The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1080: Deportation and Colonization After the Civil War w/ George Bagby

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

103 MinutesSafe for WorkGeorge Bagby is a content creator and publisher of long-forgotten books. George joins Pete to talk about the contents of the Civil War-themed essay "Deportation and Colonization: An Attempted Solution to the Race Problem" by Walter Lynwood Fleming.George's Twitter AccountGeorge's Pinned Tweet w/ Links George's YouTube ChannelVIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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How are you doing, George? I'm doing well. Thank you. It's great to be back. Well, yeah, after the last appearance, well received, a lot of comments, all positive. It was, it was amazing. And one of the things you did after that appearance was you sent me a book. You sent me a couple books, but one of the books in particular was the, it's called Southern Concerns, shorter writings of Walter Linwood Fleming. And you said, why don't you read the first chapter?

there, the first essay that he wrote. And I read it. And of course, it is not history that you are going to get in a regime classroom. So I will start out by asking you, why did you think that essay would be of concern and something that we could potentially talk about? Well, you love your controversial subjects. I knew that this one would strike you. So the title of the essay is, deportation and colonization an attempted solution to the race problem. And it is about various attempts by the federal government to rectify racial tensions and inequities through deportation and deliberate colonization, which is something that other European powers attempted and and succeeded in, to some degree, before America.

But the United States is exceptional in a few different ways. I like to critique American exceptionalism just broadly, but there are many things that make America a very unusual place. And one of them is the huge population of, African slaves at the time of the Civil War. And the sheer numbers of these slaves meant that deportation and colonization was not a viable option, or it certainly was not seriously pursued after all was said and done by the powers that be. But this is a very provocative essay.

I should say the book is a collection of scholarly monographs by Walter Fleming that had mostly been published in academic journals around the turn of the century. So these are old academic papers that I collected and republished. This is the first book of its time. I actually found a PDF of it on a dot-gov way. website. Wow, really? Yeah. I wonder what it's doing there. I have to go back and some of these through, I got some of them through J-Store. I got some of them through unns.org. I found a, found a few citations that way and I was able to get the documents.

I contacted a librarian friend of mine and got got access to some documents that way. So I I got his monographs in various ways, but this is a whole book of various essays on southern subjects. Many of tensions and reconstruction in particular. Oh, just to answer your question. So what about... Just to answer your question. Library Congress website. Wow.

Yeah, I just pulled it up. How about that? I didn't know the Library of Congress had it. Yeah, there are many ways to access these old documents, but you could also buy my book. I'm having, I'm having a baby later this year. Help me pay for the midwife. Please go buy my books. I agree.

And therefore, I agree. And just to say, as somebody who has three of your books, the formatting is dynamite. The covers are dynamite. It is, they're well put together, well worth the cost. I'll have a link in the of a link in the show notes and if you want to you can go to is it at Tallman

books on Twitter and it's the pin tweet? That is correct. Yes. If you look at my Twitter profile you can see links that will direct you straight to the printer of my books and you can get them at wholesale cost

so you don't have to pay the extra to the middleman. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah, no problem. All right, onward. So the essay called deportation and colonization was originally published in the teens. Walter Fleming was a scholar of Reconstruction in particular, but he had a tremendous interest in racial tensions, racial problems in American history, and wrote a number of essays on the subject. You'll see many of them in this particular volume.

What he starts his essay out by saying is that differences in status, even very radical legal differences in status, were resolved, rectified, modified in various ways in European traditions. He mentions things. like feudalism where there's great difference in status between the lords and the serfs. But he says this is made easier to deal with in the fact that there was not a racial and religious difference.

And he says the American case of difference in status is exacerbated because of race. He says, in regard to black slaves, there was another problem besides that of status. It was that of race. Was it possible for two free races, unlike in many respects, to inhabit the same territory without racial conflict? So he says, this is a problem that is considered from the early republic up until the Civil War. And what's really remarkable is that none of the leaders involved in this question thought that the two races could exist in a legal, equitable situation in the same territory and under the same law. So he goes all the way back to people like Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson speculated in his book notes on the state of Virginia in 1784 that the colonization of emancipated slaves was a necessary policy at some point.

And this is Thomas Jefferson who is, you might say, is living in the heyday of the institution, where very few people are talking about amansomero. of any sort in the South, but Thomas Jefferson is of the opinion that this institution will not last forever. But he's already thinking ahead for what America is going to look like after this point. What is really remarkable is that all the leaders that Fleming catalogs from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln are all united in the belief that America that the United States of America is a European project, that it has European norms. It has European standards, European culture, religion, law. And the Europeans have set the norms, mostly the Anglo-Americans, of course, and that there is a necessary conflict or paradox to try to

to have people of other races fitting under these norms. Now this makes me think of our friend Kofethi Anon, who I have not, I have just haven't been on Twitter for very long, but I've heard this guy interviewed in places. And he gave that remarkable proverb, The woke are more correct than the mainstream. And this is something that I think is truly insightful. The radical left likes to go around and say American society was built by white men to formalize their norms and their ideals.

and that this is in conflict with other groups in American society. And that they say to their detriment. Now, most of that seems to me to be true. And I'm in an agreement with that proverb from Kofepheonon. In this respect, I think the woke are more correct than the mainstream. The mainstream have this idea that heritage does not matter, that traditions do not matter. However, those traditions may be communicated. Whether it's something you get in early childhood or whether it's something more intrinsic,

I am not here to say. I'm just here to say, it's there. And everyone always knew it was there. And everyone always knew that this was going to be a problem. And what we have, Fleming does not go into this here, though he represents it elsewhere. What we have following the Civil War is a widespread acceptance in this, what we might say, a Lincolnian nationalist period that lasts roughly from the time of the Civil War up until the 1960s, roughly speaking, this was an American idea of unity that took for granted that Anglo-Americans

set the norms of United States civilization, that they were in the cultural driver's seat. Now, you don't find many people talking about that. as a reality because it was something so fundamental that people took it for granted. Just like look a generation into the past, you do not find people talking about what it means to be female, or what it means to be biologically male, right? No one thought that it was necessary to describe such things, right? Everyone thought that this was something that you could take for granted and this was not worthy of efforts in polemic, right? But similarly, this was a norm of this nationalist period that Anglo-Americans had founded the country and made the laws of the country, named its places,

drove its action, made its laws, and all the rest, and they made it to suit themselves. And there was a growing liberal bent to all of this, and we see this manifested in the 60s, a civic nationalism, if you will, the idea that, oh, it doesn't matter where you're from, you can enjoy American norms. And we see that manifested in the change in immigration policy in the 1960s, where we see the quota system that, prioritized immigrants from Europe. We see that ditched. I think that's a very important bit of evidence right there. And I'm sure you all already know about this. But that's a very important evidence of the norms that were taken for granted

that America was a European civilization up until that time, in which case the ideology that doesn't matter where you're from. everyone's the same on the inside. Anyone can be an American or the concept that this is magical dirt in some sense that makes everyone the same. Seems to make them all listen to Taylor Swift and eat McDonald's, I suppose. But there's so much more to it than that. That is the most superficial sort of meaning in America.

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Yes. And you insert people into it who cannot operate and cannot thrive within that system. Then if you, you can allow them to fail and leave, or you can change the system for them, which thereby now starts to hamper who the system was designed for. When they could just go back and, you know, I would say, you know, like a country like Nigeria, a system could be built for Nigerians to thrive in. Yes. But the whole idea that dominates the zeitgeist, that dominates the spirit of the age,

especially since World War II, is that everyone's the same. You plug everyone into some kind of liberal system. Anyone in the world can come to a liberal system, and they can thrive. And if they can't, we'll just change the system. It will keep tweaking the system. Well, that doesn't work, because then after a certain point, some people, because they are just wired differently, will always be able to thrive within whatever system they're put in, but most people are going to start to flounder. I think that it ends up working for the benefit of its patrons because they get to loot the mainstream.

They get to loot the heritage population. They get to expropriate the people that founded the country itself. And they and their leadership, whoever they might be, political classes that see that opportunity, whether they're doing it cynically or whether they're true believers. They benefit from that. But certainly, the native population, the heritage population, the Americanaurs suffer for it. So this idea that the common culture, the common heritage, and in particular, the common ancestry, that these are things that bind Americans together.

is without any doubt, without any argument, part of our political heritage, and it was said so explicitly. So we can go back to the Federalist Papers. And Federalist is it Federalist number two? John Jay is writing in praise of the Constitution. Like all the Federalist Papers, it's an argument in favor of the Philadelphia Constitution. And in Federalist number two, John Jay says, we all have the same ancestors. We all have the same religion. He is certainly referring to Protestants there, who are the vast majority of Anglo-Americans

at that time. He says they have the same manners and customs. I was working with Washington's farewell address this morning. And I found the same theme there. So Washington is talking about the importance of the common government, the importance to support the Constitution and the union against sectional prejudices and regional interests and political parties, which he says are very dangerous in a representative government. He says political parties are an extreme danger.

But he does say, let's see, the name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumph together. The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. That is George Washington in his farewell address. John Jay specifically mentions common ancestry.

And naturally enough, that's where manners and customs come from. That's where common memories come from. All of these things are things that unite a people in a common effort and reassure people. This is what gives people trust and confidence to live together in a community. to the point where they don't need cinderblock walls surrounding their property. They do not need security cameras, right? They are so much in common, they are so trustworthy with one another, so confident in each other, that they are not living in fear of one another.

They aren't walking down the street wondering who that is behind them, who that is coming up in front of them. They are not feeling the things that we are more often feeling these days when we go into public in our own country, where we're experiencing this loss of trust. So George Washington is speaking to an audience that has a great deal in common, and the obvious origin of this is that they came from the same land,

they spoke the same language, they had the same religion, they had the same traditions. And they had just accomplished a great political work together. They had won their independence. They had started a new political system. They had ratified a constitution, elected a president, and are now seeing a new system operate to their benefit and in their name, right, the new republic.

This is a very important basis of civil society. And we see this is very much an opposition to what our mainstream leadership will talk about now as a basis for civil society. We hear everywhere that diversity is our strength. That was certainly not the opinion of the writers of the Federalist Papers or George Washington himself. We can reflect on what George Washington said there that I just quoted. diversity is the antithesis of what George Washington just described. So going back to Fleming, Thomas Jefferson is of the opinion in his notes on the state of Virginia. He doesn't go into reasons why.

He takes it for granted everyone knows. There is a major difference in tradition that prevents these people living, on the same level as their Anglo neighbors. Maybe we can formalize some kind of nominal legal equity, but that is not going to solve this problem of difference, which is cultural. And I know around here on your channel, we are not afraid of talking about racial inheritance,

but let me describe it. in a more approachable way. We are like our ancestors, and this is just. There is nothing wrong with this. This is rightful and just and providential. This is the way that God made us to be like our ancestors. We look like them.

Our voices are their voices. Our jokes are their jokes. We grow up eating like. them who taught you how to eat your mother your father your grandmother they are the ones who taught you how to eat and what to eat they gave you your your tradition and and there's more to it than that right because when people live in a certain place in a certain way for long periods of time it seems to affect things like their digestion so

In some places in the world, I have intimates that are Asians, for instance. They do not like dairy products because it upsets their stomachs. Now, this does not seem surprising to me at all because they live for many thousands of years without fermenting milk and making cheese out of it or drinking milk in any quantity at all, whereas my ancestors cultivated that for thousands of years. And it was a norm for them. So it seems that we adjust to our environment to some degree. And this makes us into distinct peoples.

Now, we take so many things for granted in modern America. I enjoy eating Thai food. I love Mexican food, and I've learned to make it myself. and I'm really enjoying that. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you.

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That doesn't affect me personally, right? We lose in the midst of the pluralism. We lose in the midst of the multicultural vision that we're always hearing so much about. We lose normalcy. Who sets the tone? There will always be someone who is setting the tone. Some group will dominate. will give the society its norms.

And it's a fascinating transition that we see in the latter half of the 20th century. A historian that I've learned a great deal from. I'm curious what the listeners of the Pete Kenyonez show might have to say about this one. But I've learned a great deal from the historic. John Lukash, a Hungarian Catholic who fled the violence of World War II. He was from Budapest and went and taught at a small school in Pennsylvania. And he died only recently. I think he's only been dead for 10 or 15 years.

But he wrote a great number of books about the 20th century, Europe and America. And in the foreword of one of his books about America, I do not have my library with me at the moment, so I cannot check it. But the book, whose title I forget, he says, the most significant event of the 20th century is when African Americans decided that Anglo-Americans did not set their cultural norms or aspirations. I think that that is a fascinating and highly insightful line in that particular history. We see through American history, we see African Americans, and maybe there's something pitiful about this ultimately. I think there's something deeply admirable about it myself. I'm inclined to it. It doesn't really matter what it.

It doesn't really matter about this. I'll get canceled for it. African Americans dressed like Anglo-Americans for most of American history. African-Americans wanted things like a European education. You have fascinating characters, leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois, who was born free in Massachusetts before the Civil War. who are contending that the thing to accomplish equality of the races in America is a classical education, that African Americans need to go and learn Latin and Greek.

That needs to be their norm, like it was for educated Anglos for hundreds of years. there's something there's something so ambitious so praiseworthy there they they want to be mainstream Americans at least some of their leadership does

Du Bois being an outstanding example now the sad thing about Du Bois is that he eventually loses heart and he he becomes a communist black nationalist black

nationalist at the end of his life. And he actually dies in Ghana, in West Africa, a guest of a radical dictator at the time. So he finally leaves America. And we see that he finally repudiates something of his earlier thoughts about integration and a multiracial society, finally resolving that there is no future for for the likes of him anyway in America. And what does that, what does that finally signify? Does it mean that in the end, W.B. Du Bois agrees with Thomas Jefferson. That deportation and colonization is the solution for the African-American's feelings of alienation and separation. It's an extraordinary thing to contemplate. And I don't know what the answer is there. I see problems. I see tensions. I see endless blackmailing.

And I do not have any solutions for this. I do not, I'm not here to give any solutions, but I'm here to talk about what Fleming records. And Fleming is writing the history. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive, by design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plugin hybrid range.

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In 1816, the Virginia legislature asked the United States. States Congress to acquire land abroad for the colonization of free black people from America. And in 1817, the American Colonization Society was formalized and organized, and it attracted the support of a great many American statesman. Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, John Marshall, Henry Clay. So we see a mixture of political factions. We see Republicans and Federalists. We see northern abolitionists or people of an abolitionist bent or belief.

And we see southern slave owners like Henry Clay and James Madison, who are all patronizing this effort. This is something that is eventually supported with tax dollars, but initially it is supported through private charity, and there's a great deal of colonization effort that is made through private charity, through the allocation of private funds. There are ministers, a great many dissenters in the north that popularize these efforts and patronize,

these efforts. And the whole point of the colonization society is to set up a colony of freemen or freedmen, or both. The difference being freemen are people born free, black Americans that are born outside of slavery. Freedmen are manumitted slaves. So they were born in slavery and were manumitted through some means. Their masters may have willed their freedom or they may have arranged their freedom with their masters. That is what we hear about of people buying their own freedom. The American Colonization Society patronized the colony of Liberia in West Africa. Now, in that, the Americans are imitating the British Empire. The British Empire carried out certainly one of the largest

emancipation efforts ever accomplished. And one of the major differences between the British and the Americans is that the British did that politically. As you know, the Americans ended the institution of slavery through force and violence without a plan and without regular political processes, right? Congress did not debate the immediate emancipation of slaves in the Civil War South. There was never any debate on this question. There was never any policy proposal for the ending of slavery. Slavery originate, or the radical blow to end slavery originating. in the executive order, the emancipation proclamation, which is a war measure and has a great many

details. But that's a really extraordinary thing, that it is something done without compensation, with no compromise, with no plan for what happens afterwards. That's one of the most consequential aspects of it. The British Empire emancipated their slaves according to a plan. This was compensated emancipation. The political leadership of the British Empire debated the question in Parliament. They passed bills. They allocated funds. They financed the operation. They took out bonds at tremendous expense in order to purchase slaves from British slave owners, the vast majority of which were in the Caribbean. They liberated these slaves according to a plan, so there was a gradual manumission of those slaves,

along with an attempt to train them in useful labor and marketable skills. So there was an apprenticeship program that was part of the manumission of the slaves in the British Empire. Nevertheless, the white Anglo population in the islands of the Caribbean, most notably Jamaica, the very largest of all of these holdings of British America at that time, the white Anglos flee from all of these islands for the most part. are manumitted gradually. Those born in slavery are freed after a certain age. So they are kept under authority for a certain period of time. And then people that are over a certain age are kept in slavery. The idea is that they've lived their entire lives in slavery

and it's not doing anyone a great service or the business or the or boon to set them free to fend for themselves when they've turned 65. Right? That's not a good thing for those people. When you turn 65, you need to be taken care of. You cannot fin for yourself nearly so well, especially especially a couple hundred years ago, right? You're already at the end of your life expectancy. So anyway, the British Empire, what?

what they did was they manniumitted slaves and they also colonized slaves or former slaves freemen they took the black population of london for instance many of whom were former indentured servants and slaves in london back when slavery was legal in england and they colonized them in sierra leone This is itself an epic tale. This was relatively successful. I don't know too much about the history of Sierra Leone, but the British did have such a small black population in the British Isles that this was not a huge logistical challenge,

nor a particularly difficult financial one. They did finance the operation. They settled these people. with with state funds they colonize them at expense to themselves and they created a the country of Sierra Leone which is still around today the Americans wanted to do the same thing that's the point I'm I'm here to make the Americans set up the country of Liberia now this happens during the Monroe administration so this is right after the war of 1812 and James Monroe President James Monroe of Virginia helps

establish the colony of Liberia which is to be for the freedmen of the United States they are to go there voluntarily so they add this the liberal qualification the individual consent is what legitimates the operation, it's what legitimates the change. And they transport some numbers there. And the idea is that the government will support them for their first year in the new colony. There are great many private ventures to support this as well. There's a very morbid story of

Pennsylvania Quakers who had always been very vocal in their opposition to slavery, they sent a colony of freedmen, volunteers, who were also converts to Quakerism, to Liberia. And they were supporting this colony. And of course, the Quakers are pacifists who do not believe that any violence is legitimate. and they are cannibalized by the local population and do not defend themselves. Now, this is a problem that Quakers have, not the cannibalism, but this is a problem that Quakers have on the frontiers of Pennsylvania back in colonial days, where they're attacked by the Native Americans and wiped out because they will not defend themselves. And so the Quakers have this idea, well, let's bring in the Scotchia.

Irish from the borderlands, and let's make sure that they're in between us and the unsettled frontier, because they will defend our borders, and that is precisely what happens, which is one of the reasons why the center of Pennsylvania is a lot like West Virginia, you know, it's part of Appalachia culturally. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity. Experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse.

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They've stayed there ever since. They rather like their rugged remote mountains. So with the disaster of the Quaker colony in Liberia, the other colonies did pretty well for themselves and were willing to defend themselves with force if necessary. They were greatly outnumbered. There was a huge native population there. they are animist stone age peoples.

They're very fierce. The American, the Afro-American Liberians who are colonized in West Africa have a really terrible utterly horrifying story.

They do run Liberia up until modern times, but in the 70s and 80s, this is the 1970s, 1980s, there is a massive civil war in Liberia in which the ruling class of Liberia, which are these American-English-speaking transplants, these descendants of freedmen from the colonial era, they made up the wealthy ruling class of Liberia. They were Protestants. They governed Liberia originally with the American Philadelphia Constitution. That was their governing document.

And they enslaved the native African population of Liberia. And this is a really wild tale. I'm working on some material concerning this because I, I think that we need to be reading more about this episode. This needs to be in our minds. I have great, I've got feeling for the utterly horrible fate of the American, the African American Liberians because they were Americans at one point. And they took our institutions with them to Africa.

took the English language, they took American governing traditions, they took Protestantism, they were all Protestants of some stripe. They even took Freemasonry with them. There were great many of them in the Liberian ruling class that were Freemasons, and they were Republicans of a sort. They didn't think much of illiterate and animists and they subjugated them even though they were fellow Africans. This seems very strange to people in modern America, but it's a true story and it's a really wild story. Well, the African-American Liberians were almost entirely destroyed in the Civil War that took place in my lifetime. And there are virtually none of them left now.

So that's a really sad story about Liberia, but Liberia was dysfunctional for a very long time. It was not a very successful experiment. And reports of this were so widely known that it became very difficult to convince African Americans before the Civil War to migrate to Liberia, even though there was, there was. federal funding to support it in such. You couldn't get people to voluntarily go there because conditions were so harsh. And in retrospect now, from our perspective, we can see, well, that was probably for the best for those people. They would have ended up being wiped out like we saw the African-American Liberians wiped out in our own lives. There were a number of other attempts to colonize freed

uh, freedmen uh, manumitted from the southern states. And this is all before the civil war. Uh, there were efforts to take them to places like Trinidad, uh, to places like Haiti. Of course, Haiti is the, the original American, uh, African Republic. And it was founded by a slave revolt. Um, the government of Haiti was actually very interested in American discussions to resettle freed slaves in their

republic. But anytime African Americans got a glimpse of Haiti and what living conditions were like there, they were repulsed by it and couldn't be made to go there voluntarily after they knew something about it. So there were a number of other efforts that were made. The federal government had many discussions

about purchasing land in Mexico. For instance, just after the Mexican war, there were discussions in Congress about purchasing parts of Mexico as a colony for freed slaves. And then

purposefully settling large numbers of them, maybe even coming up with some form of compensated emancipation to end the institution of slavery and to resettle. Now, this is much more productive and useful than the story of the abolitionist fanatics. So let me define my term here. the radical abolitionists who are perhaps most famous in Boston, you have William Lloyd Garrison, who runs a famous newspaper called The Liberator in Boston, who is a mouthpiece for this idea of radical abolitionism. William Lloyd Garrison's paper, by the way, changes its name after the Civil War. It becomes the nation

after the Civil War. So this paper is actually still with us. You can still subscribe to the nation. And these days, it is a leftist periodical. And I'd say, well, it's always been a leftist periodical. But William Lloyd Garrison made a speech back before the Civil War when he's running his newspaper. He made a public speech in which he repudiated the idea of gradual and compensated emancipation. The idea that ending slavery is a very complex affair and it requires political action and the interests of all parties should be taken into account and everyone should be at the

table to make a deal. He repudiates that approach. Now, in that, as I've said before, America is exceptional. The United States is the only country in the world to get rid of the institution of slavery with no plan, with no political process, without all interested parties involved in some respect. It is the only country in the world to end slavery immediately. It is the only country in the world to end slavery with no compensation for the slaveholders. To cash out the property, to transfer the capital somehow, even if it means taking out government bonds to do it, as the British Empire did. That is exceptional. That's all very unusual in the history of slavery.

William Lloyd Garrison puts himself on the record. He says, tell the man whose house is on fire to spread a moderate alarm. Tell the man to be moderate when his wife is in the hands of a ravisher. He says, no, I will not be moderate. I will be as uncompromising as the truth. There's so much rugby on Sports Exeter from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes.

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There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky, they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jampacked with rugby. For the first time we've fed every Champions Cup match exclusively live, bus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place.

Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra. Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months, further terms apply. Maybe we recognize the hysterical rhetoric here.

This is characteristic American political style, perhaps. William Lloyd Garrison puts himself on the record as the spokesman of radical abolitionism. So the radical abolitionists say, we need no plan here. Those that talk about what happens afterwards are only stalling for time. What we need is dramatic action now, uncompromising action now. Nevertheless, that is not a kind of rhetoric that works in any political context. In a political context, if you go into one who has any difference on policy than yourself, and you say, you are actually evil and I will take none of your concerns into account,

and I will have everything that I want, and any compromise you demand is only proof of your depravity. Those are the circumstances in which people start swinging at one another. That is when violence must be the end of the matter, not conversation. Conversation means there must be back and forth. So William Lloyd Garrison is not in politics. William Lloyd Garrison is a single issue sort of guy. And William Lloyd Garrison does not get a following in politics. What's very interesting and what I'm constantly telling people to their consternation,

both in high school and out, is Abraham Lincoln was always distancing himself from the abolitionists. This is not at all surprising when we consider that what the radical abolitionists are demanding. No reasonable politician can repeat. That's not in the realm of politics. So Abraham Lincoln is constantly distancing himself from the radical abolitionists, saying that he does not seek the end of the institution of slavery. He only seeks to limit its expansion.

And Lincoln gives a couple of speeches while he's running for president in which he says, I am not and never have been an advocate for the abolition of slavery. Just the same for various reasons. those who are seeking a political solution, they've completely coalesced around colonization. And Fleming documents this in great detail in his essay. There is no one in American public life who imagines that the freedmen will live at the same level

as white Americans after the end of slavery. And they believe that that is a serious political and cultural concern. And so they seek a solution to that concern. And naturally enough, it's a Republican solution of a sort. Like the Declaration of Independence, Americans believe that a group of people who define themselves as such, they say we are a political community. We have the same values for whatever reason. Americans typically, and I think that I can say this authoritatively, in our political discourse,

we have not typically talked about Americans on. racial terms. You don't find even John Jay saying, we are a European people. No, he makes an allusion to common ancestry, and that's as far as he goes. But this is still implicit in they're talking about common manners, common religion, common origin, common experience. They're talking about the Americans of 1776, the citizens of 1776. They are explicitly, and this is, and this is explicit in the Declaration of Independence. This is explicit in the Federalist papers. This is explicit among these writers. They are not talking about non-citizens. And they will get a little more particular than that. They will say, they are not talking about Native Americans.

They are not talking about groups that are not taxed. They are not talking about slaves. And by the way, that is the point of the dread Scott decision of the Supreme Court. If you want great detail on what the early republic, what the framers of the Constitution, what the authors of the Declaration, what the authors of the Declaration, of Independence, what those people thought about citizenship for slaves in America. Go and read Justice Tauney's decision in the Dred Scott case, in which he documents this in great detail and quotes these people on those points. Coincidentally, if you want another good source book on this, there is a source. certain small press, rather like mine.

It's called Forbidden Books. There are only a couple of titles. One of which is the Negroes of Negro land, or it's The Negroes in Negro Land by Hinton-Rowen Helper, a very interesting abolitionist, a southern abolitionist. that is a book of compilation quotes of European explorers of Africa. And it's very interesting for that reason. Helper had edited early European explorers of the Dark Continent. So he's quoting Dr. Livingston. He is quoting early English slave traders on the Gold Coast.

he's quoting a lot of people the first Europeans to penetrate the Niger Delta things like that but at the end of that compilation is a collection of quotes from Americans on the disparity between whites and blacks

in the United States and that's also an interesting source book on matter. So what what Fleming establishes in his essay is that the political conversation outside of abolitionist propaganda, which was always careful to avoid what would happen after emancipation, abolitionists as a rule, and this was something that they made a point of, they would not talk about what happened afterwards. And that was one of the things that things that made them abolitionists.

That was one of their defining characteristics. They would not plan. And William Lloyd Garrison was rather hysterical on that point. In the halls of power, planning was still going on, but to no effect. There was talk about acquiring the island of Hispaniola. There was talk about acquiring pieces of Mexico. There was talk about acquiring island. islands in the Caribbean. The imperial powers of the time were not interested. Haiti was

interested because that would have meant investment. But the United States still had not recognized the Republic of Haiti. That put a major complication into everything. When the Civil War finally begins in 1861, Abraham Lincoln surprisingly, maintains this interest in colonization. And, and this is another remarkable characteristic of the Lincoln administration, Lincoln arguably puts more effort into schemes of deportation and colonization than any of his predecessors. We might say that James Monroe in the Foundation of Liberia, and the,

the namesake capital of Liberia, Monrovia, which is named in honor of James Monroe, president from Virginia. James Monroe is the only other American leader that measures up as far as effort. Abraham Lincoln is asking Congress over and over and over again for a colonization scheme. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity. experience a story of Ireland's most iconic beer in a stunning Christmas setting at the Guinness Storehouse.

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they've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jampacked with rugby. For the first time we've met every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European rugby all in the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments than ever before on Sports Extra.

Jampack with rugby. Phew, that is a lot of rugby. Get Sports Extra on Sky for 15 euro a month for 12 months. Search Sports Extra. New Sports Extra customers only. Standard Pressing applies after 12 months for the terms apply. And he gets funding. He gets several outlays from legislation from Congress.

But he's blocked by some of his cabinet members from time to time. The Secretary of War, the Secretary of State are throwing complications in these plans, sometimes because of their own private thoughts on the effort, sometimes because they're foreign difficulties. Abraham Lincoln, one of his essay, or one of his allies, Congressman White of Indiana proposed an appropriation of $180 million to purchase only unionist slaves. and colonize them abroad.

This is really extraordinary. He's proposing compensated emancipation to end slavery for only slave owners in union areas who are loyal to the union during the Civil War. Supposedly, I guess everyone else is out of luck because they took up arms against the government, they will not get any compensation for their slaves. But that's one of many schemes.

Lincoln has bad judgment in the characters that he patronizes for his scheme. So there's one fellow who takes some money from a congressional appropriation. he seeks out private backers on top of tax money, and he takes a number of contrabands. Now, the contrabands are slaves that abandon their masters in the south, in the course of the war, and follow the Union Army. So in the midst of the Civil War, the Union Army finds itself responsible for hundreds of thousands of runaway slaves, which are termed contrabands, and have their own dramatic story. They're put in camps, they are forcibly conscripted into Union regiments, things like that. the Union Army would love to be rid of this unexpected burden. This one particular schemer, he convinces some of his contacts in D.C. that he can make use of them.

He seeks private financial backing in New York City for a scheme to grow cotton in the Caribbean. He gets an agreement with the Republic of Haiti, which has just been recognized conveniently by, the United States government. In the midst of the Civil War, Haiti is finally recognized by the United States government as an independent country. And he takes several hundred contrabands to an island off the coast of Haiti, an uninhabited island. There are some very pitiful stories that are told about this. He proposes to pay them in wages. is. He promises them freedom and prosperity in a free labor economy. He puts them all on transports that he charters for the purpose to take them down. The whole point of the scheme is that they're going to grow cotton on this Caribbean island,

uninhabited, or maybe previously inhabited, but uninhabited at the time he goes. the contrabands get out of this this terrible living situation where they're eating army rations and are policed by military police outside of a Union Army camp they get on these boats and there are these stories of them falling down on their knees and singing hallelujah

and kissing the feet of their there are erstwhile liberators, these participants in this scheme, they're taken down to this Caribbean island and there is no shelter, there is no food, and the organizer did not even bring any cotton seeds with him to plant. Then he begins selling all the necessities of life to the contraband's. He begins selling to them. They don't even have any fresh water. And it's an utterly miserable situation. He ends up needing assistance from the government to try to rescue those that do not die of tropical diseases and starvation and things like that.

And they all desperately want to get back to the United States. This is one of the more outrageous examples of colonization efforts during the Lincoln administration. It's a sample of the various failed efforts to colonize slaves during this time. It's a time of war. People with talent, people with capacity are otherwise engaged to their benefit, arguably. This is a boondoggle speculative operation, these various attempts to colonize the freedmen. Another example, and it's a telling one, General Benjamin Butler, very famously of the conquest of Louisiana and the occupation of New Orleans. General Butler, who is a very politically attuned man, if not a capable military leader.

Butler is asked to confer with Lincoln. He goes and meets with Lincoln. Lincoln is very interested in the contraband's. Butler has had a great deal of experience with them. In the very beginning of the war, Butler was at Fortress Monroe in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and was early involved in efforts to organize the contraband. in efforts to transition them over to a wage labor system in the tidewater of Virginia, in Union-occupied Virginia.

He has a very good reputation with them, and he's one of the few men that have experience with the contraband. Lincoln asks him how they can transport the contraband's abroad. assuming they have a funding for the operation, land secured, some kind of way to live for these people, assuming all of that is taken care of. Lincoln asks Butler, what if after the war the all the ships of the United States Navy are getting demobilized from? military action. If we used all of the ships in the United States Navy to transport the former slaves and the freemen of America, the free black population that many of which have been free from for generations, if we transport them abroad, will the United States Navy be large enough

for this operation? And General Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts says, no, Mr. President, the natural increase of children among the black population will make that operation futile. Butler says the black Americans are having children too quickly for the United States Navy to keep up with them, even if you devoted the entire Navy just to transporting black Americans to a colony abroad. And the story is that this this discourages Lincoln finally after after years of of boondoggles and embarrassments stolen appropriations made by Congress to these corrupt characters Lincoln finally finally is given an argument that he does not know what to do with Now, arguably, Lincoln does not change his mind.

In spite of Butler's discouragement, Lincoln still thinks that this is the only Republican solution. Again, going back to the Declaration of Independence, a people defined as members of communities need to rule themselves, need to have their own institutions. This is a very old American idea. They are not, when Thomas Jefferson writes this, he does not define this by race, but he does say it's a self-identification. Lincoln's idea is that African Americans are a distinct American community, and they need to rule themselves. They are so distinct as a group of society that they need to. have their own institutions. American society was not built to accommodate their folkways. Once again, we go back to that idea that things that the woke left says about America,

some of these things are true. The social norms, the laws, the customs are not African. there is something in the heritage there that is meaningful to people. And this is part of the idea that they need to have their own territory. This is Lincoln as a black nationalist, if you will. Lincoln has many meetings while he is president with delegations from black communities in the north, most of whom are from Washington. Washington, D.C., not surprisingly. There is an article that catalogs all these things.

It is by Berlin Game, President Lincoln's Meetings with African Americans. It is in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. You can find this online. Michael Berlin Game of the University of Illinois is what it looks like. is what it looks like. I looked this up earlier and this is a good compilation of all of these experiences. Lincoln repeatedly tells delegations of free African Americans to the White House, that they do not have a political future in America. He urges them to convince their fellows to immigrate, to participate in colonization programs, specifically to go all the way to

Liberia. Now, that's not because Abraham Lincoln thought Liberia was the best option, but because Liberia was really the only option. It was the only one that significant numbers of Freeman had gone to. So he mentions that on several occasions. And he says something really provocative, certainly provocative by modern standards, to a delegation to the White House, a delegation of free black Americans. He says, you are the cause of this war. Now, that's a really wild take. it seems to me

maybe insightful but also unusual we do not have many people talking this way at that time he said he says to them had it not been for your presence on this continent

we would not be fighting right now we would not be engaged in this war now and then he urges them to go abroad he says there are differences so great between your people and ours that we cannot live together.

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Park in Dublin and photo house in Cork. Follow the enchanting walking trail that will captivate all ages as the night comes alive with dazzling displays and unforgettable moments. Who will you Wonderlights with. For dates and bookings, visit wonderlights.io. Now, as a southerner, I've, I struggle to find the words to say in response to this. As a southerner, I want to push back on Lincoln there and contend that in the South, we have had ways. I want to, I want to, I want to, to choose my words carefully, it seems to me we have had ways of living together in the South. It does not seem to me that the North or the West have had ways of living together with African Americans. I don't think that's been part of their tradition. And I don't

mean to be unjust to them. I don't know a particular, I don't know very much about the history of racial tensions in Philadelphia or Detroit. I do know that they've had many more and far worse riots on racial tensions than I am familiar with in southern cities in which I've lived. That being said, I think that racial tensions have gotten far worse in my lifetime, beyond what I thought was at all reasonable or possible. And so, I suppose, I would say, I am not here to talk about modern problems with race, outside of saying that much. It just seems to me, that in the past, and I'm certainly including the segregation period, a very important period for our consideration, whatever else we might say about it. I'm not here to talk about it. But there were ways in which large numbers of black people and large numbers of white people lived to mutual advantage in the past in America.

And that was in the South. And that's not what any of them planned on either. But I think that historically we've had better race relations. And I know that's going to throw some people through loop, but I think that's the case. I think anybody who knows the history of Boston knows this. I remember in the 1980s growing up and being told, that Boston was still one of the most racist cities in the country, or the most racist city in the country when it came to racial tensions between blacks and the Irish and whites in general.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like a lot of that is, a lot of that's in the north when it's not being engineered by northerners in the south. Indeed. Indeed. There were natural boundaries set up between these communities in the South and traditions that developed to ensure some stability and some familiarity, but also some separation and some privacy. There's a really good book on this subject that's indispensable, C. Van Woodward, a great Southern historian, wrote a book called The Strange Career of Jim Crow, in which he documented the growth of segregation laws in the South. And early on in that book, he's painting a picture of a very unfamiliar South. He's painting a picture of the relation between the races in the decades immediately following the Civil War.

And one of his sources is Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Massachusetts, a fire-breathingeating abolitionist from before the war, a supporter of John Brown. He was one of the Secret Six who financed John Brown's scheme to instigate a race war at Harper's Ferry. Higginson later led a black regiment in the Civil War and served with distinction leading United States colored troops. Higginson is perhaps one of the most prejudiced people against the South on race relations in particular, and yet he travels through the South immediately after the Civil War and is amazed at the easiness of race, relations. And he says, Southerners white and black will dine together and associate with one another in close quarters on transportation. And he cannot believe his eyes because he has never seen the like of it in New England, even among his enlightened circles. So it's a really unusual period. The Jim Crow laws that we've

heard so much about come an entire generation after the Civil War. You see a lot of them come into effect in the 1890s when the old southern aristocracy, a conservative and slave-owning group of men, many of them former Confederate generals, they are out of power by the 1890s. And you see a new generation, Nouveau-Riche, southerners coming into power with different ideas. Many of them have had no experience with slavery. They were of non-slave-holding Southern whites. They made up the majority of Southern whites before the war who come into political power,

and they are the ones who are pushing segregation laws. I'm not here to say anything more on that subject, but it just comes a generation later, which is an important thing to remember. So Southerners, they developed some way of living. Southerners white and black, they were able to get along with one another for some mysterious quality there. They were accustomed to one another. And so we see early on, we see James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson, who are advocates for colonization.

And these are statesmen. They are thinking a long ways off. They're thinking of some very big topics. But it's not a popular subject in the South. Now, that is partly because there is a strong interest, a strong political interest, in maintaining the institution of slavery. There are a great number of people that cannot imagine their lives without the institution of slavery. There are defenders of the institution of slavery in the South.

And there are also a lot of southerners who are very alarmed at the possibility that slavery will be ended, and yet the African freedmen will remain. And they will become a source of competition with labor. they will compete for land and they will compete as a faction in politics. This is one of the reasons why the majority of the population, both north and south, was very interested in colonization and in politics, only spoke of gradual emancipation with colonization. I think that finally, as a reflection on Fleming, the reason those political plans finally failed was because the population of slaves in America was so large. And the reason it was so large is partly due to, well, I think entirely due to the unusual character.

of American slavery. In Central America and in South America, where the vast majority of slaves trafficked across the Atlantic ended up, only 5% of that Atlantic slave traffic ended up in North America. So it's a very small part of that Atlantic trait, the middle passage. But what made America different is that there was a distribution of the sexes, family formation was normal, and they reproduced themselves at a similar rate to the white population, and tended to live almost as long. They didn't live quite as long as the white population, but they lived almost as long as the white population. None of those things were true in Central America, in the in the Caribbean or in South America, where the premium was on male slaves, they lived without

families, usually did not reproduce themselves, and died young. America was different. America fostered those people, and whatever else we might say on the matter, they did build a civilization here. Now, I'm not one that quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. I'm certainly not quoting him on any of his idealism. But he had a fascinating interview with Robert Penn Warren. Robert Penn Warren wrote an excellent book, a book that had a big role in my own cancellation. because I liked this book and I talked about it with the wrong people.

But he wrote a book called Who Speaks for the Negro? Now this is Robert Pinn-Woren for heaven's sake. He won the Pulitzer Prize. He was the first American poet laureate. He's one of my favorite authors. He went around and asked African-American leaders around the United States the exact same set of questions in the 1960s. So he went around, he interviewed Malcolm X, he interviewed Martin Luther King, he interviewed James Baldwin, all sorts of leaders in education.

It's a fascinating book, and Warren has his own take on that, and I really enjoy his perspective, but he's very consistent. He asked them all the same questions and kind of made it an oral history project. He recorded everything. And I suppose those tapes are in an archive somewhere, but he wrote a book with the transcript of these things. He asked Martin Luther King Jr. about African Americans in their experience. And Martin Luther King Jr. said, whatever else you might say about them, we aren't Africans anymore. We don't belong in Africa anymore. And that is very mysterious. There is a process of assimilation.

African Americans, they may have animist qualities today, but they are overwhelmingly Christian by confession. African Americans, they may preserve elements of their former languages, but they speak dialects of English or English. and to the degree that they speak English fluently and incompetently, that is to their benefit. They can go very far with that. What do we make of them? They don't dress like Africans, even when they play act to dress like Africans. I don't know what you call this, when they wear the multicolored scarves and things like that.

perhaps some of them are actually imitating Nigerian dress or something, but a lot of that is made up. Kwanza is not something that happens in Africa. It's invented by Americans. Some of their naming customs, you know, the Keshondas and the Antwans and things like that, Those things are a thing particular to African Americans over here. Perhaps it's going more mainstream around the world. Perhaps black people in the United Kingdom are imitating these things. We know they're exporting musical styles and dress and things like that. But whatever else we might say about these things, they're particular to the West.

these people have westernized to some degree. And I think MLK's observation on that is insightful. And I can't help but ponder this, and I do this now as part of my job. Once again, I'm speaking in front of people and making a living off of that. It's something that I do contemplate with them kind of in a neutral way, just asking a question and inviting thought.

I feel for their sense of alienation in the same way that I feel for heritage Americans who no longer feel at home in their own country. Alienation is a bad thing. We should not be defined by our alienation. That's something that damages human beings. And just as a closing remark, I want African Americans, people that I've been around my entire life, I've worked with them, I've been friendly with them, I've never had one as an intimate or a close associate. But I sincerely want them to feel at home. and I want them to have a kind of independence in their own affairs.

I am perhaps more than ever convinced that we can't live under the same laws. When the law is equitably applied to their people and mine, cities burn. And so we must be apart from one another. after all this time. And it seems to me there's still a part of me that thinks it didn't have to be that way. We should be able to live together somehow we've managed it for so long. I'm from the deep south, but I'm more convinced than ever that we can't live equitably under the same regime with the same laws. And I think that's tragic. that that's going to cause them a lot of suffering and it will cause us a lot of suffering as well.

But I think we either have to have some way to come back from the terrible situation that we've found ourselves in as far as racial tensions in America today. Or we must grow apart from one another and live apart from one another. Yeah, I mean, it's it's, it's, it's, come to this and that's unfortunate. It's just, you know, the managerial, when the West shifted into, quote, unquote, democracy and managerialism, it was just going to come to this. Because it's a lot easier to run a managerial state when people are, not only people who really have differences at their core, but.

When a managerial state understands that if you magnify those, it just increases their need. It increases their, you know, they're basically creating, you know, creating demand that only they can supply. So, yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, it was, it seemed like we were headed down a right path there for a while. If you really study the history, I know a lot of people think that's. I think that's bull, but it's not. It seemed like things were headed down a pretty good road there for a while, and then it just skidded right off. And maybe it would eventually, but a lot of it just seems manufactured to me.

And it's all built on resentment. And that's why it cannot continue. It becomes extremely dangerous. The longer the resentment is. encouraged and that's the official policy to encourage it that will will tear society to pieces on on a fundamental level um just as an epilogue i i wanted to mention there were efforts during reconstruction which which fleming does not go into at the end of his essay he's he's more focused up until the lincoln administration but during the grant administration during

in Reconstruction, Grant was extremely close to buying the island of Hispaniola, which contains the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti, to turn it into a colony for American freedmen. And Grant got a vote of 50% for and 50% against in Congress, or a 50% for and 50% against in Congress, or in the Senate. It was a international treaty. So he got a split in the vote. He was only one vote away from ratifying the treaty to buy the island of Hispaniola. That's how close we got after the Civil War to deportation and colonization. Also, during the grant administration, there was a scheme that was hatched by his treasury secretary to designate a couple of southern states

as black republics. Now, they would have remained in the union, but it would have meant the whole confiscation of all property owned by white people in Georgia and Florida, I believe, were the states that were designated for that project. Now, that never came off the ground. It would have meant ethnic cleansing to make it happen.

It would have meant the movement of millions of people and the forcible movement of who knows how many. The scheme involved Georgia because William Sherman had expelled a remnant of the white population from a number of the sea islands of Georgia. And William Sherman, in a military order, had designated those islands as reserve for black settlers exclusively and forbidding the entry of white people onto those islands. And the Freedmen's Bureau turned it into a welfare project where they were delivering food and supplies to the islands regularly. And this was diffused at a later date, much to the annoyance of the black colonists on those islands.

But eventually the titles to the property involved got settled somehow. I don't remember exactly how it worked out, but the Black Reservation Project on the Sea Islands did not survive. It was supported for a few years by the federal government, but it ends up getting dismantled at a later date. So there are some other interesting efforts. The idea that a couple of southern states would be designated as exclusively African American, it coincides with the planning and building of the Native American reservation, in the far west. Those things are going on at the same time. So if we if we associate grant with both of those projects that might might make some more sense to us just why

were they thinking of doing that? It's a it's a curiosity of American history that Native Americans got they got exclusive territories and a Imperium at Imperio You know, they got their own government inside of the union, and other minorities didn't. That's an anomaly. Now, it was far more practical when it came to the Native Americans, not to say that they didn't lose out an awful lot from that arrangement. And this was something imposed on them by losing wars against the federal government. It certainly was. They did not, go into that relationship willingly and most of those reservations are terrible places that

none of us would want to live however the indians did preserve their native languages and they would not have if they had not been isolated on those reservations they did preserve traditional lifestyles to some degree traditional handicrafts to some degree and they run their own affairs to some degree all of those are partial goods, at least. Certainly from a historical perspective, we are very happy that we still have many of those Native American languages. That was an unintended consequence, perhaps, of the reservation system, but it was a good consequence of it.

But that's a great anomaly in the story of the United States. At the same time, the freed slaves are being enfranchised and encouraged to participate in politics. The Native Americans are all technically governing themselves on reservations, but are emphatically not American citizens. They become American citizens a couple generations later. I think in the 1920s, the Dawes Act, I believe, is what extends the franchise and citizenship to Native Americans for the first time.

Well, and, you know, we got some casinos too, so that's great. Yes. No, but you're right. You're right. It's very interesting that the seeming persecution, not really, but disenfranchisement, allowed them to keep a lot of their culture where blacks just basically adopted the culture of everyone around them, but by being enfranchised. and, you know, of course, to Friedman schools, just try to turn them into good little, good little progressive Protestants.

And, yeah, that's going to do something, too. So I'm not saying anything about them. That they shouldn't have been, I'm not saying they should have been turned into Catholics. I'm not saying they should have been turned into Orthodox. I'm just saying that they were targeted. And Thomas, Thomas 777 talks about this. He says, um, the deracination. that cultures feel that cultures suffered in this country.

It's all of them, basically. All of them. And, you know, it's a tragedy because they should have their own culture. They should just, you know, it should be somewhere else at this point. Yeah. And I don't know what that means for us going forward. I'm not here to speculate on politics. But we seem to be in a place where we cannot continue as we've been going.

I agree. I agree. Well, let's wrap this one up. We've had a couple hiccups along the way, but I think we made it, and I think the information is out there. So just remind everybody where they can get your stuff, and we'll learn this. All right. Real pleasure to be on your show again. I really appreciate it.

You can find me on Twitter at Tallman Books. I have posted there on my profile links to the various books that I've published or republished. And you can follow those links and get them at wholesale cost so you don't have to pay the middleman. I have a telegram channel. It's called Bagby's Corner. if you want to follow my adventures and escapades. And look forward to seeing you on other podcasts. I appear frequently on the Jay Burden podcast, and I will appear on others as well.

So thank you very much for the opportunity. It's a pleasure to be with you. I appreciate it. Thank you, George. Take care. Have a good evening. You too. Goodbye.