CZM Rewind: Part One: The Battle of Negro Fort: Florida's Maroon Community

Margaret talks with Jamie Loftus about the Black and Indigenous soldiers who lived free in a fort in Spanish Florida until Andrew Jackson broke a lot of laws to fight them.

Original Air Date: 12.18.23

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's people trying to do good things. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and this is a rerun week. Everyone loves
a rerun week. It's when I get to take a
short break and run a rerun instead of doing another
episode in the endless march of podcast production, which is

(00:28):
endless anyway. I'm recording this on the fourth of July.
And I am not a particularly patriotic person in general
and in particular for the slave empire called the United
States of America, and so I don't have a lot
of stories that specifically talk about the ways in which
It's something that's come up again and again on this

(00:50):
show is the ways in which the American Revolution was
honestly kind of a counter revolution. And so I'm going
to tell a story, or rather rerun a story called
the Battle of Negro Fort about Florida's Maroon community, and
it is a story that gets into a little bit

(01:10):
about the black loyalists. They're called the people who took
the UK up on its offer, Britain up on its
offer to fight for Britain in the American Revolution in
order to gain their freedom and some of the things
that those people then went on to do. So I
hope you like the story and I'll be back next

(01:30):
week with an episode that's probably not a rerun.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff Podcast About the Stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today as
my guest, is the host of every podcast, the Queen
of Tube shaped Food, Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
I couldn't ask for a better introduction. It makes me
sound so busy.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
And you're executive producing a new show as well, aren't you, Jamie.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
It's true. I'm trying to do an impression of Sophie
and producing We the Unhoused that just launched on iHeart
as well. It existed before, but now it's relaunching on iHeart.
You should check it out.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Well what's it about?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Well it is, Thank you for asking bye it We
the end Housed is a show that was originally created
and is still written and hosted by Theo Henderson formally
Unhoused person in la. He began the show back in
twenty nineteen as a way to show the issues that

(02:49):
unhouse people in LA face from the perspective of unhoused
people and took a year off and is now relaunching
the show with iHeart. So our first episode is out
now and covers Theo's experience being unhoused as well as
just sort of talking about the show and interviewing someone

(03:09):
who is a part of the reclaiming house initiatives in
LA where unhoused people or low income people are reclaiming
empty units in buildings that the city is just leaving
empty for no reason. And then we have a new
episode coming up that is all about the Unhoused Day
of Remembrance that happens towards the end of the year

(03:31):
where people who past who are unhoused and haven't gotten
a proper memorial are given that memorial within their communities.
So that's the show. It's been really really fun to
work on and Theo's the best.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
I suspect that if you like this podcast, you will
like that podcast.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Can almost guarantee it, yes.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, And if you don't, you should feel guilty about.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
You should really ask yourself, why, yeah, is it that
you don't like me? Specifically, it might be that you
don't like you won't hear my voice on Meet the House,
so it's okay, okay, Well maybe I'll listen to it though, Yeah,
check it out.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, that's really funny. Well, Sophie Licktman is our producer.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
That's me.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
That's that's me.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I am the producer, the only producer except that one,
except that one time that Jamie takes my face.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
That one happens from time to time, and we don't
talk about it.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
No, like in I'm okay wait, I'm obsessed with the
BBC version of Dracula that came out in twenty twenty,
that's on that Flix.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, yeah, we've talked about this.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yes, did we talk about it on the on air
before this? Damn it?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Say more, say more, No, don't back down.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Well, there's some there's some face wearing in that and
I rewatched. I rewatched it already. I I'm so into it.
It is like written for me. It was like anyway whatever, okay, okay. Also,
our audio engineers Ian Hi Ian Hi ian Nyan. Our
theme music was written for us by unwoman Jamie. Have

(05:10):
you ever heard of a place called Florida?

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yes? With yes, And I guess I'll just leave it
at that, yes, and I've spent some time there myself.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I never thought I'd be doing an episode about Florida history.
Yeah yeah, people want to hear Church. Yeah yeah, it's.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Just a little bit of my experience with Florida.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Well, we're gonna talk about some more Florida history today.
I never really expected that I would be doing any
Florida history. No offense to some offense to the state
of Florida. But don't worry. This story is set during
the most riveting time period in American history, the time
we all know and care so much about the war

(05:57):
that everyone pays attention to in US history, the War
of eighteen twelve.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Oh, that is very Florida coated.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
For it is a Florida coated war. I see, you
know more about the War of eighteen twelve than I did.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Oh only because of Ghost Church. That was for I
ended up learning one thousand times more because I think
the only thing I do about the War of eighteen
twelve is that it had most certainly happened and when
then that was it?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yeah, Yeah, it's hard to forget when the War of
eighteen twelve happened.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
That is one of its main features.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, although you'd think it was like neatly constrained by
the year eighteen twelve, but that's not the case.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
No, it also the drama.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
It also went on after it ended.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, didn't it keep going until like fourteen fifteen?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, they like some way. Well, part of the problem,
we'll talk about it later. But part of the problem
is that they signed the agent to settle it. But
this was decades before the Transcontinental Telegraph. Oh, so they
kept fighting for months before word came that the war

(07:13):
was over.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Brutal, brutal Okay, very war again, very War of eighteen
twelve coded.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, and this is not a story. Don't worry, dear listeners,
not a story about the War of eighteen twelve. Think
of that as that as like the backdrop, like you're
watching a period piece the romance.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
My working title for this for our dropbox folder is
behind the War.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Of eighteen twelve.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Because I'm trash. Yeah, so I can't imagine that the
War of eighteen twelve was the cool person who did
cool things.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
I know, absolutely not. Although there are some surprise good
guys in this story. I don't want to spoil it,
but I'll give you a hint. Is the group of
people that I am second least likely to ever call
the good guys of an episode. Ooh well wait h

(08:10):
it probably goes like Rhodesians and Nazis are number one,
and then America or whatever. Okay, it's like the third
or fourth least likely.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Oh wait, I an American president. You're close.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Oh okay, yeah, you're not that far off.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
So this week's story is like a lot of our stories.
The big basic gist of it is like every beautiful
moment in history ever, a group of people found community
and solidarity amidst the horror movie that is most of history.
They set about to live their lives and were eventually
destroyed by this or that empire. It's a story worth
hearing again and again because all of our lives eventually end,

(08:49):
and some of our lives have these great, beautiful moments
of freedom. And that's accidentally the cool people formula. This
is the story of a place called negro Fort. You
ever heard of negro Fort?

Speaker 3 (09:03):
I have not.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
I hadn't either. Besides when I first heard about the
story and added it to my list of one day
I'm going to do this.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Story, and day is now.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
This story is a funny mess of identities. It is
mostly about black ex slaves, some born in the US,
some born in Africa, some born in Spanish colony, living
in a Spanish colony while wrapping the British flag and
the red coat. That's our surprise. The hero of the

(09:34):
story is the British Empire.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
We wow, that is number three, isn't it? That even
comes before American president. Wow, that's that's a that's a
difficult chafe. I'm in.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, well, don't worry. A American president before he's president
is the main antagonist. Okay, my favorite folk punk band
used to be named after or the bad guy president.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
As I said to.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
You before, when you told me and that you were
doing this, I was like, there's I thought the only
good British person was James Stout and uh, you know,
Honorey mentioned Jake Hanrahan.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
What is this so very exciting here?

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, James Madison. Now, I was like, that's not a bed.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
There's a band called AJJ that used to be called
Andrew Jackson Jeehat and then they were like, oh, that's
a bad name, and then they changed their name.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
It sure is. And that's also the name of an
undert well, depending on who you an underrated Broadway musical Bloody,
Bloody Andrew Jackson.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Oh I haven't seen this, but I mean it has
a better at least it knows that this man is.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Bad, better than AJJ. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, well we'll talk about all that later. So this
story is also the story of a pattern we're going
to see not in the show, but in history again
and again, just one hundred years earlier than usual, because
this is the story about the United States deciding that
it is in its own best interests to go blow

(11:06):
shit up in a foreign country without asking to defend
the interests of wealthy, white supremacist Americans.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Hmm, okay, it sounds like them.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, it's just the twentieth century, only it happened in
the early nineteenth.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah, and it's also the twenty first. I mean it's
like they're not over it.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
No, yeah, that nothing's gonna it. Basically, we came out
the gate. It wasn't even fifty years after we became
like thirty years after we became a republic when they
did this shit.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Sorry, I'm just I've got my hand on my heart
and I'm looking at my flag. Just I forgot it
was an audio medium for a second.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Well, don't worry. This is also a story that lets
me do my favorite thing ever, which just talk shit
on the American Revolution. Oh but because in order to
talk about the War of eighteen twelve, being me, I
have to say something about the revolution I wore. I've
covered the rev Lutionary War a bunch of times on
this show. Basically the lay of the rest. A lot
of the propaganda we hear growing up in America the

(12:05):
British Empire is really bad. All empires bad, British Empire
among the worst. But in this case, England kind of
managed to be more or less the lesser evil in
the Revolutionary War, at least from the point of view
of most black and Indigenous people in North America. One
of the huge reasons for the War of Independence was
because American settlers wanted to go west and steal more

(12:26):
land from various indigenous nations, but the king didn't want
to let them, so they throw a fit aka war.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
God, you can refer to every war as a little
fit that someone is throwing to the detriment of millions,
can't you, wow?

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, pretty much. Being a slave society is a huge
military weakness, and this is something that doesn't come up enough.
I think it has always been this case and it
will always be the case. And it came up in
the American Civil War. One of the many reasons of
the South loss is because it had an economy based
on sl When you have an economy based on slavery,

(13:04):
you are sitting on a powder keg and you know it.
And so now your primary motive is to make sure
no one blows up this powder keg that you're sitting
on top of, right, okay, because you can always have
slaver volts and they will fuck you up, right. And
when most of the people in your country aren't treated
like people, it means most of the people in your

(13:25):
country hate the fucking government. The British learned that during
the Revolutionary War when they armed black and indigenous groups
promising to free the black enslaved people from slavery and
or get indigenous treaties respected. Britain famously lost the Revolutionary War.
That's why it's called the Revolutionary War, yep.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
But it did name the word till after it ended,
which I think was kind of fun.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, what do you mean? Probably I wonder what the Firs.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Are named after the outcome, not all of them. We're
of eighteen.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Twelve unclear, Yeah, well the worst northern gret never mind.
In the end, it did work out. This deal that
the Brits made did work out for the twenty thousand
or so black men who fought for their freedom and
were freed during the Revolutionary War by the British Empire.

(14:19):
What does that have to do with Florida. Well, I'm
glad I asked.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Florida here, I'm here. I second that ask.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Okay, great Florida spent most of its hit his history
inhabited by indigenous people, but in fifteen thirteen the Spanish
were like, oh, it's ours now, and they got the
name from land of flowers, and it was kind of
a forgotten colony for a while. Spain didn't really give
a shit about Florida pretty much the entire time it

(14:48):
had Florida maybe like right at the beginning, they were
into it for a little while. Then we talked about
this another time. You get the Seven Years War, which
started in seventeen fifty six and then ran seven years,
and this was World War zero two. European colonial powers
were like, let's turn the entire world into a fucking battleground. Yeah, Florida.

(15:11):
The end result for this is that the British got it.
I'm actually curious when you were doing Ghost Church and
you went to Florida and stuff you said you ended
up learning a decent bit about Florida history. Is that
because like, I feel like I don't learn about like
Florida as like a previously Spanish controlled area much like.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Yeah, I mean, I granted all of this research was
conducted nearly two years ago. Now, so grain of salt
in what I recall off the top of my head.
But yeah, when I was looking into this, I was
researching this spiritualist camp in central Florida, and I wanted
to because the spiritualist camp pulls from a lot of

(15:51):
it is a majority white camp, that all of its
architecture is different from a lot of what you see
in central Florida. It looks like a New England town
because it was it was sort of migrated from upstate
New York. And in spiritualism, they pull really heavily from
tropes surrounding American indigenous people, but seemed to have little

(16:15):
to know contact with any indigenous community. And so I
did some research into what that what the spiritualist community
thought happened on the land they now live on, and
then sort of contrasted that with what actually happened. And Yeah,
I mean I think that it was a series of

(16:35):
that I was not aware of, and I would be
very curious because I didn't. I grew up in Massachusetts.
I didn't have close contact with Florida. I'd be curious
if Floridians grew up with this history at all. That
there were a series of armed conflicts over the course
of hundreds of years, and that the land in Florida
was un you know, like undeveloped in the capitalistic sense

(16:57):
for a really long time, and then it changed hands
so many times in spite of not very much about
the landscape changing.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah, no, see, Okay, So that actually brings up a
really good point, which is that throughout the entire thing
that we're going to be talking about, there's not a
lot of people living in Florida. You know, this is
not yet where old people go to die, right, and
it's mostly actually under indigenous control through most of what

(17:27):
we're going to talk about. But yeah, world War during
World War zero, which no one calls it that except me.
The Seven Years' War, Yeah, totally. The British get it.
At the end of that war, It's part of their whole.
You know. It was kind of a stalemate war and
the British were like, all right, we're going to take this,
and Spain actually paid to get almost all their people

(17:50):
out of there, which I think this is now my
conjecture is part of why there's not a ton of
continuity like culturally or anything like that, is that most
of the Spanish colonists were uh transported out when Britain
took control. The brit split it into two colonies. You've
got West Florida, which is the current day Panhandle, and

(18:10):
then the southern trunk of a bunch of current days
states west of it almost to New Orleans. And then
you've got East Florida, which is the actual peninsula Florida
we all know in.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Love and love and love and love were absolute.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah. I almost feel bad, Like I feel like everyone
makes now I hate Florida because of the fucking piece
of shit fascist who hates everyone of marginalized identities who
rules the place.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
But people live there, like marginalized people live there.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like even the like the famous
like Florida man thing. I am now completely speaking out
of a headline I read a while ago, so like,
but the famous like Florida man fights the drunk alligator
while on crack or whatever. That whole thing I think
comes to something to do with like a law where
like newspapers are allowed to port more of that shit

(19:01):
than like most states or something interesting.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, and then now everyone it is absolutely true and
I totally am remembering this very clearly from an article
I read a year ago.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Mm hmm, well, I mean, yeah, I feel like that
is like a very common and I've heard it with
friends and just like people I follow who are from Florida,
seems to be like a general complaint with the way
that like it's it's whatever, one of the easiest states
to dunk on. Yeah, but there are so many Like

(19:33):
the reason that we hate all the fascist laws that
exist there is because marginalized people live there and not
exactly not talked about quite as frequently. And then occasionally
you see a Florida Man headline and it gets you.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Yeah, and see, I would be very proud of that
part of it.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
If I'm yeah, I'd be like, look at we're we're
a sturdy people.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, totally, we're not dead. No, So it's now a
British colony, and Britain is like, look they're in there,
like good guy, arc. I don't know entirely why. They're
basically like, look, you all don't have to pay taxes.
We just kind of want you to live there, and
you don't have to pay taxes because you're not making

(20:16):
any profit yet. Once you start making a profit, we'll
revisit it, but for now, you're fine. Just do your thing.
So basically the whole taxation without representation thing that the
rest of the colonies did, Florida didn't give a shit.
They were like, oh, no taxation, no representation, no problem.

(20:38):
You know, we got none of it. It's fine whatever
in us issue.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
So they didn't join the rebellion against the British and
the Revolutionary War, and by and large they were loyalists. Okay, well,
by and large they were indigenous. Indigenous people outnumbered the
British colonists by about three to one during the time
of the Revolutionary War. Of those indigenous groups, most notably,
you've got the Muscogee people, who are often called the Creek,

(21:05):
which is a large and diverse group of different peoples
who were formed in the Muscogee Creek Confederacy. And then
you've got future friend of the pod, the Seminoles, who
are more recent group of people basically a bunch of
folks who really really didn't want to give up the
land of white people and included a lot of black
folk as well.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, that's a lot of I mean, I guess, and
that's coming off of this period of time. A lot
of what I was looking at were the Seminole Wars.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, yeah, they come right, the first Seminole Wars like
kind of the end of most of today's story. And
actually the thing that we're going to talk about kind
of kicks off the Seminole Wars.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
Ooh okay, cool.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, eventually I'm going to cover the Seminoles because they're
fucking cool and interesting. Well, specifically, you know, the way
in which they resisted US imperialism. Basically, their whole deal
was like We're going to to the swamps and the
deepest woods and fuck up anyone who tries to colonize us.
So Florida, they backed the British during the Revolutionary War,

(22:08):
but then during that war, the Spanish were like, what
if Florida was ours again? So they just went ahead
and took it, and Spain has Florida for the whole
of the story we're talking about today. Okay, much like you,
dear listener, also have available to you the entire story today,
sweet sweet opportunities to buy objects and or services. I'm

(22:38):
with you from the sponsors of today's show, who we
all wholeheartedly agree with on every issue.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
I just got off a call with them.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah. Yeah, this show brought to you by big sponsor.
Here's what a big sponsor has to say, and we're back.
I hope you're enjoying those services and goods.

Speaker 3 (23:09):
Oh yeah, I've got I've got. Oh, this is kind
of a fun experiment. Whatever you just heard advertise to you.
I currently have underneath my table. Whatever it is, it's
there and it feels great.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm jealous because I didn't get to it
in time.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Mm hmm. But next it's a limited time offer.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Next one I'm going to get. So okay, what's next
on our context list for today's story? Slavery. I don't
know if you knew this, but the founders of this
nation were slavers.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, I've heard, I've I've heard about.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
It, yeah, or slave owners. Whatever I think owns people
is enough to get you the title slaver in my book. Yeah,
and a lot of them specifically did the buying and
sell and people are still like, oh, slave owner, and
I'm like whatever, fuck all these people are not even
any redundant. Yeah, yeah, okay, But then there's weird nuance

(24:11):
that is going to relate to today's story, not nuance
that makes anyone involve a better person. To be clear,
there's just a bunch of different types of white supremacists
who are trying to run the country in the late
eighteenth century during the Revolutionary warn't after it. Most of
the Founding Fathers were this weird variety that actually, like

(24:32):
later Southern Confederate types, disagreed with very actively because the
Founding fathers, most of them are like a ton of
them owned slaves and they were white supremacists, but they
were interested in the gradual abolition of slavery because they
wanted a white only society.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh god.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, they were like, we gotta kick every all the
black people out of here.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Yeah, new type of slavery just dropped.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
That's like a galaxy brain racist. That's okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
But it's like it's instead of it being like a two,
instead of it being like a more racist than the
previous racist, it's like two orbiting stars of racism. You know.
The galaxy is a binary system.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
What's clear is that no one is right and or
anywhere close. God that is mind.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah, okay, even like George Washington and shit was one,
even though he's like the famous horror movie teeth made
out of the teeth ripped out of his enslaved people's faces.
Even he was like kind of like, oh, slavery is
like not the best, but really, I mean, obviously white
people and black people put it together. So the Articles
of Confederation, because we were confederacy for a while before

(25:56):
we became a republic, didn't make any rules about slavery.
That was up to the states. Overall, slavery was starting
to go out of style in the entire Western world.
The northern states started voting for abolition really early on.
Pennsylvania didn't even wait till the war with England was over.
They passed gradual abolition where all children were born free,

(26:17):
no more enslaved people could be trafficked into the state,
and a lot of the Northern abolitionists, it's like, not
all of them were the type of white supremacist I
was just talking about, but like that was among the
reasons why people would argue for either at whatever.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
It's all messy, okay, Okay, Yeah, I mean it's like
there's always tricky talking about Northern abolitionists because they feel
like it just ends up like painting them with the
very broad brush of like the good guys, when it's
like there were so many absurd shades of gray, and
then even if they were working in the right direction,
it was often not for the right reason.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
I don't know. I'll just yeah, shit, absolutely for every
John Brown. You have, all the people's names I don't
remember because they're bad people.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
That's an other show.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, it's a good people's show, Yeah, exactly. The South,
of course, was famously very into slavery. Even during the Confederation,
Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which was like, no slavery
north and west of the Ohio River. The Northwest Territories
does not mean what we would call Northwest. It's like
Ohio and fucking up into Minnesota and shit, and by

(27:24):
the time people were writing the Constitution, most people wanted
to end the transatlantic slave trade. So there was this
like deal in the Constitution where it was like, all right, well,
we're not gonna do it for twenty years at least,
And it was basically all the northern states were like, fuck,
if we don't like, if we don't allow for some slavery,
the South isn't going to join the union because that

(27:46):
tension was there since the very founding of the United States.
The Constitution itself was going to mention slavery openly, but
then it didn't because, as slave owner James Madison put it,
it was wrong to quote it in the Constitution that
there could be property in men. Basically, they are They

(28:07):
all knew that. They were hypocrites who were like gonna
burn in hell for all eternity because they preached about
all men being created equal and that enslaving people. They
all fucking knew it, and they all still fucking did it.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
I hate and yet we have a million boring ass
movies and plays about how right they were to say
what they said, And you never see the note session
where James Madison is like, now, hold on, yeah, fellas. Yeah,
I just noticed there's a bit of a chafe in
one of these. Yeah, one of these, and so it's

(28:40):
just a lie biomission. God.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah. And the Constitution authorized the federal government to suppress
slave insurrections, and it also said that free states couldn't
free runaways. These were like the concessions that they were making, right,
The government wasn't allowed to ban the transatlantic slave trade
for at least twenty years. The Constitution was bad enough

(29:02):
that seventy years later, in eighteen fifty four, the abolitionist
William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution and
called it, quote a covenant with death and an agreement
with hell woo. And I really just threw that in
because I had a fucking sick line.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Yeah, that's really metals.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Yeah. The nad As pro slavery founding fathers were the
white supremacist They wanted the white Republic, and then they
of course wanted to take all the land from the
indigenous people. And whatever the reason I'm bringing all this
shit up, Partly it's because I enjoy talking shit on
the founding of the United States, but also because it's

(29:42):
important to understand that slavery was already a divisive issue
right from the start of this country. During the end
of the eighteenth century, slavery in the western world was
on a decline. The US South was fucking obsessed with
buying and selling people, and they were kind of an outlier,
and this, of course had disastrous consequences for everyone on
the South's obsession with the expansion of slavery, the peculiar institution,

(30:05):
including this had very negative influences on the heroes of
this week's story. So, while slavery is starting to become
a little bit less popular, over all, the Southern plantation
slave society is growing and they're getting like more and more,
like no, this is who we fucking are, right, It
is like, we're so cool. The Louisiana Purchase of eighteen
oh three, when the which is what's kind of in

(30:28):
the name in the air eighteen o three, the United
States purchase Louisiana. Yeah, it opened up a ton of
land into the court of King Cotton, as it was
called at the time. And so they were like, man,
we're not allowed to do this up north. Where else
can we go? And then they were like, oh, hey,

(30:48):
Florida what's up? Can we can we show up there
and be more of an evil empire?

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, there's Florida even like within the world of the South,
feels like for hundreds of years has been its own
thing in terms of conversation, Like, it's obviously very much
a part of the South, but when you think of
the South, Florida it's still at least to be feels

(31:18):
like its own thing and has always been treated that way.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
And this like I finally understand why after learning more
about the history of Florida, you know, because the rest
of the South was like we're the South for like
fucking hundreds of years, right, and then Florida was like
there's a couple swamps here and some traders.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Right, and then like that, the you know, industrial developed
sense didn't develop an identity until far later than like
most places did. And so it's just and that's why
it was like a sitting duck for you know, Mickey
Mouse to like raw fuck it at that? Yep, I

(31:59):
guess I stand by that sentence. Why not?

Speaker 2 (32:03):
What could go wrong? The weird timeline we're in is
where Disney and fucking what's that asshole's name? Disantas are
like at each other, you.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Know, yeah, and you're just like, I don't huh.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I've played enough risk that I know that what happens
here is you encourage both of them and then you
stand back and wait.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah, just wait for bob Iger and DeSantis to get
into a slap fight.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Interesting. For so long, my friend told me this, and
then I realized a long time later that it was
not It was obviously not true, but that bob Iger's
name was said like Bonie Verar because it looks the same,
so I thought it was Bobi Gaar for a while.

(32:52):
It's not.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Wait, I can't even I don't know how to spell
any of these people's names.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
It's fine, and we could keep moving.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Okay, I'm sorry Sophie's doing that. Margaret didn't get a
reference space.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
I really enjoyed it, and part of our audience will
think it's really funny.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
But you don't need to comfort me. It's okay. It
didn't work. It didn't work. I liked it.

Speaker 1 (33:20):
You're doing great, sweetie.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
All right, just keep telling me the story.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
All right. So Spanish Florida is like, fuck, we really
don't want to become the States because some of the
people who lived in that area include Indigenous people who
weren't a big fan of the US's whole genocide the
indigenous people, policy creole people who were generally free Catholic

(33:46):
descendants of Spanish and Black parentage who weren't excited about
a strict racial caste system showing up and all of
a sudden, you know, being at the bottom of it.
And British loyalists who you know, branded as traders, so
they weren't really stoked. They weren't like, oh, man, the
US to come on down.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
M h.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
The southern slave owners, though, were like, you know, rubbing
their hands together and salivating at all the potential plantation land.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Sounds like them.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Spanish Florida was still a slave society, but it was
one wherein slave people had a lot more rights. Like like,
it's so hard to explain because like often slavery apologists
will be like, oh, everywhere heead slavery. It's like that's true,
and also not a good excuse. No, I know, I know, right,

(34:37):
But US chattel slavery was worse. It was its own
fucked up thing that everyone was like, yeah, it was
kind of fucked up. Can we keep getting away with us,
you know, and eventually.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
We write this down that we're doing this.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, So I mean, like, like fuck
slave societies absolutely in Spanish Florida, in slave people had
basic property and marriage rights and they could buy themselves
out of slavery. So a lot of people ran the
fuck away from the evil empire of the United States
into the Spanish territories all the time and like to

(35:19):
have a chance at a better life. And you wind
up with a lot of maroon societies, which are in
this case it's both black people integrated into seminal society
but also independent maroon societies. And if you really want
to get into and I barely do, but I feel
like it'd be lied by a mission to not mention
this if you really want to get into the blurriness

(35:40):
of the gradiation of slavery. The seminal society was also
a slave society, but it was different even than the
Spanish slave society. By and large, Seminole slavery was closer
to serfdom. People lived their lives and then gave some
percentage of their crops to their owners. It is real mess.
See both the indigenous seminoles and the black seminoles believed

(36:03):
that they had to work together to destroy the US
in order to destroy slavery and colonization all in one go.
And basically we're like, oh, we're gonna get rid of
slavery once we destroy the United States. That is I
want to do so much more reading about the seminole
and all that, but that is the you know, gist
of what I've read.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
I only got the tip of the iceberg. And it's
fascinating and like you're speaking to your point, messy as hell.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, and you have a lot of times where indigenous
seminoles and black seminoles will fight alongside one another and
defend each other, and like, you know, it is a
a thing whatever, moral relativism whatever.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
Okay, more more an hour and moral relativism.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Go and that's it. That's the end of the show.
So maroon societies, Maroon societies are this very common phenomenon
across the New World of different society. I had not
heard of marine society, so I was a grown ass adult.
I'm curious if you had.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
I had not known.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
So there's this very common phenomenon across the New World
of Different societies where people escaping slavery end up setting
up their own resistance societies, Like all over the fucking place,
there's ones that lasted hundreds of years, you know, you
havely Yeah, Like we've covered a couple of them. They'll
be called different things in different languages. Colombo is another

(37:37):
word for this style of society, and in English it
usually gets called maroon society. The most famous one of
the United States that I really want to cover at
some point, that we touched on in our one of
our episodes a long ast time ago, was the Great
Dismal Swamp in northeast North Carolina, where like a ton
of people lived for hundreds of years resisting colonization, and

(37:59):
maroon societies were often they were like mostly black and
runaway enslaved folks, but there was also like poor white
people often would end up in them because they were like, well,
fuck the society I'm from. That one gets played up
a little bit by like white radicals like me. You
get really excited about that part. And then also indigenous
folks who were like putting in their lot together, right, Yeah.

(38:21):
And then there was like huge one that we covered
in an episode we did about Brazil. We're going to
cover more of them. I fucking they're amazing, and I
just didn't know about it. I was just like, oh,
people who were enslaved, it sucked and they had no
options except to goes or the white people in the north.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Right, right right, which is like, I mean, whatever, the
story we learned a bagillion times about, like, well, what
is the advantage of teaching get that way?

Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's obvious? Yeah, totally. Yeah. So today we're going to
talk about a maroon society, a really particular one, not
a very long lived one, but the largest one inside
what is now the United States. Spoilers in Florida. You
probably figured that part out. And in order to talk
about it, we're gonna talk about the War of eighteen twelve.

(39:07):
But before we talk about the War of eighteen twelve,
we're gonna talk about one hundred and twelve one hundred
eighteen oney, eight hundred and twelve things that you can
buy for me for Christmas. Because all of these ads
I want you, the listener to buy for me for Christmas.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
I've got my feet steeped in the last thing we advertise,
and I just know that the next one is going
to be delicious.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Mmm mmmmmm sweet.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
I hope it's a car.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Yeah. I love when I get ads about how you
should buy new cars all the time and new phones.
If you don't have a new phone every year, then
you're a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
I hope it's not a car, because, as we've establish,
it's under your desk right now. And if that's under
your desk right now, I'm really concerned.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's under my desk, and I'm going to eat it.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah, concern continues.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Here's the ads, and we're back. The War of eighteen
twelve is also known as the War. I probably took
a test on in eighth grade, but I don't remember
anything except that the Brits burned down Washington. Or if
you live in Maryland, you might know it as the

(40:20):
reason we have really shitty license plates. Ooh yeah, we
didn't used to have American flags in our license plates,
but then at some point people were like War of
eighteen twelve, and then we had really an annoying license plate.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Where's the War of eighteen twelve? Hive came to the
license plates specifically, but interesting to know I've seen. Yeah,
my family member lives in Maryland and I never understood it.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, Maryland also has the really nice ones, the like
Save of the Bay. One has like a heron on it.
But there's that northern well of.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
A state bird. Love a state bird and a license
plate more.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Of that well Maryland mostly. I think I've already told
people I'm from Maryland, mostly famous for having crabs on
your driver's license.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Mhm, I mean like you cornered the market on crab culture.
I found out recently that my my kitten was I
adopted him, and they gave me like the cross streets
of where he'd been found, and he was found slash
born in front of a chain restaurant called Oh My Crab, Like,

(41:31):
oh my God, but crab for some reason, Oh.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
That actually really fits.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
And really it resonated with me. I'm like, I feel
like he's got oh my crab, you know, energy, he
carried it with him, he does, he does. I love
that for him, my crab. I'm to try to get
that into my daily language.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
You should just actually, every time that the word God
is in something, you should replace it with crab.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
I need to stop taking the name of God in vain.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
So crab damned tam Denoyd.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
That's really like Grandma. That's some Grandma, shit.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
These crabless heathens, all right. The War of eighteen twelve,
the short version, the US got real mad at Britain,
so they declared war in eighteen twelve. Yeah. Why they
were mad is something that's fun to argue about. There's
two main perspectives, the main American perspective and the one

(42:35):
that actually probably is a little bit. It's like the
main one that you hear about, and it's a little
bit the more one. Probably it was about American honor
because Britain kept fucking with American ships and they were
restricting trade, and they were pressed ganging American soldier American
sailors into being in the British navy, which, to be fair,
is reason enough to go to war. Stealing people and

(42:58):
forcing them to do labor is always reason enough to
go to war against anyone who would do such a thing.
That's my subtle anyway. So the other reason is that
Britain was making it really hard for Americans to steep,
keep stealing land from indigenous groups, and also the Americans
wanted to steal Canada.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Specifically, the US was trying to hard to balance the
like slave and free states as it expanded and the
South had just got in Louisiana. So the North, it's
only fair the North should get to stay, Canada should.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Get to stook it. And I understand that this was
a legitimate plan, but it just does sound like when
Grew from Despicable Me describes wanting to steal the Moon.
I'm like, yeah, sure, you're gonna steal Canada.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Best of luck. Yeah, No, it like, why would you
take your own hat? It makes no sense exactly. Yeah,
you'll like this part. One of the reasons the South
was against annexing Canada is that it meant not only
would it mean more free states, but it would mean
more Catholics.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
You know, I were always i, Margaret, I feel like
you always find a random w for Catholics.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, why not. Yeah, if I can find
somebody who died in tuberculosis, or I can find some
like anti papist nonsense.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
And so you know, there's got to be a fair
amount of overlap on that event diagram.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
That's true. Yeah, And so the British they were also
doing this thing that pissed off the US. They were
supporting future friend of the pod To Cumsa and his
confederacy and I want to do more about him. At
some point, he was one of the first indigenous leaders
to say, let's create one big confederation in resistance to
the American Empire. So he like he spent the year

(44:55):
of eighteen eleven traveling around the United States in the
area west of the United States trying to build an
anti American confederation. And one of his sick quotes when
he was talking about how to deal with the US,
he demanded war now, war always, war on the living,
war on the dead. Who medalist fuck.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah. I was like, that's another that's like a rob
zombie character.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
That's great. Yeah, And so he went around he was like, look,
if we do this, Britain in Spain will arm us
and then we can go fuck up the Americans. He
only partially succeeded because the US had been not all
indigenous groups were against the United States, right, Yeah, but

(45:42):
British support for his war on the US was part
of why the US went to war with Britain. So,
for whatever reasons, in eighteen twelve the US declared war.
England was like, yeah, whatever, sure, because they were busy
dealing with a Napoleon and a war in Europe. But
then when the US invaded Canada, it was still British.

(46:03):
So Britain was like, fine, I guess we have a
war whatever if you really want one.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, really really teen girl about it?

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Yeah? Absolutely stop. Yeah, they were like could you wait?

Speaker 3 (46:16):
But fine, I'll sacrifice some of my own citizens and
murder hundreds of thousands of others.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Uh. Yeah. Well, mostly they first just armed indigenous and
black groups, which is like both like noble.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
And forgetting that they're the keep forgetting that they're like
not the bad guys here.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
I know, all right, I know, but it's like all right,
it's still like part of the reason that they're arming
all these people is that they don't want to fight
the war, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
Decums have died in the Battle of the Thames on
October eighteen thirteen as part of the War of eighteen twelve,
and once again, like last time, Britain looked at the
US and was like, all right, how do we fuck
up America? Oh right, they're on a fucking powder keg.
Let's give the guns to runaway slaves and to indigenous people.
And in the spring of eighteen fourteen, Napoleon gave up

(47:06):
the French throne and some shit that I haven't researched
enough yet that everyone who's listening knows more about than me,
and Britain was able to turn his attention to the
US War. They invaded and burned the US capital and
the White House, which wasn't called the White House yet
it was called like the President's Mansion or whatever the fuck,
and black fugitive ex slaves were their allies in that

(47:28):
they acted as scouts, spies, soldiers, sailors, and some of
them did the burning, which is cool as fuck. Fuck Britain,
but fuck the US.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, you're really presented with the real trick heutory of villains.
I'm pleased. Whatever.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah. So when people fled slavery and crossed into British
controlled territory during the war, which thousands and thousands of
people did, the British helped women and children get passage
to Bermuda and to other British colonies to live free.
Black men were given a choice. They could either go
with everyone else, or they could stay and fight, and
if they did, they would be given a red coat

(48:05):
and a musket and they would be part of integrated
military units, which was not something that anyone else was
fucking thinking about at that point, right, and given a chance.
Some of them were non integrated units, but some of
them were integrated units. We'll talk a little bit more
about that, okay, And given a chance to shoot the
people who were trying to own them. And so a

(48:27):
lot of people were like, yeah, that sounds fucking great.
Give me a fucking gun. I want to go kill
these slavers.

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Never mind this red coat.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, I have a gun. It's the point, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
but okay, Well, actually, in a weird way, the legitimacy
of the red coat meant a lot to people, a
lot of them. It was like it was kind of
a you can't fuck with us. We're under the union
jack now and like oh.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Yeah, like sheltered by a larger like infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, because those white Americans are the most deluded people
in the history of the world. The British were like, hey,
you know what, are you mad that we stole your property.
I'll tell you what, if you approach under a flag
of truce, we will give you a chance to personally
plead your case and try to get your runaway slaves
to come back to you. So and this happened all

(49:21):
over the United States and people kept doing it. All
of these slave owners were like, well, I'm nice to Ted,
so of course Ted will come back to me. And
so they all went under a flag of truce and
they were like, come on, Bud, remember those good times.
Oh my, you will be shocked to know that at

(49:44):
least in a few places, a few like like one
percent of people or something or less were like fine,
fuck it. But at least in the particular case where
they did it, in like Maryland, Virginia, DC area or whatever, like,
not a single person voluntarily went back to slavery, and
it no kidding that they kept trying it is the

(50:06):
most indicative of how deluded people are ever.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, yeah, or just likeugh, god, that's so depressing and
embarrassing and just like you because that is just like
proof positive that I don't know. It feels like almost
an answer to James Madison being like, well, guys, we
shouldn't mention it, we shouldn't codify slavery because of what

(50:35):
we said earlier. It's like less self awareness than that
of like truly taking the time to delude yourself into
thinking you are both a slave owner and a good person. Yeah,
and that like you're such a good person as a
bad person that that Oh god, no, that's so embarrassing.

(50:55):
But also like, ugh, I would love I would just
love to read the journy in an entry after like
you won't believe what happened today.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
There's a lot of them. The main book about Negro
Force called The Battle of Negro Force, and it's a
really good book, and it has a lot of quotes
of like the because a lot of the specific specifics
we know about is people later writing and being like, oh,
I went today and tried to get ted back, or
or it's Ted writing being like, oh, the guy came
back or whatever and tried to get me. I want

(51:26):
to watch like the reality TV show not but set
then like not obviously recreating the situation. Yeah. So part
of the reason that Britain was so eager to free
folks in the US is their own honor. Britain had
always seen itself as like the bastion of liberty, which
is funny and ironic. But then after the US, funny

(51:46):
is the US? Yeah, But after the US Revolution, the
US was getting the reputation of being the bastion of liberty,
and so Britain loved pointing out that they're a slave society.
Had just been like, you know, who's unfree in your territory?
All of the following people, you pieces of shit. And

(52:09):
in the South during the War of eighteen twelve, the
ostensibly neutral Spanish were like, you know, we hate the US. Anyway,
you can set up a fort in our territory with
which to plan an attack on the US South. And
so the British did, and they set up the Core
of Colonial Marines, which is kind of our There's like
two cool people this week. One of them is the

(52:30):
Core of Colonial Marines, and one of them is the
Negro Fort, which is the people who remained. But we'll
talk about that later. The corp of Colonial Marines was
a multi racial army of black, white, and indigenous troops.
I read in one place that it was all white officers,
but then in another source I read about at least
one black guy we're going to talk about later, who
was a lieutenant. So I think that the top ranks

(52:52):
were white people, but there were black officers. And they
built this big, old fucking fort together, and they picked
a site called Prospect Bluff, lisas was called an English
and it's at the mouth of the apalachic Cola River,
which is totally a river I had definitely heard of before,
because I am definitely a geography knowing person.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
It just tripped off the top.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah, it is gorgeous. Yeah, no, totally. I didn't like,
go back and make ian editor where I had to
say it again. Oh no, no, yeah. And so they
seized the area. They get this army right, and it's
like and they're like, all right, well there's this trading
post here, but fuck them. They have enslaved people anyway.
So they just show up take the area free all

(53:33):
the people who had been working there, and the free
people who had been working there or the unfree people
who had been working there joined as free people to
now work on the fort. And they started building, and
they built this real fuck off fort. Eventually it started off.
You know, they're expanding on it right by the end.
It's got high stone walls, it's got a wide moat

(53:53):
as stone buildings to store gunpowder and shit, all surrounded
by forest full of like swampy forest full of one
hundred foot tall pine trees.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Okay, this is some like infrastructure I'm familiar with, Like
the vaguely medieval stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah. Yeah, there's people hitting people with swords in this story,
you know.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is this is my Florida.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah yeah, that's right, Yeah, medieval Florida. And so they
went around and they went to all these indigenous groups
and all these leaders and were like, hey, do you
want a ton of guns and food and shit. If
you're down to fight the Americans who keeps stealing all
this shit from you, we will help you fight them.
Bonus points if you could also go around and tell

(54:37):
any enslave people, anyone who runs away from America or
Spain whose territory were in, they're free now if they
make it to us. Eventually, three thousand Muskogie warriors donned
redcoats and joined the army against their common enemy. Others
went and recruited people to slavery, and they built an army,

(54:59):
a really cool multi racial army. Their officer Okay, I
hate how we know more about their officer, the white officer,
than we do about almost any of the other people. Right, Yeah,
this guy's really fucking cool. His name is Edward Nichols,
and he's his irishman.

Speaker 3 (55:19):
Okay, I'm already listening.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, he dedicated his life to fighting slavery as well
as fighting for the rights of indigenous North Americans against
the American government. That was like what he did with
his life. He was wild. He was born a Protestant
in Ireland. Can can't help that, you know, no one,
no one chooses. He joined the Royal Navy at eleven.
He fought in one hundred and seven battles in his life.

(55:42):
He survived starting when he was eleven. Yeah, yeah, well,
I think by sixteen he's like really more doing the
war stuff. I think he's like kind of like a
ship hand or something. At the first.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
It does. I mean, he's got a he's got a
really good like movie protagonist name. They're like, yeah, Nichols.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Oh, he's a wild card. His lookout for Nichols. Fighting
Nichols is his name during most of the story.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Of course, he's got an Irish sounding nickname, fighting Nichols.
That's Irish as a hell.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Yeah. During his life, he survived a broken leg, being
shot through the torso, shot through the arm, hid in
the head with a sword, almost killed, bayonetted through the chest,
and lost an eye to grape shot. That one's actually
gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
During the story, God, you're your move recipe and that's
wild all before antibiotics.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
He lived to be eighty five years old.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
That, oh God, that's the certainly the result of some
sort of witchcraft, and celebrate that witchcraft.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
That's why did.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
It at any point? I mean, I'm not expecting you
to know his like totally. At any point. Did he
have to slow down at any point or was he
just like this way.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
I don't know how much of this eighty five years
he was fighting, you know, because I like, I like
thought about it. I like ran into him and I
was like, I wonder if I'm going to save him
and just do him later. And I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
I mean, it sounds like, you know, if we're dis
covering one exploit today, it sounds like you've got exploitss
if he started when he was eleven.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
Yeah, Like the mccaullay culkin of being this.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Guy and his abolitionism comes from religious fervor sort of.
John Brown's style and his actions and the actions of
everyone else that we're going to talk about today too,
are going to inspire John Brown, who's going to specifically
reference negro Ford, although under a different name. After the
war in America, Nichols moves to like the mid Atlantic

(57:47):
or whatever. He starts attacking slave ships as part of
the attempt to destroy the Transatlantic slave trade. There's a
town named after him in the Bahamas called Nichols Town,
named by its founders, who were enslaved people he helped liberate. Okay,
so he's cool. He wasn't in charge of the British post,
but he was in charge of the training, teaching them

(58:08):
how to fire muskets and shit and leading them into battle.
Less than a month into the training, the Americans start
trying to invade Pensacola, and he and his troops show up,
and the Americans are like, in their mind, we don't
want to invade Pensacola. We changed our mind. It's not
we weren't even I don't know what you're talking about.
We weren't going to invade. We were just hanging out.

Speaker 3 (58:28):
To kill who.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Yeah, Oh, that's weird. Yeah. The fact that white, black,
and indigenous soldiers led by an irishman very specifically did
the newspapers complain about that part. The fact that they
were all fighting alongside one another scandalized the American press.
The savages are taking over. Basically, something must be done.

(58:51):
Nothing could be done right away because there was already
a war. All of the getting done was try trying
to happen, you know, right The US side was also
arming indigenous groups. Every war the US has ever gotten
or got up to manage to turn not only different
tribes and nations against each other, but often split them
internally in kind of a brother versus brother way. This

(59:15):
week's story is going to be no different. There's going
to be Indigenous people fighting on both sides of this.
There's this asshole slaver named Benjamin Hawkins who spent decades
quote unquote civilizing the Muskogee, encouraging them to practice chattel
slavery of black people, and paid them bounties to catch
fugitive slaves. So a lot of these indigenous folks are
US allies in the War of eighteen twelve, and they're

(59:38):
promised that they can keep any black people they find
who don't already have owners. Basically, whenever they do any
of these raids, later many of them will feel betrayed
and switch sides. But that's later. But you know what
else is later, Jamie, The rest of might have a
feel it's the rest of the story because because you

(01:00:00):
the super rat army, what are they going to do?
You can't just read a history book or Wikipedia or
the Wikipedia won't get you the good stuff. Unfortunately, you
have to wait till Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
But I want no, I'm gonna wait two whole minutes
and then we're gonna start recording the next Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
That's true. And then when we're done, I'm gonna eat dinner.
I'm so excited.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
We love to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
But before we do any of that, Jamie, what do
you have to plug?

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
I will you know? I want to plug. We the
Unhoused again. We've got new episodes coming out every other Tuesday.
It's hosted and written by the O Henderson, and we
have a bunch of great episodes coming out in the
new year. We have an episode in production that is

(01:00:49):
about living out of trailers and especially a long venice beach.
We have an episode coming out about being unhoused and
queer in LA. We've all this stuff coming out and
I would recommend you subscribe. And then if you want
to read a book about hot dogs, there's one called

(01:01:10):
raw Dog and it's all my faults and you can
get it, and that's what I'll plug.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
And that's why forever for well, eventually people will stop
only making hot dog references when they talk to you.
Won't that be nice?

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I feel
like that's kind of a nice thing where you're like, well,
this is this association is going to be forever. But
then you spend ten hours talking about something more specific
and worse.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
And then it's that, yeah, yeah, it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
Life's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Life is beautiful, Sophie. What do you want to plug?

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
I want to plug that, Jamie said, okay, if I
plug the show for next year, Yeah, yeah, okay, I
want to plug that. We have cool Zone Media are
bringing you a weekly Loftus bring you a new show,
written and hosted, investigated and interviewed with the one and
only Jamie Loftis interviewed. I don't know if that was

(01:02:08):
a good I don't know if I did it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
I did it justice there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
It's true, though I'm not gonna tell you what it's
about because ha ha, but look for it and Mark String.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Coming spring along with the flowers. It's going to be
a blast. I'm so scared. I'm So Scared of Photography
with Robert Mgpei about how to have an intense scripted
weekly podcast and it seems easy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah. I didn't say, oh god, it's going to burn
you out. I said it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
You said easy, easy, easy, easy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
But basically what I'm saying is you're fucking welcome listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Look out for it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
I'm excited. Every Jamie Loftis podcast is a good one, and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Every Jamie Loftis podcast is produced by Sophie Lick Driven
even better.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
If you want to hear more stories, you can listen
to on Sunday. Maybe you already do because it's in
the same podcast feed, but you can listen to cool
Zone Media book Club where fiction and if you want
all of the ad pivots but none of the ads,
subscribe to Cooler Zone Media and we'll see you on Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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visit our website Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out
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