July 9, 2025 • 53 mins
Margaret continues talking 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.
Orginial Air Date: 12.20.23
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder twice a week reminder that sometimes Margaret
runs rerun episodes. Actually that's not very often, but it
is this week and you already know that because you're
not listening to just Wednesday's episode. That would be strange.
But either way, this is a rerun and thanks for
putting up with that. But it's a good story and
(00:25):
I think you'll like it. Hello and welcome to Cool People,
Did Cool Stuff, the show where you don't get to
be the one who decides what's cool. Instead, I the host,
Margaret Kiljoy decide what's cool, which is a strange irony,
but there's no way around it because no one can
(00:45):
start podcasts because it's illegal and the law and morality
are identical. Our guest today is Jamie loftus Ty Jamie.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Hi, Margaret, dude to my status is starting a podcast?
I am current considered a fugitive. That's true, but I
think but I think it's actually I think it's it's
worth it to get my little ideas out into the world.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
When podcasts are outlawed, only outlawso podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Me and Deck Shepherd against the world.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's right. That's why we're all going to get the vests.
But we're not gonna tell you what I mean by that. Instead,
I'm gonna introduce the producer, Sophie. That's me, matron of crime.
I'll take it, okay, and are well now. I just
feel bad saying the names of everyone involved because they're
all doing crime. But Ian is our audio engineer, and
(01:44):
everyone is to say Hi Ian, Hi, Ian.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, Hi Ian, Sorry about your recent uh breaking the
law by participating in this evil empire. Oh Jamie, you
know you're my partner in crime and that you're the mastermind.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's true?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
What are you? Jader? Behind them, behind all producers. Yes,
the theme music was written for us by someone who
will not be named lest unwoman get in trouble, and
it worked. Thanks Proud of that one. Today is part
two of a two parter, which is the first time
(02:22):
that's ever happened, not the ninety eighth time that's ever
happened in part one. Okay, this time we're talking about
Negro for It, which was a really amazing maroon community
in Florida when it was Spanish Florida that the US
went and fucked up. In part one, I talked about
how a ton of Indigenous folks were real mad at
the Americans. Right now I want to talk about what
(02:43):
had beens just stolen from them, which is to say,
I get to talk about everyone's favorite person, Andrew Jackson. Yes,
if you ever meet someone who thinks that Andrew Jackson
is a good person, then you have met a bad person,
or at best, a terribly badly informed person.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah. I would say, don't waste your time trying to
fix them unless I know, you know, you've only we've
only got so much time.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, it's and if it's like your best friend, no,
if it's your dad, I don't know whatever. Andrew Jackson
before the War of eighteen twelve, no one really knew
him outside of Tennessee. He grew up a backwoods guy.
He wasn't actually poor. He later inherited two hundred acres,
but he grew up backwoods along the North and South
Carolina border shortly before the Revolutionary War, and he grew
(03:38):
up hating Indigenous people and British people. And this was
like his main thing, and like stop clock on the
British thing. But you know whatever, the Revolutionary war had
killed his mother, his only parent, and two of his brothers,
so he was really into hating the British. He also
hated indigenous people because he was a racist piece of
(03:59):
shit dick. He quickly left the backwoods and became a
Southern gentleman, which of course meant buying and selling people.
Right come the War of eighteen twelve, he was like,
let's go kill the britsin Indians, capture Florida. Woooo and
that was that was his war crime. In eighteen thirteen,
(04:19):
the Muscogee had what was called the Creek Civil War
because they were mostly called the Creek. On one side,
you have the Americanized folks who were, you know, had
just been like they'd been like doing the more settled thing.
They're starting to grow, build plantations. They were really into
the chattel slavery thing. On the other side, you had
the Red Sticks who were like, yeah, fuck all that,
(04:42):
and they would attack forts and kill everyone there except
the enslaved people who were freed who then joined them.
So Andrew Jackson just went just like went around and
burned down every Muscogi village that he could find, which like.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
A like a gentleman would, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
People tend to conveniently forget that usually everyone on all
sides of any given war of colonization kills civilians every
single chance they can get. It's like a hard conversation
to have, so we all try to not have it.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and all the history books that we get in
American public schools do not reflect it because it complicates
things too much.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, you pick one side to decide that they kill
civilians and then the other side doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
That is the way to civilian life, the ultimate complicating factor.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, totally. But you know, I think that there's a
difference between colonial and anti colonial violence, and you know,
not to just whatever. Anyway, now I'm accidentally getting into
the motorn shit. Most of the Red Sticks died in
battle against Jackson. They were out number two to one
at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. Maybe all die so bravely. Basically,
(05:52):
Andrew Jackson was promoted to major general for massacring all
these people who outnumbered and then immediately got the Allied
Muscogee people to sign away twenty three million acres of
their territory, basically stole it from them. Basically, it was like, yeah,
now you're just gonna give us all the shit because
we want it. Yeah, any idea how big twenty three
million acres is. It's like one of those numbers that's
(06:13):
a meaningless number. No, right, I can tell you it
was like a county, and I could tell you it
was like the eastern Seaboards.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Right at Florida.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
It's about half modern Florida.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, twenty three million, only half.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I mean Florida's big, though, I mean, yeah, that's a
big fucking state. You ever like drive through Florida and
you're like, this is no, no way, this is going
to feel like driving through Texas that takes years, but
then it does.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It is, especially like driving to Miami.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's it's it's gigantic, and also like there's a lot
of I don't know, it's such a large state that
I think, like Texas, there's also like regional specificity that
get's kind of totally.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
So everyone's mad, right, because he just took so much
fucking land, And this terrible loss is why the Brits
had so much luck recruiting indigenous people in the area,
because even those who had been allied with the US
had just been fucked and so it was up to
Andrew Jackson. Everyone decided, probably including Andrew Jackson, that was
up to him to smash the pesky interracial Army, which
(07:19):
to be clear, absolutely was planning to go fuck up
the US South and free from tyrannical American government. That
was absolutely their goal. Nichols, the Irishman, gave speeches about
how they would quote unrivet the chains of every person
still held in slavery. So they attacked the cool interracial
army right their first at the Colonial Marines or whatever
(07:43):
I said their name, like eight times you think i'd
remember the core of Colonial Marines. The first attack on
Alabama did not go well for the British, and grape
shot took out nichols right eye and he'll never see
out of it again. It will not stop him from
continuing to fight in battles where he gets edit and
doesn't stop. So they were treated and they got back
(08:05):
to recruiting people. They were like, okay, well we need
more people, and so they helped more and more people
escape slavery. At least they end up taking over Pensacola
for a minute, because it's not really under American control
e they're so it's sort of easy. At least two
thirds of Pensacola's and slave population was recruited during this time,
(08:26):
and all the slave owners would like go and be like,
come on, Britz, give us back our people. And the
Brits just laughed and we're like, nah, we have guns
and shit, you're gonna fuck off now. Okay, So they're
being cool. They're up to some cool stuff. November eighteen fourteen,
Andrew Jackson invaded Pensacola and outnumbered the British Florida one.
(08:50):
So the multiracial army fled and they blew up their
fortifications as they went and went back to the British post,
which is the fort that they had built along the
Apologicola River. They grow there to a force of about
fifteen hundred. As more and more indigenous warriors show up.
There's like numbers that go all over the place, all
(09:11):
the different like estimates where they're like, oh, they got
three thousand, they got fifteen hundred, they got one thousand,
there's three hundred of them. It's like all over the
fucking place, the numbers.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
God, okay, and how many like different sources is it
coming from us? It just depends.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
It just depends. A lot of it is that it
was very variable by time. And then also a lot
of history doesn't necessarily like stay perfectly linear in how
they describe these things, you know. I think that it's
like at its largest. Also, a lot of the sources,
like Americans, kept exaggerating the size of this force because
(09:50):
they were like, this is the this is armageddon, you know,
and so like there's like ones that are like there's
fifteen thousand of them, but that's like a pro slavery
America newspaper giving that number. For example, more and more
Indigenous warriors starts showing up, and then they start paying
indigenous slave owners for the freedom of their slaves at
about a I want to say about thirty dollars ahead,
(10:11):
which is like way less than market rate. It's sort
of a like we'll pay you to free slaves, but
we won't pay like white people to free slaves in America.
Those were just going to go capture, you know. On
December twenty fourth, eighteen fourteen, the War of eighteen twelve
was officially over by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent,
but they didn't have cell phones, so the war raged
(10:33):
on until news came months and months later that it
had already ended in a draw because it didn't go
well for either side. Basically both sides just fucked each
other up.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And it also, yeah, it also didn't just go in
eighteen twelve. But that's that's that's the most that's the
saddest thing in the world to me. I mean, there's
in like a casualty of war sense where you you, like,
if someone you loved was killed after the war had
(11:05):
been resolved and you found that out later, I simply
don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
There's like World War One had that a lot, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's fucking it, is it? It would on either side
like that would kind of fuck me up, you know, yeah,
because then it was like a even this like, for example,
the Americans are about to pull out their greatest victory
in the War of eighteen twelve, after the war is over.
(11:31):
The Battle of New Orleans, made famous by a song
that I don't remember who sings and don't listen too.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Much, don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
On January eighth, eighteen fifteen, British soldiers attacked New Orleans
and Nichol's army was like, yeah, we're gonna lead. We
volunteer to like lead the landing. We're going to go
fuck these fucking slavers up. But they were told that
they couldn't join. They were basically too valuable to risk,
like they had, you know, the British and other military
plans for them. The Battle of New Orleans was like
(11:59):
not a huge deal from the British point of view,
and the British army got wrecked. Like two thousand dead
to fourteen dead on the American side is what I read. God,
it's like enough that I'm like, that's fucked. You know.
That is because they tried to march through a swamp
(12:20):
at an entrenched position, and they were also arrogant. They
were like, we are the most civilized in advanced army
in the world. Of course we're going to wreck this
like Motley Force, you know, right. And Andrew Jackson was
in charge of defending New Orleans. This is a big
This is like where is like fame like fucking comes
from at the time. Now he's mostly famous as a butcher.
(12:41):
He did the unthinkable when he defended New Orleans. He
armed enslaved people. He promised people their freedom if they
fought for the Americans. Then after the battle, he did
the thinkable, which was he said, not just fucking kidding
your fucking property, not people giving back the guns off
to jol.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That isn't the most Andrew Jackson thing in the fucking
world to do, is Yeah, yeah, promise advancement to read
nag on it later.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah. One of the most annoying things about reading the
nineteenth century like pro and anti slavery shit is watching
all of the people on all sides argue about whether
or not black people would be any good in a fight.
And like people refer to Andrew Jackson as like practically
anti racist in that he like he was like he
(13:33):
respected that black people knew how to fight for whatever.
I hate him and I hate everything about him.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
One manu, Yeah, I can't can't hand it to him
for that.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
No, absolutely, exactly, absolutely not. And the fact that that
is a thing that is like constantly brought up, and
it is a thing that like even like a lot
of the British are doing during this point. They're like, whoa,
Like I didn't know that you all were like not
racially inferior, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right right, Yeah, It's like we didn't know, we assumed
that you were not competent in like, it's what a treat,
What a treat to be told that.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah. So one man who was promises freedom was this
guy named James Roberts. During the battle, he killed six
British soldiers in hand to hand combat, losing a finger
and taking a sword across the face in the process,
and he survived. After the battle, the Americans disarmed him,
stripped him, sent him to prison, and then sent him
to the plantation where he'd come from. He later said, quote,
(14:40):
had there been less bravery with us, and he means
the armed enslaved people, the British would have gained the victory,
and in that event, they would have set the slaves free.
So that I see now how we in that war
contributed to fasten our own chains tighter? What about fucking heartbreaking? Yeah, like.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Anyway, no, I mean no, it's yeah, yeah, I mean
I feel like it just speaks to the the helplessness
of the situation and just that they're like are ultimately no,
I don't know, there's no good imperial force to ally with,
if you can believe it, in this case, there's a
(15:25):
better one.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Everyone who fought for the British not only were they freed,
but so were their families. Oh wow, okay, and Andrew
Jackson after they like after the folks who fight and
then they they flee whatever. Andrew Jackson figures that he
can now show up. He's like, he just crushed the British, right,
so he's like, I'm just going to show up and
(15:47):
be like, yo, give us back our property. And the
British were like, no, we're good, and once again all
the like slave owners go and they're like, they're like,
same deal as always. You can come and not buy worse,
ask people to return to you. And so all these
like slave owners like showed up and we're like, oh,
of course they're gonna come back. We're gonna like ask nicely. Right.
(16:08):
A few people in this case did end up going back. Basically,
I think that they thought that they might get abandoned
and killed, and they just were looking to their options.
Almost everyone was like, no chance in fucking hell will
we do that. One newly freed wagon driver told us,
former master, you may carry my head along with you,
but as to my body, it will remain here, like
(16:32):
it's just the time of metal quotes.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Basically, yeah, I was like, there's really some bangers in
this story, like one after the other. Yeah, and they
still don't know the war's over. So Nichol's army is
now thirty five hundred strong and they get ready to invade,
and they're gonna just fucking go fuck up the American South.
The war's over. But they're like, let they don't know,
(16:55):
Scho girls, Well, they don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
It, right, right?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Right? Do we know how exactly how long after this is.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We're still only like a month or so later. I
don't remember the well, okay, So, like the treaty was signed,
Battle of New Orleans is January eighth, and so then
like pretty immediately afterwards, right, it's like a week or
two later or something. They're like, we're getting ready to
go do this thing, but then news of the truce
comes before they get a chance to do it. And
(17:24):
so Nichols's army basically it's like never really put to
the test. And you know. So then Spain's like, all right, great,
the war's over. Can we have our enslaved people back?
And Nichols was like nah. And then Spade was like,
but there's no legal basis for that, and Nichols was like,
I don't really care Nick got Nick go. Yeah. It
(17:48):
was hilarious because the deal was that under the Spanish
territorial law, it was okay for slaves escaping the US
to be freed, but not Spanish slaves, like anyone escaping
a Spanish owner, right, okay. And so there's all these
slaves with Hispanic last names who only spoke Spanish, and
Nichols is like, nah, that guy's American, you know, And
(18:10):
they'd be like, no, I swear that that's our guy.
Nicholas just be like, no, it's not you go ooh,
I also have a lot of guns.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, gigantic bluff.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I love it. Yeah. In the end, Nichols presented each
person who had fought or was there a certificate of freedom,
saying that their service in the military meant that they
were free, and that basically that the Spanish delegates could
eat it. The Spanish delegates are like there when he's
passing out these certificates.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And he also gave the soldiers all of their wages
for the entire time, which is the whole thing. And
like even the Army of the North and during the
Civil War like decades later, was like real bad at
pain black soldiers you know. So he's like, here's all
your money. You can keep the uniform that you are
officially discharged from service because the war is over. And
(19:04):
these certificates that he gave them kept a bunch of
people free down the line because there's like all this
shit where like because Nichols rules in Britain sucks, you know,
and so like later a lot of these freed people
like go to other British colonies and people are like, no,
you're not free, and they have to be like, ah,
I'm going to take it to court and I have
this document and shit, you know. So he made a
fucking paper trail. He based it on nothing. He based
(19:26):
it on I want these people to be free. Here's
a document.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
God that fucking rocks. Yeah, totally another a win for
the Irish, a win for fighting Nichols. Yeah, just having
an army, a bunch of guns and a big old
lie and actually being on the right side of history.
And the war ended a month ago secretly, great great,
great great great.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, and so he tried one lass thing, but the
British government didn't go for it. Basically he was like,
we will absolutely keep this war going if you don't
give the Muscogee back the land at Andrew Jackson stole
those twenty three million acres, we will absolutely go to
war for it. And then Britain was like, no, no, no,
(20:12):
not so much. We're not going to do that. But
they did stand by the emancipation of five thousand enslaved
people who had escaped to British Territory in April eighteen fifteen.
Nichols and the rest of the white British unit lefty.
This gets like a little blurry. They had this intention
to return in six months or maybe a year, and
(20:33):
maybe it was to help transport everyone away, but then
other people were like, no, he was never planning on
coming back, and people chose to stay there because they
wanted to just live there and keep the fort and shit.
And the reason I want I want to like Nichols,
and two the other reason I kind of trust him
about this. He leaves this fort intact fully armed with
(20:57):
hundreds of guns like cannon, powder keg after powder keg,
like this is a fully. He doesn't take any of
the food like he As far as I can tell,
he just right by the people. The one thing he
fucked up is he left a white guy in charge. Oh,
(21:18):
he's gonna fuck off soon, don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I mean, but I just, based on what you just described,
I'm tempted to want to give a good faith reading
of that because other other than just like fucking off
in the middle of the night, and like, you know,
completely like it sounds like there was the intent of
some longevity there.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, And when he leaves, it transports a ton of
the formally enslaved people with them when they leave, but
a lot of people stick around. But they leave this
white guy named Hambly around and they're like, all right,
this guy's in charge. And he was like he had
been he was local to the area, and he had
been like an important part of a lot of the
(21:58):
conversations with indigenous leader and stuff, and he had worked
for the trading post that was what used to be
there before the fort. So Nichols leaves. He goes on
to continue his life to go fuck up slave ships
in Atlantic. A bunch of black soldiers leave with him
and they go off to live in Bermuda and shit.
About three hundred black families remain at the fort, which
(22:19):
is fully stocked in armed by the British. Before their departure,
and British post becomes Negro Po Negro Fort, and the
Spanish authorities couldn't do shit about it because it was
fully stocked and armed fort. So what the fuck are
they going to do about it? Because one thing that
history teaches you is that often the law doesn't matter
if you have enough guns.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And this can go a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh, absolutely, it goes bad and good, yes, constantly, yeah, yes,
but generally true. Yeah, some of the black families and
soldiers they actually had come with the British in the
first place, from Virginia or the Caribbean and decided to
stick around because they were like, actually, if we stay here,
there's this amazing community of resistance that's being built. It's
(23:03):
basically like being built as a maroon community right away.
And so a bunch of people who came from elsewhere
who were just British soldiers were like, nas where weren't
gonna be? Yeah, Indigenous fighters stuck around as well, or
they lived in the area immediately around it. But one
thing that they didn't have that you and I have
is access to Actually, I'm sure there were ads. There
(23:28):
are probably a ton of ads, but our ads are
more developed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
But not with the weird little music beds that not
the little beet boop beat boops that you get on
a podcast ad. There's a unique kind of gorgeous, annoying
musical cadence to a podcast add there really is.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, uh, and here they are and we're back. So
how do you think that America took the fact that
when the British left, they left a armed maroon community
(24:12):
in a fort that was incredibly defensible?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I think in the way America always takes things calmly,
reasonably and wanting to be inclusive and extend that American
dream to everybody.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is that correct? It's close and they you know, they
probably were like, well, that's not America. Why is it
any of our business? Mm hmm. But unfortunately everything is
America's business, Jamie Loftus and the existence of this fort
scared the shit out of white people, just fucking kept
(24:47):
people up at night. This was going to destroy everything
they loved about America. There's newspapers all over the country
screaming and yelling about this happening. Those black people who
weren't even in the fucking United States, fucking United States,
were like, come in for baseball and apple pie, and
by that I mean chattel slavery only. Okay, be clear,
(25:09):
it would be entirely fine if they I would love
them if they were off to go do that. They weren't.
The war was over. They were not planning some great
raid on the US. They were just trying to fucking
live free. To quote the author Matthew C. Clayven from
the best book about this that I'm aware of, the
Battle of negro Fort, quote, negro Fort's denizens were not
(25:33):
slave revolutionaries out to destroy the nefarious institution that sought
to keep them in bondage. Nor were they determined to
restore or recreate a traditional way of life recalled from
their youth or inherited from their African ancestors. Instead, like
other Maroons who struggled to survive in the Southern United
States or adjacent territories, their actions show that self determination,
(25:53):
self reliance, and self rule were their key objectives. And
so they were just trying to fucking live.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, that was like, that's a long point of saying,
just living with dignity and independence.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
That white guy Hambley, he was a chicken shit loser.
He ran off right away and he went to the US,
and he was like, please destroy that place. I'll help
you negotiate with indigenous leaders to attack it.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Oh yeah, okay, real flame out. Okay, real flame out.
Use it. Yeah, he will know he had millennial burnout.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Margaret, Right, totally. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You have burnout at work?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah? What do you think that they had? Like, like,
I don't know the names of generations before the greatest generation.
You know, it's like greatest old boomers, young boomers, which
is a millennial silent?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Is it silent before greatest?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh? Yeah, is the greatest and then silent? But but
what the fuck did they call? Oh? I hate asking
questions like this because people are going to answer me,
and the when people answer me correctly, it's interesting. And
when people just a year from now listen to this
and then message me with no context, I'll have no idea.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
They're like Margaret, Margaret, pep generation. It was the peep generation.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Cool, that is all that is. Like one of the
beautiful parts of parasociality is someone answering a question you
asked six years ago, yeah, and being presented as urgent
or I don't know, just like stuff like, hey, do
you remember when you said this in twenty eighteen. I'm like, guaranteed, No,
let's assume I was wrong. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I don't remember by the time you're hearing this, even
if you listen when it first came out, I'm not
going to remember. Make this sentence. I only remember about
the four Yeah, the weird side conversations not part of
my memory.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Nor should it be.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, anyway, before we talk shit on the people who
are listen to our s eh okay.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Oh no, no, no, it's just an interesting it's an
interesting and like usually funny side effect of the job.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. And I do it to like I do it
to Jamie. I listened to something Jamie did, Like I
do it to Robert. I do it to ya. I
do it to cool Zone media. People like it. Yeah,
it is a human instinct to be like, I know
a thing about that. Like Robert Evans said that people
listen to the V Nation are old. I'm sure Robert
Evans doesn't remember saying that, But when I listen to
(28:28):
the V Nation in my basement when I'm working out,
I think, yeah, no, I'm kind of old. This is
a really interesting asign. People are very glad we did it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I love Yeah, I love talking to five year old
MP three files. It's my passion.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, so negro Fort Sadly, the whole point
of this episode is about how cool this place was.
The reason that we didn't get to it until now
is because we don't know that much about it. We
know a lot about what happened when there were white
people around, and we know very little when they weren't.
(29:09):
It was fucking cool. We know that Nichols is great,
but it's annoying that he gets all the screen time
and we know more about him. We know that Maroon
communities require security culture in order to stay alive, and
that's part of why we know so little about Maroon communities.
We also know that in this community there were Spanish speaking,
(29:32):
French speaking, English speaking, and people born in Africa all
living there side by side, and we know that's mostly
because their names. Like one person would be like Congo
Tom because he was born in Africa, and another person
will have like a French name or whatever, right, and
we actually know a lot about like because they're fucking
listed as property. We know a lot of their names,
(29:53):
and we know a lot of their job descriptions, you know,
because people are like reporting their missing property. We also
know that they had eight cannons, and that's part of
why they managed to fucking stay missing property, which fucking rules. Yeah,
they were skilled artisans. They had eight cannons, a howitzer,
which is like halfway between a cannon and a mortar,
so it's like not quite as long distance whatever. And
(30:13):
they had hundreds of muskets. M Yeah, we thought howitzers
is a brand name of a gun, and then I
started reading.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, like a xerox or a Zamboni situation. Interesting, Okay,
it's his own thing.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
It might be Oh god, I've talked about a military Okay. Anyway,
we know that they started off with food stores, but
soon they were growing their own and they seemed to
live lives of plenty. They herded cattle in the swampy forest.
They grew corn and melons, and they cultivated land. They
set up like several they're described as plantations, but that
just means like how they plant things, not how it
(30:48):
was structured. They hunted turkey and alligator and deer, and
they fished. They traded extensively with their indigenous allies in
the surrounding area. New fugitives arrived every day, they kept growing,
and they were all considered bandits. And to be clear,
I think they did some piracy they like built boats
and shit, but mostly they were bandits because they had
(31:11):
stolen valuable property. Do you want to guess what the
valuable property they stole was. No, it's themselves. No, that's
what makes them bandits. They are bandits because they stole property.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
I think their own human bodies.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Y y, yes, they stole from slave owners and for
once they are black lead. We know about three of
the commanders. There's Cyrus, there's Prince, who was actually a
lieutenant in the Colonial Marines. And the most famous of
the three, Garson, was a thirty six year old carpenter
who'd been a sergeant major. Why was he the most
(31:50):
famous because his name was French?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Oh my god, I was about to say, because he
had a cute little name. And that was the reason.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It is the reason, because this the single scariest thing
that has happened to white Southerners and human history was
the Haitian Revolution. Okay, and during the Haitian Revolution, which
is had only ended and ended in eighteen oh four,
and you know, so not that long before this, black
and slave people rose up and freed themselves. And the
(32:21):
guy who had led that to Saint Lutour, whose French
name I am not good at French, was a black
guy with a French name. So here's Garson. He's French
and black. The end is nigh. God Like, all over
the papers, all over the papers, they're like the Haitian
(32:42):
Revolutions coming. Which, don't get me wrong, there were many
people trying to make the Haitian Revolution come to North America.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
For sure, But I'm just at every turn, just a
nation of fucking weird babies.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It's just absolutely and who will save this nation of
weird babies? But a hero, a hero will merge. Mm hmmm,
it's Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Again, I had a feeling it was Andrew Jackson. Yeah.
I mean, if anyone was well equipped to capture the
mind of violent babies, I suppose it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
YEP. Which is an awkward place to stick an AD pivot,
but that's where it is. It's right here, right now.
Here's an AD pivot, and we're.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Back, and we pivoted right on back. It feels I
think that would perfectly Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Absolutely good mind Tom. So basically Andrew Jackson was like,
dear mister the President, can I invade a sovereign country
to put down a ford in their territory? Because I
think that they make Basically, it was like the existence
of this place will incite people to flee? Right, Okay,
(34:02):
that was like their main argument, which is true, the
existence of that place incited people to flee, which is good.
Just not he presents it as bad because he's a
backwards man who walks backwards and talks whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It's opposite day for him every day exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, he's the opposite moratl guy. Yeah. And so he writes,
dear mister president, can I invade the sovereign country to
put down a fort in their territory? And the President's like, oh,
don't know when he's like thinking about it, and then
Andrew Jackson's like, you know what, I'm not waiting for
a response. I don't care. Wow, And just in classic
(34:39):
white supremacist for him, he's like, fuck the law, I
do things my way.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah. No, he's he's a classic example of uh asked,
you know, apologizing instead of asking for permission.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And he also did the same thing to
the Spanish, he wrote and was like, if you all
don't take down that place, I will. But before the
Spanish have a chance to think about it, America is
already on its way to illegally cross into Spain and
fucker thinks up it's time to go burn indigenous villages,
including our recent allies, blow up the fort all in
(35:10):
someone else's country. It is entirely illegal, even by US standards.
That has never stopped anyone with power, let alone Andrew Jackson.
But Andrew Jackson didn't lead it himself. He just illegally
authorized his subordinate general Gains to do it for him
because Jackson wanted to be president and so he wanted
(35:32):
to do some plausible deniability shit where what he said
was go take care of it however you think is best.
But we we have his correspondence where he's openly like
and by that I mean like he'll everyone and blow
shit up and get back all this enslaved people and shit,
I don't care go through violence.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I feel like that there is just like a kind
of commonly held like presidents were not caught saying openly inflammatory,
violent shit before Watergate, And you're like, no, they've been doing.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It Yeah, he is absolutely going to end up president
at the end of this story.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And there's the paper trail. Collectively everyone decided
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, totally, that's for historians.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
So Gaines's plan was simple. He was going to hire
the local indigenous people to do all the fighting and
dying by promising them fifty dollars ahead for recaptured slaves,
which is about four times the going rate, and also
that they could loot the place of anything but cannons,
and they could also keep any people who for whom
owners couldn't be found. They would be supported by some
(36:40):
US gunboats and at least the book Battle of negro
Fort represents it as the first ever large scale slave
hunting expedition by the US. The first battle of it
went really badly for the US, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
A small boat of white soldiers like went up the
river looking for fresh water, and they were ambushed by
twenty black and twenty indigenous fighters, each under their own commander.
Garsan was leading the black forces and an unknown unnamed
chief to let the indigenous fighters, and they killed some
of the white people and they drove the rest off
(37:21):
somewhere along the way. Aware of the coming attack. Hundreds
of maroons and fugitives slipped out of the fort, while
a few hundreds stayed behind to defend it. The fugitives
took refuge in various indigenous communities, especially among the Seminole.
We'll talk a little bit more about soon. The fort
was besieged indigenous warriors of the I mean it's literally
(37:44):
Musgogi fighters on both sides of this. So it's just
like the indigenous warriors in the woods were shooting at
the fort while the white people hid in boats behind
the bluff. Their stated plan was to stay out of
it so that no white people got hurt. And this
last to six days, this siege, and there were sorties
fought between the two forces that forced the soldiers of
(38:05):
negro Fort back behind their walls. And about half of
the soldiers in negro Fort are black and the other
half are Indigenous. They flew the union jack and above
it they flew a solid red flag, which was a
flag that meant they would offer no quarter and not
accept any quarter. They were all going to fight to
the death rather than go back into trains. Once again,
(38:28):
very metal.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
A very yeah, nothing if not consistently metal.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah. The battle ended quickly. I spent the episode talking
about metaphorical powder kegs, but this one's not metaphorical. At
the center of the fort was this massive stone edifice
named the Citadel that stored all the powder for all
those cannons and muskets. One of the besieging gunboats was
(38:59):
doing something called hot shot, where they would put the
cannonballs in like a furnace, like a makeshift furnace that
they built on the boat before shooting them out of
the cannons. One cannon ball found its way into the citadel.
The resulting explosion was heard for miles in every direction,
and almost every defender died in the blast, About two
(39:21):
hundred and fifty people died and about fifty people survived,
most of whom later succumbed to their wounds. Okay Garson
and an unnamed Choctaw war chief survived the blast. They
were captured. They immediately and proudly took credit for killing
the American soldiers, and they were scalped and shot. Almost
(39:43):
none of the Maroons were returned to slavery. Almost every
single one of them died free, which was their plan. Wow,
and like, I feel like that doesn't like it gets
talked about like this great loss, and it was right,
like they didn't win, but they were really clear about
(40:08):
their intentions and they also provided enough time for way
more people who stayed to get out and get away.
You know.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, I mean, and I think that there should and
often is has to be some area for well, what
does winning versus.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Losing look like in a situation like this? And I
think that yeah, like characterizing it as a total loss
would would not be true because you know, dilied free.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, in the end, like I think maybe two people
were returned to slavery successfully. During all of this, the
refugees from negro Fort went deeper into the wilderness and
they formed two communities. There was a black one called
Nero's Town, which had a leader named Nero, and an
indigenous one called bow Leg's Town, which had a leader
(41:02):
named bow Leg.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay, I was waiting for a twist.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, no, no twist. More fugitives began to join them.
So the Maroon community continues and the two communities, they're
like military societies and including at like negro Fort was
like a military institution. It considered itself British military unit
(41:26):
and so like it was like it gets presented as
a like military dictatorship or whatever. I'm like, yeah, it was.
It was a military society, you know that it was
around in the middle of basically an active war. I'm
not fucking coming at them for their authoritarianism, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
And Nero's Town in bow Leg's Town are presented in
very similar ways where they were still A lot of
them are still wearing uniforms. A lot of them are like, no,
this is just where we're continuing the fight. Interesting, okay.
And Nero's Town, Nero was a black man who had
himself run away from slavery twenty plus years early to
live with the seminole before showing up to negro Fort.
(42:03):
And in Nero's town, they would dance the Red Stick dance,
which was away like part of the culture of the
Red Sticks, so they consider themselves part of the Red Sticks.
Shortly after the destruction of negro Fort, hundreds of Seminal
warriors and Red Sticks captured that asshole Hambly, you know,
the like the dude who had fucking been left in charge.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Wow, they found the.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Flop, which is like the most movie part of it, right,
he'd be like the Disney villain who like, you know,
runs away and like gets but yeah he.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Gets I'm so glad he got gotten. That's thrilling.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
And then so seminal warriors capture him, transport him and
some other folks who were responsible for the destruction one
hundred and fifty miles to Nero's town, and there were
sentenced to torture by a tribunal, with the implication being
tortured at death, but Nero intervened for some unknown reason
and had them transported and turnover to Spanish authorities. I'd
(43:06):
be so I'd be so pissed if I was one
of the people who had just transported this guy one
hundred and fifty miles, you know.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, with the sweet promise. Yeah yeah, not to be like,
actually we've decided to go to a different direction. Fuck you,
yeah we got this far.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well I still think that's I mean, that is yeah,
that is a movie style return. I thought I thought
that he he got off Scott free.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah no, and did not get off Scott free.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Excellent, great news.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
And then in the US, basically weird annoying political machinations
of cover up started immediately because what they had done
was flagrantly illegal, right. The other thing that started right
away was the hunt for all the fugitives who'd escaped,
which was basically another illegal intrusion into Spanish Florida by
Andrew jack this time him personally, and they went around
(44:04):
in massacred places. They massacred Nero's town at least I
don't know about bow Legstown. Jackson personally enslaved a black
fighter who still wore his red coat.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Jesus, an inexhaustibly evil person.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I know, just fucking terminator style, like more than four
Even after this, more than four hundred and thirty negro
Fort refugees continued to live in Florida free, mostly with
the Seminoles. The Seminoles didn't take kindly all this massacring happening,
and you get the first Seminole War, which is a
story for another week, but the shortish versions of it. Eventually,
(44:45):
the Seminole War led Spain to be like, fine, fuck it,
take Florida. We kind of hate it anyhow, and the
US got one of its most cursed states. The Seminoles
went so hard that there's more than one Seminole War
in which negro Fort veterans fought and got to see
some revenge on the empire that enslaved them. Like literally
the fifteen twenty year later wore some of the same
veterans were like, yeah, we're gonna go fuck up some
(45:06):
fucking like colonial Americans.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Absolutely mm hmm, God, I would love to hear a
cool people on the Seminal Wars.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
That is, it's absolutely in the plans. I've been Yeah,
I've like done some of the research into it, and
it's going to get into some messy and interesting shit
and some like yeah, wild escapades. In eighteen twenty nine,
famed racist crusader Andrew Jackson became the seventeenth President of
the United States and the first Democratic president back when
(45:39):
Democrat meant the pro slavery guys. He signed the Indian
Removal Act and was just like one of the worst
people ever born. The Seminal Wars were Indian Wars, but
they were also wars over slavery. The North was like,
what the fuck are we doing? And the abolitionist movement
adopted Negro Ford as a symbol and the US attack
on it as evident of the US being what't referred
(46:02):
They started referring to the US accurately enough as a
slaveocracy like ruled by slavers, and their evidence was the
US keeps doing shit for slavers. That has nothing to
do with our economic interest, nothing to do with our
military interests. It's just for slavery, right. Negro Fort was
on John Brown's tongue when he declared the need for
(46:23):
a violent liberation of enslaved people and wrote a long
piece about it three months after he wrote that he
led his assault on Harper's Ferry. That, as we've talked
about before, was at least a crucial domino, if not
the spark itself that started the Civil War and ended
legal chattel slavery in the United States. So here's to
(46:43):
Garson and the hundreds of other unnamed indigenous and Black
people who lived free, died free, and helped spark one
of the greatest movements for human liberty and history against
one of the most vile empires that has ever existed
on this earth.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That is so I'm I mean, it stands straight, but
it's it's really cool to hear that that negro Fort
became such a huge inspiration for the movement moving forward
and also makes it, i mean, all the more frustrating
that it is not taught, oh yeah, to anyone. But
(47:20):
I feel like any any armed resistance is especially by
indigenous or black people of the US, is just not not.
We don't talk.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
About it, absolutely not, and especially yeah, I don't like
telling stories where the British are the good guys, right like,
and so I think that's even part of it too.
I mean it's mostly this. We do talk about violent resistance,
especially any violent resistance that could be justified. You know,
we're always like, h sure, the evil, savage people being whatever,
(47:48):
you know, but right, yeah, no, it was a completely
justified thing that even in the and then the other
thing is that people are like, oh, we're so smart now,
and in the nineteenth century they're all idiots, and I'm like, no,
in the eighteen thirties and forties, people were like, wait,
what we did? What are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Well, then, and then the inevitability of of everyone involved
acting so heroically and genuinely having a net win not
only in a number of people living and dying free,
but in inspiring them inspiring further action, and contrasting that
(48:30):
with and Andrew Jackson becomes president anyways, and I know,
you know, never sees a consequence in his entire fucking
life and just accruse more and more and more power.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, and it's funny too, Like if you read about
Andrew Jackson's legacy, it's like, Andrew Jackson was incredibly popular,
and then it's like, by the second half of the
twentieth century, some people were starting to think he was
not a good person.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
You know that two hundred years Yeah, Like, but it
also but at the same time, it's like people are like, oh,
product of their time, and it's like, one, Andrew Jackson
was worse than everyone, and everyone knew it he was.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
He was the worst guy.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Then yeah, like he was more racist than the racist
founding fathers, you know. And like also everyone at the
time was like fuck that. Not everyone, most people liked him,
but a ton of people were like fuck this guy.
Well again, Also, I hate when we're like, oh, all
white all people in the nineteenth century were racist, and
you're like, do you mean all white people? Like right, anyway,
(49:33):
that's the story.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
That's this, that's the story. Wow, thank you so much
for uh for telling me. I truly knew, I mean,
and I knew a little bit about this about the
seminole Wars, but I did not know, uh what preceded it. Yeah, God,
thank you, thank you. I hope that I really, I
mean not that I have, you know, much hope in
(49:55):
this way, but I hope that that this is like
talked about more, really is starting and still could and
should be inspiring. Now.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, absolutely, Well what else should be talked about now
is your plugs?
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yay, yay, Okay, you can. I just began producing a
relaunch of the wonderful show We the Unhoused, hosted by
Theo Henderson on iHeart Radio. It is a show about
the unhoused experience from an unhoused lens. We have episodes
(50:38):
that release every other Tuesday, and we just relaunched, So
get in on the ground floor of the show. And
there's also a great backlog. And yeah, it's holiday times.
You should get my book Raw Dog. It's about hot
dogs and also about the evils of capitalism. So if
you're a fan of this show and not fan of
(51:00):
hot dogs, there's still something for you in it.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I secretly love all of the reviews of people who
got really upset when they thought it was just gonna
be about hot dogs but didn't realize that the manufacture
of a commodity ties in the economic system that creates
it and might be critical of that economic system.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Or that I would want to even mention manufacturing. They're like,
what the heck this was supposed to be about the
one my dad makes?
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Why is it just about mustard?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah? No, although I'm sure that if I had had
more real estate page wise, we could have we could
have found a mustard bastard easily.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Yeah. Now, I'm just imagining a sort of a cartoon,
not a cartoon character, like a mascot, a villain with
a in a mustard suit.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
I don't know why, a torly mustache peeking out of
a mustard suit.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah. Now, I'm like, I'm gonna go eat dumplanes and
I'm like, I want if I can put mustard on them.
I think I'm gonna stick with soy sauce. But okay,
I'm clearly distracted by the fact that I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You can follow me on Instagram. My Instagram is at
Margaret Kiljoy. You can follow me on substack. My substack
is you Google Margaret Kiljoy substack. I don't know anyone
who actually types in the url in that particular situation.
I post new essays every week. Half of them are public,
half of them are private. If you want to know
more about my hikes with my dog, then you have
to be a paid subscriber. If you want to know
(52:30):
more about the stuff. That's actually the kind of thing
I want to say to the broader world. You don't
have to be a paid subscriber. It's free. That's the
point of it. It's like the opposite of freemium like.
And also you can listen to other cool Zone Media podcasts.
You can listen to Hood Politics with prop which is
amazing and has been what I listened to while cooking recently.
(52:52):
And also Burning track. I would never burn trash. I
live in the country, but I would never even burn cardboard.
I wouldn't do that. That's wrong. It's the end of
the episode. Bye everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder twice a week reminder that sometimes Margaret
runs rerun episodes. Actually that's not very often, but it
is this week and you already know that because you're
not listening to just Wednesday's episode. That would be strange.
But either way, this is a rerun and thanks for
putting up with that. But it's a good story and
(00:25):
I think you'll like it. Hello and welcome to Cool People,
Did Cool Stuff, the show where you don't get to
be the one who decides what's cool. Instead, I the host,
Margaret Kiljoy decide what's cool, which is a strange irony,
but there's no way around it because no one can
(00:45):
start podcasts because it's illegal and the law and morality
are identical. Our guest today is Jamie loftus Ty Jamie.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Hi, Margaret, dude to my status is starting a podcast?
I am current considered a fugitive. That's true, but I
think but I think it's actually I think it's it's
worth it to get my little ideas out into the world.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
When podcasts are outlawed, only outlawso podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Me and Deck Shepherd against the world.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That's right. That's why we're all going to get the vests.
But we're not gonna tell you what I mean by that. Instead,
I'm gonna introduce the producer, Sophie. That's me, matron of crime.
I'll take it, okay, and are well now. I just
feel bad saying the names of everyone involved because they're
all doing crime. But Ian is our audio engineer, and
(01:44):
everyone is to say Hi Ian, Hi, Ian.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, Hi Ian, Sorry about your recent uh breaking the
law by participating in this evil empire. Oh Jamie, you
know you're my partner in crime and that you're the mastermind.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It's true?
Speaker 2 (02:00):
What are you? Jader? Behind them, behind all producers. Yes,
the theme music was written for us by someone who
will not be named lest unwoman get in trouble, and
it worked. Thanks Proud of that one. Today is part
two of a two parter, which is the first time
(02:22):
that's ever happened, not the ninety eighth time that's ever
happened in part one. Okay, this time we're talking about
Negro for It, which was a really amazing maroon community
in Florida when it was Spanish Florida that the US
went and fucked up. In part one, I talked about
how a ton of Indigenous folks were real mad at
the Americans. Right now I want to talk about what
(02:43):
had beens just stolen from them, which is to say,
I get to talk about everyone's favorite person, Andrew Jackson. Yes,
if you ever meet someone who thinks that Andrew Jackson
is a good person, then you have met a bad person,
or at best, a terribly badly informed person.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah. I would say, don't waste your time trying to
fix them unless I know, you know, you've only we've
only got so much time.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, it's and if it's like your best friend, no,
if it's your dad, I don't know whatever. Andrew Jackson
before the War of eighteen twelve, no one really knew
him outside of Tennessee. He grew up a backwoods guy.
He wasn't actually poor. He later inherited two hundred acres,
but he grew up backwoods along the North and South
Carolina border shortly before the Revolutionary War, and he grew
(03:38):
up hating Indigenous people and British people. And this was
like his main thing, and like stop clock on the
British thing. But you know whatever, the Revolutionary war had
killed his mother, his only parent, and two of his brothers,
so he was really into hating the British. He also
hated indigenous people because he was a racist piece of
(03:59):
shit dick. He quickly left the backwoods and became a
Southern gentleman, which of course meant buying and selling people.
Right come the War of eighteen twelve, he was like,
let's go kill the britsin Indians, capture Florida. Woooo and
that was that was his war crime. In eighteen thirteen,
(04:19):
the Muscogee had what was called the Creek Civil War
because they were mostly called the Creek. On one side,
you have the Americanized folks who were, you know, had
just been like they'd been like doing the more settled thing.
They're starting to grow, build plantations. They were really into
the chattel slavery thing. On the other side, you had
the Red Sticks who were like, yeah, fuck all that,
(04:42):
and they would attack forts and kill everyone there except
the enslaved people who were freed who then joined them.
So Andrew Jackson just went just like went around and
burned down every Muscogi village that he could find, which like.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
A like a gentleman would, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
People tend to conveniently forget that usually everyone on all
sides of any given war of colonization kills civilians every
single chance they can get. It's like a hard conversation
to have, so we all try to not have it.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, and all the history books that we get in
American public schools do not reflect it because it complicates
things too much.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, you pick one side to decide that they kill
civilians and then the other side doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
That is the way to civilian life, the ultimate complicating factor.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, totally. But you know, I think that there's a
difference between colonial and anti colonial violence, and you know,
not to just whatever. Anyway, now I'm accidentally getting into
the motorn shit. Most of the Red Sticks died in
battle against Jackson. They were out number two to one
at Horseshoe Bend in Alabama. Maybe all die so bravely. Basically,
(05:52):
Andrew Jackson was promoted to major general for massacring all
these people who outnumbered and then immediately got the Allied
Muscogee people to sign away twenty three million acres of
their territory, basically stole it from them. Basically, it was like, yeah,
now you're just gonna give us all the shit because
we want it. Yeah, any idea how big twenty three
million acres is. It's like one of those numbers that's
(06:13):
a meaningless number. No, right, I can tell you it
was like a county, and I could tell you it
was like the eastern Seaboards.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Right at Florida.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
It's about half modern Florida.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, twenty three million, only half.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I mean Florida's big, though, I mean, yeah, that's a
big fucking state. You ever like drive through Florida and
you're like, this is no, no way, this is going
to feel like driving through Texas that takes years, but
then it does.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It is, especially like driving to Miami.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
It's it's it's gigantic, and also like there's a lot
of I don't know, it's such a large state that
I think, like Texas, there's also like regional specificity that
get's kind of totally.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
So everyone's mad, right, because he just took so much
fucking land, And this terrible loss is why the Brits
had so much luck recruiting indigenous people in the area,
because even those who had been allied with the US
had just been fucked and so it was up to
Andrew Jackson. Everyone decided, probably including Andrew Jackson, that was
up to him to smash the pesky interracial Army, which
(07:19):
to be clear, absolutely was planning to go fuck up
the US South and free from tyrannical American government. That
was absolutely their goal. Nichols, the Irishman, gave speeches about
how they would quote unrivet the chains of every person
still held in slavery. So they attacked the cool interracial
army right their first at the Colonial Marines or whatever
(07:43):
I said their name, like eight times you think i'd
remember the core of Colonial Marines. The first attack on
Alabama did not go well for the British, and grape
shot took out nichols right eye and he'll never see
out of it again. It will not stop him from
continuing to fight in battles where he gets edit and
doesn't stop. So they were treated and they got back
(08:05):
to recruiting people. They were like, okay, well we need
more people, and so they helped more and more people
escape slavery. At least they end up taking over Pensacola
for a minute, because it's not really under American control
e they're so it's sort of easy. At least two
thirds of Pensacola's and slave population was recruited during this time,
(08:26):
and all the slave owners would like go and be like,
come on, Britz, give us back our people. And the
Brits just laughed and we're like, nah, we have guns
and shit, you're gonna fuck off now. Okay, So they're
being cool. They're up to some cool stuff. November eighteen fourteen,
Andrew Jackson invaded Pensacola and outnumbered the British Florida one.
(08:50):
So the multiracial army fled and they blew up their
fortifications as they went and went back to the British post,
which is the fort that they had built along the
Apologicola River. They grow there to a force of about
fifteen hundred. As more and more indigenous warriors show up.
There's like numbers that go all over the place, all
(09:11):
the different like estimates where they're like, oh, they got
three thousand, they got fifteen hundred, they got one thousand,
there's three hundred of them. It's like all over the
fucking place, the numbers.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
God, okay, and how many like different sources is it
coming from us? It just depends.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
It just depends. A lot of it is that it
was very variable by time. And then also a lot
of history doesn't necessarily like stay perfectly linear in how
they describe these things, you know. I think that it's
like at its largest. Also, a lot of the sources,
like Americans, kept exaggerating the size of this force because
(09:50):
they were like, this is the this is armageddon, you know,
and so like there's like ones that are like there's
fifteen thousand of them, but that's like a pro slavery
America newspaper giving that number. For example, more and more
Indigenous warriors starts showing up, and then they start paying
indigenous slave owners for the freedom of their slaves at
about a I want to say about thirty dollars ahead,
(10:11):
which is like way less than market rate. It's sort
of a like we'll pay you to free slaves, but
we won't pay like white people to free slaves in America.
Those were just going to go capture, you know. On
December twenty fourth, eighteen fourteen, the War of eighteen twelve
was officially over by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent,
but they didn't have cell phones, so the war raged
(10:33):
on until news came months and months later that it
had already ended in a draw because it didn't go
well for either side. Basically both sides just fucked each
other up.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
And it also, yeah, it also didn't just go in
eighteen twelve. But that's that's that's the most that's the
saddest thing in the world to me. I mean, there's
in like a casualty of war sense where you you, like,
if someone you loved was killed after the war had
(11:05):
been resolved and you found that out later, I simply
don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
There's like World War One had that a lot, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's fucking it, is it? It would on either side
like that would kind of fuck me up, you know, yeah,
because then it was like a even this like, for example,
the Americans are about to pull out their greatest victory
in the War of eighteen twelve, after the war is over.
(11:31):
The Battle of New Orleans, made famous by a song
that I don't remember who sings and don't listen too.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Much, don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
On January eighth, eighteen fifteen, British soldiers attacked New Orleans
and Nichol's army was like, yeah, we're gonna lead. We
volunteer to like lead the landing. We're going to go
fuck these fucking slavers up. But they were told that
they couldn't join. They were basically too valuable to risk,
like they had, you know, the British and other military
plans for them. The Battle of New Orleans was like
(11:59):
not a huge deal from the British point of view,
and the British army got wrecked. Like two thousand dead
to fourteen dead on the American side is what I read. God,
it's like enough that I'm like, that's fucked. You know.
That is because they tried to march through a swamp
(12:20):
at an entrenched position, and they were also arrogant. They
were like, we are the most civilized in advanced army
in the world. Of course we're going to wreck this
like Motley Force, you know, right. And Andrew Jackson was
in charge of defending New Orleans. This is a big
This is like where is like fame like fucking comes
from at the time. Now he's mostly famous as a butcher.
(12:41):
He did the unthinkable when he defended New Orleans. He
armed enslaved people. He promised people their freedom if they
fought for the Americans. Then after the battle, he did
the thinkable, which was he said, not just fucking kidding
your fucking property, not people giving back the guns off
to jol.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That isn't the most Andrew Jackson thing in the fucking
world to do, is Yeah, yeah, promise advancement to read
nag on it later.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah. One of the most annoying things about reading the
nineteenth century like pro and anti slavery shit is watching
all of the people on all sides argue about whether
or not black people would be any good in a fight.
And like people refer to Andrew Jackson as like practically
anti racist in that he like he was like he
(13:33):
respected that black people knew how to fight for whatever.
I hate him and I hate everything about him.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
One manu, Yeah, I can't can't hand it to him
for that.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
No, absolutely, exactly, absolutely not. And the fact that that
is a thing that is like constantly brought up, and
it is a thing that like even like a lot
of the British are doing during this point. They're like, whoa,
Like I didn't know that you all were like not
racially inferior, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right right, Yeah, It's like we didn't know, we assumed
that you were not competent in like, it's what a treat,
What a treat to be told that.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah. So one man who was promises freedom was this
guy named James Roberts. During the battle, he killed six
British soldiers in hand to hand combat, losing a finger
and taking a sword across the face in the process,
and he survived. After the battle, the Americans disarmed him,
stripped him, sent him to prison, and then sent him
to the plantation where he'd come from. He later said, quote,
(14:40):
had there been less bravery with us, and he means
the armed enslaved people, the British would have gained the victory,
and in that event, they would have set the slaves free.
So that I see now how we in that war
contributed to fasten our own chains tighter? What about fucking heartbreaking? Yeah, like.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Anyway, no, I mean no, it's yeah, yeah, I mean
I feel like it just speaks to the the helplessness
of the situation and just that they're like are ultimately no,
I don't know, there's no good imperial force to ally with,
if you can believe it, in this case, there's a
(15:25):
better one.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Everyone who fought for the British not only were they freed,
but so were their families. Oh wow, okay, and Andrew
Jackson after they like after the folks who fight and
then they they flee whatever. Andrew Jackson figures that he
can now show up. He's like, he just crushed the British, right,
so he's like, I'm just going to show up and
(15:47):
be like, yo, give us back our property. And the
British were like, no, we're good, and once again all
the like slave owners go and they're like, they're like,
same deal as always. You can come and not buy worse,
ask people to return to you. And so all these
like slave owners like showed up and we're like, oh,
of course they're gonna come back. We're gonna like ask nicely. Right.
(16:08):
A few people in this case did end up going back. Basically,
I think that they thought that they might get abandoned
and killed, and they just were looking to their options.
Almost everyone was like, no chance in fucking hell will
we do that. One newly freed wagon driver told us,
former master, you may carry my head along with you,
but as to my body, it will remain here, like
(16:32):
it's just the time of metal quotes.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Basically, yeah, I was like, there's really some bangers in
this story, like one after the other. Yeah, and they
still don't know the war's over. So Nichol's army is
now thirty five hundred strong and they get ready to invade,
and they're gonna just fucking go fuck up the American South.
The war's over. But they're like, let they don't know,
(16:55):
Scho girls, Well, they don't know.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
It, right, right?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Right? Do we know how exactly how long after this is.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We're still only like a month or so later. I
don't remember the well, okay, So, like the treaty was signed,
Battle of New Orleans is January eighth, and so then
like pretty immediately afterwards, right, it's like a week or
two later or something. They're like, we're getting ready to
go do this thing, but then news of the truce
comes before they get a chance to do it. And
(17:24):
so Nichols's army basically it's like never really put to
the test. And you know. So then Spain's like, all right, great,
the war's over. Can we have our enslaved people back?
And Nichols was like nah. And then Spade was like,
but there's no legal basis for that, and Nichols was like,
I don't really care Nick got Nick go. Yeah. It
(17:48):
was hilarious because the deal was that under the Spanish
territorial law, it was okay for slaves escaping the US
to be freed, but not Spanish slaves, like anyone escaping
a Spanish owner, right, okay. And so there's all these
slaves with Hispanic last names who only spoke Spanish, and
Nichols is like, nah, that guy's American, you know, And
(18:10):
they'd be like, no, I swear that that's our guy.
Nicholas just be like, no, it's not you go ooh,
I also have a lot of guns.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, gigantic bluff.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I love it. Yeah. In the end, Nichols presented each
person who had fought or was there a certificate of freedom,
saying that their service in the military meant that they
were free, and that basically that the Spanish delegates could
eat it. The Spanish delegates are like there when he's
passing out these certificates.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And he also gave the soldiers all of their wages
for the entire time, which is the whole thing. And
like even the Army of the North and during the
Civil War like decades later, was like real bad at
pain black soldiers you know. So he's like, here's all
your money. You can keep the uniform that you are
officially discharged from service because the war is over. And
(19:04):
these certificates that he gave them kept a bunch of
people free down the line because there's like all this
shit where like because Nichols rules in Britain sucks, you know,
and so like later a lot of these freed people
like go to other British colonies and people are like, no,
you're not free, and they have to be like, ah,
I'm going to take it to court and I have
this document and shit, you know. So he made a
fucking paper trail. He based it on nothing. He based
(19:26):
it on I want these people to be free. Here's
a document.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
God that fucking rocks. Yeah, totally another a win for
the Irish, a win for fighting Nichols. Yeah, just having
an army, a bunch of guns and a big old
lie and actually being on the right side of history.
And the war ended a month ago secretly, great great,
great great great.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, and so he tried one lass thing, but the
British government didn't go for it. Basically he was like,
we will absolutely keep this war going if you don't
give the Muscogee back the land at Andrew Jackson stole
those twenty three million acres, we will absolutely go to
war for it. And then Britain was like, no, no, no,
(20:12):
not so much. We're not going to do that. But
they did stand by the emancipation of five thousand enslaved
people who had escaped to British Territory in April eighteen fifteen.
Nichols and the rest of the white British unit lefty.
This gets like a little blurry. They had this intention
to return in six months or maybe a year, and
(20:33):
maybe it was to help transport everyone away, but then
other people were like, no, he was never planning on
coming back, and people chose to stay there because they
wanted to just live there and keep the fort and shit.
And the reason I want I want to like Nichols,
and two the other reason I kind of trust him
about this. He leaves this fort intact fully armed with
(20:57):
hundreds of guns like cannon, powder keg after powder keg,
like this is a fully. He doesn't take any of
the food like he As far as I can tell,
he just right by the people. The one thing he
fucked up is he left a white guy in charge. Oh,
(21:18):
he's gonna fuck off soon, don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I mean, but I just, based on what you just described,
I'm tempted to want to give a good faith reading
of that because other other than just like fucking off
in the middle of the night, and like, you know,
completely like it sounds like there was the intent of
some longevity there.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, And when he leaves, it transports a ton of
the formally enslaved people with them when they leave, but
a lot of people stick around. But they leave this
white guy named Hambly around and they're like, all right,
this guy's in charge. And he was like he had
been he was local to the area, and he had
been like an important part of a lot of the
(21:58):
conversations with indigenous leader and stuff, and he had worked
for the trading post that was what used to be
there before the fort. So Nichols leaves. He goes on
to continue his life to go fuck up slave ships
in Atlantic. A bunch of black soldiers leave with him
and they go off to live in Bermuda and shit.
About three hundred black families remain at the fort, which
(22:19):
is fully stocked in armed by the British. Before their departure,
and British post becomes Negro Po Negro Fort, and the
Spanish authorities couldn't do shit about it because it was
fully stocked and armed fort. So what the fuck are
they going to do about it? Because one thing that
history teaches you is that often the law doesn't matter
if you have enough guns.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And this can go a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Oh, absolutely, it goes bad and good, yes, constantly, yeah, yes,
but generally true. Yeah, some of the black families and
soldiers they actually had come with the British in the
first place, from Virginia or the Caribbean and decided to
stick around because they were like, actually, if we stay here,
there's this amazing community of resistance that's being built. It's
(23:03):
basically like being built as a maroon community right away.
And so a bunch of people who came from elsewhere
who were just British soldiers were like, nas where weren't
gonna be? Yeah, Indigenous fighters stuck around as well, or
they lived in the area immediately around it. But one
thing that they didn't have that you and I have
is access to Actually, I'm sure there were ads. There
(23:28):
are probably a ton of ads, but our ads are
more developed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
But not with the weird little music beds that not
the little beet boop beat boops that you get on
a podcast ad. There's a unique kind of gorgeous, annoying
musical cadence to a podcast add there really is.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, uh, and here they are and we're back. So
how do you think that America took the fact that
when the British left, they left a armed maroon community
(24:12):
in a fort that was incredibly defensible?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I think in the way America always takes things calmly,
reasonably and wanting to be inclusive and extend that American
dream to everybody.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Is that correct? It's close and they you know, they
probably were like, well, that's not America. Why is it
any of our business? Mm hmm. But unfortunately everything is
America's business, Jamie Loftus and the existence of this fort
scared the shit out of white people, just fucking kept
(24:47):
people up at night. This was going to destroy everything
they loved about America. There's newspapers all over the country
screaming and yelling about this happening. Those black people who
weren't even in the fucking United States, fucking United States,
were like, come in for baseball and apple pie, and
by that I mean chattel slavery only. Okay, be clear,
(25:09):
it would be entirely fine if they I would love
them if they were off to go do that. They weren't.
The war was over. They were not planning some great
raid on the US. They were just trying to fucking
live free. To quote the author Matthew C. Clayven from
the best book about this that I'm aware of, the
Battle of negro Fort, quote, negro Fort's denizens were not
(25:33):
slave revolutionaries out to destroy the nefarious institution that sought
to keep them in bondage. Nor were they determined to
restore or recreate a traditional way of life recalled from
their youth or inherited from their African ancestors. Instead, like
other Maroons who struggled to survive in the Southern United
States or adjacent territories, their actions show that self determination,
(25:53):
self reliance, and self rule were their key objectives. And
so they were just trying to fucking live.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah, that was like, that's a long point of saying,
just living with dignity and independence.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
That white guy Hambley, he was a chicken shit loser.
He ran off right away and he went to the US,
and he was like, please destroy that place. I'll help
you negotiate with indigenous leaders to attack it.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Oh yeah, okay, real flame out. Okay, real flame out.
Use it. Yeah, he will know he had millennial burnout.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Margaret, Right, totally. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You have burnout at work?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah? What do you think that they had? Like, like,
I don't know the names of generations before the greatest generation.
You know, it's like greatest old boomers, young boomers, which
is a millennial silent?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Is it silent before greatest?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Oh? Yeah, is the greatest and then silent? But but
what the fuck did they call? Oh? I hate asking
questions like this because people are going to answer me,
and the when people answer me correctly, it's interesting. And
when people just a year from now listen to this
and then message me with no context, I'll have no idea.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
They're like Margaret, Margaret, pep generation. It was the peep generation.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Cool, that is all that is. Like one of the
beautiful parts of parasociality is someone answering a question you
asked six years ago, yeah, and being presented as urgent
or I don't know, just like stuff like, hey, do
you remember when you said this in twenty eighteen. I'm like, guaranteed, No,
let's assume I was wrong. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I don't remember by the time you're hearing this, even
if you listen when it first came out, I'm not
going to remember. Make this sentence. I only remember about
the four Yeah, the weird side conversations not part of
my memory.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Nor should it be.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, anyway, before we talk shit on the people who
are listen to our s eh okay.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Oh no, no, no, it's just an interesting it's an
interesting and like usually funny side effect of the job.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. And I do it to like I do it
to Jamie. I listened to something Jamie did, Like I
do it to Robert. I do it to ya. I
do it to cool Zone media. People like it. Yeah,
it is a human instinct to be like, I know
a thing about that. Like Robert Evans said that people
listen to the V Nation are old. I'm sure Robert
Evans doesn't remember saying that, But when I listen to
(28:28):
the V Nation in my basement when I'm working out,
I think, yeah, no, I'm kind of old. This is
a really interesting asign. People are very glad we did it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I love Yeah, I love talking to five year old
MP three files. It's my passion.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, so negro Fort Sadly, the whole point
of this episode is about how cool this place was.
The reason that we didn't get to it until now
is because we don't know that much about it. We
know a lot about what happened when there were white
people around, and we know very little when they weren't.
(29:09):
It was fucking cool. We know that Nichols is great,
but it's annoying that he gets all the screen time
and we know more about him. We know that Maroon
communities require security culture in order to stay alive, and
that's part of why we know so little about Maroon communities.
We also know that in this community there were Spanish speaking,
(29:32):
French speaking, English speaking, and people born in Africa all
living there side by side, and we know that's mostly
because their names. Like one person would be like Congo
Tom because he was born in Africa, and another person
will have like a French name or whatever, right, and
we actually know a lot about like because they're fucking
listed as property. We know a lot of their names,
(29:53):
and we know a lot of their job descriptions, you know,
because people are like reporting their missing property. We also
know that they had eight cannons, and that's part of
why they managed to fucking stay missing property, which fucking rules. Yeah,
they were skilled artisans. They had eight cannons, a howitzer,
which is like halfway between a cannon and a mortar,
so it's like not quite as long distance whatever. And
(30:13):
they had hundreds of muskets. M Yeah, we thought howitzers
is a brand name of a gun, and then I
started reading.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, like a xerox or a Zamboni situation. Interesting, Okay,
it's his own thing.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
It might be Oh god, I've talked about a military Okay. Anyway,
we know that they started off with food stores, but
soon they were growing their own and they seemed to
live lives of plenty. They herded cattle in the swampy forest.
They grew corn and melons, and they cultivated land. They
set up like several they're described as plantations, but that
just means like how they plant things, not how it
(30:48):
was structured. They hunted turkey and alligator and deer, and
they fished. They traded extensively with their indigenous allies in
the surrounding area. New fugitives arrived every day, they kept growing,
and they were all considered bandits. And to be clear,
I think they did some piracy they like built boats
and shit, but mostly they were bandits because they had
(31:11):
stolen valuable property. Do you want to guess what the
valuable property they stole was. No, it's themselves. No, that's
what makes them bandits. They are bandits because they stole property.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
I think their own human bodies.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Y y, yes, they stole from slave owners and for
once they are black lead. We know about three of
the commanders. There's Cyrus, there's Prince, who was actually a
lieutenant in the Colonial Marines. And the most famous of
the three, Garson, was a thirty six year old carpenter
who'd been a sergeant major. Why was he the most
(31:50):
famous because his name was French?
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Oh my god, I was about to say, because he
had a cute little name. And that was the reason.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
It is the reason, because this the single scariest thing
that has happened to white Southerners and human history was
the Haitian Revolution. Okay, and during the Haitian Revolution, which
is had only ended and ended in eighteen oh four,
and you know, so not that long before this, black
and slave people rose up and freed themselves. And the
(32:21):
guy who had led that to Saint Lutour, whose French
name I am not good at French, was a black
guy with a French name. So here's Garson. He's French
and black. The end is nigh. God Like, all over
the papers, all over the papers, they're like the Haitian
(32:42):
Revolutions coming. Which, don't get me wrong, there were many
people trying to make the Haitian Revolution come to North America.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
For sure, But I'm just at every turn, just a
nation of fucking weird babies.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
It's just absolutely and who will save this nation of
weird babies? But a hero, a hero will merge. Mm hmmm,
it's Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Again, I had a feeling it was Andrew Jackson. Yeah.
I mean, if anyone was well equipped to capture the
mind of violent babies, I suppose it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
YEP. Which is an awkward place to stick an AD pivot,
but that's where it is. It's right here, right now.
Here's an AD pivot, and we're.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Back, and we pivoted right on back. It feels I
think that would perfectly Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Absolutely good mind Tom. So basically Andrew Jackson was like,
dear mister the President, can I invade a sovereign country
to put down a ford in their territory? Because I
think that they make Basically, it was like the existence
of this place will incite people to flee? Right, Okay,
(34:02):
that was like their main argument, which is true, the
existence of that place incited people to flee, which is good.
Just not he presents it as bad because he's a
backwards man who walks backwards and talks whatever.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It's opposite day for him every day exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, he's the opposite moratl guy. Yeah. And so he writes,
dear mister president, can I invade the sovereign country to
put down a fort in their territory? And the President's like, oh,
don't know when he's like thinking about it, and then
Andrew Jackson's like, you know what, I'm not waiting for
a response. I don't care. Wow, And just in classic
(34:39):
white supremacist for him, he's like, fuck the law, I
do things my way.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah. No, he's he's a classic example of uh asked,
you know, apologizing instead of asking for permission.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And he also did the same thing to
the Spanish, he wrote and was like, if you all
don't take down that place, I will. But before the
Spanish have a chance to think about it, America is
already on its way to illegally cross into Spain and
fucker thinks up it's time to go burn indigenous villages,
including our recent allies, blow up the fort all in
(35:10):
someone else's country. It is entirely illegal, even by US standards.
That has never stopped anyone with power, let alone Andrew Jackson.
But Andrew Jackson didn't lead it himself. He just illegally
authorized his subordinate general Gains to do it for him
because Jackson wanted to be president and so he wanted
(35:32):
to do some plausible deniability shit where what he said
was go take care of it however you think is best.
But we we have his correspondence where he's openly like
and by that I mean like he'll everyone and blow
shit up and get back all this enslaved people and shit,
I don't care go through violence.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I feel like that there is just like a kind
of commonly held like presidents were not caught saying openly inflammatory,
violent shit before Watergate, And you're like, no, they've been doing.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It Yeah, he is absolutely going to end up president
at the end of this story.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And there's the paper trail. Collectively everyone decided
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, totally, that's for historians.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
So Gaines's plan was simple. He was going to hire
the local indigenous people to do all the fighting and
dying by promising them fifty dollars ahead for recaptured slaves,
which is about four times the going rate, and also
that they could loot the place of anything but cannons,
and they could also keep any people who for whom
owners couldn't be found. They would be supported by some
(36:40):
US gunboats and at least the book Battle of negro
Fort represents it as the first ever large scale slave
hunting expedition by the US. The first battle of it
went really badly for the US, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
A small boat of white soldiers like went up the
river looking for fresh water, and they were ambushed by
twenty black and twenty indigenous fighters, each under their own commander.
Garsan was leading the black forces and an unknown unnamed
chief to let the indigenous fighters, and they killed some
of the white people and they drove the rest off
(37:21):
somewhere along the way. Aware of the coming attack. Hundreds
of maroons and fugitives slipped out of the fort, while
a few hundreds stayed behind to defend it. The fugitives
took refuge in various indigenous communities, especially among the Seminole.
We'll talk a little bit more about soon. The fort
was besieged indigenous warriors of the I mean it's literally
(37:44):
Musgogi fighters on both sides of this. So it's just
like the indigenous warriors in the woods were shooting at
the fort while the white people hid in boats behind
the bluff. Their stated plan was to stay out of
it so that no white people got hurt. And this
last to six days, this siege, and there were sorties
fought between the two forces that forced the soldiers of
(38:05):
negro Fort back behind their walls. And about half of
the soldiers in negro Fort are black and the other
half are Indigenous. They flew the union jack and above
it they flew a solid red flag, which was a
flag that meant they would offer no quarter and not
accept any quarter. They were all going to fight to
the death rather than go back into trains. Once again,
(38:28):
very metal.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
A very yeah, nothing if not consistently metal.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah. The battle ended quickly. I spent the episode talking
about metaphorical powder kegs, but this one's not metaphorical. At
the center of the fort was this massive stone edifice
named the Citadel that stored all the powder for all
those cannons and muskets. One of the besieging gunboats was
(38:59):
doing something called hot shot, where they would put the
cannonballs in like a furnace, like a makeshift furnace that
they built on the boat before shooting them out of
the cannons. One cannon ball found its way into the citadel.
The resulting explosion was heard for miles in every direction,
and almost every defender died in the blast, About two
(39:21):
hundred and fifty people died and about fifty people survived,
most of whom later succumbed to their wounds. Okay Garson
and an unnamed Choctaw war chief survived the blast. They
were captured. They immediately and proudly took credit for killing
the American soldiers, and they were scalped and shot. Almost
(39:43):
none of the Maroons were returned to slavery. Almost every
single one of them died free, which was their plan. Wow,
and like, I feel like that doesn't like it gets
talked about like this great loss, and it was right,
like they didn't win, but they were really clear about
(40:08):
their intentions and they also provided enough time for way
more people who stayed to get out and get away.
You know.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
Yeah, I mean, and I think that there should and
often is has to be some area for well, what
does winning versus.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Losing look like in a situation like this? And I
think that yeah, like characterizing it as a total loss
would would not be true because you know, dilied free.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, in the end, like I think maybe two people
were returned to slavery successfully. During all of this, the
refugees from negro Fort went deeper into the wilderness and
they formed two communities. There was a black one called
Nero's Town, which had a leader named Nero, and an
indigenous one called bow Leg's Town, which had a leader
(41:02):
named bow Leg.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Okay, I was waiting for a twist.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, no, no twist. More fugitives began to join them.
So the Maroon community continues and the two communities, they're
like military societies and including at like negro Fort was
like a military institution. It considered itself British military unit
(41:26):
and so like it was like it gets presented as
a like military dictatorship or whatever. I'm like, yeah, it was.
It was a military society, you know that it was
around in the middle of basically an active war. I'm
not fucking coming at them for their authoritarianism, you know.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
And Nero's Town in bow Leg's Town are presented in
very similar ways where they were still A lot of
them are still wearing uniforms. A lot of them are like, no,
this is just where we're continuing the fight. Interesting, okay.
And Nero's Town, Nero was a black man who had
himself run away from slavery twenty plus years early to
live with the seminole before showing up to negro Fort.
(42:03):
And in Nero's town, they would dance the Red Stick dance,
which was away like part of the culture of the
Red Sticks, so they consider themselves part of the Red Sticks.
Shortly after the destruction of negro Fort, hundreds of Seminal
warriors and Red Sticks captured that asshole Hambly, you know,
the like the dude who had fucking been left in charge.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Wow, they found the.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Flop, which is like the most movie part of it, right,
he'd be like the Disney villain who like, you know,
runs away and like gets but yeah he.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
Gets I'm so glad he got gotten. That's thrilling.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
And then so seminal warriors capture him, transport him and
some other folks who were responsible for the destruction one
hundred and fifty miles to Nero's town, and there were
sentenced to torture by a tribunal, with the implication being
tortured at death, but Nero intervened for some unknown reason
and had them transported and turnover to Spanish authorities. I'd
(43:06):
be so I'd be so pissed if I was one
of the people who had just transported this guy one
hundred and fifty miles, you know.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, with the sweet promise. Yeah yeah, not to be like,
actually we've decided to go to a different direction. Fuck you,
yeah we got this far.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
Well I still think that's I mean, that is yeah,
that is a movie style return. I thought I thought
that he he got off Scott free.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah no, and did not get off Scott free.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Excellent, great news.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
And then in the US, basically weird annoying political machinations
of cover up started immediately because what they had done
was flagrantly illegal, right. The other thing that started right
away was the hunt for all the fugitives who'd escaped,
which was basically another illegal intrusion into Spanish Florida by
Andrew jack this time him personally, and they went around
(44:04):
in massacred places. They massacred Nero's town at least I
don't know about bow Legstown. Jackson personally enslaved a black
fighter who still wore his red coat.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Jesus, an inexhaustibly evil person.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I know, just fucking terminator style, like more than four
Even after this, more than four hundred and thirty negro
Fort refugees continued to live in Florida free, mostly with
the Seminoles. The Seminoles didn't take kindly all this massacring happening,
and you get the first Seminole War, which is a
story for another week, but the shortish versions of it. Eventually,
(44:45):
the Seminole War led Spain to be like, fine, fuck it,
take Florida. We kind of hate it anyhow, and the
US got one of its most cursed states. The Seminoles
went so hard that there's more than one Seminole War
in which negro Fort veterans fought and got to see
some revenge on the empire that enslaved them. Like literally
the fifteen twenty year later wore some of the same
veterans were like, yeah, we're gonna go fuck up some
(45:06):
fucking like colonial Americans.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Absolutely mm hmm, God, I would love to hear a
cool people on the Seminal Wars.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
That is, it's absolutely in the plans. I've been Yeah,
I've like done some of the research into it, and
it's going to get into some messy and interesting shit
and some like yeah, wild escapades. In eighteen twenty nine,
famed racist crusader Andrew Jackson became the seventeenth President of
the United States and the first Democratic president back when
(45:39):
Democrat meant the pro slavery guys. He signed the Indian
Removal Act and was just like one of the worst
people ever born. The Seminal Wars were Indian Wars, but
they were also wars over slavery. The North was like,
what the fuck are we doing? And the abolitionist movement
adopted Negro Ford as a symbol and the US attack
on it as evident of the US being what't referred
(46:02):
They started referring to the US accurately enough as a
slaveocracy like ruled by slavers, and their evidence was the
US keeps doing shit for slavers. That has nothing to
do with our economic interest, nothing to do with our
military interests. It's just for slavery, right. Negro Fort was
on John Brown's tongue when he declared the need for
(46:23):
a violent liberation of enslaved people and wrote a long
piece about it three months after he wrote that he
led his assault on Harper's Ferry. That, as we've talked
about before, was at least a crucial domino, if not
the spark itself that started the Civil War and ended
legal chattel slavery in the United States. So here's to
(46:43):
Garson and the hundreds of other unnamed indigenous and Black
people who lived free, died free, and helped spark one
of the greatest movements for human liberty and history against
one of the most vile empires that has ever existed
on this earth.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That is so I'm I mean, it stands straight, but
it's it's really cool to hear that that negro Fort
became such a huge inspiration for the movement moving forward
and also makes it, i mean, all the more frustrating
that it is not taught, oh yeah, to anyone. But
(47:20):
I feel like any any armed resistance is especially by
indigenous or black people of the US, is just not not.
We don't talk.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
About it, absolutely not, and especially yeah, I don't like
telling stories where the British are the good guys, right like,
and so I think that's even part of it too.
I mean it's mostly this. We do talk about violent resistance,
especially any violent resistance that could be justified. You know,
we're always like, h sure, the evil, savage people being whatever,
(47:48):
you know, but right, yeah, no, it was a completely
justified thing that even in the and then the other
thing is that people are like, oh, we're so smart now,
and in the nineteenth century they're all idiots, and I'm like, no,
in the eighteen thirties and forties, people were like, wait,
what we did? What are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 1 (48:08):
Well, then, and then the inevitability of of everyone involved
acting so heroically and genuinely having a net win not
only in a number of people living and dying free,
but in inspiring them inspiring further action, and contrasting that
(48:30):
with and Andrew Jackson becomes president anyways, and I know,
you know, never sees a consequence in his entire fucking
life and just accruse more and more and more power.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Yeah, and it's funny too, Like if you read about
Andrew Jackson's legacy, it's like, Andrew Jackson was incredibly popular,
and then it's like, by the second half of the
twentieth century, some people were starting to think he was
not a good person.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
You know that two hundred years Yeah, Like, but it
also but at the same time, it's like people are like, oh,
product of their time, and it's like, one, Andrew Jackson
was worse than everyone, and everyone knew it he was.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
He was the worst guy.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Then yeah, like he was more racist than the racist
founding fathers, you know. And like also everyone at the
time was like fuck that. Not everyone, most people liked him,
but a ton of people were like fuck this guy.
Well again, Also, I hate when we're like, oh, all
white all people in the nineteenth century were racist, and
you're like, do you mean all white people? Like right, anyway,
(49:33):
that's the story.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
That's this, that's the story. Wow, thank you so much
for uh for telling me. I truly knew, I mean,
and I knew a little bit about this about the
seminole Wars, but I did not know, uh what preceded it. Yeah, God,
thank you, thank you. I hope that I really, I
mean not that I have, you know, much hope in
(49:55):
this way, but I hope that that this is like
talked about more, really is starting and still could and
should be inspiring. Now.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, absolutely, Well what else should be talked about now
is your plugs?
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yay, yay, Okay, you can. I just began producing a
relaunch of the wonderful show We the Unhoused, hosted by
Theo Henderson on iHeart Radio. It is a show about
the unhoused experience from an unhoused lens. We have episodes
(50:38):
that release every other Tuesday, and we just relaunched, So
get in on the ground floor of the show. And
there's also a great backlog. And yeah, it's holiday times.
You should get my book Raw Dog. It's about hot
dogs and also about the evils of capitalism. So if
you're a fan of this show and not fan of
(51:00):
hot dogs, there's still something for you in it.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I secretly love all of the reviews of people who
got really upset when they thought it was just gonna
be about hot dogs but didn't realize that the manufacture
of a commodity ties in the economic system that creates
it and might be critical of that economic system.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Or that I would want to even mention manufacturing. They're like,
what the heck this was supposed to be about the
one my dad makes?
Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Why is it just about mustard?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Yeah? No, although I'm sure that if I had had
more real estate page wise, we could have we could
have found a mustard bastard easily.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Yeah. Now, I'm just imagining a sort of a cartoon,
not a cartoon character, like a mascot, a villain with
a in a mustard suit.
Speaker 1 (51:52):
I don't know why, a torly mustache peeking out of
a mustard suit.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah. Now, I'm like, I'm gonna go eat dumplanes and
I'm like, I want if I can put mustard on them.
I think I'm gonna stick with soy sauce. But okay,
I'm clearly distracted by the fact that I'm hungry.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You can follow me on Instagram. My Instagram is at
Margaret Kiljoy. You can follow me on substack. My substack
is you Google Margaret Kiljoy substack. I don't know anyone
who actually types in the url in that particular situation.
I post new essays every week. Half of them are public,
half of them are private. If you want to know
more about my hikes with my dog, then you have
to be a paid subscriber. If you want to know
(52:30):
more about the stuff. That's actually the kind of thing
I want to say to the broader world. You don't
have to be a paid subscriber. It's free. That's the
point of it. It's like the opposite of freemium like.
And also you can listen to other cool Zone Media podcasts.
You can listen to Hood Politics with prop which is
amazing and has been what I listened to while cooking recently.
(52:52):
And also Burning track. I would never burn trash. I
live in the country, but I would never even burn cardboard.
I wouldn't do that. That's wrong. It's the end of
the episode. Bye everyone. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (53:08):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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