Part Two: The German Abolitionists: How the 48ers Joined the American Abolitionists

Margaret finishes talking to Cody Johnston about how a bunch of German revolutionaries joined the movement against American slavery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff, a podcast that does what it says in
the name of the podcast, because there's two ways to
name things, and one is direct and literal and one
is evocative. And usually go for evocative, but I didn't.
I went for a direct and literal post Martyr Kiljoy.

(00:22):
I'm a host of Cool People Did Cool Stuff and
one of the people who's cool and does cool stuff,
but isn't the subject of today's episode, but is instead.
The guest for today's episode is Cody Johnston. Hi, how
are you?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I'm great, how are you? Thank you so much? What
a nice compliment. Oh, thank you. I hope to be
the subject of the podcast one day. Oh yeah, this
is your life. Yeah, you'll be a guest. Actually, for
the record, I would never listen to a podcast about myself.
Please nobody make that exist ever, No Hollywood story, please don't.
What have we made stuff up? Be like?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
And then his life fell apart as he got into
I don't know what you have and haven't done, so
I don't want to like a joke and you actually
have struggled with the addiction, so but I don't know.
I have your opinions about politicians.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, my life is boring. One assumes no one will
ever know though, because there won't be a podcast about it.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
That's true. What there will be a podcast about is
our producer, Sharenhi Sheren, How are you?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
No? No, no, there won't.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Scharene welcome to this is your Life? Surprised, Thanks Margaret,
thank you for having me. Yeah, Sharene's our producer today
and well it's actually always one of our producers, but
is our on mic producer today. So if you like
the show, it's in large part because of Shreene.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Oh that's very nice.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Whenever people are like, ah, DII is the best, I'm like,
I have done almost everything I do also DIY. And
you know what rules is like working with a team
of people that makes some good. It's so good. It's
so much better. And this is coming from a hard
introvert who doesn't like working with people. But one of
the people that I'm happy to work with is or
our audio engineer Hi Rori hi Rori, Hi Rory. And

(02:04):
also our the musical was written for us by own women.
And I don't know why I'm talking so fast? Why
am I talking so fast. It probably has to do
with the cookies that are on the table next to me.
Now I am realizing that I am in.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
A sugar rush.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
What a great way to podcast. Anyway, This is part
two in our two parter about the forty eight ers
from the Spirit of forty eight, the Good Sorry eight
and how a bunch of German immigrants came to America
and joined the abolitionist movement and are largely left out

(02:38):
of the story. I mean mostly it's the black abolitions
are left out of the story. And we've done a
bunch of episodes about black abolitionism and we're going to
do more. But I hadn't heard about the immigrant abolitionists.
I mostly hear stories about all the immigrants were a
bunch of racists, which a lot of them were, but
a lot of them weren't. Anyway, you know what state

(03:02):
is really big? And almost never on this show.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
I do, but only because because I said that last time, Yeah, yeah, oh,
I was gonna say Utah, Oh.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
That's pretty big. And also never on this show. We've
probably never done a Utah because I knew, oh, okay,
there's a lot of Montana was probably in some of
our Lakota Resistance. It's the Dakota's more.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Montana is pretty big less, yes, I know.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Oh my god, there's so many places I haven't done.
I have to keep having a job, so thanks for listening.
That's why I have a job. We haven't gotten to
talk about cool people in Texas much, and when we did,
it was, of course Mexican immigrant laborers who unionized and
fought in the Mexican Revolution. You can listen to our

(03:55):
episode about the Maganistas if you want to hear about that.
But here's maybe our only second Texas story, unless there's
another one I forgot. The first wave of German immigration
to Texas pre dates Texas being a state. In the
early eighteen forties, some nobles from Prussia, they settled in
what is now Central Texas but was called Western Texas

(04:16):
at the time, and they paid for hundreds of peasants
to come join them. And I don't know enough about
this to know whether or not this was a like,
hey serfs, we miss having serfs, or whether it was
like a we're going to help you all start new
lives right right.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, maybe they I mean the movie said the second thing,
but really meant the first thing. You know, we want
to help you.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, because we don't know how to pour our own tea.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
This era is called aristocratic German Texas by the probably
ten people alive who think or talk about it. Germany
was a fairly diverse place, and suddenly Protestants, Catholics, and
Jews were all neighbors in Texas. And that is a
like not what you expect out of eighteen forties Texas.
When the revolutionary forty eight er Germans came over, they

(05:04):
created something really different. They created a whole ass counterculture
of what might be called farmer intellectuals. They are like
working class, Like like a Northern journalist came down and
was like, whoa, what the fuck? You can like ride
a horse around on a ranch talking about Dante with
like workers who split shingles for a living. This is amazing.

(05:25):
I am in love with it. I get that that
sounds fun.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
These German ethnic enclaves were little anti slavery islands in
Texas where white workers owned their own farms and did
the work themselves, which is a wild idea. I know
there were exceptions to this here and there, but overall,
these Germans were opposed to slavery, Like there was a
couple of them who were like, hell, yeah, I'm in
America when in rome By.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
There's always going to be a couple. Yeah, any group
of people.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Like one person on your streets a slaver and you're
just like, fuck, now I have to.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Go to one.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
They formed societies like the Sister Dale Free Society based
on platforms that slavery needed to be abolished, which was
really specifically bold for immigrants in the South to be
saying most groups of people who would run around saying
we aggressively hate slavery and would like to see it
end in don't live where the slavers with guns can

(06:26):
reach you. Yeah, and I feel like that needs to
be acknowledged about, like a specific radical act of being
in Texas saying this the main focus of our story,
this part of the story. We're going to get to
Ohio later. A radical newspaper that tried to push anti
slavery and abolition at great risk to life and limb.
The newspaper was called the San Antonio Zeitungue, which means newspaper.

(06:48):
It's subtitle translated to a social democratic paper for the
Germans in Western Texas. Because when you have to name
something either very literally or more evocatively. As far as
I can tell, ninety nine percent of German immigrants in
America picked literal.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Do what you know?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah? The newspaper that like is the reason we celebrate
May Day was called Arbitter's Tongue, which means worker newspaper.
So I need it's all there, Yeah, exactly, that's what
it says.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
It doesn't need to be fans. Yeah, partsy shit.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, it's principal editor. Uh. The san Antotiose Tongue was
a German immigrant named Adolf. Do I Adolf? I'm gonna
call him Adolf because due is harder pronounced. But it's
going to be funny to call him Adolf the whole time,
because for some weird reason, people don't name their kids
that anymore.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
There's there was a good one before there was a
bad one. You know, that's just sad.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
It's actually another Adolf in the Chicago Haymarket story who
ran a different America's German newspaper that a different name that.
Oh the name escapes me.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
I mean it just takes one. Yeah, it takes one
one monster. Yeah, and other stuff, but especially the name.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, our Adolf had lived a wildlife already before he
moved to Texas. Yeah, the good Adolph. He had five
separate arrests for high treason in Prussia that got him
jailed and eventually driven into exile, and when he got
to the US he was in no way reformed. High

(08:16):
treason might as well have been his middle name. That
visiting journalist wrote about him, I never saw a man
more cheerful and full of boundless hope and aspirations for
the elevation of all mankind, including Africans.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
What a different ad All. That's just the opposite of
the most famous all. It's even spelled differently. Wait, is
our is bad Adolf? pH or F?

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (08:39):
No, it's an f F.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Oh okay. The other Adolf from Chicago is pH Okay,
this one has the bad spelling, but again years ago?

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Even who is the spelling?

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Really, that man needs to go back and change his
name ahead time. Otherways, he's canceled.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
But that's quote you just read. It's like the antithesis
of the Bad Adolf. Yeah, I have nothing bad to
say about this man. I'm sure there's bad stuff, but
he is a heartwarming story. He is fighting off slavers
with his elderly dad side by side with guns by
the end of this story, did he paint?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
He painted.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
I don't know if he painted, but I bet they're good.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Wouldn't it be creepy if they were like similarly like
mid with slightly bad perspective?

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, that'd be really funny.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Like nothing to write home about, but not terrible.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
It's fine, like I don't know you yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
But who did try to cancel? Adolph was the slavers.
A culture war stirred up when he started publishing anti
slavery articles, and they were all in German. At first,
he was actually kind of getting ratted out by the
conservative German immigrants because they existed right like wherever this
is happening, there's also people who are like Bootleckers, who
are like, no, we want to hang out both the
cool slavers, you know. By eighteen fifty four, a right

(10:04):
wing boycott of his paper was gaining ground, and he
was losing subscribers and advertisers. Do I was not the
kind of guy to lose his nerve. He fundraised to
buy his paper. It was originally owned by like stockholders
and they were increasingly nervous, and they wanted to avoid trouble,
and so he fundraised, got a lot of money actually
from northern abolitionists, and bought his own paper. People also

(10:26):
kept threatening to lynch him, which was, to be clear,
a very real threat. An awful lot of anti slavery folks,
white and black, were getting lynched in Texas at the time.
He kept going, He and the other folks around him
went harder. Together they formed what was called the Free
Soil Texas Movement. It is a movement to make Texas

(10:47):
a free state. And when I think of like states
that would probably be hard to make a free state,
Like I don't think Texas is where I would like
first pick.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
You know, it's not the first Yeah, good luck to them, Yeah, no,
and good luck.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
They were not afraid of biting off more than they
could chew. He has five arrests for high trees and
in Prussia, you know, okay, So there's two ways of
they went about it. A lot of the other folks
were like, we're just going to bring abolitionists Germans from
the north of the US and outvote the pro slavery folks, right,
We're going to like out colonize them basically. You know,

(11:24):
Adolph was more optimistic. He was like, the answer is
public education, the answer. Most white Texans didn't own people.
Most white Texans are poor. He wanted to teach how
class solidarity was what mattered, not race solidarity, not white supremacy.
So he turned The Zetongue into a bilingual paper to

(11:47):
educate English speakers too, and he had help of the
decentralized National Abolitionist Movement fundraised to help him buy the paper,
and they also helped him buy English language type. Right,
because it's just different characters slightly. Oh my god, that
means it was in black letter, holy shit, because Germany
didn't drop black letter until the Nazis actually decided it

(12:07):
was too Jewish. Which is funny, right because black letter
looks really Nazi because we associated with Germany, it does. Yeah, yeah, No.
Hitler was like, ah, that shit looks Jewish to me.
Journalists across the country started talking about this movement of
people that were cultivating the soil with their own fucking
hands and how that was happening in northwestern Texas. Of course,

(12:30):
it wouldn't be America if there wasn't a massive blind
spot in someone's political position. Adolf was completely fine with
colonization of the United States, as best as I can tell.
I found like one sentence about it. I didn't read
all the things he wrote, right, Basically, he was like,
the tribes that live here should just join the US,
and if they don't, then whatever, fuck them.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
So no one's perfect.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
He could have he could have had a better opinion
about that. Absolutely, Yeah, he could have been not perfect
in other ways.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Absolutely, That's a big wamp wamp for me.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
It's just interesting because it's like everyone is just still
for a very long time, just coming in with this
colonial mindset of like we're enlightenment thinkers. We're going to
make these big enlightened democracies, and the big problem is, like,
I mean, slavery is a big problem, right, you know.
But like he's like, oh, we're going to create racial
quality within a liberal Republican state, you know, except for well,

(13:28):
I mean, I think he would have been pro the
like what he would have considered anti racism, you know,
he would have been against being racists to indigenous people.
He just wanted to steal all their land and have
them no longer be in the formations that they used
to be and have. It's still bad, is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah,
that's very very clear. They're building this free labor movement.

(13:53):
And what's really interesting to me is that this is
when I kind of realized it was a little bit socialist,
or at least not capitalists as we understand it today.
Northern Protestant abolitionists were pretty capitalists, right, A lot of them.
They didn't mind that there would be like rich barons
who hired everyone and created a proletarian working class. But
the free labor movement, like I was saying earlier, it's

(14:15):
all wage labor is temporary. It's a step in the
way for everyone to own the means of production, to
produce with their own hands. And this is in serious
and aggressive contrast to the Southern planter gentry, who proved
their value by having not to work at all. Right,
if you're like a slave owner, your whole thing is
you're like, ah, I'm gotta work. I just sit around
and drink tea and not beer. Yeah oh yeah, god yeah,

(14:39):
it's so weird to imagine them not drinking. I'd like,
I'm sure a ton of them drank the ze tongue
that he was publishing. Believed in free and open discussion,
and it wasn't just like a here's a list of answers,
but instead it was like pages where people could discuss
abolishist methods and ideas. Because there's this idea again I
used to saying really cool things. It came from Germany.

(15:00):
There's this German idea called buildung, which is a tradition
of self cultivation of identity, the ideas that we slowly
improve ourselves as individuals to improve society, like by making
ourselves better and good people. Later, when we talk about Ohio,
we're going to talk about how like gymnastics societies were,
like how they organized their revolutionary and abolitionist movement. James

(15:22):
would have loved it. Oh well, James will never be
able to listen because only the two of you can listen.
That's the cool thing about podcasting. So this is part
of why he didn't believe in like he believed in
free speech. He didn't want to censor himself despite constant
threats of violence. Also did help that he was a
hardened revolutionary and not above Later he's going to fight
some people who come at him, but he was toning

(15:46):
it down a little bit. He avoided for years outright
saying like, hey, we should overthrow slave society. Instead, he
was like, we should move towards a free society. He
also didn't do that. I don't think he did the
like twelve years is a great way to do it,
you know. I think he stayed kind of wishy washy
about it. And this could have been cowardice, it could
have been pragmatism. I think my best guess is that

(16:08):
he was looking at the people he was trying to reach,
and he was trying to figure out the best way
to reach them, and he was trying to figure out
how to like bring them along. That is my generous
but I.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Don't but I mean, if you know, his approach seems
to be like you're saying, like education and inform people
of these sort of things, and you kind of to
do that, you have to meet them where they are
and start bringing over, start bringing over. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
He's not the person who's trying to break the Overton window.
He's trying to meet people and bring them yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
And he realized that the slavers are basically the same
autocratic police state that they left behind in Germany. The
aristocracy had to be destroyed for democracy to flourish, And
so he actually wrote mostly about slavery's impact on poor,
rural white folks and immigrants. How can free labor survive
when competing with giant slave plantations. He did write about

(16:57):
the moral implications and why you know slavery is bad
for black people too, right, But like his focus was
on this other thing, and his theory about how this
revolution would happen is actually way more radical than what
I just read. Makes it sound like he would guess
because most northern abolitionists are like, oh, a white leader

(17:18):
will like lead us to victory. Right, He's like, enslaved
people who are armed are going to lead a violent
revolution that poor whites would join to help them destroy
what is a feudal society because the white people will
realize that like basically the coming race war should become
a class war to destroy the rich, and it starts

(17:40):
with and is led by black folks.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
So okay, is that a sure? You've seen that. It's
that meme with the MAGA guy and the Black Lives
Matter guy and they're like it's bumping.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yeah, but what about or what's then?

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Oh, it's just like it's that, but like not I
don't even know what I'm saying that like approach of
like actually like.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Oh yeah, that the white people need to tell black
people it's a ya. So basically, the leftist discourse before
the Civil War was like, how the fuck do we
get white people to recognize class solidarity is what matters,
not allegiance to white supremacy. And I know I'm like
hammering that point, but it's like such an interesting point,
and it's an important question, Adolf. It is one that
we're still asking today. Most of the people we look

(18:26):
for for answers are not named Adolf, but that's because
the name is gone lost to the annals of history.
If you're listening and your name is Adolf and it's
actually a common name where you live, I'm sorry for
making assumptions. What I'm only a little sorry for is
the fact that what I accept as a compromise based
on the economy that we live in that I wish
didn't exist is that we're an ad sponsored show and

(18:48):
here's ads for other things, some of which are good,
good ads sneak in every now and then, like oh yeah,
you never know, still like go out to the forest, one.
I love that ad.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Maybe we'll listen to that.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, here's a free ad. Go out to the forest.
It's nice, it is nice. Take a big deep breath.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
There is better there.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
It's true, taste better.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Here's ads, and we're back. So the paper survives this
like cancel culture attack on it the first one. It's okay.
Later they're going to get it. But spoiler, it survives
this boycott, and he starts to get new subscribers and investors,
and some of the Anglo settlers start actually reading it.

(19:33):
It starts spreading this free soil movement, and the Spanish
language sister publication was soon in the works. The book
I read about this focused mostly on his newspapers. It's
called Where the Revolutionists, and it's by Misha Honeck, and
it's just about a lot of what we're talking about today.
And there's a couple other sources that I put together
for some of the other sorts of the story. But

(19:54):
and that book focuses mostly on like here's the newspaper.
I'm a little bit more like I kind of want
to know a little bit more about some of this
other stuff that, like I know that German free soilers
were getting into skirmishes with pro slavery folks. What does
that mean?

Speaker 2 (20:11):
What does that mean? What?

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Contextually? My best guess, based on other things I've read
from elsewhere, is that these are a combination of brawls, standoffs,
and shootouts that probably had a body count, probably in
the like I'm guessing like four or five people died
on each side. This is completely just my guess based
on other similar movements from the time. I think German

(20:37):
immigrants are helping enslaved folks run away, sheltering them and
getting them north. But that's me reading between the lines.
I certainly know that three German settlers were lynched for
being suspected of having done so. The slightly moderate line
of the San Antonio paper, which I think was understandable
considering its context, and it's already getting into gunfights with racists,
which is like more or less like the line I

(20:58):
want people to be at is I want people to
be rather enough the racists want to shoot you, Yeah,
I don't want you get shot, but like anyway.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Angry as Yeah, they're angry enough that they might want
to do.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
But it is still too moderate for some of the
other forty eight ers in Louisville, Kentucky. Don't fuck with
Louisville also a slave state. The German radical paper there
they're Pioneer, which I'm guessing means the Pioneer published statements
like quote, only idiots, cowards or villains betray the principles
of freedom for practical considerations.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Yeah, that's where it fucking goes on.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah, idiots, cowards or villains.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Louisville slack.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
And so eventually, in nineteen fifty five, I don't know
if it was a response to Louisville or not, the
Ze tongue, the San Antonio Ze Tongue, just came out
and said it, our goal is to create a free
state out of Texas. And the pro slavery papers were like, what,
oh my god, these monsters in our midst.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
I'm just hearing this for the first time.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Totally and other papers are like, look, we believe in
free speech, but we need to shut this crowd up.
Or other ones are just like, let's call for the
death penalty for the editors of this paper. Totally normal, Yeah, yeah,
but hard and revolutionaries are hard to fuck with. He

(22:27):
doesn't back down, this Texas asshole. Not another guy. The
editor of the Texas State Times, swaggers over with a
friend like into his office and insists that Adolph prints
a retraction for an article about whatever fucking thing. And
Adolph is like, no, I'm good, I'm just not going
to do that. And so this slavery stand takes a

(22:49):
swing at him, and so Adolf beats the shit out
of him. And I think this is a quote from
his autobiography that he quote quietly beat him up until
he bled the word quietly is.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
So yeah, that says everything about that situation and that person.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
And like that's the scene in the movie where like
the real sketchy fight scenes are the ones where the
music stops.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh yeah, It's like it's just like this intense focus.
It's yes, you have one goal and you know efficiency.
It's just exactly totally. Another time, twelve pro slavery folks
showed up at his office in San Antonio and said
they were going to lynch him. So twelve of his friends,

(23:37):
this is why, I know is a larger movement. He's
like the one who becomes the central figure. But so
twelve of his friends take to the roof with guns
and then Adolph's father, an old soldier, himself, barricades the
door and sets up with a gun, And in.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Adolph's autobiography he talks about how like this is like
his father's, like feeling youthful and excited and feels great again.
You know, we are at the fucking barrack, reinvigorated.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, good for him.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
The pro slavery folks took one look at the situation
and got the fuck out of town.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Nice quietly left.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, yeah, and quietly until they bled. But the tide
was turning against the larger Texas Free Soil movement. New
settlers in Texas were more and more pro slavery, and
so some other forty eight ers were like, look, we've lost.
They said, quote, do not induce any good man to

(24:30):
settle here. It's not gonna work. We should try elsewhere.
The Anglo whites were not being won over by and large,
and the German folks were more and more afraid to
speak up for liberty and were distancing themselves from the radicals.
So by nineteen fifty six it was just eight off
see me eighteen eighteen, I do mean eighteen fifty six. Yeah,

(24:51):
they didn't run this for one hundred and many four
years or whatever. Yeah, that seems crazy to me. Yeah,
Adolphin is very elderly. Father. At this point, they're running
the paper by themselves, both the German and English one,
and then the Spanish one. I think that just like
everyone's like fled this cause, and they are like, we
are not giving up. We are antislaver propagandists. We are

(25:14):
going to keep doing this. They type said it all.
They worked fourteen hour days trying to stem the tide
of slavery until basically he was broke and he couldn't
make enough money selling the paper to eat. He was
forced to sell the paper to a conservative in order
to survive, like the only person who would buy it,
I think, which delighted in destroying it, and he and

(25:39):
presumably his father moved back up to New York. I
know nothing about his family, because why would people talk
about women in books. I actually kind of get the
impression of this man was a bachelor though, but I
don't know. He kept up his work as a journalist
and he started speaking around the country, drumming up support
among the German population for anti slavery. He did not stop.
He just got out of the South.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
He just left.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, exactly when Texas seceded in the Civil War. They
cited slavery as the primary cause of it. I think
everyone who listens to this know that the Civil War
was about slavery, but in case you didn't, that was
what Texas cited. At least sixty Unionists, mostly German forty
eight ers who hadn't previously fled Texas tried to make
a break for it to the Mexico border, but they

(26:22):
were caught by a Confederate army and they were killed
to a person. And this ended one of the largest
white attempts at spreading abolitionist rhetoric in the deepest into
slave country you can go. But then the Union army
kicked the shit out of the fucking piece of shit
slavers in Texas became a free state by force of arms.

(26:44):
And here's the heartwarming twist, ending Adolph's own press, like
the physical press that he printed with, was taken up
by the first black owned newspaper in Texas. They sent
him a copy. On the front page it said, quote
this newspaper, the first to be founded in Texas by negroes,

(27:06):
was printed on the same press which doctor Adolph dou
I founded in San Antonio in eighteen fifty three, in
order to combat slavery. It will be a great satisfaction
to him that the freed slaves of Texas gratefully remember
his dangerous and courageous agitation on their behalf.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
That's nice.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
You know, I got a little tiary when I was
just reading it.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, that's so many I'm good for. Don't take this
out of context. Good for aight off.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
You know what's really tragic. I've been thinking about this
is not what happened, But wouldn't it be sad if
Adolf Hitler's mom named Adolf after.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Oh my God, Yeah, oh oh God in his memory?
And so now I'm going to go over to Cincinnati,
the city that is most known as I thought it
was spelled with two t's and only two ends, but
it's only one tea.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
It's one tea.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
The reason is most known as that is because when
I do my edits at the end of the thing,
I did a lot of changing how I spelled it
right very quickly. When I'm sketching out the drafts of
these episodes.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
Birthplace of ninety eight degrees. That's a boy nick Lache,
It is a boy band. Yeah, they got they got
him to do the voice of the tram for about
a year that they wait, really, I don't know what
the tram is. They built I left, Yeah, they built it.
Trams is nawty. It's like years after I moved away

(28:34):
from Ohio and I visited once and the voice is
like nick Lache, like, yeah, they changed it shortly after,
but it's very, very jarring and the weird that's so funny.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I like how Ohio is, like it's the state that
is the most self contained. Like no one talks about
Ohio unless you live there, and then it has everything thing.
It's like its own world.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Oh yeah, it's got everything you need. It's just flat
and you kind of want to.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Yeah know, everyone leaves it. Yeah, there's a reason that
no one talks about it. But there's a lot there
a lot of cities that start with C and I
don't know which ones are where because they all start
with the same letter and they're roughly the same length.
I can't use any of my to determine what's the

(29:26):
same as Like recently, I had to interact with someone
named Josh and someone named Jack, I think, and I
was like trying to explain to them that I was like,
you are the same person in my head until I
see you physically, and you better have different haircuts. Yeah,
no offense. And if someone's like I can't tell the
difference between a Margaret and a Claudia, you understand, it's fine. Anyway. Cincinnati,

(29:50):
Cincinnati was right on the border with Kentucky, which is
a slave state. Ohio is a free state. It was
also full of racists, like every other part of the North,
but maybe especially Ohio. But but it's also just everywhere
so racist that it's hard to say, like really only
like Massachusetts is like trying to come out of this
looking as good as possible, you know. Yeah, Pennsylvania's full
of Quakers, Okay, whatever. Anyway, Ohio racist but not slavery racist.

(30:14):
That's where I'm gonna That's what I'm gonna call it.
So black people came into Cincinnati looking for something like
a modicum of freedom. They made up about three percent
of the city's population in the run up to the war,
mostly living in a poor black neighborhood called Little Africa
or more racistly, Bucktown, either of those ring a bell.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Not familiar with either ra though so awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Some lived, however, in over the Rhine, which was the
working class immigrant German neighborhood. I don't know if that
one that I'm familiar with Over the Rhine is still
over the Rhine. You are the hero of the rest
of this episode.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
There we go. That's probably why the name stuck.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Around, because did they actually have a proud history for
this part. Cincinnati was a hub for working class forty
eight or agitation. A lot of the German tech free
soil stuff was a little bit more middle class. This
is like the fucking I don't know, their job is
probably lumber shover, you know. Thirty thousand of them showed up.
Forty eight ers showed up and hit the ground running.

(31:14):
Moving into Cincinnati, a working man's club was formed to
fight for better wages. Freethinkers clubs were formed to debate
the topics of the day. They were socialists, they were atheists,
they were abolitionists. They fought the know nothings in the street,
getting into gun battles. They built militias to defend themselves
against the rioters. They set up like sharpshooter clubs, and

(31:36):
they were called the turners after the turn varying which
are these gymnastic clubs that existed in Germany to promote
German culture, physical fitness, and radical politics, which sounds really bad,
but again, nineteenth century is upside down times. The Republicans
are the left, the Germans are the gabolitionists. The Turners

(31:58):
took part in the eighteen forty eight reve and so
they kept the tradition going in the US. And this
is where the Turners kind of are are more known
for is the German American groups. And when I say
more known for, I mean the ten people who pay
attention to this, which now includes all of you listening.
And since everyone was still really into thinking in terms

(32:19):
of ethnicity and race. For the German immigrants, being in
favor of anti racism was an ethnic trait of the
German people that they were very proud of.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
That's I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Us Teutonic people, we are the true anti racists. Nothing
bad will come.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Of this, and that's so silly, But I guess if
you're gonna have an ethnic trade, I guess.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, being anti racist, okay. And like, and you know,
I'm saying, they have like all these clubs and they're
like sending all these plays and doing all this cool shit,
they are working class people. And this is like a
thing that comes up a lot on the show is
that like immigerent cultures will have more cultural access than
like a white native born poor person in a lot

(33:10):
of ways at this time, because they built it, and
they were like, we want what rich people have, So
we're gonna fucking do it. We're gonna throw picnics, We're
gonna throw plays, We're gonna like just we're going to
talk about the fucking Dante or whatever. You know, yeah, live, yeah,
And the German Fortiators in Cincinnati were some of the

(33:31):
most direct and radical abolitionists in the country. They weren't
fucking around with like oh maybe twelve years, you know.
They were like, we call for an immediate federal ban
on slavery, not even like oh, we want this state
or that state to be They were like war to
the slavers. Fuck them. And while most white immigrant abolitionists

(33:52):
first and foremostly connected with white na native abolitionists, the
Cincinnati Fourtiators connected with the black community directly, which makes sense.
Black schools started teaching German as the language to connect
them with their radical friends, and it was Ohio black
groups who had been fundraising for the revolution.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
One time, a white journalist named William Connolly was imprisoned
for hiding fugitive slaves. And I don't think he was
German based on the name, assuming he was Scottish or
Irish or something. And so the German population came out
and supported him because he was imprisoned for hiding fugitive slaves.
When he was released, they met him at the jail
in the pouring rain and led a torchlight procession for
their hero because it didn't matter that he wasn't German.

(34:37):
They're doing what's right. And while there's a ton of
cool individual folks in that scene, there's like black intellectuals,
and there's a native born white Catholic who was excommunicated
for preaching too hard against slavery. I'm going to focus
on a figure, a guy named August Willich, who was
a former Prussian noble who became a communist in his thirties,

(34:58):
fought in the revolutionchallenged Marks to a duel. This is
probably why I included him.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Your tone when you even said that, I was like,
that's why.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah, Like organized uncompromising interracial solidarity in Ohio raised two
regiments of German immigrants to fight the Confederacy in the
war beat the Texas Rangers was a general who led
from the front even of he was in his like
mid fifties, and he survived the war and I really
like him. But what I also like is swords. This

(35:33):
episode is brought to you by swords. In the the
Union Army had swords. It's true you can buy replicas. Unfortunately,
it's way easier to buy replicas of Confederate swords. But
you can buy a replica Union sword, or if you're rich,
you can buy me a real Union sword. I actually
don't have a po box. I don't want people sending

(35:53):
me random packages. But you know what, if you're buying
me a real sword, you can reach out to me.
I'll figure it out o boxes for you. But this
episode brought to you by swords. Everyone likes swords.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
And we're back.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
What was your favorite medieval weapon that we advertised during
the break.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Was good?

Speaker 1 (36:19):
A lot of moving parts, that's true. Good for fighting skeletons.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
You know, good for fighting skeletons. I'm kind of using
for exercises, true practice, jump rope, a lot a lot
of with the mace.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Serene Okay, some other time I'm going to ask.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
You for you Well, you're not going to make it
if you don't have a weapon. I don't know, they're old.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
All I'm thinking about is that spiky ball. But that's
not a real thing, is it.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
So that's feeling. It's what Cody meant when Cody said mace.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
It is literally exactly what I meant.

Speaker 3 (36:58):
Great, okay, that's what I think.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Picked.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, that's called a flail. A mace actually doesn't have
any moving parts. It's a ball on a city.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Doesn't have movie. I was thinking exactly. I had a
delve into my like, no, that's not actually mace doesn't
have the movie.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Well flail, right, No, flails are great, spikey ball hell yeah.
August Wilich was born Johann August Ernst von Wilich in
eighteen ten. You will be shocked to know with the
name Johann August Ernst von Wilich. He was born into
the landed nobility of Prussia in a part that is

(37:42):
now Poland. He was orphaned at three, but I think
he was just like still like brought up in noble times,
like off to school or whatever. I don't know what
happened him at three. He stayed noble for thirty six years.
He did what he was supposed to do his landed nobility.
He spent nineteen years sir in the Prussian Army as
a captain. But while he was in the army, he

(38:05):
was reading, and he was reading philosophy. And if you're
reading philosophy in like the middle of the nineteenth century
in Europe, you're reading radical philosophy. And he was like,
oh shit, we shouldn't treat workers like we do.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
And I love that.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Like I don't know, whenever I would meet like philosophy
majors when I was younger, I imagine them just like, okay,
when I met when I met imaginary philosophy majors. In
my head, they'd be smoking cigarettes and talking about how
nothing as meaning, you know, and they wouldn't be talking
about like why the workers need to be free. But
actually turns out that even in nihilism, that's a big
part of it. So he's reading all this stuff and

(38:43):
in eighteen forty six he resigns his commission in an
open letter against the aristocracy. It is so strongly worded
that they arrest him in court martial him Yeah. He
comes out. He's like he's thirty five or thirty six,
and he's like, I have become a radical, and he
he fucking meant it.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Don't let people read. Yeah, that's exactly I think. It's
just like people shouldn't be read.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Move to Florida, and two years later they eventually let
him out, let him leave the army after he serves
his time. Two years later, the revolution breaks out, and
so he goes to war against the aristocracy and he's
leading troops and he has fucking Frederick Engels, like of
Marx and Engels as his aide de camp, the guy
helping him, right, But he refuses to be treated better

(39:29):
than his soldiers, and he takes no special privileges. He's
just probably the one who should be in charge because
he's the nineteen year officer who's led a whole lot
of troops into battle. Before you know, the revolution loses.
He goes into exile in England, where he starts butting
heads with Karl Marx, who set out that revolution. He
considered Karl Marx too conservative. But what they actually got

(39:50):
into an argument about in the end was that Willis
wanted to build more of a popular front and was
like willing to work with like Democrats, and Marx was like, no,
we shouldn't do that, and so will resigned from the
Communist League. Then he like went back to a meeting
just to insult Marx and challenge him to a duel.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Do you love this so much?

Speaker 1 (40:09):
This is the thing, this is a Yeah, my dream job,
it is being him. My secondary dream job is talking
about him. Yeah, talk about him. But if you could
be Carl Marx does not fight Karl Marx rights. So
Carl Marx sent a proxy to dual Willitch in Belgium,

(40:31):
and Wilich wounded the guy. And because he's fucking August Willich,
I wouldn't want to fucking duel August Wilich. What are
you talking about? This man has been an army officer
for nineteen years and at this point he's like, Europe
is not for me. I kind of burned bridges of
the Communist League. Here Mark seems to be in charge.
I tried to kill him. That's there for you except Cincinnati.

(40:55):
Well he did okay. First he goes to Brooklyn and
he's a carpenter for a while Brooklyn, and then he's
doing math with the US Coastal survey. And then he
moves to Cincinnati, the town with only one T in
its name, to edit a German newspaper, and that's where
he is for a while. They build this entire subculture
in Cincinnati, like all the best movements they had. I

(41:18):
already said some of this, but it's in the script,
so I'm just going to keep going. They built a
shooting club and had picnics and put on plays and
organized interracial solidarity as best as they can. They went
through elaborate efforts to unite people across ethnic and religious lines,
like you have an ex Catholic preacher going to a
Jewish neighborhood to talk, and they're bringing Hindu speakers to
talk at their congregations. And they just did the hard

(41:39):
and thankless work of building movements, because these movements are
really split along religious lines, right, because now you have
all these like atheist abolitionists. But then people are like, no,
we're doing abolition because God told us to. And you know,
we don't want to talk to you. You're all weird socialists.
And they're like, yeah, we are weird socialists. We want endslavery,
You want endslavery. Can we just fucking.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Slavery, but we all agree exact bigger.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Problem here it is called the Confederacy. Well so called
that yet, but it will be soon. On December fourth,
eighteen fifty nine, a few months after John Brown and
his friends raided Harper's Ferry. Basically, when John Brown dies,
the whole abolitionist world is like, oh, fuck, he's our guy.
Well most of them. Some of them are like, oh,
he's a little extreme. I support his ideas, but not

(42:24):
that violence part, you know, But maybe like twelve years
of like yeah, totally, yeah, it's good enough for a
number of apostles. I think those twelve or maybe it
was thirteen. I don't actually know. I'm good at stuff
and uh. Anyway, So there's big rallies and gatherings and
memorials all over the country, especially the parts where you

(42:46):
won't get shot for doing it, like the North. On
December fourth, eighteen fifty nine, the German working class socialists
throw a memorial for their fallen hero and it brings
together all of these groups that they've been working with
to unite white and black, showing up and sitting side
by side. And this is a huge deal.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Even most the.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Abolitionist movement, anti slavery movement, blah blah blah, are not
socializing inter racially, and at this they are. And the
American flag, the German Republican flag which is red, black
and gold, and the flag from an African American contingent
that I want to know so badly what was But
all I have is they brought their flag.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh I want to see that flag.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I know what fucking flag was it? I'm aware of
only twentieth century Like I mean, I'm sure there's other ones, right,
but I've my attempts to find have only found twentieth century,
like African American flags. But they brought a flag and
it was also on display, and people from each contingent
came up and spoke. You know, there's like sort of
the white religious groups and then there was black groups.

(43:49):
And August Willich was the German speaker at the event,
and I think he spoke in English, but he told
the crowd that they should quote what their sabers and
nerve their arms for the day of retrotion, when all
slavers and their supporters would quote be crushed into a
common grave.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Ooh that's good.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's real solid and like, it's not empty words.
The crowd roars and approval, and they are all willing
to get directly involved. After the service, the crowd gathers
up torches and led a procession through downtown Cincinnati despite
numerous threats from the racists. And this freaks people the

(44:33):
fuck out. The mainstream press hated the forty eight ers
in Cincinnati. One paper wrote, their politics have ever been
the most degraded of the most degraded stamp, and the
most dangerous character to the peace and welfare of this nation.
And that quote. They recognize no distinction of color in
their social intercourse, and if anything, consider a negro a

(44:57):
little better than a white man.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Oh, it sounds like Jesus to me.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
You do it.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
And the Turners, the German folks, they're organizing around these
like gymnastics societies. Right, they don't wait for a war
to be announced before they start drilling and training and
will it is just like, all right, we're about to
be an army. Let's set up a fucking army. So
they're kind of the first union soldiers. Yeah, at least

(45:27):
the first like volunteers. I can't remember whether we had
to stand out.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Cultural working class Coalition Army.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, and their units were ethnically divided because the Union
Army when it starts is racist, right, and it takes
a long time for black soldiers to be able to fight.
They're mostly like digging ditches and shit. But yeah, and
so then, to quote a twenty seventeen article from Cincinnati Magazine,

(45:53):
because Cincinnati knows it's zeros. Quote, when the Civil War
erupted Cincinnati, Germans responded so quickly that within a week,
fifteen hundred men had enlisted in what became the legendary
ninth Ohio Infantry Regiment, and August is the most experienced commander.
But they went with a non German leader who was
like friends with all the Germans. For political reasons. They

(46:15):
were like, oh, we gotta have a non German so
that people actually give us money for uniforms and shit.
You know. So he drilled the ninth. He was like
second in command. He drilled the ninth, He marched them
to Virginia, and then he went home and started another regiment. Yeah,
or he didn't go home, I guess he went to Indiana.
He started Indiana's thirty second, which is another German regiment,

(46:37):
and he was the commander of that one. Hell yeah,
Cincinnati was one of the most aggressively anti Confederate cities
in the nation. And I know I've talked shit on
Irish Americans throughout this entire episode. They came out and
droves two. The Irish Montgomery Brigade was one of the
first units to come out of the city. As the
war dragged on, Some Irish and German workers, the ones

(47:01):
who weren't all fighting, and I think not the Turners,
I'd like to believe, not the Turners, but that's because
I want them to be great, turned their back on
blackfellow workers. And there were race riots in Cincinnati as
well as like everywhere else. There was one thing that
happened earlier where at one point some black folks showed
up to a Turner event and they were turned away

(47:21):
for being black. And so then the Turners had like
a come to Jesus moment where they were like, you
turned people away for being black at our events? What
the fuck? And so then they codified we don't turn
people away for being black, and like kind of went
from being anti slavery to abolitionist by that standard.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
You know that's good. Sometimes you gotta yeah, yeah, get
a little you gotta do something foolish and stang your mind.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Yeah, And Cincinnati the Radical Press overall, like most papers
are like kind of downplaying slavery as the reason because
they're afraid of plausant race riots. The Cincinnati Radical Press
is like, we say what we mean. Not only is
anti slay' very the reason to fight, it's actually the
only legitimate war goal, which I think means like, look,

(48:06):
you can't really get mad at people for succeeding. You
can get mad at people for owning people, right, yeah,
which is my take on the Civil War. And the
thing that they said really specifically, and it's where the
book We Are the Revolutionists gets its name from, is
that they're like, we are having a revolution. The revolution

(48:30):
is against slavery, like the counter revolution is the Confederacy, right,
And it's a semantic difference, but it kind of matters,
and it's like one that people don't talk about now. Right.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
It's like.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
I famously have the word sedition tattooed across my hands
and I got really mad on January sixth. You know, Oh,
I know, like I have friends who are insurrectionists. That
is their political position. It means that they don't believe in,
like waiting to organize a mass movement before fighting for
what they believe in. It sucks when these words get

(49:04):
taken by people embarrassing day. I'm just like for this,
you're doing this for this?

Speaker 2 (49:08):
Yes, what do you what? Do you get it together?

Speaker 4 (49:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (49:12):
But yeah, like refocusing to like the war is against slavery,
this like keeping yeah, keeping the union together, doing this
and this and this. That's like that happened as a
result of the war that we started, which is against
slavery exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
And you know, it's like you could look at the
same thing and draw a different conclusion. But this is
why they fought. This is why the Turners marched to
war and were some of the first people and were
prepared beforehand, and we're training for it, you know.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
And so Wilich went to war. He beat the fucking
Texas Rangers. He led from the front. His troops called
him Papa Willich. He regularly gave lectures, not just about
like philosophy, like I mean one and why is he
giving any lectures? But he's just like, hey, comin, I'm
going to give lectures about philosophy. And also like astronomy
and shit to his soldiers.

Speaker 3 (50:00):
God, he's so cool, I know.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Okay, then here's your Hollywood moment that I haven't seen
in another battle. His forces are starting to flag and
they're about to rout, and this is relayed by a
higher up general. I don't remember whether Willich is a
general yet at this point, but if he never hits
like high general, he's like low general whatever. I didn't
write down this specific thing because it didn't I didn't
understand it. So this other general, higher general sees this happen.

(50:25):
Willich's troops are starting to rout, which is the most
dangerous time in a battle. Once you route, that's when
you just get gunned down and everyone dies run away.
It's it's an unordered retreat. Retreat is like, hey, we're
gonna get out of here carefully. Rout is like fuck run,
And that's like, especially in medieval battles, that's like when
almost everyone who dies dies. You scare them until they run,

(50:47):
and then you chase them down with cavalry and.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
It's chaos and you're not you're focused.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
So his troops are about to be routed, so he
rides his horse to the front of them in the
middle of this fucking battle. He turns his back to
the enemy and he has his soldiers drill do their
like manual of arms like hold the rifle, load the
right like like practice while some of them are dying

(51:13):
like while they're getting shot. The effect, according to a
general who watched quote, was magical. This stopped the route
and they stayed in the fight. And even though some
of them died while drilling in the middle of a battle,
it kept the morale up and kept a lot of
them alive.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Later his horse was shot and he was captured. He
spent I think five months in a pow camp before
he was traded in an exchange, and apparently he like
spent the whole time he was in jail like planning
more tactics, of course, and when he came out he
invented a bunch of new tactics around rapid fire attacks
and using bugle calls to direct his troops. Supposedly, this

(51:53):
is like the guy who invented using bugle calls to
uh direct your troops. To me, this seems so obvious that,
of course everyone has been doing it forever. But he's
a German communist who tried to kill Karl Marx, who
did it?

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah, it took five months in Fiodovi camp to come up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Later he loses the use of his right arm when
it's injured in a battle. He keeps going. He does
not leave, but he came up with a new way
to have another. Totally, Karl Marx would have liked. Karl
Marks might have been right about the thing that we're
fighting about. I don't know, we don't even know.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
I'd have to read the autobiography of his daughter to
find out more about that, because it's just read a
kind of low context quote about it from that book. Anyway,
So he stays in. He stays until the fucking war
is one. He once wrote to a friend in eighteen
sixty two. Middle of the war, he writes to a friend, quote,
working toward a solution of the social problem and calling

(52:50):
attention to it is and will remain the only purpose
of my life. This work alone not only makes life
bearable but worth living in my eyes.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
What a guy, Hell of a guy.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
It took fucking Zelotz d end slavery. Yeah, yeah, focused
violent zealots, Yes, totally. And so that's the German communist
general of the Union Army who once tried to duel
car Marks. And there were well so many other forty
eight ers who fought slavery in whatever way. Whenever I
do an eight million part episode on like John Brown

(53:22):
and the Gorilla Resistance to Slavery, I'll get to talk
about Charles Kaiser and August Bondi, who were forty eight
ers who joined John Brown's Gorilla gang. Carl Schurz is
probably the most famous German forty eight er. He was
a general in the Union Army in the Civil War.
Later he went on to be pretty boring. He joined
the like liberal Republican Party, which was basically like Reconstructions

(53:42):
too radical. So Kimo A tenth of the Union Army
was born in Germany, and it was German volunteers who
kept Saint Louis and therefore Missouri from falling to the
Confederacy at the outbreak of the war.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
That's not nothing.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
No, it's not one state, a big old battleground when
there's like only fucking I don't know how many states
or the time twenty forty seventy, I don't know, seven
probably probably used to be about seventy States at least seventy. Yeah,
anytime I do an episode about chattel slavery, I really
need to nail home the point that the Thirteenth Amendment

(54:20):
was written with a loophole. It reads, neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist. Within the United States,
prison labor is slavery. One point two million people are
currently enslaved by the car sool system in the United States.
There is an abolitionist movement right now that tries to

(54:41):
end prison slavery. So if you want to know what
you would be doing during times when there's abolitionists, it's
now that's my episode. What do you all think about
the forty eight ers.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Good for Germans during that period?

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Yeah, would never have thought.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
But that also Cincinnati, Yeah, during that period of time
as well, some of Cincinnati like Cincinnati's like some of Cincinnati.
I guess I'm not saying like Cincinnati's a successively racist place,
but I was surprised by some of that information.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yeah, the trajectory of alcohol and Germans is kind of
wild to have observed in the last century or two
that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
The pro drinking Germans were on the right side of
history in nineteenth century America.

Speaker 4 (55:31):
Something that you got to fight for your right to party. Yeah, true,
that was awesome, though I liked you for your Reich party.
Oh no, sorry, they did fight the Reich. That was
a thing they did.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
That was part of their whole thing was that they
did not like kings, so would have been the same
Germans who would have also been anti fascist one hundred
years later. If people want to hear about things that
are happening now, do you have any options for them.
I know it's much easier to find stuff out about
old timey stuff, but Hi, you.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
Can find me all over the place. I do all
kinds of stuff, not about the past. Usually we talked
about the past. We talk about the present. Mostly. You
circle is you can watch Ohio native jd Vance ordered
donuts in the worst way possibly. It's so funny.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
You work here, You work here long? Where are you
driving to? Had anything to drink tonight? Sir?

Speaker 2 (56:34):
Phrase you use whatever makes sense? When I asked about like,
he's like a glaze some sprinkles. Whatever makes sense. The
weirdest thing you could possibly saying? Donuts imagine ordering in
a restaurant. Whatever makes sense. Well, I don't know you, sir, anyway,
we don't even talk about that guy, right. I have
a show called some More News I host on YouTube,
and there's a podcast called even more News, and sometimes

(56:55):
we do a podcast called way Less News because who
likes talking about the news? Very rarely, but we're doing
it more because it's fun. And I've got a band
called the Hot Shapes if you'd like to check them
out on places not Spotify currently but maybe soon. And
I'm doctor mister Cody on social media. I think that's

(57:15):
the end of that sentence.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Yeah, cool, good sense. I have a substack. It's Margaret
Kildroid at substack dot com and it is where I
write things about how I feel about current events and history.
And half of them are personal and for people who
pay me money, and half of them are free and
are more political and you know, how to be an

(57:38):
activist or build movements or whatever it is I talk
about and care about. I'm not entirely sure I don't
care about anything. Oh I'm a nihilist. That's not true. Actually,
actually now, I do weirdly care about a lot of things,
but one time, I was playing concertina loudly outside this Starbucks,
very badly, and I was trying to get some money
because I didn't have any money at concertina, and I
was playing very badly, and this guy comes up and

(57:58):
he's like, hey, i'll give you a dollar if you
moved to the other street. Oh, And I was like no,
and he was like I think. I was like, I'll
give you ten dollars and he was like no. And
I was like, well, you're drink at Starbucks. I'm not
doing anything wrong. And he's like, oh, it's a protest
and I was like, no, it's not protest. I'm a nihilist,
which isn't true then or now, but I was just
feeling salty. And he was like, i'll give you a dollar.

(58:18):
You can spell nihilist, and so I spelled nihilist and
he gave me a dollar and then he went and
sat back down. He was a man of his word.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Did he keep playing.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
I played for like long enough to feel like I
had won, and then I left because I don't actually
like playing music when I know that people hate it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Oh yeah, no exactly. You have you bury that feeling, though,
to make them feel bad. For a little extra time. Yeah,
and then get out.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
And then I got an accordion and got halfway good
at it, and I no longer made annoying noises and
that was a much better instrument to play on the
street for me. That's my story about why I don't
know why I'm talking about this train.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
You guy, then you want to plug.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
I sometimes host it could happen here, or join another
host on it could happen here, and talk about stuff
A lot of palsigne stuff recently, or when I'm not
talking about that and getting really depressed, I talk about
food and history and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
So hell yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
Love food in history, the food of the mind.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Hmmm, I'm gonna have to do an alcohol episode. I'm
so fascinated with how alcohol rebranded itself.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
It's I know, yeah, so successfully, one of the most
successful rebrands of all time. Genuinely.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
And it also ties into like early white feminism was
very into the temperance movement, but some of them were
actually rad and many of them weren't, and so it
was just all tied together in weird ways pro and
anti drinking. Yeah, way more political than I ever could
have imagined. Yeah, all right, I'll see you all later.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Cool Goodbye.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Cool People who did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, but wherever you get your podcasts.