contributor of doing this, Lincoln gets that spot. He was the catalyst. He was the catalyst, but it's not like Lincoln is solely responsible. or the one person that ended this. Like it was the contributions of a ton of people doing this all for different reasons, but all going toward the same goal that helped to accomplish this and keep the union together. Yeah, I have nothing but respect for Lincoln. Oh, yeah.

I think that he was a man that was put in an impossible situation and he did everything. In an impossible time. Yeah. Yeah, given an impossible mission and somehow managed to see it through to the end. And really, I mean, Andrew Johnson comes in after that, as you said, but we start to see the change. And for as rough and as hard as the war was on the country, the reconstruction became so important because, again, all these places that are in the south are the people that are supplying the north with the supplies to continue to make the economy run. So first and foremost, most importantly, they have to get back to the South and they have to start rebuilding the South. They have to start rebuilding railways.

They have to basically try to control everything that they can control to bring the South back because that's where we get all of our raw goods and supplies from. It's kind of like you were mentioned to me last night when we were talking back and forth about Lee and, fuck now I can't remember who was the president of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis. Jefferson Davis about how. there wasn't really any repercussions against them or anything like that. And looking at it from a perspective of, well, you know, are we talking war crimes here? What are we kind of, what are we talking? It's just one of those things where you're trying to essentially heal the nation

and it's going to just prolong that if I don't know how much I agree with it. I'm just trying to kind of see the rationale for it of being like you guys lost, you're already losing a lot, you know, what you consider your way of life, the wrong way, essentially, of life that you guys considered to be the right way. I think at that point, it was almost just like, just war exhaustion of just being like, can we just be fucking done? You guys start working toward getting, you know, getting all your people on board with getting us back together and we'll do what we can to try to kind of, you know, try to

loob your entry back into the union. Yeah. And it's kind of like, I said it is totally a Nixon Ford situation. Like after Nixon was out, Ford got up there and just kind of looked around and he took a deep breath and he looks right. He's like, hey, crazy time, huh? Mm-hmm. Let's just move past it.

Let's not prosecute Nixon. and Jefferson Davis was actually held in prison for, I think it was two years, until Andrew Johnson said we got to get him out of prison. He was just held there. I think it was under treason charges. But finally, Andrew Johnson just said, let him go. What's done is done. We need to start moving towards the future and we need to start making these things happen.

We don't need to make this guy martyr. Yeah. Technically. And it really, reconstruction kind of worked hand in hand with, Congress. That's where during Reconstruction, we got the three amendments that kind of changed the game, or at least

started to the 13th Amendment, abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment gave citizenship to all people born in the United States, and the 15th Amendment gave black Americans the right to vote. So, we saw the writing on the wall that if

we were going to free these people, we needed to go ahead and give all of the liberties and all the civil protections that we possibly could that we give to every other person born in this country. It was huge. And we have the Civil Rights Act of 1875. It just reinforced everything. It protected all citizens, civil and legal rights as far as undue prosecution, fair trials, things like that.

And the reason that we were able to do that in the South, prior to, unfortunately, what happens after that was because this was still. held by union forces. It was still held by northern territories. They were overseeing the reconstruction. So there was a... Kind of like the same situation of like what happened with Germany. Germany was essentially not in the sense of being split up between, you know, the allies and Soviet Union, Russia, whatever you want to say it at that time. But yeah, it's kind of like, okay, we're just going to go ahead and oversee to make sure that you guys don't get any additional ideas. No hairbrained, no plans, no... Just make sure you guys aren't like, you're not lit,

and your anger or, you know, your desire for revenge to get the better of you. Yeah, and by all respects, I think that that worked out well. I wish that I could say that we had a happy ending, but unfortunately, as everybody knows, things kind of go back the other way. The pendulum swings back the other way, and that really starts right around 1877. There was a compromise of 1877. It effectively ended reconstruction. The union moved back up.

north, the south was in a way on its feet or being back to on its feet. And Jim Crow laws started to set in right about then to separate what we had tried to put back together and to put these laws on freed black Americans to try to keep them in bondage or to try to keep them lower. And unfortunately, the people, this is a tough topic to talk about and again two white guys it's just not going to sound right but the reason i believe that slavery was kind of just socially accepted in the south was because no matter if you were a rich white landowner a plantation owner or if you were a poor white laborer even if you were the poorest of the poor white laborer you still weren't the bottom

of the social caste so there was concern and this was stuff that they used during the war just war propaganda to try to continue to push the south further towards fighting for this goal was they would tell them and I can't blame black people if this was the response to this um but they would basically say think about a world where black people and white people are free together we just kept these people in bondage for hundreds of years fear mongering yeah yeah if we let these people go and they're free what's to say that they're not going to slaughter all of us. And again, like I have to say, if they had, I can't say that I would blame them. It's a device of your own making. You've put them in, you've put an entire

group of people in a position where you've subjugated them and treated them so poorly over the course of a couple hundred years even at this point. If they have some hard feelings, they're allowed to have those hard feelings. Yeah, they're going to have some fucking, and they're going to have some rightful fucking grievances. It's your job to assist in moving past that. It's not your job to sit there and be scared of it. It's your job to go ahead and assist in making sure that that doesn't happen. I think it was Jefferson. He said something along the lines of slavery is like holding a wolf by the ears. Yep. You are in fear because the second you let go of it, it's going to attack you, but you also don't want to be in the position of having to hold the ears.

It's just that, unfortunately, once the North left and Jim Crow was enacted, things started to go back where the power struggle became more back on the white side. What's so crazy to me is going from the end of the Civil War to today, this isn't, people like to pretend that this is ancient history. This isn't the fucking pyramids. This isn't the fucking creation of Rome, you know, this isn't the medieval knights or all that shit. this is 150 years ago. Like, that's two people.

Yeah. That's two people could have lived within that time frame, which means that a really old person now could have known a person that was a slave. Like, I'm trying to think about that. and it gets treated like its fucking ancient history. Well, it's because the narrative coming from the South had tried to be rewritten into a way to where it sounded like this was a state's rights issue. Or we were fighting for our independence. But like, why did you want the independence? That's what the argument always is.

And I understand that, I don't understand. I don't understand it. You have people that still fly the fucking Confederate flag. Oh, Southern pride and all that kind of stuff. Cool. But guess what? You're the stuff that you should be proud about in the South should be wholly after all of this and that you tried to put in the work to try to fix.

And I think I mentioned this to you. Like, that's the, to me, it's the same thing of someone in like Germany. being like, you know, third Reich pride or anything like that. Remember the good old days and everything? You're like, no, like that wasn't the fucking good old days. And the shit that you're celebrating is, is heinous, heinous shit. Like, I don't get that. Like, you're, and I don't know if, if it feels to some people like it was so long ago

because so much has happened since then, you know, two world wars. and so like that feels more recent and even to people nowadays that feels like you know that's less than we're less than a hundred we're less than a hundred years removed from world wars both or we're 100 years removed from first world war and less than 100 years removed from the second but like is it because of that that this feels just because it's it's down the rung a little bit that it people don't like feel of course there's still fucking effects of this kind of stuff like even even geographically, why do you think that there's a larger population of, of black people in the South? It's not just like people move in a generation and completely move to another part. Like people were brought there, lived there, and have their roots there. But they're not long roots. They, you know, some of them are the ones that, you know, people that got brought over earlier and everything. But at the same time, it's like, that's still remnants and that should still put in your memory that that's why we have a higher population. It's not because like it's more

advantageous in the south or anything. It's that's where they were brought and kept and enslaved. And that's where they've, they have their heritage. Though, you know, unfortunately some of that heritage was forced upon them, but it's, it's just such a weird fucking concept to celebrate losing and losing for you know horrible reasons but to talk about like fighting for your independence you wanted that independency you could

keep doing horrible shit I it's just it's so fucking weird to me to try to even put myself into somebody's shoes that has that mentality we felt victim to a situation here that history doesn't always fall victim to. And it's like we say with every historical episode,

history is always written by the victors. But in this case, the losers were still alive. It's not like we went through and burned everything. You know, it's it, the whole thing with, you know, history is written by the victors is at a time when you have the ability to completely destroy the history of the losers. It's history that's so recent

that there are people and documents and fucking photographs and everything of this. So it's not like you can make excuses and be like, no, that's been exaggerated or no, that history has been changed by the, no, it hasn't been changed. It's been document, it's been documented this shit.

Well, and that's where the spin comes in is just some of the things that I've seen in research as far as like justifications for what happened, you run into the justification of saying, well, the only reason that the South lost the war was because the North was already set up with manufacturing and ways to do that.

And if this went right or if this went wrong or if this didn't happen, we would have won this war. And it's just the age old saying, if FIFs and Butts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas. Like you can say if or but a million times, but it didn't happen. And at the same time, you're like,

well, the only reason we lost, okay, so you got into a stupid fucking war then. Yeah. You knew that we, you knew that the North had more people, had more of an infrastructure to be able to support war, but yet you still somehow felt like

this was a smart move. Like, what's your argument here? You're not making an educated or even a rational argument. So you're just saying that you were stupid in the way you did things. Yeah, if we ran this simulation a hundred times and you think that you won 20 out of the hundred times,

guess what? This is one of the 80 times that it didn't happen, so we can't go back and look at it. Yeah. The justification that I've seen where they say, well, we would have phased slavery out eventually with modernization of everything else. Nothing that you did or were on course to do

had any indication that you were going to do that. You were trying to expand it. Yeah, your livelihood was based upon other people's work ethics. And that's why in the beginning, when we were talking about it, there were things that led up to the South, wanting to secede, but slavery was at the heart of everything. Yes. And that's all that it was. And that's the thing that they want to try to erase when

they come back and they say, well, you know, it was going to be phased out, or that wasn't the biggest deal, or we were actually providing a service for these people that we looked at as less than human being able to learn from a society of elegance and pleasure and leisure. Because they were taking part in all the benefits of that so much. There's a million different ways to spin it. Yeah. And it's, it shows. up everywhere. You see it and unfortunately some of the more white things in life. You'll eventually see a Confederate flag at a NASCAR event. I liken this because I have to deal with it on a pretty regular basis. At night, when I'm really in that sweet stone spot, I'm laying there and I turn on

wrestling. I always turn on old episodes of WCW Nitro back in the good old days. And WCW has its roots in the south. They were a southern wrestling company. They were formed around Atlanta and therefore a lot of the events that they would do nitros and things like that were based in the south. And I will be goddamned if not every single episode. I see somebody, some fan in the background, not holding

up a sign, but holding up the Confederate flag. And it's just shit like that where they've been told so many times that it wasn't about slavery and that they had. had good means, that if you get told something a thousand times eventually, you're going to start to think if you don't believe that, you're crazy. So the rewriting of history and the justifications that still go on to this day, that we still

hear constantly in the news every time somebody's like, oh, well, they shouldn't have pulled down that Robert Lee statue. You know what? I have 100% respect for the way that Robert Lee fought a fight. I think that he was a great general. I think that he was very strategic. I think that he was one of the greatest military minds that this country's ever seen. He did it for unscrupulous means,

and we shouldn't have to have a statue put up by somebody called the Daughters of the Confederacy that want to try to whitewash what happened. I don't know if I've ever seen someone try to celebrate losing so hard. Yeah. I don't really see the whole thing with statues. I mean, I would rather them not be up. I'm not going to go pull one down. But when one does get pulled down, you just have to look at it and be like, why was that there in the beginning?

Yeah. People go, well, you can't erase history. That's why we have fucking books. And that's why we have school and literally everything else. That's why we have Wikipedia. Yeah. That's why it's there. Yeah.

We're not trying to erase history. We're trying to remove something that stood for something that we're not proud of in history. And you shouldn't be fucking proud of either. Not too many statues of Hitler in Germany. That's not really a thing. No. just to I guess wrap this up final stats we'll go down the final steps we're going to flip over the Civil War tops upper deck sports card and go down this final stats for the union 365,000 dead a total of 828,000 casualties over the whole entire course of the war the union had 2.2 million forces so I I'm not thinking about math right now.

That's what probably... 40 to 45% casualties. The Confederacy, 290,000 dead, between or about 864,000 casualties. Out of 700 or of... 750 to a million, somewhere around in there. So, I mean, that's...

So dead. and this is including soldiers, slaves, and civilians, probably it's upward of a million plus dead between soldiers, slaves, and civilians over the course of four years. So, I mean, it is something that we definitely should not forget. No, I want to say at the time it was like 2% of the United States population. Just staggering numbers that today would just shock anything.

not to diminish it at all because it was a huge thing but like you said with the Normandy stat earlier we lost 16, 1,800 people in Pearl Harbor yeah very big deal

World Trade Center, very big deal 2000 I think somewhere around there for World Trade Center Yeah those numbers are 2000 yeah those numbers pale in comparison to what this is Yeah it's just it's peanuts that we are so shocked by today when that was like a battle number.

That was a low battle number. And those have, those have, you know, remembrances. 9-11, never forget Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy.

I mean, this is something that hopefully you guys have learned more maybe than you previously knew about the Civil War, maybe some additional details, or maybe just cleared some stuff up that wasn't exactly clear from the get-go. But other than that, yeah,

don't, I think the biggest takeaway from this, and this is something that we talk about a lot is, we can't be afraid of history and just want to dig into the this is a debate me and you have all the time is when we pick out these topics it's kind of like you kind of close your eyes and tell your head back and it's like oh this is going to be fucking depressing and everything again but i mean a lot of history is i mean i think if anything doing this podcast has shown us that you have to explore this ugly stuff because it's cliche to say but history repeats itself if you don't know how to prevent it or if you're not educated about it. It hurts. It sucks. It's something that you can kind of weigh on your mind, but it also leads you to a different perspective on what we see day to day.

And like you say with history repeats itself, you can pick themes out of things that are happening now and things that are happening then that feel. They're obviously not the same, because we're never going to see anything. Hopefully, I pray to Allah God, whoever's up there, Muhammad. that this never happens again. But we've seen what happens when these kind of fights break out.

The term civil wars have been thrown around as of late over the last, what, three or four months, a little more casually than I think it should be, the comparisons and whatnot. But yeah, it's just something to learn from, be educated on it. Be educated as much as you can about anything and everything.

It really helps you have a different perspective going through life. Yeah, we don't try to slain anything. This isn't, we're not trying to prove somebody's better than anybody else. This is just raw, hard data that we picked out of a million different sources. And unfortunately, there's not a lot of sources that look at this. Exactly. All right, man, any closing thoughts? No, no.

Be good to each other. All right. Have good night, guys. Peace. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button. Follow us. If you didn't like what you heard, still hit that anyway because we'll probably cover something in the future that you do like.

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com. Thanks again. Peace.