Rafters

used whatever they could find. It was August of nineteen ninety four in Havana, Cuba. Food and other resources were scarce. The people longed for a better life, and it was only one hundred miles to Florida, one hundred miles of choppy, shark infested water, but they were willing to take the chance. Many garages how secret bus us makeshift rafts that families could use to send loved ones to America. The name is derived from the cheap, flimsy balsa wood some Cubans

used to construct their rafts. The government didn't approve of its citizens leaving the country, though so they kept tight control over materials such as plywood and inner tubes, and so the people used what they had. The rafts were as numerous as they were strange. Some were barely better than a cork bobbing in an ocean, truly just a square of foam and aluminum, but some were more elaborate too. Entire cars were hollowed out and then placed between two

rows of floating oil drums. Hanoi and his family members worked on their raft in secret. They used tar as an adhesive to attach blocks of styrofoam to a wooden frame. An old shower curtain was used to line the interior. Hanoi would try alone in the small compartment. The thought filled him with anxiety and despair. He might drown or die of thirst, or be eaten by sharks. Even if he was successful, he might never see his family again.

But they wanted this for him. They wanted him to have a future, and as it turns out, they didn't have to bring the raft to the ocean. Under the cover of night. On August eighth of nineteen ninety four, the country's leader, Fidel Castro, lifted the emigration ban, allowing Cuba citizens to flee on their rafts without fear of capture. People like Hanoi and his family lined up along the country's beautiful beaches, preparing to say goodbye. The sunrises in

Cuba are magnificent and the ocean is bright blue. But of course you can't eat the view, and so Hanoi's family fed him a simple meal of rice and beans, and then helped him into the raft. They pushed him off and into the ocean. He waved and waved, not stopping until Cuba and his family were a dot on the and then he got to rowing. The trip could be completed in about a day and a half. The shorter the better. Of course, the rice and beans were all the food his family had. It would be his

last meal unless he could reach America. Similarly, he didn't have any drinking water, and unfortunately, the choppy waves meant that not even the rice and beans would stay in him. He soon got sick and threw up over the side of the raft, and as he traveled he could see other rafts dotting the ocean. He and the other sailors encouraged one another, but as night fell and darkness surrounded him, he could no longer see them. However, he could hear screams.

All of these balsaros, the Spanish name for rafters, soon found that some of the rafts were better designed than others. Some were little more than a frame, and the blsaro's feet dangled into the water, and at nighttime, hungry sharks took advantage of this. More than one Balsaros lost a limb or their life. When morning came, Hanoil was alone. He continued rowing, pushing himself in the heat. His mouth was dry and his hands were blistered, but he kept

on rowing. Finally, mercifully, land appeared on the horizon. It was Florida. He was nearly there, but now he was sharing the water with a very different type of sailor. The United States Coastguard descended on Hanoi and his fellow bolsaro's. President Clinton had ordered that they be rounded up and taken to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. They would not be allowed into the United States as their predecessors had in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, The country, they seemed to say,

no longer had room for them. There were thirty thousand detainees in total. The thought of returning to Cuba was heart wrenching, but being kept at Guantanamo actually had its upsides. The soldiers there provided the Cuban refugees with tents, food, and water, but it was excruciatingly boring to wait in the hot, dry, dusty camp while the world powers argued what to do with Hanoi and his countrymen. All he

could do was hope, and ultimately that was enough. After nearly a year, the Clinton administration relented and allowed the Cuban refugees into the United States. Hanoi's long ordeal was over. Now he could begin the equally hard work of building a new life for himself. But that was what he had always wanted. The ingenuity of his family and his curiosity in facing the unknown finally delivered him to America. On December twentieth of eighteen sixty, South Carolina seceded from

the United States. They was the first of eleven states to secede, which would form the Confederate States of America and kick off the American Civil War. Their secession, by the way, was all because they wanted to keep owning and enslaving other human beans, beans, refusing them rights and dignity and freedom. You'll often hear it said that the Civil War was about states' rights, but folks who say

that rarely elaborate. The state right that South Carolina and all the others wanted to protect was their right to buy, sell, and use other human beings. South Carolina said so right in their declaration of secession. The fourth state to secede was Alabama on January eleventh of eighteen sixty one. The vote in Alabama was sixty one to thirty nine in favor of secession. However, when the vote was secured and the state officially decided to leave the Union, there was

one holdout in the Alabama House of Representatives. Christopher Sheetz, a school teacher in his early twenties, refused to sign the ordinance. He was the sole representative of Winston County and his county did not want to secede. The push towards secession was driven by slaveholding plantation owners, and Winston

County was not a large participant in that system. A county of less four thousand people, it only had fourteen slaveholders in around one hundred and twenty enslave people within their county lines, a vanishingly tiny portion of their already small population. Christopher Sheets was ultimately imprisoned for treason against the Confederacy for this, but spent the entire war awaiting trial. Meanwhile, his home county became an ideological battleground in the middle

of a civil war. Not long after Alabama's secession, Winston County residents loyal to the Union gathered in Looney's tavern, where they declared it the Free State of Winston. The gathering, while informal, declared Sheets a hero for opposing secession, and said that if Alabama could secede from the United States, well,

then Winston County could secede from Alabama. That same year, an opposing gathering of Confederate sympathizers occurred, where they wrote a petition to the governor asking for his support to quell the growing Union sentiment in their county. They said that citizens needed to be forced to swear a loyalty

oath to the Confederacy. Starting in eighteen sixty two, the Confederate government attempted to force Winston County residents, even those who supported neither the Union nor the Confederate sides, to enlist. Many wound up fleeing north, joining the first Alabama cavalry with the Union Army. Enough farmers fled conscription that Winston County farms struggled to grow enough food for their remaining residents, a problem that worsened when Confederate soldiers confiscated food for

their own use as they passed on through. For the next several years, conflicts broke out across the county. It was the target of several raids from both Union and Confederate units. Neighbors turned against neighbors. There was little strategic value to this northern Alabama county, nor were there any huge political values to its capture. All the same, the

county became a microcosm for the war itself. Families found themselves split down the middle, and even after the end of the war in eighteen sixty five, when the South lost, tensions remained between neighbors who had served on opposite sides during the conflict. Christopher Sheetz was let out of prison and attempted a rocky return to politics that concluded with him serving in the House of Representatives in the eighteen seventies and briefly served as the US ambassador to Denmark.

Like the rest of the country, Winston County did its best to move on from the turmoil of Civil War, but the reminders of its particular role in the conflict remained to this present day, most prominently in a memorial statue in front of their courthouse. The statue depicts a Civil War era soldier whose uniform is split down the middle, half Union, half Confederate. The statue bears the title Dual Destiny. There's a lot to say about the Free State of

Winston and its unique history. If the rallying cry of the South in the Civil War was states' rights, it should be abundantly ironic that they tried so hard to suppress a county that asserted its own independence in the face of a state in active rebellion. The county never actually seceded from the Confederacy. It remained officially Confederate territory until the end of the war, but not by signing a single piece of paper. Sheets determined that his county

would retain its integrity after the war. In the long arc of history, a rebellion, even a symbolic one, can carry real weight. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts researched and written by the Grim and Mild team and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.

You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grimanda and until next time, stay curious. Mm hmm.