Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 313 - The Fall of Confederate New Orleans

Episode Date: May 26, 2024

SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sinking forts, suicide gun boats, and one very dumb fake country. Check us out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lionsledbydonkeyspodcast7424 Sources: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/new-orleans-civil-war https://64parishes.org/entry/fall-of-new-orleans-and-federal-occupation-adaptation https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1962/april/fall-new-orleans https://www.historynet.com/big-trouble-big-easy-confederacy/ https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/conquering-the-queen-city/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lines Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lines led by donkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always

been ad-free. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me in the London dungeon is Nate. What's up, buddy? Hey, what's up? I have experienced a strange incident recently of bike tire deflating and being unusable for no discernible reason.

I believe that this is the work of magic and witchcraft and now I understand the Munster rebellion. I've just decided that I've been cursed and I need of magic and witchcraft and now I understand the Munster Rebellion I've just decided that i've been cursed and I need to find who cursed me and burn them at the stake or submit them to Water treatment, but uh, it's there's no mechanical explanation for it. It must just be devilry I had something similar happen to me. Um, I ran over a bunch of broken glass because Not too long ago. We had a King's day here in the Netherlands, which is everybody goes out in the street and gets drunk. Um, and generally speaking, it's, it's kind of like someone hits a light switch,

right? Like wall to wall parties between in every street and in every town and everything is completely trashed. And then by like 8 AM the next morning, it's like, it never happened. Everything is completely cleaned up and it's like, and it's like, it was like, it 8 a.m. the next morning, it's like it never happened. Everything is completely cleaned up and it's like it was a fever dream. So I didn't think anything of it and I was cycling to the gym, just ran over a pile of broken glass

because the sun didn't hit it quite right to be able to see it. And I immediately was on the rims of my bicycle. Oh no. And I am like five kilometers in any direction from anywhere resembling my local bike shop. So I did the responsible thing and rode it to the bicycle shop anyway on the rims. I'm like, I'm not like I have an electrical bike. It's fucking heavy. I'm not doing, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. I know you have an electric assist bike. I do too.

But the thing is, is that it's like really slim profile. And so I don't want to damage the rims. And quite frankly, because there's very few parts of my route that are on protected cycle lanes and even the ones that are like, there's lots of places where cars cut in, it's just not safe because like traffic is so bad. Like I, I I'm used to it. I've been doing it for over five, almost six years now, but it's one of those things where when I can tell that I'm losing traction,

I'm like, yeah, this is dangerous, I gotta walk it. Because America is worse, Britain though is pretty close in terms of a place where people will go out of their way to fuck with you on a bike just because they hate cyclists. In America, I've had people swerve into the wrong lane of traffic honking their horns just trying to run me over because they just like, cycling is gay or something. Alaska, not really an enlightened place,

but this could happen in all 50 states. I assumed you were talking about New York with that. I've heard horror stories about cyclists in New York. In New York, it's more that it's really dangerous and if you get killed, the cops will blame you for your own death because the cops hate everyone who lives In New York and they hate cyclists even more like you someone could be like getting knife murdered on the street

and the cops would be trying to give tickets to cyclists who ran a red light like They're there's we would derail this episode completely talking about being a cyclist in New York but the point is no one has the only only cyclist in New York. But the point is, the only thing where people are found, or it's less likely for you to be found liable for your own criminal negligence than killing someone by running them over when you're in a car and they're on a bike in New York is being a cop and killing someone. Because obviously no one will ever, unless you're not a white cop, in which case they'll immediately charge you. That's not fair. They might just ask you to resign so they don't have that bullet point on their press

release. I mean, to be honest with you, a friend of mine is Chinese American. There's been a lot of really political agitation from Chinese American community in New York because they're mad that a Chinese American cop was actually criminally charged for shooting a guy for no reason. And they're like, well, all these white cops do it all the time. Why do they get away with it? And it's like, yeah, that's America, buddy.

That's America. Literally the protests are like, well, white cops and Italian American cops get to kill people and get away with it. And it's like, what do you think's happening here? Y'all want to dig into that a little. But anyway, like I said, cycling New York is insane. I've had it go real bad with people just being aggressive, throwing shit at you and stuff.

And so I wouldn't say Britain's like that, but I would say I've had people do things where there's no explanation other than they are intentionally trying to like swerve you over and do something dangerous. Yeah, just, yeah. Also people are starting to drive pickup trucks here and they have no concept of like the profile of a pickup truck

and so like just Brits and pickup trucks is a terrible terrible idea I've I've seen there's a pickup truck in the parking lot of my apartment building like I see I'm not the only American that lives here, right? Well, they ran into him and his name is like it's a guy named like Roland Honk or something like that It's completely Dutch. No. No, I wanted to be. And his name is like, it's a guy named like Roland Honk or something like that. He's completely Dutch. No, no, I wanted to be a little, you know, sarcastically, I was like, nice truck. And he answered back in a British accent. I was like, oh, fuck, didn't expect that one.

Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what it is, man. But I know now I know to stay away from him because he doesn't know how to drive the truck. Yeah, they don't. They don't, man. Like Brits, Brits can people who know what they're doing can do like open heart surgery with white vans, just whip in all over the place. Like you would not believe how nimble they are, but they cannot drive trucks to save

their lives because they just don't, it seems like they're not accustomed to how wide the profile is. And who said Americans don't have culture? Our culture is giant trucks. Giant trucks, conceiving of everything in terms of burgers, refusing to learn the problematic history of artists like Gary Glitter, because we will never Google. We don't even know the name of the song. We just know it as the, hey song.

Actually, that's the only thing I know about Gary Glitter. I had no idea that was a song. I think I have some YouTube listicle to blame. You didn't know it was his song, but you've heard his song his entire life. You've heard that song at like hockey games and stuff. Yeah, yeah. But I didn't, the only thing I knew about Gary Glitter

is Giant Stupid Haircut, Pedophile. Yeah, yeah. Also now, that song. Yeah, yeah, that's Gary Glitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even I learned something on this show from time to time. Oh, and speaking of American culture, we're going back to the United States for an episode. Are we?

Specifically the American Civil War. Oh, I'm excited for that. The War of Northern Aggression, as your history books will say if you're south of Kentucky these days. I mean, in fairness, if you're south of Kentucky these days. I mean, in fairness, they'd say it in Kentucky too. That's true. That's true. Depending on what part of Kentucky you're in, yeah. I mean, depending on what part of Indiana you're in, quite frankly, there's parts of Indiana that are considered historically part of the Confederacy because they refuse to allow conscription for the

Union Army and sent volunteers to fight for the Confederates. You know, it's interesting in Michigan where like Michigan was like full bore for the Union, but because of the politics of like what happened after the Civil War, and we've talked about this on the show before, you have crazy opposite world where you go into Northern Michigan and you'll start seeing Confederate flags.

Like, guys, like Michigan was so pro union that we sent more units that to like more volunteers to fight for the Union than the government asked for like no we got so many fucking Michiganers that want to shoot people from the south here you go now you go up I don't know like Manistee or whatever and you see the fucking stars and bars everywhere but we're gonna go further south than either of our states for this episode. And we're going to New Orleans. Now, New Orleans, known for a lot of things.

Jazz, Cajun food being the destination for the worst tourist mainland the United States has to offer. And that time the British and the United States fought over it during the War of 1812 after the war was officially over because nobody knew the war was over. And also the Civil War. I was going to make a joke about that it would be like people in Northern Michigan flying the Japanese battle flag because they were really into anime or something like that in

terms of when you think about the upper Midwest had units that fought the Japanese in the South Pacific and in New Guinea and had horrible casualties. So it would just be weird. But I mean, as we said before- The internet has taught us that that guy exists. 100%, 100%. But what I would say that I find so funny about this is just that, yeah, it's not a symbol of white supremacy.

It's a symbol of our heritage. It's like, well, first of all, it wasn't really flown as ubiquitously as people think during the Civil War. And also, why would somebody in, I don't know, Minnesota or Michigan or upstate New York or Maine fly that flag? Can't think of one particular reason. Their heritage is, your ancestors were eating fucking boiled horse meat so they could shoot those people in the face.

All right? So like, it's not fucking heritage unless it's white supremacy. Y'all tell me. Also, it's fun to point out that nobody hated the Confederate Oh the Union hated the Confederate government right more than anybody else But you know who was in second place paying the Confederate government and it's something that we will talk about during this episode was the states in the Confederacy because it turns out when you pull a confederation of states together whose entire

Ideology is fuck the central government and also let's own people as property, it doesn't make for a functioning government. We've talked about that a lot on the show. Like you can't have it both ways. It's the reason why the Articles of Confederation for the young United States did not work. But also like the Western North Carolina mountainous areas were not pro-Confederacy. West Virginia literally split off because they like, fuck you, we don't want to be beholden

to like tidewater plantations. Places where slavery wasn't creating, you know, guys like Bumpus, filibuster the fourth or whatever, like Southern aristocracy, like they didn't have purchase. It's just that- famed Confederate leader Leonidas Bumpus the third. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, I mean, the only thing funnier than having guys who are like a dude from the south who owns 2000 slaves, whose name is like, you know, like Cleophas Archimedes Jones or something like that, is guy from the North who's probably like a Democrat and probably pro-slavery,

even though he's from New York, but because his mom read like a fad popular, like romance novel in the 1810s that involved people with Spanish names, his name is like Frederico Sheridan or something like that, you know. Yeah, Fernando Bumpus. I mean, I know that like, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but there was this New York Senator named Fernando something because there's a character that he features in the Spielberg movie, Lincoln. But like that was the thing. American names in the 1800s

were the peak era of American naming. Now we just rely on like Mormon names. It's so funny because like you cannot tell like you'll see someone's name be like, oh, was that person Jewish? Like, no, no, they were extremely Christian. That's why they were they were, you know, named Moshiach or like Saul, you know, like Esther, etc. Like one of my favorite things that we've accidentally stumbled on during an episode was years ago, we did an episode on like Gideon Pillow and there was also solid name Gideon Pillow. But during the episode, like, oh no, there's two different guys in this episode with the first name Leonidas. Gideon Pillow sounds like Christian influencer sex pillow.

It's approved for your Christian Dominionist sex lifestyle It's a it's a body pillow, but you can't even cuddle it now Speaking about New Orleans. Let's talk about the actual plot. We've had our we've had our fun. We've had dessert before dinner Let's have the actual story now New Orleans was founded by the French and ruled by Spain for a little while before being sold to the United States than one of Napoleon's dumbest non-battlefield related decisions. New Orleans was unlike pretty much any other part of the Confederacy. It was cosmopolitan as much as it could be back then and even though it of course benefited

from the slave trade and slavery, a huge number of its freed population were not white. Like French speaking Creoles, many of whom were mixed-raced, and black and mixed-raced people who had come over in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution. It was also arguably the most powerful city in the southern United States at the time. Between being a shipping titan with its ocean port and riverine transport network, politically it was punching above its weight class, playing a major role in the Mexican-American War, the annexation of Texas, and being a stopping and logistical point for the gold rush going west. Then came the Succession Movement, and things get more complicated and dumber.

Louisiana's governor at the time, Thomas Overton Moore, was a staunch defender of slavery and the idea of breaking away from the Union in order to preserve it. But he was also a man who wanted to secure the bag. You see, no matter how valuable New Orleans was, it was valuable because it was part of the United States. So he pushed Louisiana down the road of the Confederacy, but didn't count New Orleans in his plan. He wanted to remain a free and open city to both the Confederacy and the United States,

therefore remaining open for trade and shipping. And, you know, slavery would also be legal there. Mm-hmm. Obviously this didn't work. Nobody was on board with this, but he tried. In the era before airplanes, you know, we're 70 odd years before planes pretty much if we're looking or 60, 50, 50 years. That's crazy when we think about it. 50 years after the Civil War, they had planes.

But like, obviously boat transport and trains were where it was at and they didn't have trains cross country yet. So you had the Mississippi River and New Orleans has both, like you said, the ocean and the Mississippi River. So it's massive. It's incredibly important. And also I think it's important to point this out that Haiti was, the way that we instituted white supremacy in America, in the American South,

is not the same way that the French did it in their colonies. It was still horrific, but it was different in the sense they did not have the one drop rule. Yeah, the US's slavery concepts and racism concept, and the very concept of race itself and chattel slavery is much, much different than a lot of other countries were at the time.

Different doesn't necessarily make it better or worse, but different. Once the war started, the Union knew how important New Orleans and other shipping ports were to the underarmed and vastly under-industrialized South. And so they developed the Anaconda Plan, which would blockade all rebel ports while advancing down the Mississippi River in order to cut the Confederacy in half. About half of this went well.

The blockade mostly worked out, mostly because the Confederacy's Navy was largely nonexistent in the beginning of the war, but we'll talk a little bit about that later. But Union ground advances were not great, they were being rendered into a fine conscript navy like at the battle of Manassas on July 21st 1861. Though that didn't mean the US Navy did not keep working because at this point of the Civil War the Union Navy was pretty much the lone bright spot of the entire war effort. The Blockade Strategy Board picked New Orleans to be the next site of the next major operation

for the Navy, choosing a small island only slightly larger than a sandbar called Ship Island just off the coast to be chosen as the starting point. When the USS Massachusetts pulled up to the island began bombing it, the Confederate garrison decided, we're good, and they just ran. I mean, do you blame them? No, God, no. If a fleet of the USS, every state in the Union shows up and you're just like, you basically have a tree fort except it's your job and you have a gun. Right. I'd probably leave.

And there's no naval support coming in any shape. Because most of the United States Navy, like 99% of it sided with the Union. And a lot of that has to do with the seeds of the concept of the American Union itself and the difference of ideology between what existed as the US military, the US army at the time, which was hardly even existent at the start of the Civil War and the US Navy.

Barely any at all. Because remember the whole idea of a large US army, like unified, not states militia, is born directly from the end of the Civil War, not beginning. Before this, the US had that deep suspicion of a strong central army because you can oppress people with that. It's kind of hard to oppress people with the Navy, and they thought the Navy would be very, very powerful and important to secure trade. So the vast majority of United Defense spending only went to the Navy.

So the Navy is the lone strong spot of a centralized Union government at the start of the Civil War. We are very suspicious of an army, a standing army and its tendency to oppress the citizenry. However, there is a bright career ahead for you to shell Tunisia and Algeria for some reason if you want to join the US Navy. I will also say that this is a point I would make is that a lot of people, the only way to become a commissioned officer in the US Army in this era was to go to West Point and many people would commission

and then hold reserve commissions because there just weren't that many spots for active duty army officers. The army itself was only a few thousand people at the time. Like the vast majority of heavy lifting was militias. And there would be tons of reserve officers all going to West Point that would either have a rank, have a commission and never do shit with it or

go and be an officer in their state's militia with their West Point education. The army was not exactly a great career field until the Civil War and arguably until after the Civil War because so many people were fucking dying 20 year olds ended up being generals at various points of the war. Not great. Uh. But if you wanted to go to West Point and flunk out because you sucked at opening your window

to the exact uniform height and then become a famous alcoholic poet and write a poem known as The Raven that gets misquoted all the time, that was a career path you could take. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it worked out great for him. Tuberculosis, I think, I don't know, alcoholism, whatever.

Why not both? I like to mix my gut rot with consumption. I was going to say, in the first half of the 19th century in America, alcoholism and consumption were kind of like, they were like salt and pepper. See, this is why I wouldn't return to tradition, I want us all to be drinking things that are slightly above paint thinner while dying of easily communicable diseases You know bring us back the whiskey rebellion and like no you can't tax tax our whiskey and it's like The American whiskey heritage, but then it's like can you imagine how bad that shit must have tasted? I bet it was fucking awful had to be but like but it was better than drinking water which just instantly killed Yeah, like this this this whiskey or bourbon or whatever tastes like a sock, but I'm not gonna get cholera from it

I may go blind but I'm not gonna shit out my ass until I die My it might also have an antiseptic effect on the huge open sores I have in my mouth because we haven't invented dental care have an antiseptic effect on the huge open sores I have in my mouth because we haven't invented dental care. Now it was around this time that the governor of Louisiana realized, ah shit, the union might try to attack the city from the sea, which they had done before for other confederate cities on the east coast. But being in the Gulf meant absolutely nobody thought that this would happen, nor had they prepared for it. In fact, the opposite was true. New Orleans and Louisiana at large as a whole had been sending their men and war material away, keeping virtually nothing for themselves.

No one in the Confederate government believed that New Orleans would be a battleground. So, you exist to supply our forces, right? And while it was true, the Union was planning a seaborne assault on New Orleans, those plans were not even on paper yet and amounted to little more than table discussion. But the South didn't know that and they began to freak out. Governor Moore wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis asking for a single military officer to be sent to the city to prepare for defenses, something that the previous man in charge, a guy named Major General David Twiggs had not done.

Now the reason for this is Twiggs was in his seventies and in the mid 1860s, that's kind of impressive. He was all but retired before this. Can you imagine what that guy's accent sounded like? It's like 1861 and you're 70 years old and you're a Confederate officer. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That kind of stuff, like, it's just-

The guy comes with subtitles. It's just syrup. Yeah, I was thinking about this. I'm like, well, I wonder if they're gonna attack us from the ocean. It's like, well, do you think they're gonna go over land all the way through the Confederacy? Do you think they're gonna take the good ship lollipop down the Mississippi and attack you like

Do you think Florida is just so powerful which I came in I know so little about Florida's role in the Confederacy, but I do believe they were in the Confederate I just can't remember I assume they were because they love putting fucking Confederate flags on shit on their official flag But Florida is an odd one, obviously, because it was. Yeah, Florida was a member of the Confederacy, for sure. I thought they were, but I really, like I said, Florida's an interesting one just because it was acquired

differently at different times. Florida continues to be an interesting one to put a kind title on it. Roger, yeah. Side note, I remember when Seventh Special Forces Group moved from Fort Bragg to Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle, there were some problems because so many dudes in 7th Group had married women from Latin America and all of a sudden they're like, wait, this place is really racist. We're getting harassed for being like traitors to the white

race for marrying Latin American women. It's just like, yeah, it's a panhandle, buddy. Could you imagine being a Confederate or a state militia conscript or whatever? Oh, someone go pass this message to General Twiggs. And the guy, pretty much everyone accepts that he wasn't all there mentally anymore. So he is like, go poke him with a stick, go wake up the general. Yeah. Yeah. You can only communicate messages to him after you've like, you have a five minute window between his third and fourth mint julep. Now Twiggs wasn't really in command of the defenses, right? Like he acted more as a middleman.

His whole job was effectively quartermaster. His job was sending supplies further north to support the Confederate war effort. He always met his recruiting quotas, he always met his materiel quotas, but he never kept anything for Louisiana. And no request was ever turned down by twigs. Someone's like, hey, we need 10,000 more men. He's like, yeah, sure, I'll figure it out.

This tradition continued with Bobby Jindal and oil and natural gas revenues. God, I forgot about that guy. You went for president. He did. He was governor of Louisiana. And he, like I said, he absolutely was like, no, I'm intervening on the side of the markets. We can't keep any tax revenue from all this oil and natural gas. Louisiana is like, we could kind of use the money.

Nope. Kind of use it to build some stuff. Nope. Yeah. Nope. Nope. Tradition continues. When Twigs was asked, you know, like, how could New Orleans, how could Louisiana defend itself?

And he answered, quote, the city was entirely defenseless. And when asked by someone, you know, why, he said he was unable to get anything done. And the city itself cannot make more than an hour's fight. So he did not try. It's just too damn hot and everyone's playing the damn trombone. It's goddamn kids and their jazz music. Won't do fucking shit. Yeah, it predates jazz music.

I'm wondering what kind of old timey ass stuff they were playing. I know it predates jazz music. I'm just wondering. I'm not correcting you. I was saying I was like, because I was going to make some jazz. I was like, yeah, but it predates it. Like what, what do you, I wonder what kind of shit they were playing.

Like what kind of... Er-ska, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the music that you dance to at like French balls where everyone like, like if you tripped and falled, then you got a mean nickname that lasted your entire life. Like I have no idea.

The Confederacy sent a replacement, Brigadier General Mansfield Lovell, to take over. Lovell would have to fix what twigs had left him, which was nothing. He said quote, the city has been almost entirely stripped of everything. Should you see in the New Orleans papers that we are well supplied with everything, you can regard this as a lie. He demanded that the requisitioning bodies of the Confederacy stop ordering supplies from New Orleans as they needed them to defend themselves.

The Secretary of War, Judah Benjamin, told Lovell, no. Judah Benjamin is a really interesting one because he was actually the first Jewish American senator and he was Confederate. And then he fled after the fall of the Confederacy too, I believe, like somewhere in the Caribbean. So he could continue owning slaves, I believe, but long story short, it's wild. It's like, it's not looking good. You know what I mean?

Like it's one of those- We love a trailblazer in Confederate history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe if I remember my history correctly, he was in fact a Senator before the war and then during the Confederacy obviously, cause he was from, I believe if I remember my history correctly, he was in fact a senator before the war and then during the Confederacy Obviously because he was from I believe South Carolina, but his family had come via I want to say Bermuda But I'm not sure they were they were Sephardic Jews kicked out of Portugal I believe. The hell comes full circle

Now Benjamin's whole thing was look even if I told them to stop ordering supplies to New Orleans They wouldn't listen to me, so you're better off just supplying them anyway. Great government you got there guys. I mean, I don't know, is there anything more confederate than the man in charge of war telling another guy, hey I can't make anything happen, nobody listens to me, just go with it, I haven't quite heard it yet. Yeah, just kinda roll with it.

What would you say your job is here Benjamin well y'all don't know about but a boo-bop my job is to sit on this porch in this rocking chair and smoke a pacifist Lee long cigarette while getting nothing done but who's you understand that the weather's quite hot down here year round and we haven't invented air conditioning or a swim pool. So I really don't really have much I can be doing between the hours of let's say 8am and 8pm. I have employed my 500 slaves to fan me.

It has not worked. My grandfather's from the Mississippi Delta so I'm doing my best to talk the way he did in memory of him being kind of not a nice person. And genuinely, I feel as though if you were a non-native English speaker, you would need subtitles to understand it. And I can only imagine how much worse it was back in those days. So Lovell decided, I have an idea. I can't work within what I have now because every

other state militia will simply steal it and I can't stop them. So I will simply have to build a brand new parallel military industrial complex just for New Orleans. He ordered new mills, new forages, new gun manufactures, new gun powder, new gun powder manufacturers, fucking everything, completely off of the books so he could outfit the state and city militias. And he also ordered the Louisiana's multiple riverine approaches to be blocked. He dug earthworks, all this stuff. And meanwhile, remember, the Union Navy is kind of just watching them from the Gulf. And Lovell himself still believed, okay, the Union Navy is obviously there to harass us, right?

They're going to blockade the port. There's not going to be an attack coming from the sea. At most, they're going to support whatever overland force comes into Louisiana. Mansfield Lovell invents Wagner group, the prototype. Well, to be fair, they appeal to the same broad base, right? Sure enough, sure enough. Man, talk about an episode that needs an update that we did back in the day.

Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, geez, woo, yeah. Don't you hate when modern history warps your history podcast and you have to go back and fix it. I mean, I'll give you a brief anecdote. I had a student when I was teaching college English, but it was an early college program for high school seniors.

And one of my students did a program about the occupation in basically in Gaza and the West bank. And his paper wasn't wrong, but he was talking about the sort of the settlement projects. And he was like a 17 year old kid, like a Chinese American kid. And he had written about all these settlements and stuff. And he was like a 17 year old kid, like a Chinese American kid. And he had written about all these settlements and stuff. And he mentioned a bunch of them in Gaza.

And I was like, I really gotta break it to you, buddy. You need to check sources and make sure they're within date because these sources are from 2003 and they evacuated all the settlements in Gaza in 2005. So, 2005. Thankfully nothing happened after 2005 in the area. Obviously, Roger, but you know what I mean? He's talking specifically about settlement

projects and I'm like, those have all been closed at this point for almost a decade because this is 2014, 2015. I just remember like, yeah, man, that source was accurate in 2002. This reminds me of when I was in history class, I believe in middle school and you had to pick a country and write something about it. I was like, I'm going to pick something easy. I picked Canada. And you have to use the history book to write about the country that you have chosen to write about. And in my history book, in middle school, it says that Canada is the second largest country on earth after the Soviet Union. Now, this is many years out of date. But yeah, Roger, I mean, I still have, I think my parents still have a copy of the Double

Day Children's Atlas, which features North Yemen and South Yemen, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, you know, Zaire. That's a good one too. Yeah. Now, after doing all of this, all of this, the Confederate War Department said, hey look at this new stuff that New Orleans and Louisiana has, and they took that shit too. Because they had a spring offensive in western Tennessee. Fuckin' he got Wagner, he got Perosikin 150 years before. Lovell's horse was mysteriously shot with a missile. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Confederacy couldn't take from Lovell's defensive

plans was New Orleans' forts, Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, which were 70 miles south of New Orleans. And they were built in 1822 by future president and then general, but all around dickhead, Andrew Jackson. Now, if there's one thing that you know about New Orleans, it might be that it's mostly built on a swamp kind of thing that maybe well, one, you shouldn't build a large metropolitan area around, but you also shouldn't build large, reinforced stone forts on top of, especially with 1800s technology. Pretty much as soon as the forts were done being built,

they were sinking into the mud. One parade grout on Fort Jackson was known for just being under ankle-deep swamp water because it was flooding so much. The fort's magazines had to have pumps built into them because they just routinely flooded. And the entire fort had sunk so much that their main cannons could no longer be lowered at the water line because the cannon cannons barrel would then be underwater. I strongly advise against building cities below the sea level. I strongly advise against anyone operating, I was gonna say, anyone operating in those areas. I think that they're making a terrible decision.

I am NOT gonna look at Joe's IP address or where he is recording from. Hey there's two things you can do when building a city under sea level, and that is actively fight the sea and reclaim it, or just let it do what it wants. The United States almost universally picks the second option. I'm just laughing, like imagine if New Orleans was Dutch and they just never had this problem. We have Dutch New Orleans, food worse, music worse, sea worthiness, water tightness, far better. Look, the music would be worse, the food would be much worse, but also, your fort probably wouldn't flood.

You got that going for you. You could maybe traverse your cannons just a little. Perhaps. Now for the Union side. Vague discussions of an attack on the city had turned into a real thing thanks to Lieutenant David Dixon Porter of the US Navy. Now one thing that was giving planners a pause was the protective forts that we just talked about, because any naval expedition towards the city itself would have to fight them. Dixon's plan was simple. It was so simple in fact, it was kind of stupid, which is why it's a great

battle plan. We slap a bunch of mortars onto a fleet of cheap ships, bomb the forts, pin them down, and then simply blow right by the forts with purposefully souped up steam ships loaded down with 20,000 men so quickly the Confederate forts won't be able to react. Millennium Challenge 1861 The Secretary of War and President Lincoln both thought, this is a great idea, and he told Dixon to talk to General George McClellan about getting the soldiers that he would need for the operation because Back then the Marines were not exactly a parallel army. You couldn't just like that Let's just fucking pack a whole bunch of Marines under the ship. You need the army to do it McClellan immediately shot down the plan simply because he didn't want to give the Navy so many of his men and therefore power

However, he eventually changed his mind when he realized he could give the Navy the troops that he wanted While also putting them under the command of a man that he hated General Benjamin Butler to effectively banish him to the furthest possible point of the Union's war effort This always happens when the when you're in a military unit, they're like, hey, we have to task organize a new unit. We need every company, every platoon, every battalion has to give us some soldiers to man this. This always happens.

They're always like, yep, we'll give you our best and our brightest, and they just give you everyone who was about to have a congenital heart attack that they shouldn't have been allowed to get in the army with or is getting chaptered. Yeah, that fucking happened to me. Like, my platoon kept getting sent out the army with or is getting chaptered. Yeah, that fucking happened to me. My platoon kept getting sent out to the furthest possible place to do missions that were borderline

incomprehensibly dangerous with no planning because my company commander fucking hated my platoon sergeant, just wanted to get rid of him. Our battalion commander had basically a non-MTO tactical headquarters, like non-standard tactical headquarters, and they basically kidded out an entire platoon, or at least four full squads to do stuff, because he wanted to get around and check stuff out and be out around the battlefield.

And that exact same thing happened. It was like, give us troops, and it's like, yep, we'll give you some good dudes. Oh, we got troops for you, motherfucker. Yeah, we sure as do it. It's like, basically, it's like half of them were stop loss, and half of them were getting chap. half of them were getting chaps. One of them got in trouble for smoking weed in the turret on mission.

I can respect that. What I can respect is that when his squad leader was like, do you smell weed? He was like, ah, I'm not going to use the word he used, but it was just Afghans in the car that passed by, they were smoking weed. Look, I'd rather have a high gunner than a drunk gunner if I'm gonna have to pick. Because I mean, 50% of the time when you're dealing with soldiers, that is the choice you have to make. Would I rather them be drunk or high on weed?

Hopefully just weed. Hopefully just weed, yeah. So anyway, like I'm saying, this always happens. Whenever they're like, hey, we can get, task organize a rogue unit. It's always like, give us your worst and your darkest. Don't worry, you're the reliable one asterix They hate you they fucking hate you now on the naval side of things Dixon would not be in command

He didn't have the experience for it. So that fell to Captain David Glasgow Farragut now Farragut is an interesting character as far as the Civil War goes for the Union he was a southerner through and Now, Farragut is an interesting character as far as the Civil War goes for the Union. He was a Southerner, through and fucking through, but he remained loyal to the Union. And just to underline how Southern he was, this is from the article Capturing the Queen City. Quote, Farragut was a Tennessee native, his wife was from Virginia, he had residence in Norfolk, had a brother in New Orleans, a sister in a nearby parish,

and a cousin who was married to Captain John Mitchell, who happened to be the Confederate naval commander at New Orleans. This man was Southern. It's sort of like when the Republican in Wisconsin is like, actually, no, I disagree with vote suppression and racism. I believe in the standards of the American democracy. You're like, well, you're a bit of an odd one. Yeah.

Farragut is a really cool story like whenever people are like people are just fighting for their states or whatever I'm like what about this guy yeah he gave he looked he took one look at the Confederacy threw up two middle fingers then shot at it with fucking cannons as one should yeah as one should have and what should today absolutely politicians were obviously worried about him possibly having sympathies, but everyone in the Navy said Hey, if you need a guy who can pull this crazy shit off He's the only one we got and this is despite the the Navy's own internal elitism

Which the Navy still kind of has but it was even worse back then Remember Farragut is only a captain and he was not even the top ranked one they had in the form of seniority He was 38 38th. So, naval captain, yeah. Yeah, he's a naval captain. Okay, yeah. No, just because it's one of those things where it's always confusing because army captain is extremely junior in rank to what a navy captain is. And so it's just one of those

things where, but like you said, back into, we're getting to the era of 20 year old generals. So like it's, yeah. None of the suspicions around Farragut mattered He was gonna be facing down two sinking forts and his own family member commanding the naval forces arrayed against him But thankfully his cousin sucked at his job. For example, it's the 1800s The only way to have any lights is going to be a fire, right? Mm-hmm. This is a very important place to be defended and therefore needs to be illuminated at night to ward off scouts Raiding parties you name it place to be defended and therefore needs to be illuminated at night to ward off scouts, raiding parties, you name it.

So the Confederates figured out the best way to light up the approaches to the two forts was by simply kicking down rafts with a bonfire on them, like a fire raft down the river to act as a moving torch to keep an eye out for Union raiders and scouts. Like illumination flares but boat born. However, they only did it at a very specific time on very specific days and they never moved that schedule around. So, Barragut simply figured out by watching them over the course of a week what their schedule was and he planned accordingly. So the night that he ran the gauntlet toward the city, there simply wouldn't be any fire rafts. There is a greater problem of the Confederacy as a whole though. Lacking any true centralization

of political ideology does not in fact work in a time of war, especially when you start off with not really having a navy. The entire naval department of the Confederacy was a clusterfuck of infighting and mismanagement, all run by a lawyer for starters. Then, local commanders and states would have to fill the gaps by creating their own what amounted to naval militias, and that's exactly what Louisiana did. So, they had a few gunboats that were not part of the Confederate Navy, but still fell under the command of the governor because he's the commander of the militia. So when these were sent to help New Orleans, the gunboat commanders just refused to listen

to Captain John Mitchell, the Confederate Navy captain, because he was the Navy, not the state. So they just kind of did whatever they wanted. According to Mitchell, quote, not one of them made the feeblest offensive or defensive movement, which is untrue. This is Mitchell attempting to make the Navy look good while making the militia look bad, and we'll say why in a little bit. Then there's the CNS Louisiana. This is supposed to be an iron clad, which we've talked about iron clads before, but its construction was botched and behind schedule, so at the time of this battle it did not even have an engine, reducing it to a floating gun platform that had to

be towed into place. Also since it had no engine, the Confederate Navy didn't bother to put sailors in it because it wasn't finished, so the militia just packed it full of random militiamen with no naval, but most importantly, artillery, experience, or knowledge. So, on April 18th, 1862, the Union's jerry-rigged motorboats, camouflaged with trees and shrubs, floated into position to begin bombarding the forts. Their shells were full on Burnham Wood Comes to Dunsinane shit, just like, you're bething the fuck out of them, it's crazy. And their shells were deadly accurate, nearly blowing up on the fort's magazines, and

probably that was only saved because it was flooded. Meanwhile, when the forts tried to fire back, they couldn't hit anything, because remember their cannons cannot be put into position, meaning they're mostly just flinging shells blindly into the sky. Also, it's dark, they can't see where the fire's coming from exactly. The original plan was to hit the forts for two days, but after just one day, the Union Navy burned through so much ammo they had to slow down their vigorous pounding, as Farragut put it, and prepared for a brown water invasion scheduled for Easter Sunday.

With that, Farragut ordered his massive 43 ship fleet to make the run past the forts. And this is where we have the single Confederate victory that would occur during the battle. And it was by the strange Louisiana state militia gunboats, which is why I think Mitchell is full of shit. And the reason why they are able to pull this off is because the dude just ignored orders. The gunboat, Governor Moore, no, the ship was named after the governor, the governor was not on the ship. I did point that out. That would be very funny if he had been though. The ship Governor Moore, commanded by Governor Moore. This was commanded by a guy named Beverly

Kennan and he charged out against this huge Union fleet all alone and rammed directly into the side of the USS Varana and sank it. USS Cole. I hate it when my Macbeth style attack is spoiled by the USS Cole. Now the interesting thing here is you'd think Kennan dies in this but he doesn't. And another fun fact, Kennan's dad, also named Beverly Kennan, had died aboard the USS Princeton. The Princeton was doing a pleasure cruise down the Potomac River in 1844, full of government dignitaries, when someone wanted to do a cannon demonstration. The cannon exploded, killing Kennan, the Secretary of State Abel Upshur, the Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, and nearly killed the President of the United States John Tyler. And this is

widely known in storytelling as a good start. John Tyler All I can say is I hate it when the Confederate nesting doll, the USS Moore, CNS Moore commanded by Governor Moore, spoils my brown water invasion that immediately follows from a vigorous pounding. All of these things, they're supposed to work and they didn't. Now, Kennen's ship was immediately blown apart after the ramming, but Kennen himself survived and he survived this battle, but also the entire war to eventually go on to become, wait for it, a mercenary in Egypt. What can I say?

He has an interesting family. Roger. Now, the CNS Louisiana, the engine-less iron clad with randos acting as a crew, remember? Well it almost certainly would have laid waste to the Union fleet, if but for one small problem. The crew had not even gotten 5 seconds of artillery training. They had no idea how to use the cannons that were on this thing. So they were panicking, flinging shells in every direction having no idea how to aim. Though through sheer luck they did land a direct hit on the waterline of the Union ship USS Brooklyn. These guns were 9 inches and like any 9-incher

a direct hit would blow the back fucking walls out of this thing. However, the crew aboard the Confederate ironclad did not know how to arm the shells correctly. So it just slammed into the one flank of the Brooklyn and didn't explode. It's like you have this opportunity to completely lay waste to them, but what you didn't realize was that it's your crew is instead of the crack shot artillery crew, you've just got Polly Shore and Stephen Baldwin from the 1996 film bio dome. They're there for some reason. And they're just trying their best, but they're just just sucking they have no idea how to use a howitzer bro. How do we end up in the ironclad dome? Weasel get me another charge

Fucking ironclad dome man. I had a really different idea of what it's gonna be like You know this ending the ending of this film was a lot different because the weasel is just screeching in pain because his insides Have been rendered asunder by a cannonball. Fuck me. Yeah, you know, it's... This is... I love a good mashup. I love a good incompetent, you know, combination of circumstances. I love the decisive moment being crude by a guy who's like, what the fuck is a cannon? Like, this is good good this is my shit. As Farragut's fleet made his way to the forts a near point blank artillery duel erupted

between the two sides as the confederates lit their fire rafts and kicked them down the river towards the invading Union forces. The naval center division's flagship the USS Hartford ran aground all trying to get away from one fire aft, only for a second fire aft to crash into the side of it and set on fire. At such a close range even the half-sunken guns of the Confederate forts could blast holes in the Union fleet, and virtually none of them escaped to the other side of the river unscathed. As the attack went on, daylight began to break, making aiming for the fort's crew much easier,

and the 3rd naval division was smashed so hard they had to pull out. However, by full daybreak, the vast majority of the fleet had successfully run the gauntlet and were on their way to New Orleans. And inside the city itself, Lovell, the entire Confederate military command, were stunned that the Union had made a sea invasion a reality. They were so convinced that it was impossible that it made more sense for an invasion to come over land that they made zero preparations for defending the seaside of the city or Louisiana as a whole. Then if that wasn't enough, the Union fleet crushed the Confederate fortifications at Chalamet, which is where President Jackson

had made his famous stand during the War of 1812. This left Lovell with only one real option. Run. Evacuate the city the best he could north. He wired military authorities telling them, the enemy has passed the forts, it's too late to send any guns here, they'd better go to Vicksburg. Then he ordered the military stores, ships, and warehouses burned to the ground. Anything considered useful to the Union, including tens of thousands of bales of cotton, were thrown into the river. When it became clear the city was not going to fight, Farragut pulled up his fleet into the harbor and was greeted by a raging, pissed-off mob of civilians who refused to accept Union

authority. And an entire river dammed with basically like Satan's Q-tips and cotton balls just floating everywhere. We've deployed our deadliest weapon annoyance We've damned the river with novelty oversized cleaning supplies We've we've unloaded our warehouse full of those those weird circular cotton things that people clear clean makeup off with you'll never get away from us now they've invented big cotton discs what will the Confederacy invent next when the detachment of Marines are sent ashore to put up an American flag at the building that had once been the US Mint it was torn down by a man named William

Mumford no word if he played banjos with the Suns or not and this will become important later the the man not Mumford and Sons. But this whole entire episode is a huge name alert. It's just you can't even call name alert anymore because it's just the entirety of it. Lovell refused to surrender the city to Farragut, but also didn't fight him. Instead, hiding behind the rage of the mob,

he and his militia were still hard at work burning everything down, including the city's levees, which if he succeeded would have destroyed the city like an 1800s version of Hurricane Katrina, but he failed. Farragut was left with two options. Oh, I should also point out here, he made no attempt to evacuate the people in New Orleans before attempting to destroy the levees, so I guess he does have in fact something in common with George Bush.

But Farragut was left with two options. Simply leave the city to continue attacking other nearby forts and then come back waiting for the city's very angry population to calm down, you know, kind of work themselves out, burn out all the anger, or open fire and begin slaughtering civilians. Now this is normally where I'd start to talk about how the US Navy shelled New Orleans to the tune of screaming and dying trumpet music, but no, Farragut didn't do it.

Instead, he just left and came back to the city, and it had largely calmed down. New Orleans had surrendered, being held by the Confederates for 455 days since the start of the rebellion. It was the first major rebel city to fall, and now it would be under occupation. And that occupation fell to McClellan's most hated subordinate, General Butler, and

this is where he becomes a real motherfucker. One of the first things Butler did after taking command was hunt down William Mumford, the man who tore down the flag from the US Mint. Under martial law, which, mind you, did not exist at the time of the flag tearing and then burning, he was charged with treason and high crimes and misdemeanors and sentenced to death. On June 5th, Butler issued the following special order number 70. William B Mumford, citizen of New Orleans, having been convicted before a military commission

of treason and an overt act thereofof tearing down the United States flag from a public building of the United States after said flag was placed there by Commodore Farragut of the United States Navy. It is ordered that he be executed according to the sentence of said military commission on Saturday, June 7th. Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 12 a.m., under the direction of the Provost Marshall of the District of New Orleans, and for doing so, shall be his sufficient warrant. He was executed on time and on date.

Yeah, I saw somebody talking about Americans being weird about flags. I was like, yeah, we are, that's just our thing. We are weird about flags. Yeah, a little bit different than. Yeah, in the Civil War. I should point out that all this in a bubble isn't surprising. However, outside of even the bubble of occupation

during the Civil War, everything that Butler is doing is considered beyond the pale even for that. And it's gonna get worse. I also was gonna say it's funny because in McClellan's case, it's like you send your biggest hater to obvious failure because you just want to see them fail. You want to make him your waiter at the table of success but then he succeeds. You have to be the waiter to your hater because he in fact has... well I don't know if he's

gonna succeed but so far he's done better than what they thought. I will say Butler succeeds in making this an international incident. Because the harsh occupation of New Orleans didn't end there. This is from the American Battlefield Trust. Quote, Butler demanded oaths of allegiance, confiscated weapons, devised a relief plan for the poor, and jailed a large number of uncooperative citizens. Butler also ordered the inscription, The Union must and shall be preserved to be added to the base of the equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square. The population of New Orleans, already enraged, became more so when they learned that Butler's seizure of $800,000 that had been deposited at the Dutch Consul was confiscated. They had put their money in the Dutch Council because they thought it was safe and then Butler stole it

Richard we sort of thought that it would be a safe bet to bet on racism, but it just hasn't worked out We were wrong once Anyone who refused to swear allegiance to the Union was banished from New Orleans and their property seized by military authorities in case you're wondering When the last time the United States used exile as a punishment. Of course, he was the military commander and he made sure to sell the seized property at auction at a lower cost, funneling most of it to his own brother. Looting was so widespread by Union troops that Butler earned the nickname Spoons by the local population, owing to a story that Butler himself looted a large Civil War set from a fleeing southern woman.

Which may or may not be true. That would have been like the most devastating nickname to have in 1862. Oh, fucking Spoons Butler over there. Yeah, they're just calling you Spoons, you're own, you're Devils, it's the worst thing that could happen to you. Now, using his authority under martial law, he also clamped down on the freedom of the press. When William Seymour, editor of the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, asked Butler what would

happen if the newspaper ignored his censorship, an angry Butler said, quote, I am the military governor of this state, the supreme power. You cannot disregard my order, sir. By God, he that sins against me sins against the Holy Ghost. The man is insane." And then Seymour published an obituary of his father who had been killed fighting for the Confederacy. Butler confiscated his newspaper and imprisoned Seymour for three months.

Then there was his next special order, General Order 28, which held that any woman who insulted or showed contempt for any federal officer or soldier should be regarded and treated as quote, a common prostitute. The order reads as follows, New Orleans, May 15th, 1862. As the officers and soldiers of the United States have been subject to repeated insults from women, quote, calling themselves ladies, of New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference and courtesy on our part, it is ordered that here thereafter, when any female shall by word, gesture, or movement insult or show contempt to any officer or soldier of the United States,

she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town, plying her avocation." Now if you're wondering what that means, it means a savage public beating or imprisonment. And contempt could be considered something as simple as crossing the street to avoid a Union soldier or leaving a streetcar when one of them got on, or not talking to them should someone talk to them first. Yeah, I'm all about punishing the Confederacy, but you sort of kind of got to not. That's a situation where because it's so open to interpretation, it's just an op- it just basically grants Union soldiers, Union people the right to take advantage and predate. I mean, it's the 1800s. We know what soldiers do back then, especially towards the female population of any place they happen to be stationed. And now they're like, oh, you didn't even make eye contact. You can be beaten for it. And this is where he makes an international incident. The North was

shocked at Butler's order and it became international news as Europeans mocked the Union for putting such a man in charge of the occupation while simultaneously claiming the moral high ground, which yeah, yeah. It's pretty bad. It's not good, put it that way and then Butler Imprisoned a local French citizen who oversaw the majority of the American champagne industry which pissed off France Probably not good to be making international enemies Yeah, his only real claim of any kind of decency as commander of the occupation was introducing the revolutionary concept of trash Collection in order to cut down on the yearly yellow fever outbreaks that happened all the time in New Orleans because that's what happened to build a city in the middle of a fucking swamp and then dump all your

trash on the street. He also enforced strict quarantine programs for those who caught yellow fever and this worked incredibly well. In a typical year, the New Orleans population was reduced by 10% from yellow fever. But Butler's measures exceeded in preventing all but two deaths while he was in charge. So on one hand, he's an egomaniac on a power trip and more than a little misogynist. But on the other hand, he induces the revolutionary concept of don't live in shit and- Yeah. Pick up your trash and stop coughing on one another. I mean, I'm not going to be like, oh, you can't say if it's good or bad. It's obviously bad, but like...

Hey, a broke ass clock is right every once in a while. You know what I'm saying? Though by all stretches, Butler was a fucking tyrant that committed just one too many crimes and drew too much international attention to remain in command. So on December 17th, 1862, he was fired and replaced General Nathaniel Banks. Butler wasn't told about this until Banks showed up in his office to deliver the news himself. Banks himself was a dumbass, had gone to plan an invasion of Texas, but at least he wasn't a

tyrant, so let's call that progress on this front. And Farragut, for his part, was not a huge fan of Butler either. But Farragut could see where at least some of the iron-fisted dipshittery came from. New Orleans is bitterly anti-union and its people openly hated Union troop station there. It was a huge important city and Butler only had a few thousand troops to secure it all. So it was figured by being an outright murderous psycho, he could get the city in line, which is certainly a chaotically lawful way to look at it. It is a military occupation of an area in rebellion. Any occupation was probably going to be bad. I do find it interesting though, in the sense that it became an international incident just because I can think of like when

Reo Di Erno was in charge of, I believe it was to Crete, there was this whole story about like the fourth ID, you know, imposing insane martial law. And like, if people violated curfew, they would just like beat them. And like, in one case, they threw some guys who couldn't swim into a river and they drowned. Like, this eventually people got charged,

you know, criminally charged for it and things like that. But like, it was well known that Odierno was a dumbass and was giving these moronic instructions to do brutal occupation. And he wound up being the chief of staff of the army. Like he fucking, you know, it didn't hurt his career at all. So in some ways we almost went backwards. I will say that this occupation didn't hurt Butler's career. What probably hurt Butler's career more than like any of the things he actually did was bad PR and that McClellan hated him more important than anything else. Yeah, I could see that. And I definitely say that PR, like occupations are still brutal and inhumane, but we military PR has gotten better since 1862.

Especially when you remember like during the Civil War, when the most important things America was doing was forcing the rest of the world to not recognize the Confederacy and only recognize them. So by, you know, becoming a roving, misogynistic, savaging squad in the streets, ruins the veneer, you know, the gentlemanly veneer the Union was trying to portray, and was worried that like, okay,

you've imprisoned French people, you've stolen from the Dutch, you're now beating women in the streets. Like, what the fuck are you doing? You're hurting our argument here. We don't disagree with what you're doing, but other people have heard, you know? It's the double-edged sword.

Like, we want you to do this, but we don't want other people to figure out about it. Ray Ordiere knows when Saving Grace was not imprisoning the... The maître d major d the fucking uh you know the the grand master of saddam's champagne industry and as a result his career was able to flourish the one random qatari that was in charge of the supercar factory yeah the the impresario of the canned gin and tonic industry now farragut was asked what he thought about Butler

and he said, quote, "'They may say what they please about General Butler, "'but he was the right man in the right place "'in New Orleans.'" Because the occupation did work. Now, occupations working comes with a whole lot of asterisks next to it. Though, yeah, the listener can't see this,

but we just did mega shrugs. We did shrugs so big it was like Atlas holding the world. Yeah, though because this is America after all, Butler went on to be fired multiple times throughout the war, mostly for gross mismanagement and corruption, and then go on to have a successful political career with admittedly pretty good politics for his day. I should point out, despite, you know,

but all the corruption which he was still doing. And this ended with him running for president of the United States and failing. We love a good success story. I guess. The end. I guess. The end. Yeah, America. Woo. Yeah. I mean, it's not many people hear about that part of the war.

Not many people hear about Union occupations, for example. And it's also very conflicting in a way because you're like, you know, fuck the Confederacy and everything they stood for. But also now you have Union soldiers beating women on the street for crossing the road. So it's like, yeah. However, I argue you don't get one without the other, which is why war is always bad. Bad.

Yeah. Yeah. And you can see how these kinds of things, when you grant absolute authority and life and death powers and the ability to sort of inflict the state into matters of opinion, like whether or not something counts as contempt or disrespect, like it always ends badly. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you can have a great ending to a war, which is the Confederacy being destroyed,

with a lot of fucked up shit that happens in the middle of it. And I argue, those shouldn't be ignored or explained away. Now, Nate, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion, you can donate to the show on Patreon at any level and ask us either on Patreon in our Discord

where we have a dedicated thread and you can ask us, or you can attach it to a cannonball and fire it into the flank of a Union ship, which will then not explode and we'll be able to pull the note off of it and then read it. Today's question is, have you ever really gotten excited for the premise of a movie or a book and then been completely disappointed by the execution? Have you? I have a couple.

Okay, so I have a recent example I will pick and that is Spike Lee's Old Boy. I love the film Old Boy. It's originally a Korean film and I'm not going to say I was really excited like that this movie is going to be good when Spike Lee decided to make his own version of it. I will say I was excited for the idea. Like what will this possibly look like? And it was like a shot for shot remake. The next one, of course, is the next is the new Joaquin Phoenix Napoleon film, which we did a bonus episode on. And I've never seen someone so bored while playing a role

in a film as Joaquin Phoenix was Napoleon. And Ridley Scott made the whole thing like Napoleon's a weird cuck who can't fuck. I was, with him with a low bar, vastly still disappointed somehow. It's funny you should mention this because Ridley Scott, because I feel like a great example of this was I had read, there's two films I can think of where I had read the books beforehand and was very disappointed by the film. I mean, like not necessarily, can't capture everything, but just not really pulling it off. The first is Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. And the second is,

I don't remember the director, but Enemy at the Gates. That movie is terrible. Yeah, it's really bad. I think in both cases, the films oversimplified and also dumbed down stuff for the audience, and it made them much worse films. Both were quite technically accomplished, but just poor storytelling. I think in general-

Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down is a great book. It's a great book. Yeah. I tried to read Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah and I found that he just strikes me as too sort of like early 2000s Islamophobic for me to be able to just even understand it. His trying to write Iranian mentality comes across as like you're describing fucking Jafar from Disney's Aladdin. But I would say Black Hawk Down is good. It was a good book in general. And I think the film is visually quite stunning, but the storytelling

is, in my opinion, quite poor. And yeah, same with Enemy at the Gates. I mean, it would be hard to capture everything, but what a cheese vest. I least the enemy at the gates, we have one of the worst sex scenes ever put to film. Oh, with Jude Law and Rachel Weisz in a sleeping bag. Yeah, surrounded by other soldiers. 16 or 17 watching that movie, so of course, it was just sort of like, you know, like comical red horniness lines emanating off my head, but yeah.

I mean, it is Jude Law after all, am I right? Exactly, he really is that hot. Yeah, before his hairline betrayed him. Hey, hey, that only makes him more identifiable for the both of us. Ha ha ha ha ha. Is this a secret Joe bisexual reveal or are you just making fun of me?

No, I'm not making fun of you, it's Jude Law. Ha ha ha ha. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, so he was a beautiful man, is, but was even more so back then. That is a podcast. Nate, you do other podcasts. Plug those podcasts. In the interest of brevity, the shows that I produce and or co-host on are What a Hell of a Way to Die, a show about Don't Join the Military, Trash Future, a show about Why the

Tech Industry is a Joke, and Kill James Bond, a film podcast that is very funny. So check all of those out. This is the only podcast that I do, but if you think it's worth your time and money, you can support us on Patreon, where just $5 gets you about six years of bonus content, gets you access to our Discord, gets you eBooks, gets you audio books, gets you access

to all of our side series, including the History of Armenia, where I'm doing a video series interviewing Armenian veterans of of the first, second and third Karabakh Wars. What else gets you every bonus episode early gets you first dibs on all live show tickets and merch, so check that out when they come up and leave us a review. And wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps us immensely. Until next time, don't do anything that Butler did, but fuck the Confederacy.