Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 187 - Colonel Tye and the Black Loyalists of the American Revolution

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

The American Revolution left a lot of people behind. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: Egerton, Douglas R., Death of Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary... America Lanning, Michael Lee. African Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the
Starting point is 00:00:34 Legion of the Old Crow Led by Donkeys podcast. That's right, baby. The coup is complete. Yes. I'm your host,am anderson sorry i am your previous host awaiting the recounting of ballot for our last election joe and with me is my uh soon-to-be executioner liam hello liam hey buddy oh it's another lovely day in the don't cast universe where we accidentally create a coup
Starting point is 00:01:25 on top of doing other things that stuff happens that's all right just pile it on top of everybody assuming that i've killed nick or something we haven't killed nick cannot emphasize that enough he is in a secure place and he will be let out when he is allowed honestly that part's not even a joke i'm just not in control of it anyway liam if there's one thing that we're good at on this show it's being topical am i right yeah that's what we are we nail dates and times on every important date in history we have you know an episode that follows that motif just like today we're talking about the 4th of July for some reason. We are timely, baby.
Starting point is 00:02:11 We're very timely. I think I've let a little slip over the years where I've like, yes, I'm always working months ahead of time because I'm insane. I actually worked on and finished this script back during the summer. And it's at the point where it's universal, right? Because history isn't relegated to a date or anything like that. But what pissed me off is like, now we have a lot of American listeners. It's the country that listens to this show the most. But we have a lot of non-American listeners as well. So it's one of the things that pissed me off
Starting point is 00:02:36 this past 4th of July. And actually, every 4th of July, really, is the American deification of the American Revolution as this great liberatory event of personal liberty who didn't want to pay taxes the triumph of personal liberty
Starting point is 00:02:56 over the oppression of a monarchy and if you get real drunk and squint really hard that is technically true but there's a lot of things that could be technically true while being incredibly wrong at the same time. Uh, now you see every year articles like this get trotted out by people like the
Starting point is 00:03:15 national review, Fox news, the right wing propaganda machine. Yeah, I'm sure. Oh, I am. Isn't on it.
Starting point is 00:03:22 You see this as well from, you know, CNN, MSNBC, when they're not screaming about Russians. Um, like this isn't on it you see this as well from you know cnn msnbc when they're not screaming about russians um like this isn't universally a right-wing thing though obviously it's certainly they're certainly the loudest um this is something of a popular history of the american revolution that we get taught in schools at least when i was in school i know i'm i'm old no you're only a few years older than i
Starting point is 00:03:45 am hey whatever you're gonna tell yourself to make yourself feel better aren't you like 33 you're three years older than i am man we're old you know my brother is three years older than me and he feels like he's way older but you know the reason why i bring this up that like i said is this is something that unfortunately gets brought out a lot um you see it in popular media we talked about in the patriot of course in the bonus episode mel gibson following his his trend of being the most inaccurate historical actor ever apocalypto is a pretty good movie though i will say that that's the problem is i i love like the patriots incredibly inaccurate but it's dumb and fun and so so is Braveheart. And yeah, like, and, you know, this is all before he became a psychopath or at least on the surface. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:29 Publicly psychopathic. Sure. Yeah. I mean, and this is something that is it still survives when you talk about the racial implications of the American Revolution. Oftentimes you hear people say, well, some founding fathers wanted to outlaw slavery but it just didn't make it to the table because things like human liberty and and happiness sometimes have an asterisk next to them i guess that might be true they just didn't want to fucking deal with it at best which was which is just code for we simply cannot be bothered
Starting point is 00:05:03 they didn't care that they were they're mostly slave owners um and this yeah well you keep john adams name out of your mouth i said mostly john adams was not a great president but like john adams is my favorite historical figure because i've got problems that's fine um you know and i think we should evaluate how, say, more black people fought for the British than the Patriots during the Revolutionary War and how we should... I wonder why they would have done that. Exactly. And how we square that with American history, as well as the founding fathers' treatment of black people within the ranks of militias, the Continental Army, things like that. That way, maybe we can look at the 4th of July like it's just another day that maybe needs
Starting point is 00:05:51 some more education attached to it rather than a bad parody of Bioshock Infinite. But Joe, what about Crispus Attucks? Oh, yeah. Well, actually, we'll talk about him. Yeah. Okay. Now, we can agree with one thing.
Starting point is 00:06:11 The American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence really was an event of true liberty. If you happen to be a white man who owned land in the colonies and had some serious arguments of taxation policy and that you didn't really feel like paying them or listening to pretty much anyone in any regards to any form of governance. This is a problem that would continue on after independence and we've talked about that a little bit before in the past now there's several populations of people that this revolution didn't do anything for that being mostly anyone who was not a white landowning man and more specifically black slaves that populated the 13 colonies at the time now small caveat to this i would also say the native people of the 13 colonies at the time. Now, small caveat to this. I would also say the native people of the Americas. However, we would see how the British were just fine doing awful things to them in Canada with or without a revolution.
Starting point is 00:06:52 So that part was going to happen. Sucks. At the time of the revolution, the population of the 13 colonies were somewhere around 2 million. However, we're not ever going to be able to nail that exact number down. Maybe up to 2.5 million, but we do know around 20% of that entire population was slaves.
Starting point is 00:07:12 Though in some colonies, this is regional, it was much higher than others. For instance, in 1770, just a few years before the start of the revolution, in places like Virginia and more, even more regionalized than that, like certain cities and counties the population of slaves could be damn near half
Starting point is 00:07:27 because yeah but it was not always that way while slaves had been brought to the Americas for quite some time by the Spanish and the Portuguese the British held off until about the 17th century though there was some low level enslavement of the native population
Starting point is 00:07:44 what I'm saying is the industry of slavery until about the 17th century, though there was some low-level enslavement of the native population. What I'm saying is the industry of slavery had not yet started on the shores of the 13 colonies, generally considered African chattel slavery, right? There's other slavery at play here. I get it. Instead, as people settled in Jamestown and other places, the settlers discovered that tobacco is going to be, you know, their cash crop, their lifebloodblood also tobacco fucking sucks to farm it requires a lot of physical labor right
Starting point is 00:08:12 curing and all that stuff and you'll be god damned if they were going to do this themselves no you do not want to farm tobacco now at first the british were happy to furnish them with cheap labor because obviously the more they harvested the the more money the British authorities could make off of them as a colony. Just like they would eventually do in Australia, the British pumped indentured servants in at first. Now, these were generally people sentenced to a term of labor for various crimes into America as free but temporary labor. These were not slaves. I often see indentured servants, the term indentured servant to be thrown around an awful lot
Starting point is 00:08:49 with slave. It is much, much different. This generally is pegged to the Irish were slaves in America as well myth. Yep. No, they were not. No, they weren't. No, they weren't. This is not an insignificant number and a lot of these dudes were kind of innocent and totally snatched off the streets, kind of Shanghai into being servants.
Starting point is 00:09:11 I can't believe the British would do this. Yeah, it's almost like when you put a profit narrative on top of people, people get treated like shit. That's crazy how that works. In other cases, people wanted to immigrate to the 13 colonies, the new world, whatever you want to call it. But that's just expensive. Transcontinental travel, it's being stuffed into a boat for weeks and weeks at a time, costs a lot of money. So they would effectively sell themselves into debt bondage to these companies to pay their way. They work on the tobacco farms until they pay off their debt.
Starting point is 00:09:43 They're released from the 13 colonies. There they are. There's also just like other kinds of debt slavery of course there's debt slavery that shit still kind of goes on today right yeah yeah this is so prominent for a while that half vault immigration to the colonies came in chains for a time significantly more europeans those being mostly irish and various different forms of German, were the forced labor in the colonies more than anybody else. Notice how I said forced labor, not slaves. I will underline this as many times as I have to. See, this is why we should have slides on this podcast.
Starting point is 00:10:19 Yes. This came with a pretty big drawback. As you may have noticed, you're creating a surplus of population who are only there to work for free, who were eventually going to be released from that bondage. So eventually you create a surplus of unemployed people who nobody's going to employ because they can just get other indentured servants who they don't have to pay. That's kind of the whole reason the system existed. Right now, this population influx continued because wages among white people in Europe were increasing, meaning more people could just pay their way into the colonies rather than sell their bodies. So the rate of indentured servants were going down while the rate of unemployed former indentured servants in the colonies were going up. This led kind of to the Bacon's Rebellion of 1676.
Starting point is 00:11:12 And this kind of led planters and landowners to worry about the dangers of creating a large class of restless, landless and poor white men. Uh-oh. Yeah. Many of whom could not find any work whatsoever that could, cause you can't compete against free, right? Right. So by 1672,
Starting point is 00:11:32 that began to change. King Charles, the second rechartered the Royal African company in order to take a serious crack at all the money in the Atlantic slave trade. God damn it, dude. Yeah. Now at the time,
Starting point is 00:11:47 this was mostly a Spain and Portugal venture for settlers in the colonies this took some time to get used to uh not because as a business proposal owning a slave is much more expensive than temporarily owning an indentured servant the slaves are never going to be free right because you want them and their children forever not yet that'll happen okay my fault that fixes the other problem involved with owning a lot of people uh that it's a self perpetuating machine that's
Starting point is 00:12:14 the other problem as we know not the morals unfortunately when you're talking about white dudes in the 1600s you need to just get rid of morals and yeah they've already worked themselves all of these god-fearing christian men right they've already worked themselves into a headspace where purchasing a human being is okay so fair enough now slaves cost more up front uh but they
Starting point is 00:12:38 had the added bonus like i said of your labor supply is never going to decrease unless they die, which did happen a lot because of abuse, neglect, disease, what have you. But your slave was never going to be free. So they cost more up front. But by the early 1700s, the slave population of the colonies had exploded. While most of the slaves of the Atlantic slave trade went to the colonies in the Caribbean, Brazil, and Spanish America for various reasons, for the Spaniards, I can't go into this far enough, but I also cannot explain
Starting point is 00:13:12 to the proper extent that the Spanish had killed so many slaves that they were almost constantly at a negative. They had to constantly import slaves. Their sugar plantations were like hell on earth just death camp yeah all right i'm not going to go into this to the extent that it should
Starting point is 00:13:32 but they started importing slaves to these areas because they've already killed off the native population through slavery this is one of the terms that led to rafael lemkin coining the term genocidal slavery in regards to the concept of genocide. So, Spain, that's you. Well done. But they got the majority of the slaves coming from the Atlantic slave trade, but also a lot of them went... I hit my vape
Starting point is 00:13:56 in desperation. Now, a lot of these slaves did go to British America, of course, which then began to rapidly multiply because children. Right. This is uncommon for slave colonies in other areas. It didn't really seem like having kids was something that the Spanish were really OK with.
Starting point is 00:14:16 On top of their just incredible death rate meant that this didn't really occur so often other places. It was definitely an aspect of british slavery more i'm not saying that meant that the british were okay and i don't want anybody to be confused that i'm saying that any point of this episode that the british were okay we're the good guys here don't get it twisted we're talking about shades of evil of course this coincided with the development of what we now know as chattel slavery in America, meaning slaves gave birth to slaves under the legal doctrine, quote, that which is brought forth follows the belly, meaning slaves could only birth more slaves. Even that sounds fucked up. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:14:59 This also included Virginia's black codes, which restricted the very few freedmen who existed in the colonies at this time to effectively live under the same laws as slaves. This meant within a few generations, slaves were a very large minority population in whichever of the colonies they ended up in. With this boom in population became the birth
Starting point is 00:15:20 of American policing. Slave patrols. In case you're wondering where the unemployed white men went yeah yeah great now a small side note here there's a lot of surviving
Starting point is 00:15:35 institutions that were birthed during this time including southern military academies like VMI and the Citadel they were literally founded for the purpose of training slave patrols. Way to go, Roz. They still exist today for reasons I cannot comprehend. So that's fun.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Oh, and another side note, both of those schools should probably be shut down. You know, they continue to pump out just vehement racists. Enter the Somerset case. Now, James Somerset, a slave taken to England by his master, Charles Stewart, had run away while in England, recaptured and in chains of the ship bound for Jamaica. He sued for his freedom. Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, ruled, quote, The state of slavery is such a nature that is incapable of being introduced by any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created is erased from memory. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences thereof may follow from this decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England, and therefore the black must be discharged.
Starting point is 00:16:55 Sorry for the language, guys. I'm quoting a lot of shit from the 1700s in this episode. Yeah. Obviously, I always don't say the slur that pops up if it pops up now i do need to explain this case a little bit because sometimes it's explained as the british freed the slaves and that's not what happened um the crux of this case is the legality in shipping slaves back to where they had been escaped from if they managed to get to other british held lands where the practice was no longer legal or restricted in some way.
Starting point is 00:17:25 So running for your freedom. Right. But it ended up going further than that reality, but also being incredibly underwhelming. This is sometimes pointed to that the American Revolution was over slavery. And as gross and horrible as our founding fathers were, that's not actually the case. England was not coming for their slaves, though that is a fear. The more labor being done in the fields at
Starting point is 00:17:49 this time directly rewarded the British. Why the fuck would they get rid of slavery? Right. They did not care who was doing labor under what conditions. Mansfield's decision outlawed slavery only in England, but it did not apply to British colonies.
Starting point is 00:18:06 This is due to a technicality more than moral standards. Mansfield said slavery should exist per statute, positive law, if at all. And there was no law on the books allowing it within English common law. There were slaves and there were slaves and colonies. common law. There were slaves, and there were slaves in colonies, and there was laws in the colonies that allowed slavery, meaning slavery should be allowed because
Starting point is 00:18:30 it's a positive law on the books. Yes, it's very stupid. Now, here's the other funny thing. None of this mattered. It just didn't end slavery in England either. The government could just ignore the High Court's decision. It wasn't a law.
Starting point is 00:18:47 Fucking cool. And they did. At no point was the government forced to listen to the court's decision. It was considered a suggestion at most. That's the long and short of it, I guess. I mean, they continued to trade in slaves all over the empire as well as at home. For years afterwards, people could openly buy and sell slaves in England to include I mean, they continued to trade in slaves all over the empire as well as at home. For years afterwards, people could openly buy and sell slaves in England to include newspaper ads in London itself. Now, this went on until 1807 when Parliament got involved and actually did outlaw slavery within England legally in some form. And there wasn't until another 30 years after that that it was banned across the empire in some forms. Debt slavery was still on the table.
Starting point is 00:19:29 So we're talking 30, almost like what? 30 years after the revolution. Jesus Christ. Granted that is about 60 years out before we would. So there's that, but I only got off on that side tangent because people often say that the revolution was truly about slavery. It's not that simple.
Starting point is 00:19:52 I really wish I could say that. It's like saying the Civil War was about slavery. It was. It was absolutely about slavery. Revolution is a lot more gray. But it didn't matter to american slaves or colonists american slave owners thought the brits might come for their slaves and this was a real fear that did come through uh like patriot propaganda at the time while the slaves also thought that if they
Starting point is 00:20:16 ran away and got the british held lands that were not the 13 colonies they would gain their freedom so this worked for both sides negatively because that's also not what the court was saying this became more and more known as it became clear that the american revolution was going to go from you know barroom debate to actual war now the american elite leading the revolution were terrified of the idea of the british whipping up a slave revolt not only would this implode their colonial economy, that was completely dependent on slaves, but it would also mean they would immediately have tens of thousands of irregular soldiers available for recruitment at the start of any war. That being freed slaves,
Starting point is 00:20:56 the British could put them in a red coat. Most of them, right, sure. James Madison wrote to William Bradford on the conviction that if, quote, if American Britain come to hostile rupture, I'm afraid an insurrection among the slaves may and will be promoted. Yes. And to Madison's credit, that's absolutely some plan that a lot of British commanders had. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore and the last royal governor of Virginia. That was his first plan. Dunmore and the last royal governor of Virginia.
Starting point is 00:21:24 That was his first plan. He brought this idea to Lord Dartmouth, the secretary of the colonies in 1772, three years before shit would actually go hot, but it was solidly in that these revolutionaries will not shut up territory. And they knew something was going to pop off. Right. Remember a lot of the original grievances of the revolution were a
Starting point is 00:21:43 difference in mostly taxation policy. Many of the loudest patriots did not want independence necessarily. They consider themselves Englishmen and want to live under English law. They simply wanted it to be fair to them and to the people that these laws did apply to. They were unfair. I guess I have to give them that much taxation. That representation does suck. Something that the United States has never done again we've never done again moving on moving on has decided to ignore completely in places like washington dc guam puerto rico american samoa
Starting point is 00:22:18 it doesn't matter now because whatever now murray's thing was okay well these guys want english law they can fucking have it somerset law and all armed conflict was looming and patrick henry had done his give me liberty or give me death speech dunmore had ordered the royal marines to seize the gunpowder stored in williamsburg magazine that was on the night of april 20th and 21st and at this point virginia was threatening to erupt into open violence and Dunmore back down. Now, Dunmore is forced to pay restitution for the power, which is kind of funny.
Starting point is 00:22:52 And he lost his temper in front of a group of town leaders at this point, doing probably the dumbest thing he could have done at the time. Williamsburg resident Dr. William Pasteur heard the governor say that, quote, he would declare freedom to the slaves and reduce the city of williamsburg to ashes wow okay all right based he boasted that
Starting point is 00:23:12 he would have quote all the slaves on the side of the government which not what you want to do if you want to calm tempers like i i oh man that's my own heart just coming out swinging huh you're gonna regret those words as you normally do. Never mind. No, you know what I don't regret? No, you know, it's- I will say Dunberg, not a champion of the freed black man. Yeah, I can't, I can't say I'm shocked.
Starting point is 00:23:36 Now, this led Henry and the Hanover militia to confront Murray, eventually chasing him from the capital of Williamsburg, taking refuge on some Royal Navy boats off the coast. Now, the Virginia Convention quickly assured the governor of his personal safety, but expressed its extreme displeasure at this, quote, most diabolical scheme meditated and generally recommended by a person of great influence to offer freedom to our slaves to turn them against their masters. Diabolical is a goddamn one. What do you care? Yeah, that's the virginia convention too so like yeah slavery
Starting point is 00:24:08 is definitely part of the revolution um it's fine though we should be pointing out one important man did not want to promise him safety that being george washington oh i can't yeah not not shocked washington was a bastard man he was uh
Starting point is 00:24:24 very much in the uh let's kill him mood. He said, quote, I do not think that forcing his lordship on shipboard is sufficient. Nothing less than depriving him of life or liberty will secure peace in Virginia as motives of resentment actuate his conduct to a degree equal to the total destruction of that colony. So, I mean, he's equaling the freedom of slaves to the destruction of virginia wow yeah of course he is right like yeah i mean this man owned a lot of slaves his teeth were made out of slave teeth i guess he's not wrong in that like that's how capital goes belly up for him and if it's a slave colony like basically, Christ, what an asshole. If the British could do this in a more organized manner, which we'll talk about more later, the result would have been much different, I think.
Starting point is 00:25:13 But the war was on. Dunmore couldn't just return to Williamsburg, and he couldn't really fight anything either. The garrison that he had at his disposal was about 300 Royal Marines. The garrison that he had at his disposal was about 300 Royal Marines. And, you know, reinforcements were an ocean away. With the cop between a rock and a hard place, he decided to welcome supporters of the British crown of any skin color. Now, as word spread along the coast that the British were open to black people within the ranks and we'll give them a gun. But 100 runaway slaves reached Dunmore's fleet in the fall of 1775.
Starting point is 00:25:48 Now, with this corps, he created the somewhat confusingly named Ethiopian regiment. What? Now, I say confusingly because they were neither Ethiopian nor an entire regiment. Alright. I assumed he picked the one country
Starting point is 00:26:04 in Africa not currently being exploited by Europeans at the time, though I believe they were going under the name of Abyssinia at the time. I don't know. There's a lot of layers to this dumb, stupid name. Then Murray decided to kick the Patriot movement in the dick by publishing what is now known as the Dunmore Proclamation.
Starting point is 00:26:21 I got to say, this episode is quite proclamation heavy, so bear with me. Yeah, it's the 1700s, man. People were claiming shit all the time. Yeah, everybody spoke in proclamation. Nobody made fucking mixtapes. It's bullshit. Now, the proclamation declared martial law in the area as well as the promise of freedom
Starting point is 00:26:37 to any slave that ran from their master and joined the British side. Now, I don't think I need to point out here that Murray Dunmore, whatever you want to call him, was not a fan of freeing black people or freeing slaves. He didn't give a single fuck
Starting point is 00:26:53 about the enslaved population of the colonies. He owned slaves himself. Now, the proclamation read, quote, all indentured servants, Negroes or others appertaining to the rebels, free that are able and willing to bear arms. They are joining
Starting point is 00:27:08 his majesty's troops as soon as may be for the speedily reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duties to his majesty's crown and dignity.
Starting point is 00:27:17 Weirdly, I need to point out that in those proclamation, the worst is fucking word vomit at some point. The majesty is in all caps. Yeah. To his Majesty's crown and dignity. Now, this was not a general emancipation
Starting point is 00:27:32 of slaves or indentured servants if you look at the wording of that. Dunmore invited only those slaves to his banner that were owned by rebels and only those who were male and able to bear arms. Now, I do have to say that he wasn't exactly checking to see who was who. So, like, if you were a loyalist runaway slave, like loyalist to the British, I mean,
Starting point is 00:27:54 like, he wasn't going to be able to find out. Now, much like Lincoln's later Emancipation Proclamation, this is fully an economic and military matter, not one of ethics. The colonists were horrified when wrote, quote, Hell itself could not have vomited anything more black than this design of emancipation of our slaves. Fucking Christ, asshole.
Starting point is 00:28:13 A flood of slave defections would deplete the rebels' labor force, demoralizing them with the prospect of imminent insurrection and the swell of the British ranks with new recruits whose freedom and whose very lives would now rest on a British victory. This is a win-win for the Brits.
Starting point is 00:28:30 If they were not so racist. We'll get there. Ironically, British high command shared the columnist's attitude on this matter. This is because Dunmore's plan had already been brought up to them and rejected because they were worried about a slave revolt when they won.
Starting point is 00:28:48 So knowing that his plan would get shit can, Dunmore just slipped his proclamation into his proclamation of martial law without consulting them a second time. Good for him. Yeah, the old ask for forgiveness, not permission. This just says, what are you going to do about it in all caps? Yeah, I mean, the proclamation is already published. Look at all these guys I got with guns now. Like, are you really going to undo this?
Starting point is 00:29:14 And also, you know, information traveled incredibly slowly at the time. Now, the rebel Americans quickly fired back with their own proclamation a month later. Sorry, this one's long. Quote, whereas Lord Dunmore, by own proclamation a month later. Sorry, this one's long. Quote, whereas Lord Dunmore, by his proclamation dated on the board of the ship William off Norfolk, the 7th day of November 1775, hath offered
Starting point is 00:29:34 freedom to such able-bodied slaves that they're willing to join him and take up arms against the good people of this colony, giving thereby encouragement to a general insurrection, which may induce a necessity of inflicting the severest punishments upon those unhappy people, already diluted by his base and insidious arts, and whereas by act of the General Assembly now in force in this colony,
Starting point is 00:29:57 is enacted that all Negro or other slaves conspiring to rebel or make insurrection shall suffer death and be excluded all benefit of clergy. We think it proper to declare that all slaves who have been or shall be seduced by his Lordship's proclamation or other arts to desert their master's service and take up arms against the inhabitants of this colony shall be liable for punishment, such as shall hereby be directed by the general convention.
Starting point is 00:30:25 And to that end, who have taken this unlawful and wicked step may return safely to their duty and escape punishment due to their crimes. We hereby promise a part of them. They surrendered themselves to Colonel William Woodford and any commander of our troops and not appearing in arms after the publication thereof. And we do further earnestly recommend it to all humane and benevolent persons in this colony to explain and make known. This is our offer to mercy of those unfortunate people.
Starting point is 00:30:56 Slaves. Unfortunate people are slaves. I literally almost just pulled my head through our monitor in protest. And their duty is returning to enslavement. Okay. Okay, guy. This is the revolutionary government of America. You should be glad you didn't get hanged by these people.
Starting point is 00:31:14 Oh, we'll get there. Yeah, buddy. But Murray's new regiment immediately saw an impact on the war. Wearing a uniform that included a sash that actually read liberty to slaves written across it they numbered around 100 all right and first saw battle at kemp's landing in november 15 1775 some of them wore a sash that said liberty to slaves while other other ones just wore like a shirt that had liberty to slaves written on it which is admittedly like the coolest army uniform i've ever heard of like straight into the point everybody knows why you're there right now at kemp's landing they
Starting point is 00:31:50 walked right into an ambush led by a patriot militia commanded by joseph hutchings but militia had no real training and they opened up way too early remember they're all using like brown best muskets here uh so if you if you you know fire off your load too early it could take almost a minute to reload this gave away their position and allowed the ethiopian regiment which had spent their last several weeks being trained by royal marines uh to immediately still very confusingly named still very confusingly named to immediately advance on the militia's position and just shoot the hell out of them, sending them running. Now, if this isn't embarrassing enough, they then captured Hutchings with
Starting point is 00:32:29 the added little sting of the freedman that put him in chains happened to be one of his runaway slaves. Hell yeah. Actually, I got something for that. Just hook it to my veins! Now,
Starting point is 00:32:44 unfortunately for the Ethiopian regiment, they were not long for this world. I got something for that. Just tuck it to my face! Now, unfortunately for the Ethiopian regiment, they were not long for this world. Their next battle, the Battle of Great Bridge, is where the Patriots had set up an ambush. They sent a black man with some sources noting he was one of the Patriot slaves
Starting point is 00:32:59 to be a double agent to the British. Knowing Murray was open to allowing pretty much anybody in his ranks at that point, he's like, yeah, sure, come on in. Now, the double agent told Murray the nearby rebels were held up in a fort at Great Bridge and were sickly and without training. Knowing this would be an easy target for his kind of outnumbered army here, or Ethiopian regiment, Murray ordered an attack.
Starting point is 00:33:23 Now, these sickly and without training and outnumbered rebels were actually 800 people commanded by Colonel William Woodford, and were decently well trained and prepared for this. Now, during the attack, over 100 British were killed and only one rebel was wounded. Noted as it was a slight wound to the thumb. I assume he pinched it in his musket somehow. a slight wound to the thumb. I assume he pinched it in his musket somehow.
Starting point is 00:33:45 Now, once again with Murray on the run, he took refuge on an overcrowded Royal Navy ship as he had before. Unfortunately, if you know anything about close quarters in the 1700s, these things were just... That guy got scurvy and died. Actually, Murray didn't, but you know who did? Pretty much
Starting point is 00:34:02 the entire Ethiopian regiment. Oh. The spread of smallpox just annihilated them. But this would not be the first or only time the British did something like this during the war. Though I should point out here, this is all very regional. Some British commanders welcomed runaway slaves into the units, while others, like Sir William Howe, discharged them on the spot when he actually took command and saw what was happening. He ordered his army to, quote, be on the most respectable footing and all Negroes, mulattoes and other improper persons who had been admitted into these corps be immediately discharged.
Starting point is 00:34:39 So, yeah, this is this is not a go Britain episode at all. Now, for instance, after the Dunmore Proclamation, there were others. There's the Phillipsburg Proclamation in 1779, written by Sir Henry Clinton, which had pretty much the same thing as Dunmore's, but expanded the scope infinitely. Instead of being able to bear arms, it changed to being literally any slave owned by a rebel. So that was more the British version of the Emancipation Proclamation than the Dunmore one. Now, this caused such a rapid depopulation of slaves from the recently established United States, that Clinton wasn't sure what to do with them all. There were so many slaves that ran to British lines during this point, he could not feed everybody and sent some back to their masters.
Starting point is 00:35:20 Now, unfortunately, a lot of these slaves got executed when they went back. Now, it's thought to be around 100,000 slaves uprooted and ran during this time, which, going off of previous numbers, was a full 5% of the entire American population becoming internally displaced people as they ran for their freedom. Now, facing this in rebel colonies, they did the same thing to the loyalists. Rebel formations offered freedom if slaves ran from their British masters or loyalist masters, whichever. Unfortunately for the slaves that did that, they were, again, you do not have to hand it to the British. But they did keep them behind British lights as freedmen, gave them jobs as laborers.
Starting point is 00:36:04 More importantly, they gave them jobs. They did not enslave them. But again, that's also not a monolith. A lot of these slaves that ran from the British side or the loyalist or British side ran to the rebel side. They were often captured and pressed into slavery
Starting point is 00:36:19 just on the other side. I love doing it. Other people, especially slavery patrols, would capture the runaway slaves and then sell them. So the American version of this is real bad. At first, it would get better. Again, the British freed slaves for economic reasons. But by now, they'd hired thousands of German mercenaries known as Hessians to fill the gaps in their manpower. That, combined with the racism of people like Howe, meant that no longer would runaways form formal ranks within the British military.
Starting point is 00:36:51 But they did know the war was draining the manpower of the rebels, and draining it further by sending a huge percentage of the slave population running was a great way to tank their economy and force them to redirect military men to work the fields, which is what they had to do. In the beginning of the war, the Continental Army and George Washington himself was against arming black people
Starting point is 00:37:10 or promising them freedom for service. At one point, he called Murray a traitor to humanity for offering freedom to slaves in exchange for service. Now, there's two reasons for that. Washington a bitch. Washington a bitch. So there's three reasons now. Washington's a bitch washington a bitch uh so there's three reasons now washington's a bitch um racism obviously but also like we've pointed out everyone in charge of the colonies
Starting point is 00:37:33 for the most part in any form of real leadership owned slaves their riches were built upon the backs of enslaved people by offering this version freedom, they would not only financially fuck over the new nation, or more accurately, independent state, since a federal government was more of a vibe at this point, but also they would fuck themselves over. Not to mention arming and training slaves. Sounded like a really good way to get
Starting point is 00:37:58 shot by your own slaves at some point. Especially if you weren't gonna give them liberty or death, right? Right. That whole thing. Though the colonies and even individual towns were not a monolith within the American Revolution. In some cases, free black men joined the Minutemen and local militias when calls came up, and there was no complaints about it.
Starting point is 00:38:19 Famously, Crispus Attucks, generally believed to be a mixed race man, was one of the first people shot dead in the Boston Massacre, and was an early American patriot. Though, a whole lot of effort has gone into obfuscating his racial character throughout history. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:37 In 1775, at least 10 to 15 black soldiers, including some freed slaves, fought the British at the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill, the gene seat of the revolution. Two of these men, Salem Poor and Peter Salem, earned special distinction for their bravery. But by 1776, it had become clear that the revolutionary ideas of the founding fathers did not include them. Only days after taking command in 1775, George Washington decreed that no black, free, or enslaved could be recruited to fight.
Starting point is 00:39:07 Generally, he's meaning the Continental Army, not individual state militias here. But by 1776, early war enthusiasm had worn off, and he was tuned through white boys faster than he could replace them. Funny how that happens. Yeah, weird how
Starting point is 00:39:23 when you do a war on racial supremacy, you tend to shoot yourself in the foot. So in order to fill ranks, he caved, allowing black men to enlist, but they couldn't be slaves. They had to be previously freed men. Now, since it was easy to lie about slave status,
Starting point is 00:39:40 they could just run away and claim to be free. Several states put laws in the book that made it illegal for recruiters into the Continental Army or state militias to accept black men without a certificate of freedom. Now, thankfully, much as today as then, recruiters are kind of shiftless and have quotas to meet,
Starting point is 00:39:57 so they just forge them. Now, another way a slave can end up in the ranks of the new American military was through substitution. If you happen to be a slave owner, you could legally send a slave to serve in the ranks, say, in your place or your son's as a proxy should you be drafted. Literally replacement. And this also meant that you got your slave's paycheck. Cool. By 1777, some states began enacting laws that encouraged white owners to give slaves to the army in return for an enlistment bounty. Like, you know, a yield bonus of sorts that could equate a few hundred dollars, which is a lot.
Starting point is 00:40:38 Now, if that sounds like the government literally purchased slaves to use them in war. That's because they did. And this also, weirdly enough, ended up being the first and almost last time the U.S. Army would become racially integrated in some form or another, though not really, until the Korean War 175 years later. Fucking Christ, dude. Now, remember, this is the 1700s. The federal government was purposefully weak and recruitment efforts were left up mostly to state and local actors. The same went for recruiting policy
Starting point is 00:41:13 since states were given quotas to fill the Continental Army. Like, you know, we need X amount of people from Virginia, X amount of people from whatever. And then they supply those men to the Continental Army. But I'm going to do everybody a favor here and just not separate the two at this point
Starting point is 00:41:29 because it's kind of hard to do so. Now, the Militia Act of 1775 specifically excluded freed black men from the draft. But in 1777 in Virginia, worried that the idea that all the white men would get drafted, laying all the black men laying, like working on the farm,
Starting point is 00:41:45 doing business in town, whatever, becoming the majority of their lives. That's right. Becoming institutional Jody's. They decided to flip the draft on its head by like, no, no,
Starting point is 00:41:58 no. We need to draft more black people to make sure they don't outnumber the white people. So in some States, a lot more black people were drafted like freed black men but also some of them weren't free they were like known to be runaways or whatever they were like living on the outskirts of the law like whatever fuck you drafted um now according to governor thomas nelson this is done for the most i mean i have already described why this is racist but this is even
Starting point is 00:42:25 more racist than that governor thomas nelson said quote it was thought that they could best be spared for a comparison rhode island and massachusetts probably fielded more black soldiers in segregated and integrated units than anyone else this also include the only black officer of the entire war, George Middleton. Though I don't want to use the term officer here. I don't want to stand by that term because he was a militiaman and he was just given the rank of a colonel to lead other black militiamen. This was not like a Continental Army Commission. He was not an official officer.
Starting point is 00:43:05 So I really don't want to say he was the first black officer in the United States military. It gives too much credit to the military. Sure. He was only allowed to command other black militiamen who made up the Bucks of America. Yeah, that was their name, which was part of the larger Massachusetts militia. And so little was written about his militia formation that pretty much all we know is that he commanded it and that was its name. Oh, okay. Now, northern colonies finally reluctantly allowed
Starting point is 00:43:32 black people to work with them in regards to military service begrudgingly and if you jump through a lot of hoops and also if you wanted to be drafted as a meat shield, the southern colonies where the vast majority of slaves were went the other direction of this I'm shocked now they're
Starting point is 00:43:49 happy to allow slaves to work in their small riverine navies which you know barely a thing at the time but they almost entirely refused to allow slaves into their army and militia formations now at the same time, the northern colonies were
Starting point is 00:44:05 integrating their units, mostly due to a shortage of manpower. Places like South Carolina and Georgia. Georgia's real. It's honestly the worst offender in almost everything I'm about to say. Yeah, they usually fucking are. Fuck the Brains.
Starting point is 00:44:21 They offered slaves as an enlistment bonus alongside cash to people come on dude so to explain this everybody often uses the the explanation why would people fight for it now i'm going to talk about the civil war here not the revolution or why would people fight for slaves if most people didn't own slaves right because it's true most people didn't but they were seen as such a status symbol and a symbol of wealth that they were offered as a bonus for military service during the revolution because people knew owning slaves is how you get fucking rich.
Starting point is 00:44:56 Not only that, that's how you become a landed gentry and shit. Like, this is literal, like, social ladder shit we're talking here. Owning a slave. Literally the state giving you a slave as a bonus. Dude, that's so... We talk about fuck stuff on this show a lot, but Jesus Christ. Some stuff is just so goddamn egregious. I am very rarely taken aback by things that I discover during research here.
Starting point is 00:45:24 Even in school, mostly. Because history is universally terrible. But every once in a while, you plumb the depths of history to something so terribly like, holy shit! Because I immediately saw this as an enlistment bonus. They call it a bounty, but it's the same thing.
Starting point is 00:45:39 I got an enlistment bonus when I enlisted in the Army a way long time ago. It was like $4,000, but when you're 17, that's all the money in the world. Right. What Camaro did you buy, Joe? I bought a really terrible Jeep Wrangler that broke down immediately. That's right. I'm so proud of you.
Starting point is 00:45:56 Yeah, it followed the proud Jeep tradition of being unreliable trash. In the same idea, I mean, granted, I wouldn't be considered white in the revolutionary sense of America, but, I wouldn't be considered white in the revolutionary sense of America. But if I would have enlisted in 1775 or whatever in Georgia, they'd be like, Yeah, sign here for your... I think it was like two years, one year of service, even less than that. Here's your human. He's your property now.
Starting point is 00:46:19 I'm going to throw up. I'm not literally going to throw up. It's just fucking insane. Now, the reason why I told you all of that, because that's not how the script started. This script started because I wanted to tell the story of Titus Cornelius, who was not a Roman emperor, but rather a runaway slave from New Jersey. He's commonly known as Colonel Ty, and I'll call him Ty for the rest of us. Ty was born a slave in Colts Neck, New Jersey
Starting point is 00:46:45 and was owned by a Quaker, which is interesting because the Quakers actually strongly opposed slavery. Yeah. In 1758 would publish an edict to end it within their own insular community. But Ty's master, a guy named John Corlees just refused to do that
Starting point is 00:47:02 and he was actually such a bastard because I'm not saying that the Quakers were good to their slaves because you cannot be nice to slaves. Right. I'm not going to go into that. But like even the Quakers had laws that said you had to teach your slaves how to read and write so they could like read the word of God. He didn't even do that.
Starting point is 00:47:20 So even by shitty Quaker slave owners standards, he was a pretty shitty quaker slave owner um now instead of doing that he would just beat the shit out of his slaves for breaking the most minor rule um and he was such a bastard that the society of friends which is a quaker group that he was a part of kicked him out you have to fuck you have to fuck up pretty bad to get kicked out he's a freelance quaker at this point, really shopping the free agency market. He might become a Mormon. I don't know. But Ty
Starting point is 00:47:49 educated himself because his master was such a shithead, teaching himself how to read and write with the help of other slaves when they all got together to work on farms together. But the day after the Dunmore Proclamation, Ty escaped from his master and made his way to Virginia where he linked up with the Ethiopian regiment.
Starting point is 00:48:06 Once there, he enlisted and fought in the Battle of Monmouth, where he was with hundreds of black men on the field and not a single one fought for the revolution. In this first engagement, he proved to the British how good of a soldier and a leader he was. He just kind of just grabbed a group of militiamen to follow him when he saw what he thought was the captain of the local militia running away and he was right and he beat the shit out of and captured the local leader of the militia but like we talked about already
Starting point is 00:48:35 the Ethiopian regiment eventually collapsed under a pile of smallpox but that's good yeah Ty was one of the few that did not die and said he got over it, which, you know, just flexed on smallpox.
Starting point is 00:48:49 And then he fell under the pay of William Franklin. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it should. He's Benjamin Franklin's loyalist son. Now, William's idea was to use him to launch a guerrilla war in the woods of new jersey because
Starting point is 00:49:07 because uh slaves were used for a lot of things back in the day like carting shit back and forth so like he knew that this guy ty would know the woods like the back of his hand and he was right this was the the birth of ty's black brigade which despite its name was mixed race he had black and white loyalists in his ranks and it was informally commanded by ty through democracy so they're they're kind of interracial swamp anarchists oh i'm i'm quite pleased with that, actually. Yeah, this made him one of the few and maybe only black commanders of white troops on either side during the entire war. Now, since people relied so heavily on slave labor, the slaves that were recruited into the ranks knew everything. They were delivery people.
Starting point is 00:50:02 They worked in the fields. They worked in your home. They cleaned. They did manual labor for you. This meant that not only did these newly freed men and women, he did not discriminate. He would take whole families into the ranks. Not only did these men
Starting point is 00:50:18 know everything like the backs of their hands, they knew who everybody was because it wasn't like these patriot rebels or whatever you want to call them censored themselves when speaking from their slaves because one they believe that slaves are too dumb to understand concepts like liberty and freedom and two they're not going to run away i own them so soon they ran away with no one just about everything about everybody in the local community now using, using that knowledge, they launched raids throughout the county and the town of Shrewsbury.
Starting point is 00:50:49 Ty captured 80 cows and 20 horses, along with a few local rebels, and led them into the swamp where they ate like kings and shot the rebels. Oh, I'm quite pleased by this. Now, the Black Brigade set up a forest base that they called Refugee Town. Endor. Where they launched raids against local rich slave owners in the area, killing them, burning their homes out and freeing their slaves under the shrouds of darkness. By 1779, Ty worked closely with a loyalist white unit called the Queen's Rangers around New York City, which was then occupied by British forces. Using the city as a base, they would sneak back south into Jersey, raiding, stealing, and killing as they went. They would then bring their goods back north, as well as guard thousands of runaway slaves as they moved north to take refuge behind British lines.
Starting point is 00:51:41 A lot of these slaves ended up being resettled in canada um and you know other places once word got out that what exactly the black brigade was because like people assumed it was just another like guerrilla group of loyalists because there's quite a few once people got out like no no they're armed black people rebel from the county that ty came from were terrified uh for reasons like i explained these slaves do everything about all these people's day-to-day lives. They knew who was a loyalist and who was a patriot. Feels so good. Feels so good to kill the slave owner.
Starting point is 00:52:15 Like someone pointed out, one of the sources they used pointed out, that Ty had kind of accidentally created like a massive intelligence apparatus about New Jersey. Ty would gather information from these slaves some of whom were welcome into his ranks while others were pushed off British lines because they didn't want to fight or work in the camp at which point Thai would launch
Starting point is 00:52:36 raids against these houses leaving the slaves to choose what happened to their former masters and their families and sometimes arming the slaves to let them do what they will with them. Now, I feel so good. I feel so good. The fear of being raided by the
Starting point is 00:52:52 Black Brigade swept through Jersey even though that they rarely murdered people outright. Like, I do say that they killed and murdered people. Like, rarely were people being captured and then just shot in the face. Now, if you took up arms and your life was forfeit, one of the things they enjoyed doing was capturing people
Starting point is 00:53:08 and then trading them to the British to be bartered off as prisoners, to be thrown in prison ships where a lot of them died of smallpox. That'll happen. Yeah, the prison ships in the Revolutionary War were nightmarish. But it's also, you can't ignore the deep irony of these slave owners being captured by freed slaves and then being sold to the british hold on slaves hold on slaves you know the job was dangerous when you took it this is one of the the things in this uh in the show we like to call
Starting point is 00:53:39 the uno reverse card of history how do you like it motherfucker that's actually what their banner said which was crazy no reverse card of history. How do you like it, motherfucker? That's actually what their banner said, which was crazy. We actually brought down the liberty to slaves sash and we have risen the fuck around and find out sash. I'd like this
Starting point is 00:53:58 not widespread murder spree didn't assange the fear of armed black people roaming the woods of Jersey. Quote, the worst is to be feared from the irregular troops the so-called Tories have assembled from various nationalities. For example, a regiment
Starting point is 00:54:13 of Catholics, a regiment of Negroes who are fitted and inclined towards barbarities, who are lacking in human feeling and are familiar with every corner of the country. Yeah, that seems like your problem. If you beat the Black Brigade, we're sending in the Papists. Eventually, the governor of
Starting point is 00:54:32 Jersey, William Livingston, evoked martial law, but that did not stop Ty from continuing his personal war against the rebels in the region. When they weren't stealing, they were acting as a hit squad. Sometimes they would kill slave owners, but oftentimes they would hunt down rebels who were doing the same thing they were acting as a hit squad sometimes they would kill slave owners but often times they would hunt down rebels who were doing the same thing they were doing
Starting point is 00:54:47 assassinating loyalists like tit for tat assassinations going on during one of these missions to kill Captain Joshua Huddy a local militia captain known for ruthlessly murdering loyalists Ty was shot catching a musket ball in the wrist unfortunately
Starting point is 00:55:03 it's the 1700s, and a minor wound will kill you. Oh, R.I.P. Young hero. Getting shot in the wrist was fatal back then, because nobody could get all the ghosts out of your blood or whatever, and he died of an infection two days later.
Starting point is 00:55:20 Now, the Black Brigade did not die with him, however. It was taken over by Stephen Bluck, who was one, an owner of a terrible last name and to a mixed race man originally from Barbados, but moved to the colonies and settled with the British. He was not a runaway slave that I understand. He was just happened to be mixed race. He was just ready to kill some rebels. That's fine. He folded ties unit into his Black Company of Pioneers.
Starting point is 00:55:46 Sick name. And they worked as, like, saboteurs and engineers and stuff. It was pretty rad. Luck read his unit until the end of the war, where most of them were relocated to Canada, with thousands of other freed slaves who had been ferried up there during the conflict, where
Starting point is 00:56:01 they eventually became known as the Black Nova Scotians. Yep. Yep. Now, this is where things... Or New Brunswick. Depends on where you are. Yeah. up there during the conflict where they eventually became known as the black nova scotians yep yep now this is where things like depends on where you are yeah uh now this is where things get kind of grim unfortunately because nothing here can have a happy ending in case you didn't know at the end of the american revolution despite calls for equality among men and liberty and justice and all that fun shit, Bullshit nonsense. slavery was not ended. In 1782, as the US and Britain hashed out how this whole independence thing was going to work,
Starting point is 00:56:35 the new nation requested a return of stolen property. And that meant, namely, the tens of thousands of runaway slaves. Now, the Brits only evacuated a few thousand, which thankfully they refused to return, while others were forced to flee to Florida or states in the north that had already outlawed slavery previously. So the British did intend on giving some back, which thankfully it seems like most of them were able to run to freedom,
Starting point is 00:57:06 though the British did return some slaves to change. Absolutely fucking pathetic. Yeah. Of their own 5,000 or so slaves that fought for the revolution, whether as a proxy or substitute or otherwise, thousands were returned back to slavery. It's noted that I believe at Yorktown, almost a quarter of the rebel army was black. So after fighting that pivotal moment of revolutionary history, a lot of men were put back in chains.
Starting point is 00:57:38 In the South, all bets were off. Loyalists were evacuated by the British government, many taking their slaves with them, where they relocated to the Caribbean and other British imperial territories and allowed to continue their slave owner ways. In other places in the South, slaves found their masters were not returning, but found themselves enslaved by the newly independent American state of wherever the fuck. Some of the freed slaves who had fought in the ranks of the Continental Army returned to grab their families from bondage, being promised they were
Starting point is 00:58:10 allowed to do that, and instead had their paychecks stolen that they accumulated from service and find themselves also returned to slavery. I fucking hate it here. Yeah. Still other freedmen were evacuated to England and London,
Starting point is 00:58:25 where also along with Canadian refugees, they were eventually voluntarily chose to leave that fetid island of England to resettle in Sierra Leone, where they joined the black Nova Scotians who had already moved there. Now I use the term voluntary very loosely. Right. It was almost like, look,
Starting point is 00:58:43 you're never going to be equal here, motherfucker. Might as well try over there. I can't imagine having to go from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone on a fucking boat. That shit would suck ass. Yeah. The US would, of course, famously do the same thing in Liberia.
Starting point is 00:58:58 Yep. Let's call Monrovia, folks. It was considered like the progressive approach was, yes, black people should be free but also they don't need to fucking be here yeah yeah today uh these people the nova scotians and londoners make up what is known as the sierra leonean creole minority um so there's still quite a large population of them now you'm probably wondering why i made this episode so far from fourth of july and i've already explained why i did whoops now this is the
Starting point is 00:59:32 question that i want uh people to mull about i know i'm probably like this isn't a bonus episode this is a regular episode so maybe we'll have some people who stumbled upon us by accident don't know who we are right sure i want you to mull upon this idea in your head. How can you square a love for one's country, like patriotism, love of freedom and liberty in the Constitution, all of those things, without confronting, acknowledging, and understanding concepts like restorative justice within history when your nation is something like Canada, the US, UK, Australia, or various others. How do you square that with one another?
Starting point is 01:00:07 When no attempt to right the historical wrongs has been made. Personally, I have no idea because I don't. I made my opinions very open about this. I don't feel patriotism or love for my nation. I feel like that's a weird idea to have. But I would like to think that we gave people something to think about on days like 4th of July going forward, maybe. Maybe if you didn't already think that or didn't already know about the depths of depravity of the American Revolution. I will say, though, until we or anybody else acknowledge the piles of bones and justices and crimes that formed the foundation of the United States and other countries,
Starting point is 01:00:46 and actively work towards educating and righting the wrongs of our history. In my opinion, any outward display of patriotism without some form of critical aspect is not just distasteful, it's disrespectful. I'll buy that. Yeah, that's the only thing I could square with this one.
Starting point is 01:01:02 And I normally don't end episodes with like a weird podium speech it felt weird writing that okay uh you know stuff you missed in history class and they sort of tow the line of restorative justice and all that shit i think we sort of have to be we can cut this if you want but like i think it's our duty as two people one of whom served in the military one of whom did work for the United States federal government, to acknowledge our own wrongs and acknowledge that we have to be as loud as anyone in pointing out that this country has a pretty fucking sordid past. of it and be that you can't just say oh i love my country i love my country and just and just absolutely piss on the graves of people who died for no good fucking reason other than george washington didn't want to pay taxes and we don't dare to speak for the populations of people that
Starting point is 01:01:56 we're talking about no of course not and if you're gonna ask us what that restorative justice looks like i don't fucking know but the fact remains is like i don't have children liam doesn't have children but like the coming generations should be educated upon the actual foundation of whatever nation you happen to be a part of this being the united states and so i'm probably going to say because i've heard this in other cases what does that accomplish like what i can tell you actually um obviously this is not the same. But something like recognition means a lot. And I'll use my own experience because I can't possibly fathom any others. And that is, last year, that being 2020, the United States government officially
Starting point is 01:02:41 recognized the Armenian genocide. Does that change anything in Turkey? Does that change anything in Armenia? No, it doesn't. But having the nation where you live recognize generational trauma and pain really does mean something. And pretending it didn't happen is just a fucking joke. Right. It's disrespectful. You are absolutely killing them twice.
Starting point is 01:03:01 Obviously, this means a whole lot more from the nation that did it. Absolutely killing them twice. Obviously, this means a whole lot more from the nation that did it. But if you live in a place, even if the place you lived in didn't do this crime or whatever, not recognizing it is tactical denial. And that's effectively what we are doing is denial of all of this. The idea of confronting our past does not mean not learning it like people people have constantly talked about tearing down statues and things like that and uh like no these people statues shouldn't be in public i don't think washington should have a monument i don't think any of those things and i'm not saying that because washington is not an important historical
Starting point is 01:03:43 figure we can learn about him in books, in museums, in documentaries. He shouldn't be lauded. He shouldn't be praised. Deified. I mean, the guy's fucking deified. Yeah, he really is. I believe there's a painting of him pretty much being Jesus in more than one case, with a crown of laurels and shit. I think that's the problem is we're talking about dogma we're
Starting point is 01:04:05 not talking about history right we're talking about countering nationalistic historical dogmas right uh and that is poison right that's not academics that's church it's a civil religion it is in the united states a civil religion i mean i don't really want to go off into the weeds in this but like that's something that everybody can confront a little bit on their own. Obviously, this show will never be more powerful than a school. And I mean, if you noticed, I did my best not to swear all that much in this episode. I'm sorry, I didn't do that.
Starting point is 01:04:36 No, it's fine. I didn't know we weren't swearing. I generally swear more, therefore, because I talk more. Therefore, it was a self-censorship thing, because if you know somebody who truly believes in this dogma, maybe they should listen to this. I don't think it will change their mind.
Starting point is 01:04:49 I don't think it will, but it's worth a shot because as our world spins more and more into madness, our education system is going with it. Because I can remember, I know this is very regional as well. I learned about slavery in school. I learned about racism in school i learned about
Starting point is 01:05:05 racism in school i learned about i mean they didn't use the word genocide unfortunately but i learned about what we did to the natives in school and this is 20 almost 20 years ago now um and that's going away it's like our education is actually getting worse critical race theory and it's like no you have to you have appreciate it in the same way that you're not being serious about a relationship if you can't identify faults within your partner. Not that you should be a patriot anyway. You shouldn't be. Joe and I are both, I think, of the belief that there shouldn't be countries in the first place. But you can't be serious about your country or anything to do with your country
Starting point is 01:05:45 without examining the ugly bits of it. And there are ugly parts of it. And you have to, you have to fucking live with it. You have to understand that like, like Abbott Arbery, like people are still being killed in public. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:05:57 And like to, to, to pretend racism's over whatever, when it still has a pretty fucking healthy heartbeat is, is disgraceful. and it's not just some guy in georgia it's the whole fucking rotten thing yeah and i mean that's that's kind of the thing institutional racism systemic racism because it's built into the core of our nation built into the education system it absolutely is and until we confront that and excise it like the
Starting point is 01:06:22 fucking fetid tumor that it is, you can't progress very far. No, you're not serious if you can't. No. Confronting history is one of the whole reasons we did this show. We do this show and we'll continue doing this show as long as people want us to. This shit's destructive. Just because it happened in the 1700s doesn't mean... I made the joke before, the only kind of trickle down shit that exists is
Starting point is 01:06:46 bad. And that's exactly what it is. It's still there. It's the damn truth. Yeah. I mean, like until we look at the pillars of American society, and if you're not from America, you can use this on your own country as well. Most countries are
Starting point is 01:07:01 guilty of this until you confront the pillars of American study that are not history, but they're dogma, you can never progress. You'll constantly end up back to where you were in the first place. And it's going to piss a lot of people off. That's fine. I'm sure we've already pissed off a lot of people. Be mad. We don't care.
Starting point is 01:07:18 I honestly do not. I hope it made you mad. There's a lot of people I hope this episode makes mad yeah exactly yeah um because occasionally learning something it hurts sometimes yeah yeah rip the fucking band-aid baby yeah i feel like we've podiumed long enough i that will count as a question from the legion today i suppose that's fine liam use this as your plug zone. 10,000 losses. Leftist Philly sports podcast.
Starting point is 01:07:47 Well, there's your problem. Leftist engineering disasters podcast with slides. I have no other podcasts. Give us money on Patreon. Support the show on Patreon. You make everything you need possible. Buy my books. They're free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
Starting point is 01:08:05 And until next time, I don't know. Don't be an idiot. Don't be an asshole.

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