December 20, 2023 • 53 mins
In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation 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.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
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 start podcasts because
it's illegal and the law and morality are identical. Our
(00:28):
guest today is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hi, Jamie Hi, Margaret, dude to my status is starting
a podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I am currently considered a fugitive.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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 (00:47):
When podcasts are outlawed, only outlaws of podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Me and Dex Shepherd against the world.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
That's right. That's why we're all going to get the vests.
But we're not going to tell you what I mean
by that. Instead, I'm going to 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
(01:19):
is our audio engineer, and everyone is to say Hi, Ian, Hi, Ian, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Hi, Ian, sorry about your recent breaking the law by
participating in this evil empire.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Oh Jamie, you know you're my partner in crime and
that you're the mastermind.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's true?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What are you jeer?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Behind them?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, behind all producers. Yes, the theme music was written
for us by someone who will not be named lest
unwoman get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Thanks proud of that one. Today is part two of
a two parter, which is the first time 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
(02:14):
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 had beens just stolen from them,
which is to say, I get to talk about everyone's
favorite person, Andrew Jackson. Yeah. If you ever meet someone
who thinks that Andrew Jackson is a good person, then
(02:37):
you have met a bad person, or at best, a
terribly badly informed person.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, I would say, don't waste your time trying to
fix them unless I.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Know, you know, you've only we've only got so much time.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
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
(03:15):
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
(03:35):
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 Brittain Indians, capture Florida wooo, and
that was that was his war crime. In eighteen thirteen,
(03:56):
the Muskogee 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've been like doing the more settled thing.
They're starting to grow, build plantations, They're really into the
chattel slavery thing. On the other side, you had the
Red Sticks who were like, yeah, fuck all that, and
(04:19):
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 Musgogie village that he could find.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Which like a like a gentleman would, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
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 3 (04:48):
Yeah, and all the history books that we get in
American public schools do not reflect it because it just
complicates things too much.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, you pick one side to decide that they kill
civilians and the other side that is the way.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
To civilian life, the ultimate complicating factor.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
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 modern 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,
(05:29):
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
(05:50):
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 (05:56):
Right at Florida.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It's about half modern floor.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Okay, twenty three million only half. I mean Florida's big though,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, that's a big fucking state. You ever like drive
through Florida and you're like, this is no way. This
is going to feel like driving through Texas that takes years,
but then it does. No it especially be like driving
to Miami.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
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
gets kind of totally.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So everyone's mad, right, because he just took so much
fucking land. 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 to be clear,
(06:57):
absolutely was planning to go fuck up the US South
and free from 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
(07:17):
the Colonial Marines or whatever 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 bayoneted and doesn't stop. So they were treated
(07:41):
and they got back 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 there, so it's sort of easy.
At least two thirds of Pensacola's and slave population was
recruited during this time, and all the slave owners would
(08:05):
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
(08:26):
British Florida one. 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 Apalogic Cola 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
(08:46):
all over the place, all 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 3 (08:56):
God, okay, And how many like different sources is it
coming from?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Is it just depends.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
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
(09:26):
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
American 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,
(09:48):
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
(10:09):
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 3 (10:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I mean, there's.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
In like a casualty of war sense where you like,
if someone you loved was killed after the war had
been resolved, and you found that out later.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I simply don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
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 like, for example, the
Americans are about to pull out their greatest victory in
the War of eighteen twelve, after the war is over,
(11:07):
the Battle of New Orleans, made famous by a song
that I don't remember who sings and don't listen too much.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
On January eighth, eighteen fifteen, British soldiers attacked New Orleans,
and Nichols'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
(11:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
That is because they tried to march through a swamp
at an entrenched position, and they were all so arrogant.
They were like, we are the most civilized and advanced army.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
In the world.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
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. He did the
unthinkable when he defended New Orleans. He armed enslaved people.
(12:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Often joke 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 (12:48):
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
(13:09):
respected that black people knew how to fight for whatever.
I hate him and I hate everything about him one man.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I can't can't hand it to him for that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
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, right.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
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 (13:53):
Yeah. So one man who was promised his 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 and 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,
(14:16):
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?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Like anyway, no, I mean no, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Force to ally with. If he can believe it, in
this case, there's a better one.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
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 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 gonna show up and be like, yo,
(15:24):
give us back our property. And the British were like,
now 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 by force 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 going to come back. We're gonna like ask nicely. Right.
(15:45):
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
form master, you may carry my head along with you,
but as to my body, it will remain here, like
(16:08):
it's just the time of metal quotes.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Basically, yeah, I was like, there's really some bangers in
this story, like one after the other.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
The war's over.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But they're like, let they don't know what s goo. Girls, Well,
they don't know it, right, right, right?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Do we know how exactly how long after this is,
we're still only like a month or so later.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
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 truth comes before they get chance to do it.
And so Nichols's army basically it's like never really put
(17:03):
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
and Spade was like, but there's no legal basis for that,
and Nicholas is like, I don't really care, nick, Nick. Yeah,
(17:25):
it 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.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Right, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
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 they'd be like, no, I
swear that that's our guy. Nicholas just be like no,
it's not you got Oh also I have a lot
of guns.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, gigantic bluff. I love it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
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 the basically that the Spanish delegates could eat it.
The Spanish delegates are like there when he's passing out
these certificates.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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
paying black soldiers, you know. So he's like, here's all
your money. You can keep the uniform and you are
officially discharged from service because the war is over. And
(18:41):
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
(19:02):
it on I want these people to be free. Here's
a document.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
God, that fucking rocks.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Secretly, great, great, great, great great.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. And so he tried one less 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 that Andrew Jackson stole,
those twenty three million acres, we will absolutely go to
war for it. And then Britain was like, no, no, no,
(19:49):
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 left.
They this gets like a little blurry. They had this
intention to return in six months or maybe a year,
(20:09):
and maybe it was to like help transport everyone away.
But then other people were like, no, he was never
planning on coming back, and people like 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
(20:31):
intact fully armed with hundreds of guns, like eight 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
(20:51):
white guy in charge. Oh he's gonna fuck off soon,
don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I mean I just based on what you just I'm
tempted to want to give a good faith reading of
that because 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 (21:15):
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
(21:35):
conversations with indigenous leaders 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
(21:55):
is fully stocked and armed by the British. Before their departure,
bish post becomes Negro 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
(22:15):
have enough guns.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And this can go a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
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
(22:40):
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 we're
not 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.
(23:04):
There are probably a ton of ads, but our ads
are more developed, but not.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
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 (23:26):
Yeah, 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 in
(23:49):
a fort that was incredibly defensible.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh, I think in the way America always takes things calmly,
reasonably and wanting to be include and extend that American
dream to everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yes, it's close, and they were 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 the sport scared the
shit out of white people, just fucking kept people up
(24:25):
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 fuck United States, fucking United States, were like
coming for baseball and apple pie and by that I
mean chattel slavery only. Okay, it be clear. It would
(24:46):
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.
Quote the author Matthew C. Clayven from the best book
about this that I'm aware of the Battle of negro Fort.
(25:06):
Quote negro Fort's denizens were not 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
(25:28):
actions show that self determination, self reliance, and self rule
were their key objectives, and so they were just trying
to fucking live.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah, that was like, that's a long way of saying,
just living with dignity and independence.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
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 3 (25:55):
Oh yeah, okay, leader real flame out. Okay, you'll flame
that use it. Yeah, he will know he had millennial burnout.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Margaret, right, totally. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You have burnout at work.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
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 (26:22):
Is it silent before greatest.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Oh, yeah is the greatest, and then silent. But but
what the fuck did they call?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
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 3 (26:42):
They're like Margaret, Margaret Pep. Generally it was the Pep generation. Yeah, cool,
I 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,
(27:05):
let's assume I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I don't know. I don't remember by the time you're
hearing this, even if you listen when it first came out,
I'm not gonna remember make this sentence. I only remember
about the four Yeah. The weird side conversations not part
of my memory, nor should it be. Yeah, anyway, before
(27:30):
we talk shit on the people who are listen to
our s eh okay.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Oh no, no, no, it's just an interesting it's an
interesting and like usually.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Funny side effect of the job.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
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 Yeah, I
do it to cool Zone media. People like it. It
is a human instinct to be like, I know a
thing about that. Like Robert Evans said, the people listen
to the view Nation are old. I'm sure Robert Evans
doesn't remember saying that, But when I listen to the
(28:05):
v Nation in my basement when I'm working out, I think, yeah, no,
I'm kind of old. This is a really interesting aside.
People are very glad we did it.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
I love Yeah, I love talking to five year old
MP three files.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
It's my passion.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
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.
(28:46):
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 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,
(29:09):
French speaking, English speaking, and people born in Africa all
living there side by side. And we know that's because
mostly of their names, Like one person would be like
Congo Tom because he was born in Africa, and another
person will have like a French.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Name or whatever, right m.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
And we actually know a lot about like because they're
fucking listed as property. We know a lot of their names,
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
(29:46):
which is like halfway between a cannon and a mortar,
so it's like not quite as long distance or whatever.
And they had hundreds of muskets.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, we saw howitzer was just a brand name of
a gun. And then I started reading.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Yeah, I mean think xerox or a Zamboni situation.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Interesting. Okay, it's his own thing.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
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
(30:25):
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 just
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
(30:47):
they had 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 (31:01):
I think their own human bodies.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
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 famous because his
(31:29):
name was French.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Oh my god, I was about to say, because he
had a cute little name.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And that was the reason.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It is the reason, because this the single scariest thing
that has happened to white Southerners and human history was
the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
And during the Haitian Revolution, which had only ended, it
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 guy who had led that,
to Saint Luvatour, 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,
(32:14):
god like, all over the papers, all over the papers,
they're like the Haitian Revolution's coming. Which, don't get me wrong,
there were many people trying to make the Haitian Revolution
come to North America for sure.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
But I'm just at every turn, just a nation of
fucking weird babies.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
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 (32:45):
Again. I had a feeling it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I mean, if anyone was well equipped to capture the
mind of violent babies, I suppose it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yep. Which is an awkward place to start an ad pivot,
but that's where it is. It's right here, right now.
Here's an ad pivot, and.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
We're back, and we pivoted right on back. It feels
I think that would perfectly.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, absolutely good my job. 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,
(33:39):
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. It's opposite day
for him, every day exactly. Yeah, he's the opposite moratl
guy yea. And so he writes, dear mister President, can
(34:00):
I invade the sovereign country to put down a fort
in their territory? And the President's like, oh, I 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.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Wow, And just in classic white supremacist for him, he's like,
fuck the law, I do things my way.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
No, he's he's a classic example of uh asked, you know,
apologizing instead of asking for permission.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
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 a legally cross into Spain
and fuck it, thinks up, it's time to go burn
indigenous villages, including our recent allies, blow up the fort
all in someone else's country. It is entirely illegal, even
(34:51):
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 to do some plausible deniability shit where
(35:11):
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 through Violet.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
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 it.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, he is absolutely gonna end up president at the
end of this story.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
And there's and then the paper trail collectively everyone decided
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, totally, that's for historians.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
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
(36:17):
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. A
small boat of white soldiers like went up the river
(36:38):
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
(36:58):
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
(37:20):
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
lasted six days, this siege, and there were sorties fought
between the two forces that forced the soldiers of negro
(37:42):
Fort back behind their walls. And about half of the
soldiers in negro Fort are black and the other half
were 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, very metal.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
A very yeah. There nothing if not consistently metal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
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 doing
(38:36):
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 hundred
(38:58):
and fifty people died in 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 none of the
(39:20):
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 their intentions.
(39:46):
And they also provided enough time for way more people
who stayed to get out and get away, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, I mean, and I think that there should and
often is has to be some area for well, what
does winning versus 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,
(40:16):
dilied free.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
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
(40:39):
named bow Leg.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Okay, I was waiting for a twist.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
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
(41:02):
and so like it was like it gets presented as
a 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. Yeah,
And Nero's Town in bow Legs Town are presented in
very similar ways where they were still a lot of
(41:22):
them are still wearing uniforms. A lot of them are like, no,
this is just where we're continuing the fight in ok
and Nero's town. Nero was a black man who had
himself run away from slavery twenty plus years earlier to
live with the seminole before showing up to negro Fort,
and in Nero's town, they would dance the Red Stick dance,
(41:45):
which was a way 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 (42:03):
Wow, they found.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
The 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 gets.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
I'm so glad he got gotten. That's thrilling.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
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 in turnover to Spanish authorities. I'd
(42:42):
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 (42:49):
Yeah, with with the sweet promise.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah yeah, not to be like, actually we've decided to
go to a different direction.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Fuck you, Yeah, we got this far. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Well I still think that's I mean, that is yeah,
that is a movie style return.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I thought I thought.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That he he got off scott free.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, no, and did not get off Scott free.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Excellent, great news.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
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 Jackson, this time him personally, and they went around
(43:41):
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 (43:53):
Jesus an inexhaustibly evil person.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I know, just fucking terminators 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,
(44:21):
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 going to go fuck up
(44:43):
some fucking like colonial Americans. Absolutely, mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
God, I would love to hear a cool people on
the Seminole wars.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
That is, it's absolutely in the plans. I've been. Yeah,
I've like done some of the research into it. 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 Democrat
(45:16):
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 Fort as a symbol and the US attack on
it as evidence of the US being won't referred. They
(45:39):
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 need for a violent liberation
(46:01):
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 Garson and the
(46:21):
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 3 (46:34):
That is so, I mean, it stands straight, but it's
really cool to hear that that Negro for it became
such a huge.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Inspiration for the movement moving forward, and.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Also makes it, I mean all the more frustrating that
it is not taught oh yeah to anyway. But I
feel like any any armed resistance is especially by indigenous
or black people of the US, is just not no, not.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
We don't talk.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
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 didn't 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,
(47:25):
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 (47:44):
Well, then, and then the inevitability.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
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 with and Andrew Jackson becomes president anyways,
(48:11):
and I know, you know, never sees a consequence in
his entire fucking life and just accruse more and more
and more power.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
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, you know that.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Two hundred years yeah, Like, but and also 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.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
He was.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
He was the worst guy then.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
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,
and again also I hate and we're like, oh, all
white all people in the nineteenth century were racist, and
you're like, do you mean all white people?
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Like?
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Anyway, that's the story.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
That's this, that's the story. Wow, thank you so much
for uh for telling me.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
I truly knew, I mean, and I knew a little
bit about this, about.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
The Seminole Wars, but I did not know, uh what
preceded it. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
I hope that I really, I mean, not that I have,
you know, much hope in this way, but I hope
that that this is like.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Talked about more. It's really starting and still could and
should be inspiring. Now.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah, absolutely, Well what else should be talked about now
is your plugs?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yay, yay, Okay, you can uh, I uh just began
producing a relaunch of Do You Wonder Show? We The
End Housed, hosted by Theo Henderson on iHeartRadio. It is
a show about the unhoused experience from an unhoused lens.
(50:14):
We have episodes 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
(50:36):
a fan of hot dogs, there's still something for you
in it.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
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 3 (50:55):
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? Yeah, why is it just about mustard?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah? No, although I'm sure that if I had had
more real.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Estate page wise, we could have we could have found
a mustard bastard easily.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
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 3 (51:29):
I don't know why a torly mustache peeking out of
a mustard suit.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah. Now, I'm like, I'm gonna go eat dumplanes and
I'm like, I wonder 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 4 (51:46):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
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 any 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
(52:07):
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,
(52:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
That's wrong.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
It's the end of the episode. By everyone, cool People
Who did.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
For more podcasts and 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 (00:05):
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 start podcasts because
it's illegal and the law and morality are identical. Our
(00:28):
guest today is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hi, Jamie Hi, Margaret, dude to my status is starting
a podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I am currently considered a fugitive.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
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 (00:47):
When podcasts are outlawed, only outlaws of podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Me and Dex Shepherd against the world.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
That's right. That's why we're all going to get the vests.
But we're not going to tell you what I mean
by that. Instead, I'm going to 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
(01:19):
is our audio engineer, and everyone is to say Hi, Ian, Hi, Ian, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Hi, Ian, sorry about your recent breaking the law by
participating in this evil empire.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Oh Jamie, you know you're my partner in crime and
that you're the mastermind.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's true?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What are you jeer?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Behind them?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, behind all producers. Yes, the theme music was written
for us by someone who will not be named lest
unwoman get in trouble.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Thanks proud of that one. Today is part two of
a two parter, which is the first time 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
(02:14):
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 had beens just stolen from them,
which is to say, I get to talk about everyone's
favorite person, Andrew Jackson. Yeah. If you ever meet someone
who thinks that Andrew Jackson is a good person, then
(02:37):
you have met a bad person, or at best, a
terribly badly informed person.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, I would say, don't waste your time trying to
fix them unless I.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Know, you know, you've only we've only got so much time.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
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
(03:15):
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
(03:35):
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 Brittain Indians, capture Florida wooo, and
that was that was his war crime. In eighteen thirteen,
(03:56):
the Muskogee 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've been like doing the more settled thing.
They're starting to grow, build plantations, They're really into the
chattel slavery thing. On the other side, you had the
Red Sticks who were like, yeah, fuck all that, and
(04:19):
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 Musgogie village that he could find.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Which like a like a gentleman would, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
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 3 (04:48):
Yeah, and all the history books that we get in
American public schools do not reflect it because it just
complicates things too much.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, you pick one side to decide that they kill
civilians and the other side that is the way.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
To civilian life, the ultimate complicating factor.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
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 modern 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,
(05:29):
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
(05:50):
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 (05:56):
Right at Florida.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
It's about half modern floor.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Okay, twenty three million only half. I mean Florida's big though,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, that's a big fucking state. You ever like drive
through Florida and you're like, this is no way. This
is going to feel like driving through Texas that takes years,
but then it does. No it especially be like driving
to Miami.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
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
gets kind of totally.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
So everyone's mad, right, because he just took so much
fucking land. 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 to be clear,
(06:57):
absolutely was planning to go fuck up the US South
and free from 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
(07:17):
the Colonial Marines or whatever 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 bayoneted and doesn't stop. So they were treated
(07:41):
and they got back 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 there, so it's sort of easy.
At least two thirds of Pensacola's and slave population was
recruited during this time, and all the slave owners would
(08:05):
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
(08:26):
British Florida one. 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 Apalogic Cola 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
(08:46):
all over the place, all 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 3 (08:56):
God, okay, And how many like different sources is it
coming from?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Is it just depends.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
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
(09:26):
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
American 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,
(09:48):
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
(10:09):
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 3 (10:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I mean, there's.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
In like a casualty of war sense where you like,
if someone you loved was killed after the war had
been resolved, and you found that out later.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I simply don't know what I would do.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
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 like, for example, the
Americans are about to pull out their greatest victory in
the War of eighteen twelve, after the war is over,
(11:07):
the Battle of New Orleans, made famous by a song
that I don't remember who sings and don't listen too much.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
On January eighth, eighteen fifteen, British soldiers attacked New Orleans,
and Nichols'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
(11:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
That is because they tried to march through a swamp
at an entrenched position, and they were all so arrogant.
They were like, we are the most civilized and advanced army.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
In the world.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
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. He did the
unthinkable when he defended New Orleans. He armed enslaved people.
(12:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Often joke 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 (12:48):
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
(13:09):
respected that black people knew how to fight for whatever.
I hate him and I hate everything about him one man.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I can't can't hand it to him for that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
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, right.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
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 (13:53):
Yeah. So one man who was promised his 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 and 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,
(14:16):
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?
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Like anyway, no, I mean no, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Force to ally with. If he can believe it, in
this case, there's a better one.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
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 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 gonna show up and be like, yo,
(15:24):
give us back our property. And the British were like,
now 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 by force 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 going to come back. We're gonna like ask nicely. Right.
(15:45):
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
form master, you may carry my head along with you,
but as to my body, it will remain here, like
(16:08):
it's just the time of metal quotes.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Basically, yeah, I was like, there's really some bangers in
this story, like one after the other.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
The war's over.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
But they're like, let they don't know what s goo. Girls, Well,
they don't know it, right, right, right?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Do we know how exactly how long after this is,
we're still only like a month or so later.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
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 truth comes before they get chance to do it.
And so Nichols's army basically it's like never really put
(17:03):
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
and Spade was like, but there's no legal basis for that,
and Nicholas is like, I don't really care, nick, Nick. Yeah,
(17:25):
it 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.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Right, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
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 they'd be like, no, I
swear that that's our guy. Nicholas just be like no,
it's not you got Oh also I have a lot
of guns.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, gigantic bluff. I love it.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
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 the basically that the Spanish delegates could eat it.
The Spanish delegates are like there when he's passing out
these certificates.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
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
paying black soldiers, you know. So he's like, here's all
your money. You can keep the uniform and you are
officially discharged from service because the war is over. And
(18:41):
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
(19:02):
it on I want these people to be free. Here's
a document.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
God, that fucking rocks.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Secretly, great, great, great, great great.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah. And so he tried one less 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 that Andrew Jackson stole,
those twenty three million acres, we will absolutely go to
war for it. And then Britain was like, no, no, no,
(19:49):
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 left.
They this gets like a little blurry. They had this
intention to return in six months or maybe a year,
(20:09):
and maybe it was to like help transport everyone away.
But then other people were like, no, he was never
planning on coming back, and people like 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
(20:31):
intact fully armed with hundreds of guns, like eight 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
(20:51):
white guy in charge. Oh he's gonna fuck off soon,
don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I mean I just based on what you just I'm
tempted to want to give a good faith reading of
that because 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 (21:15):
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
(21:35):
conversations with indigenous leaders 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
(21:55):
is fully stocked and armed by the British. Before their departure,
bish post becomes Negro 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
(22:15):
have enough guns.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And this can go a lot of ways.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
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
(22:40):
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 we're
not 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.
(23:04):
There are probably a ton of ads, but our ads
are more developed, but not.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
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 (23:26):
Yeah, 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 in
(23:49):
a fort that was incredibly defensible.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh, I think in the way America always takes things calmly,
reasonably and wanting to be include and extend that American
dream to everybody.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Yes, it's close, and they were 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 the sport scared the
shit out of white people, just fucking kept people up
(24:25):
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 fuck United States, fucking United States, were like
coming for baseball and apple pie and by that I
mean chattel slavery only. Okay, it be clear. It would
(24:46):
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.
Quote the author Matthew C. Clayven from the best book
about this that I'm aware of the Battle of negro Fort.
(25:06):
Quote negro Fort's denizens were not 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
(25:28):
actions show that self determination, self reliance, and self rule
were their key objectives, and so they were just trying
to fucking live.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah, that was like, that's a long way of saying,
just living with dignity and independence.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
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 3 (25:55):
Oh yeah, okay, leader real flame out. Okay, you'll flame
that use it. Yeah, he will know he had millennial burnout.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Margaret, right, totally. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
You have burnout at work.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
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 (26:22):
Is it silent before greatest.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Oh, yeah is the greatest, and then silent. But but
what the fuck did they call?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
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 3 (26:42):
They're like Margaret, Margaret Pep. Generally it was the Pep generation. Yeah, cool,
I 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,
(27:05):
let's assume I was wrong.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
I don't know. I don't remember by the time you're
hearing this, even if you listen when it first came out,
I'm not gonna remember make this sentence. I only remember
about the four Yeah. The weird side conversations not part
of my memory, nor should it be. Yeah, anyway, before
(27:30):
we talk shit on the people who are listen to
our s eh okay.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Oh no, no, no, it's just an interesting it's an
interesting and like usually.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Funny side effect of the job.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
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 Yeah, I
do it to cool Zone media. People like it. It
is a human instinct to be like, I know a
thing about that. Like Robert Evans said, the people listen
to the view Nation are old. I'm sure Robert Evans
doesn't remember saying that, But when I listen to the
(28:05):
v Nation in my basement when I'm working out, I think, yeah, no,
I'm kind of old. This is a really interesting aside.
People are very glad we did it.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
I love Yeah, I love talking to five year old
MP three files.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
It's my passion.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
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.
(28:46):
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 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,
(29:09):
French speaking, English speaking, and people born in Africa all
living there side by side. And we know that's because
mostly of their names, Like one person would be like
Congo Tom because he was born in Africa, and another
person will have like a French.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Name or whatever, right m.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
And we actually know a lot about like because they're
fucking listed as property. We know a lot of their names,
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
(29:46):
which is like halfway between a cannon and a mortar,
so it's like not quite as long distance or whatever.
And they had hundreds of muskets.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, we saw howitzer was just a brand name of
a gun. And then I started reading.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Yeah, I mean think xerox or a Zamboni situation.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Interesting. Okay, it's his own thing.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
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
(30:25):
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 just
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
(30:47):
they had 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 (31:01):
I think their own human bodies.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
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 famous because his
(31:29):
name was French.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Oh my god, I was about to say, because he
had a cute little name.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And that was the reason.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It is the reason, because this the single scariest thing
that has happened to white Southerners and human history was
the Haitian Revolution.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
And during the Haitian Revolution, which had only ended, it
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 guy who had led that,
to Saint Luvatour, 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,
(32:14):
god like, all over the papers, all over the papers,
they're like the Haitian Revolution's coming. Which, don't get me wrong,
there were many people trying to make the Haitian Revolution
come to North America for sure.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
But I'm just at every turn, just a nation of
fucking weird babies.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
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 (32:45):
Again. I had a feeling it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
I mean, if anyone was well equipped to capture the
mind of violent babies, I suppose it was Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yep. Which is an awkward place to start an ad pivot,
but that's where it is. It's right here, right now.
Here's an ad pivot, and.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
We're back, and we pivoted right on back. It feels
I think that would perfectly.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, absolutely good my job. 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,
(33:39):
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. It's opposite day
for him, every day exactly. Yeah, he's the opposite moratl
guy yea. And so he writes, dear mister President, can
(34:00):
I invade the sovereign country to put down a fort
in their territory? And the President's like, oh, I 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.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Wow, And just in classic white supremacist for him, he's like,
fuck the law, I do things my way.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
No, he's he's a classic example of uh asked, you know,
apologizing instead of asking for permission.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
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 a legally cross into Spain
and fuck it, thinks up, it's time to go burn
indigenous villages, including our recent allies, blow up the fort
all in someone else's country. It is entirely illegal, even
(34:51):
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 to do some plausible deniability shit where
(35:11):
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 through Violet.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
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 it.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Yeah, he is absolutely gonna end up president at the
end of this story.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
And there's and then the paper trail collectively everyone decided
didn't matter.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, totally, that's for historians.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
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
(36:17):
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. A
small boat of white soldiers like went up the river
(36:38):
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
(36:58):
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
(37:20):
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
lasted six days, this siege, and there were sorties fought
between the two forces that forced the soldiers of negro
(37:42):
Fort back behind their walls. And about half of the
soldiers in negro Fort are black and the other half
were 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, very metal.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
A very yeah. There nothing if not consistently metal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
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 doing
(38:36):
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 hundred
(38:58):
and fifty people died in 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 none of the
(39:20):
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 their intentions.
(39:46):
And they also provided enough time for way more people
who stayed to get out and get away, you know.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, I mean, and I think that there should and
often is has to be some area for well, what
does winning versus 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,
(40:16):
dilied free.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
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
(40:39):
named bow Leg.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Okay, I was waiting for a twist.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
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
(41:02):
and so like it was like it gets presented as
a 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. Yeah,
And Nero's Town in bow Legs Town are presented in
very similar ways where they were still a lot of
(41:22):
them are still wearing uniforms. A lot of them are like, no,
this is just where we're continuing the fight in ok
and Nero's town. Nero was a black man who had
himself run away from slavery twenty plus years earlier to
live with the seminole before showing up to negro Fort,
and in Nero's town, they would dance the Red Stick dance,
(41:45):
which was a way 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 (42:03):
Wow, they found.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
The 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 gets.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
I'm so glad he got gotten. That's thrilling.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
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 in turnover to Spanish authorities. I'd
(42:42):
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 (42:49):
Yeah, with with the sweet promise.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah yeah, not to be like, actually we've decided to
go to a different direction.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Fuck you, Yeah, we got this far. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
Well I still think that's I mean, that is yeah,
that is a movie style return.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I thought I thought.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
That he he got off scott free.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Yeah, no, and did not get off Scott free.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Excellent, great news.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
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 Jackson, this time him personally, and they went around
(43:41):
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 (43:53):
Jesus an inexhaustibly evil person.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
I know, just fucking terminators 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,
(44:21):
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 going to go fuck up
(44:43):
some fucking like colonial Americans. Absolutely, mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
God, I would love to hear a cool people on
the Seminole wars.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
That is, it's absolutely in the plans. I've been. Yeah,
I've like done some of the research into it. 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 Democrat
(45:16):
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 Fort as a symbol and the US attack on
it as evidence of the US being won't referred. They
(45:39):
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 need for a violent liberation
(46:01):
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 Garson and the
(46:21):
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 3 (46:34):
That is so, I mean, it stands straight, but it's
really cool to hear that that Negro for it became
such a huge.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
Inspiration for the movement moving forward, and.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Also makes it, I mean all the more frustrating that
it is not taught oh yeah to anyway. But I
feel like any any armed resistance is especially by indigenous
or black people of the US, is just not no, not.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
We don't talk.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
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 didn't 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,
(47:25):
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 (47:44):
Well, then, and then the inevitability.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
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 with and Andrew Jackson becomes president anyways,
(48:11):
and I know, you know, never sees a consequence in
his entire fucking life and just accruse more and more
and more power.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
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, you know that.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Two hundred years yeah, Like, but and also 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.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
He was.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
He was the worst guy then.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
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,
and again also I hate and we're like, oh, all
white all people in the nineteenth century were racist, and
you're like, do you mean all white people?
Speaker 4 (49:05):
Like?
Speaker 3 (49:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Anyway, that's the story.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
That's this, that's the story. Wow, thank you so much
for uh for telling me.
Speaker 3 (49:16):
I truly knew, I mean, and I knew a little
bit about this, about.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
The Seminole Wars, but I did not know, uh what
preceded it. Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
I hope that I really, I mean, not that I have,
you know, much hope in this way, but I hope
that that this is like.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Talked about more. It's really starting and still could and
should be inspiring. Now.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah, absolutely, Well what else should be talked about now
is your plugs?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yay, yay, Okay, you can uh, I uh just began
producing a relaunch of Do You Wonder Show? We The
End Housed, hosted by Theo Henderson on iHeartRadio. It is
a show about the unhoused experience from an unhoused lens.
(50:14):
We have episodes 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
(50:36):
a fan of hot dogs, there's still something for you
in it.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
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 3 (50:55):
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? Yeah, why is it just about mustard?
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah? No, although I'm sure that if I had had
more real.
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Estate page wise, we could have we could have found
a mustard bastard easily.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
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 3 (51:29):
I don't know why a torly mustache peeking out of
a mustard suit.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah. Now, I'm like, I'm gonna go eat dumplanes and
I'm like, I wonder 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 4 (51:46):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
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 any 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
(52:07):
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,
(52:28):
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.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
That's wrong.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
It's the end of the episode. By everyone, cool People
Who did.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (52:45):
For more podcasts and 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
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!