Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff your podcast that reminds you when there's people doing bad things, there's people trying to do good things, and sometimes the people who are try and do good things have bad things happen to them, but then they go somewhere else and then they keep doing good things. That's always what the show's about, including this week. And my guest is Cody Johnston, who we've never had on this show, and this surprises me. How are you?
I'm good, Thank you so much for having me for the first time. I'm excited to be here. I love the concept of the show. Thanks something we need more and more of.
We do need more people doing cool things. And then also, yeah, like being reminded that there's a point to fighting even when we lose all the time.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They're gonna win at the end of this one. Actually, but spoilers all right, Yeah, spoilers for that. The bio I wrote for you is host of some More News and one of the best shit posters left on Twitter.
Oh, thank you so much. I've internalized that. I'm gonna let that cook and warm me up a little bit.
It was like an hour ago, right before I recorded that, I was like, oh, there's Cody doing an antagonistic reply guy to shitty people.
I did literally just tell Denesh Desuza to shit in his own mouth. Yeah that was so that's accurate description. Yeah, that's about it. That's what I do. Yeah, I'm slowly leaving Twitter because it's really bad.
That's what we all say.
Yeah, I know, I'm trying to keep it to just that and like I'll post on like blue Sky or some things, but like, you can only yell at people on Twitter.
That's true, you know.
So I can try to focus on that when I'm there and then actual posts elsewhere.
But play to the strength of the platform exactly. It's the everything appens got everything. Yeah, it can be mean to people. Sharene You're our producer and we wouldn't want to be mean to you. So that's why we're talking by zoom instead of Twitter.
Yeah, thanks for that podcast on Twitter sounds hard or guess X.
Sure, Yeah, don't dead name it, jeez, no whatever.
Even as someone who books the show, I'm surprised Cody hasn't been on it and that makes me feel crazy. So I'm glad you're here about time.
No.
I genuinely like, I was like, what was the last thing Cody was on? And then I like googled your name plus cool people did cool stuff, and then I was like, wait a second, yeah, And then I at this moment where I was like, do I just have a parasocial relationship with you? But then I remember, and I've been on your show exactly.
I was trying to think too. It was like, I don't think because I know Katie has and I was like, I don't think I've actually been there, and I was thinking of when you were on even more news.
For me, it's like a Berenstein Bear situation. I think you were on, Like.
It's possible I would. I would be easily convinced.
Back in nineteen ninety eight, the first episode, our audio engineer is Rory. Everyone has to say hi to Rory.
Hi. Rory, Hi, Rory Hi, Rory.
Our theme musical is written force by Unwoman And this week I'm going to tell you one of my favorite kinds of stories. It's a story that starts with a bunch of revolutionaries and ends up with them fighting to the death against slavery, and they even win in the end because American chattel slavery is no longer legal, so we did it. Yeah, everything's fine, we didn't do it, but like, yeah, fair enough the story. Yeah yeah, they
win some of what they wanted. We're talking about some folks who wanted way more than just the current capitalist hell world with still legalized slavery. It's just prison slavery, and said chattel slavery. This week's story. I'm curious if
either of y'all have heard of the forty eight ers. No, I admit I wasn't expecting you to not, because yeah, no, no, this is this is I feel like about half the time I do things that are like this person you've totally heard of was more radical than you think, like my Oscar wild episode or something right, And then the other half is like, here's how these people you never heard of like changed the way that you currently live today. Love those and who we could learn something from?
And also who's the fuck is Oscar Wilde? And oh yeah no he's just this, uh, just some guy.
I never did anything of any I won't be looking yeah no, yeah, yeah, no, totally Yeah, the forty eight ers are, well, the forty eight is we're going to talk about are mostly German immigrants that came over to the US after the failed revolutions of eighteen forty eight forty nine. Basically, the super short version is that there
was almost a worldwide revolution in eighteen forty eight. Fifty different countries had revolutions in eighteen forty eight eighteen forty nine, most of them lost, and the people who then had to flee the countries that they came from are called the forty eight ers. So after the revolution failed in Germany, a ton of them just hit the ground running and joined the abolitionist movement in the United States, and it opened a kind of new front in war against slavery.
It's a war that would eventually not too long after that become less metaphorical and more literal. But since the forty eight ers were not strangers to sword and rifle, they got right up into that too. Spoiler to the very end of the episode, about ten percent of the Union troops were born in Germany. Oh yeah, I had no idea on fact. It's gonna be really funny to tell this really long story about how great the Germans are.
Russian special thanks to the Germans. I know, because there's like a meme going around right now, right because like the German left is being really embarrassing and not pro Palestine by and large because of this movement called the anti Deutsch that is like everything that is whatever anyway, I'm not getting to anti Deutsch. You just don't want
to be angry. So there's like a meme that's like, congratulations Germany for continuing to be on the wrong side of history of everything forever, right side of the history this episode time this, yeah, time.
Maybe the one and only. Maybe maybe I shouldn't say that.
There's not a lot of times. I mean, like probably invading Rome was good, but I don't know. Maybe I'll like go back and learn more about the Goths and be like, eh, actually at all.
But this is up there in terms of like importance. It's this is a good one. It's not just like it's not an easy right side of history. I mean should be, but.
Right, yeah, they did better than the Irish.
Yeah, so but you know, good for them for choosing this one.
Yeah, totally. The Revolutions of eighteen forty eight stand out maybe the most dramatically as like the thing that kind of kicked off about half of what I care about. But I don't really know as much about right because I've been hearing about the revolutions of eighteen forty eight forever. But I suspect that that's not a universal experience of my hosts and listeners. They're the precursor to all the
revolutions that I know way more about. Like all the like old heads in the eighteen seventies would be like, oh yeah, eighteen forty eight, you know, sort of the equivalent of like people talking about the seventies right now, only people went even harder. Anyway, this isn't an episode about the revolutions eighteen forty eight. One day I'll cover it, but that's going to be all, like more than two parts.
There's fifty different countries, and it's the closest to a revolutionary world war that I think the earth has ever seen. I could be wrong about that. I think once I like dive more into it, i'll know a little bit more. But we're gonna talk about the exiles mostly, but first I have to talk a little bit about the revolutions of eighteen forty eight. I was really sad because sometimes I know more about nineteenth century politics than twenty first
century politics because I live in books. So there's this thing that I run across sometimes people talk about the Spirit of forty eight, you know, and I was like, oh, maybe I'm gonna call this episode the Spirit of forty eight. And then I googled spirit of forty eight and it is Zionism complaining. Oh because they're about nineteen forty eight.
Oh haha, Yeah, that's so fortunate. They really fucked up that number.
I know, you could be specific spirit of eighteen forty eight.
Yeah, that's true. We'll see what it ends up called.
Spirit of forty eight parentheses, No, the other one, the other.
The one that Margaret pays more attention to the old one. In eighteen forty eight, a wave of revolution spread across Europe and to a lesser extent, around the world. About fifty countries were up in that and this wasn't a big mass planned thing, nor was it internationally coordinated. Each country was doing its own thing, but they were like looking over and being like Italy's doing it, we can do it, you know, which is the way things happened. I mean, that's what I say.
It was.
Yeah, this was the kind of the biggest revolution of the Enlightenment. Maybe I don't know if people were gonna get mad when I used hyperbolic whatever. It was a big revolution that was enlightenment. Thinking it was pro democracy is anti aristocracy. People wanted constitutions instead of kings. They wanted freedom of the press. Working class people wanted to
not starved to death. Nationalism was all the rage, and I've talked a bunch on the show before about how nationalism meant a fairly different thing in the nineteenth century and than it does now. But it it was probably always a mistake, but we know why they came up with it. They were like, what if Ukraine wasn't part of Russia anymore? You know, and shit like that.
Right.
Socialism was also all the rage during this but socialism wasn't as codified and specific as it would be thirty years later. The working class in a lot of Europe was spending half its wages on food, mostly potatoes and bread, and only two years earlier the potato crap had failed, most famously of course, in Ireland, but you know, it failed everywhere across Europe, and people sure weren't happy. They
were hungry, they weren't happy. Capitalism had just come through and destroyed the traditional guild system for skilled labor, and the labor movement hadn't quite kicked into gear yet. This is kind of like, in some ways, is the labor movement kicking into gear. The political landscape is almost entirely different than it would be by the end of the nineteenth century. And it's funny to pretend like, oh, everyone understands totally the ins and outs of leftism at the
end of the nineteenth century. That's probably not true. But the left in eighteen forty eight was a mix of like republicans as in, we want a republic and socialists, some of whom are what we would understand is modern socialists more or less, and those will tend to like lean more towards like atheism and enlightenment thinking. You also have these utopian socialists that were actually very religious and they kind of just go away after a while.
Yeah, there's not a lot of that.
No, France overthrew their monarchy and went back to having a republic for a little while. Every now and then people are like, oh, you're going to do the French Revolution, and like maybe, but like which one? And I can't keep track. There's too many of them. And they always put rich people in charge, so like just to all of them, Yeah, that's true, you'd be like, and then they put rich people in charge and they killed too
many people. Italy and Germany were heading towards unification, which was like a big part of the nationalism.
Love when Italy and Germany get together.
Yeah, well not with each other, but like Italy didn't exist, right, Germany didn't exist. They were like what if, Like there are these ideas, which again didn't work out great for the world. Yeah, like, because they do later get more directly together, you're oal. The Austrian Empire conceded a bunch of power to some of its conquered people, like the Hungarians and the Czechs, and these revolutions. I hate to
give credit to the American Revolution. It's like a thing that causes me physical discomfort, but the American Revolution was a major source of inspiration for the revolutions of eighteen forty eight for a lot of the revolutionaries. Their heroes were the founding fathers of the United States, because this is like kind of the first Western country being like
what if republic? Though, right, they created a slave republic, and that's going to come up as an issue, so revolutionaries and like random European countries would fly the French tricolor flag of the First French Revolution right next to the stars and stripes of the US as being like, the revolutionary flags don't bring this back. German pamphlets would go around with the slogan Germany must become a free state like America because all men are created equal. Looked good on paper.
Does it's a good sentence.
But even back then people were like, well, except the US isn't really free though, right They enslave people there. That seems like not freedom. So the forty eight ers took their ideas of liberty way further than the US did. The Second Republic of France abolished slavery at home and in the colonies on April twenty seventh, eighteen forty eight. Sweden abolished slavery in eighteen forty seven. Denmark abolished slavery
in eighteen forty eight. But whenever you like read the quick version, it's like, oh, and then these countries abolish slavery because white Europeans are cool and good and right right. The reason that Denmark abolished slavery was because of an uprising that is left out of the story, usually because it wasn't white people who abolished slavery.
Yeah, I was told that white Americans were the first to abolish slavery. Actually, so I feel like maybe you're misrepresenting history right now.
Yeah, totally, yeah, absolutely, your word for it. In eighteen forty seven, Denmark was like, oh, we're going to phase out slavery over the next twelve years, starting with newborn babies. And this is really common. No, I know, isn't that dark?
You could Yeah, you got to start with the babies. Definitely, don't have the babies be slaves.
Yeah, insane, Yeah, weirdess like victory, we did it. Reformists from one hundred years ago plus always looks so weird.
You know.
I recently did an episode where people were fighting really earnestly for the fifty two hour work week. You know, I'm like, where does that even fit? Yeah, what's the math on that?
Oh?
But you know, I mean one of the main things that abolitionists were trying to do because they were like, well, obviously we can't get out of slavery tomorrow, but we can start by phasing it out, and like, you know, that seemed like a radical sure.
Oh yeah, again, it's in context. Totally get it, phase it out. I feel like so much of this is just like, here's like moral clarity, but we have to kind of eskew that moral clarity and like do this other path. It's a lot harder, and in retrospect seems like very silly, honest face.
Yeah no, because over and over again people learned that the way to get rid of slavery was to demand that slaves are free and then shoot everyone who tries to ll slave people. And that's how they did it in Denmark in the end, because in July eighteen forty eight, people on the Danish island of Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands were like, yeah, we're not fucking waiting around
for that. So when slave folks rose up and took over the town of Frederick's and the Governor General of the Danish West Indies looked at the situation and decided reasonably enough that the best way out of the situation was to abolish slavery immediately.
H I mean, kind of the perfect series of events. It's what you want, right.
No, totally, it worked perfectly. And what was funny is he didn't have the authority to do this because property writes blah blah blah. But he just did it even though he didn't have the authority to and it worked. Maybe there's a lesson there. Yeah, sometimes you can just do stuff.
I mean, why did they choose twelve years anyway? Like why and why decide that number? And of course they wouldn't wait that long or no one would wait that long twelve years.
I know they're like, it's right around the corner, but it's twelve years from now.
Well, you want the non babies, you're, like the one two year olds to be able to like be slaves, so like you can train up the slave children one more generation of slave children. Yeah, yeah, and then when it's abolished, then you have like some you know, strong younger folks.
They really they really thought they did something with that number, which is funny because it's still more radical than like everything that all of the white abolitionists and power were doing.
They were like, well, you know, they abolished the slave trade, so then you just had to be born in America to be a slave, and then yeah, you know, and then they were like, you know that's yeah. Third, So the governor who did this like totally illegal thing where he abolished slavery in Denmark. He then had a nervous breakdown and just like fled the islands. But it also meant that the people he just pissed off completely couldn't get to him.
That's right to do it.
Successfully, Yeah, I think so. I think he lived out of the rest of his days. I didn't track him specifically, but like no one apparently did. Yeah, I know, right, Because yeah, the US of course did not abolish slavery in eighteen forty eight. It took a whole lass war and a quarter of a million dead confederates for us
to do that. But the abolitionist movement was feeling optimistic because they were looking Europe, and abolitionist groups started talking to the forty eight ers, and especially black abolitionists were like going to Europe and joining these struggles and like going to these like World Peace Conference, and you've got like this guy whose name was in an earlier version
of the script. It didn't end up being in this version of the script where he like became the first black man to get an honorary doctorate anywhere in Europe. Because they were got a doctor of theology and I think eighteen forty nine, and when speakers from Germany would come through the US, especially Ohio, black folks in Ohio would fund raise and send them home with money for their revolution. So it wasn't just this like, oh, as poor black people need to be saved by the white Europeans.
It was a really conscious thing that, like Frederick Douglass was like going to Europe and talking to folks, it was as conscious, like we are all trying to end this stuff together.
Yeah, this sort of integration and like collaboration solitary already across the ocean to yeah, acknowledge the horror that was going on.
Yeah, And like I wouldn't blame people in the United States who are like, we need our money here because we have slavery here, but like they you know, felt as important and supported it in thanks. The German revolutionaries announced that quote the German people, as soon as they have obtained the democratic republic and the coming struggle, we use all means which are available to abolish slavery in institution, which is so wholly repugnant to the principles of true democracy.
And they actually, in the end they did better than their word. Because they said, once we get a democratic republic, will come back and help you. They did not at this stage get a democratic republic in Germany, and they still showed up in the like tens or maybe hundreds of thousands in the American Civil War with Germans. Yeah again,
eventual Germans, I guess, yeah. Like Black O'hians held a state convention in eighteen fifty two and they passed a resolution that said, tyranny in Russia, Austria and America is the same, and therefore the Russian surf, the Hungarian peasant, and the American slave and all other oppressed people should unite against tyranny and despotism. But what they should have offered is ads. They should have offered products and services.
Would have gotten a lot more done, a lot quicker, I know.
Yeah, if they just interrupted their own shows by going to ads, like we're doing right now, because we know better.
Here they are.
And we're back. So the revolutions don't win overall, some of them do. After winning some stuff really quickly, the revolutions start petering out or just losing the war. Modern soci list's thought was born in the crucible of these failed revolutions. Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto in eighteen forty eight, and I think that man was wrong about a lot of things. I'm gonna talk about somethe in
this episode because that's what I live to do. But he could fucking write the first words of the Communist Manifesto is the sentence a specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. And that's just good writing.
It's good, solid.
Yeah.
I'm sold.
Yeah, let's do it, diving right in, I mean, stateless, classicist society I'm in for. I just disagree with some of his specific, weird strategic ideas like authority, but whatever. Anyway, besides the point, what Karl Marx did it do was actually fighting the revolution. See I told you I talk shit.
Here you go.
Even though he was in Colm as workers went off to fight and die for what he said he believed in, he was like, ah, I got out of here. It's getting get a little spicy as compared to this is the pettiest I'm going to be all episode. I promise the main person he got into arguments with a couple years later, anarchism's founding father in many ways, Mikhail Bakunin also was in these revolutions. He was four years older than Marx. He was thirty four when they broke out,
and he actually fought in two of them. He fought in two countries revolutions. He fought in the Prague Uprising of eighteen forty eight, and he fought in the Dresden Uprising in eighteen forty nine. He was arrested in Dresden, he was sentenced to death, He was extradited a bunch
of times. He winds up in Siberia, losing all of his teeth and fleeing across the world through Japan and the US to wind up in London, where he then gets into a huge power struggle with Marx about whether the internationalisms what should be, that's association should be Like, yeah,
but that hasn't happened yet. What matters, besides me getting my little jabs in when I can, is that in this period, the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, this is the fire from which the modern Left was formed, as well as a lot of the petty and not so petty grievances between all these various factions. And I will leave it to the listener to decide which ones are witch, some of mineor petty. I admit that the second French Republic that they just won in this revolution, it only
lasted for four years. The Irish revolution that happened during this was called the Young Irelander Rebellion. I hope it sounds better than Irish. It's just hard to say Irelander. It didn't get too far. This is, incidentally, where the current Irish flag comes from. Is this revolution of eighteen forty eight. Some Irish revolutionaries went to France to congratulate them on the new republic and then came back with
their like, we need a trycolor of our own. So that's why the Irish flag looks like the French flag. It's intentional. And they were like, we want to reconcile green Catholic Ireland with orange Protestant Ireland into a single national identity free from England. So actually a pretty cool flag.
Sorry, green and orange? Am I aware those colors? Am I supposed to know why they're that colored?
Everyone needs to have like their little weird symbolic colors for their factions and teams in this world, right, And so like the Irish Catholics were like green and then the like Anglo Protestants, mostly in Northern Ireland, but elsewhere we're like orange, and we're like, where are the orange? Where are the green? We should fight in the streets.
Oh that's interesting. Yeah, thanks for explaining that. That seemed very random to me.
I guess it would be like the equivalent of oh my god, if the American flag was red, white and blue, but like a little bit more directly where it was like here's the Republicans and here's the Democrats, and then they're all going to get along, which in the middle would just be a bomb. And maybe over Palestine that would be the middle of the American flag because that's what they agree on. Yeah, getting my jabs in anyway, we're recordings during the DNC. It's good, we got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's fine. The eighteen forty eight revolutions, they get a bunch of stuff. They end absolute monarchy in Denmark, they get democracy in the Netherlands, they ended serfdom in Austria, in Hungary. Slavery was abolished in all those places I mentioned, also in Colombia, but the forces of reaction also came down really hard and people fled. And our story is mostly going to follow the Germans who fled to America and they joined the abolitionists. Well, who are the abolitionists, you might ask?
Did you know?
I did not know this one of the petty discourse not really petty, one of the discourse arguments that they had in nineteenth century. Do you know there's a difference between an anti slavery activist and an abolitionist. There's no reason for you to know this. Well I could guess, but you just say, anti slavery is like, yeah, we gotta get rid of slavery, but white supremacy rules, we
should keep racist divided, blah blah blah. Abolition is a little bit more like more full throated of a condemnation of white supremacy and slavery.
That makes sense.
Yeah, I agree with one more than the other.
Yeah, I wonder which which is funny though, because you can still you wich okay, yeah, you can still get killed for being an anti slaver who's still a white supremacist.
Like, as a white supremacist, why would you want to be anti slavery?
So some of its economic arguments and some of it's moral. A lot of it's moral because they're like a lot of it's like, well, you still can't enslave them even though they are less than us and we're better, you know, like you.
Yeah, you just like I don't want them around, So like.
Oh, that's a whole side of it that comes up every now and then. It's like some of the whitest places would be the places without slavery, right.
Right, exactly.
But there's also this thing a big part of why surfdom ended in Russia because capitalism with wage labor makes economies more modern, robust, militarily competitive, and richer than slave states. Do you think that slavery is like the ultimate way to have a rich country because you're like, well, those people aren't even getting paid, right, But what it's good at is propping up a specific type of like aristocracy
who doesn't work. I mean, capitalism is pretty good at that too, but like, yeah, it just basically isn't as economically competitive in the modern world.
I mean that makes general sense also, like treatment of your slaves, and like there's so many horrific things about slavery that would make just basic like economic factors and efficiency. If that's something you're concerned about in terms of slavery.
Yeah, you gotta give them healthcare because they're an investment.
Oh exactly, all these sort of things that you know, over time, of course that's going to not be sustainable.
Yeah, And a lot of the reason why the US, the North was more industrialized and therefore kind of never was going to lose the Civil War was because modern city, industrialized capitalism is better at making war. But by and large, prior to eighteen forty eight, you can draw the abolitionist into two broad categories. These are the abolitionists at the anti slavery people. We're going to leave them out of it. And the two broad categories are not going to surprise you.
It is black abolitionists and white abolitionists. And sometimes the white abolitionists get called the Northern abolitionists because more of them are white, But there are black abolitionists in the North. They just had to get there right, and a lot of them started there whatever. Anyway, both groups framed the need for abolition in moral and religious terms, but in
fairly different ways. White Northern abolitionists were largely Wasps, white Anglo Saxon Protestants, and every word of that acronym matters in this context to them, because they saw the world through racialize lenses. To be fair, so did kind of everyone at this point in history. They all just like reached different conclusions about what to do. Everyone believed in these ethnic racial categories, like the difference between the Celts
and the Anglo Saxons and the Teutonics whatever bullshit. By and large, the white Protestant abolitionists were like slavery goes against the Protestant work ethic, and many of them were capitalists. I had always assumed that kind of all of them were, but actually during my reading for this episode, a lot of people were like, well, we believe in hiring people for wage labor. Some people were like, hell, yeah, this is a great way to get rich. We're just going
to own factories and hire people. It rules fuck work. I mean, yeah, good work you can get. It is not working and having other people to your work. But an awful lot of them with the Protestant work ethic thing, were more like, we believe in small scale production where people exchange things freely that they make by their own hands. So if you have wage labor, it should just only be like the start of your career, it should be this temporary thing w you can get your own means
of production. You can have your own workshop, you can have your own little farm whatever. You know, that's not how capitalism ended up.
ORGA doesn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the black abolitionists, their motives are pretty obvious. An awful lot of them escape slavery themselves or descended from those who had. And it was also framed in religious and moral grounds, which is different ones. And then all of a sudden there's now a third group that shows up in mass the wild Eyed Socialists who are Atheists, Lutherans and Jews, and they pour into the country from Germany.
I swear I'm going to get to the people like fighting people in the streets, but I do a lot of context on this show.
That was great.
The waves of immigration from Ireland and Germany were the first really big non wasp in immigration waves in the US, and it caused an awful lot of turmoil. I'm afraid to say that by and large, the Irish immigrants behaved themselves abysmally. They're going to be a bad part of most of this story. The Germans are going to stand out in shining counter example. No dislike it, but it is just true. Boo Irish immigrants were treated like shit. They were treated like shit for being Celtic instead of
Anglo Saxon, and for being Catholic. And a lot of the anti Catholic shit comes from this, like, oh Rome is going to be in charge if we let the Catholics in divided loyalties. And they were soon more or less at war with the nativist No Nothing Party. Do you know we had a political party called the No Nothings. No, but they're just maga but like in the eighteen forties and fifties.
No Nothing Party. I mean myself, that's good.
I know.
They're the anti immigrant party. That is like their thing. Their whole shtick is that they're anti immigrant and they're anti drinking. Okay, because immigrants drink good Protestants don't drink. Oh I see. Of course, the German immigrants were treated slightly better than the Irish immigrants because they were closer to white by Anglo Saxon racial purities andards, and more of them had a little bit more of a work ethic or whatever than the lazy Irish because they're all pastoralist.
It gets back in a weird shit about being a colonized nation. Anyway, the very first episode of this show, we covered the logger beer Riots of Chicago of eighteen fifty five, and that's when basically you weren't allowed to have your like beer hall open on Sunday because of these Sabbath laws that the Protestants were all about, and it was partly to defeat the immigrant culture. Right the only day people had off work was Sunday. If they
were lucky, they had Sunday off work. And so now they're not even allowed to gather on the one day they have off work. So they had these like riots and kind of took over Chicago and a lot of them got shot by cops and right wing militia, and the history doesn't change. But the Germans in the race sciencey minds of the nineteenth century were Teutonic people, which is close cousins to the Anglo Saxons. They come from the same branch of the tree of good white people.
You know, he system is so stupid, it's so dumb.
It's the dumbest thing, even when they're trying to be smart and science y.
I know, sid there's this thing that lives rent free in my head where my ex boyfriend once told me about the guy who had to dedicate his life to measuring the skulls of different dead people, white and black to prove something he knew, which was that white brains aren't bigger, but he still had to Like he was like, you gotta get.
Yeah.
So the Germans are treated a little bit better, but a third of the immigrants are Catholic, and none of them are the right kind of Protestants and they like to drink, so they're on thin ice. At first, the abolitionists are like, hell, yeah, these like not quite white immigrants are totally going to get the job done. We're
like totally going to have all these new people. Because Irish revolutionaries in Ireland emphasis on in Ireland, we're already talking about the need to end slavery in the United States and all racial discrimination. But the flood of imigrants, especially the Irish, soon got promised whiteness in exchange for hating black people, and overall they kind of took that deal.
They were like, we don't belong in terrible working conditions like black people do, and they started calling their situation white slavery in the nineteenth century, because white slavery is bad in contrast to black slavery, which is fine, even though the white people weren't enslaved, they.
Just reversed slavery.
Yeah. And so the Irish were at the forefront of basically every northern anti black riot in the nineteenth century, killing black people in the streets.
Great, that's great.
Ireland didn't send their best, Is that way or not? One abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in eighteen forty five, and this is actually Garrison, who's on it could happen here. Who's a vampire?
Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, they look really young and that makes sense.
No, yeah, yeah, they transitioned to vampire very young. But Gare wrote in eighteen forty five it is a most deplorable circumstance that religiously and politically almost the entire body of Irishmen in this country are disposed to go with the accursed South for every purpose and to any extent. They are a mighty obstacle in the way of negro emancipation on our soil.
Get the Irish, go get them.
Yeah. Veteran of the pod Frederick Douglass said, now, I am far from finding fault with the Irish for coming to this country, but I met with an irishman a few weeks ago who told me that it was his deliberate opinion that the colored people in this country could never rise here and ought to go to Africa. What I have to say to Ireland is send no more such children here.
I like that.
He was like, you're not sending your best.
Yeah.
The German immigrants, they stand in contrast, not all of them, Many of them are racist pieces of shit, and also a ton of the Irish people are cool as hell.
You know.
It turns out, actually, if you make sweeping generalizations about people are based on where they were born and what ethnicity they are, you're usually wrong.
Oh it's funny how that works out. Yeah, it's never even the reverse reverse reverse race. Yeah, totally, it never works out.
The forty eight ers in particularly, were not too keen on what they saw when they arrived. One German newspaper editor wrote, Anglo Saxon civilization, which measures the value of a human being only on the basis of income, in which outer appearance is everything, truth and honor nothing, leads to moral servitude, material slavery, and anti social barbarity. It destroys all bonds of society, consolidates the monarchical principle wherever
it exists and undermines the republic. Yeah, that's true. Another German journalist put it a little less politely. I would feel more comfortable here if there were more paintings, better drama, and less religion. This disgusting garlic smell and the stench of religion permeate all of life.
Yep. You need different writers for different purposes. You need some is going to be more effective.
Than Yeah, yeah, totally, and the best of all of these writers continues to be Frederick Douglass, in contrast to how he viewed that the Irish immigrants, said of the Germans, a German has only to be a German to be utterly opposed to slavery. This is why you know that you can't judge nations by what you assume is their national character. Because the national character of Germans looked really good.
One hundred years later it didn't look as good. Yeah, but what does look good one hundred years from now is looking back on all those receipts and thinking, you know what, I'm glad I spent my money on products and services. There's services too, there's services as well. Sometimes you even get ads for podcasts, which is neither a product nor a service, just a thing.
Yes, entertainment.
Is that a service?
I guess you're the product.
Oh, here's a product, and you're doing a service.
Yeah, by listening to these ads, here they are yeah, and we're back. And so the forty eight ers they show up just as abolitionism is heating up, because in eighteen fifty, the US passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which basically gave Southerners way more rights recovering their like property in the North. And we recently did an episode where I talked about how this started, but I can't remember
which fucking episode it was. You should just listen to all one hundred and something episodes that we've done in the show, and you'll know where the Fugitive Slave Act started from.
Pause this real quick, I guess, and then guilds and all those yeah, yeah, and then come back.
Okay, you're back, Okay, cool, glad you're still with us?
All right?
And for people who didn't have to pause because they've already listened to all of them, are you okay? I mean, I guess I've listened to all of them. I'm not sure. I'm okay, oh yeah, if you have.
Listened all them, I guess pause and then just sort of listened to silence for as long as it would take, and then come back as well totally.
Okay, now you're back from that. Okay, I really appreciate that. So the Fugitive Slave Act united the disparate and like the abolitionist movement, has never been a centralized thing. It will never be a centralized thing except when it's like the United States Army and it's you know, at war, right, But all of the different factions are fighting a lot until the Fugitive Slave Act, which in some ways hastened the decline of slavery because it got people to get
their shit together. Because what it did is now the North is a battleground too, right, because now you could be like a white liberal in Boston and then all of a sudden, you are culpable because this fugitive person can be arrested in front of you. You know, a lot of people fought, and we've talked about this on the show. A lot of people were like, no, we're gonna we don't care about the law. We will pull guns and shoot people who try to recover their quote
unquote property. That's a guy. You can't convince me otherwise.
Yeah, that makes sense that that's going to galvinize me. You bring it even closer to them and blurring the lines of that, and it's like, yeah, any aggressive law, like, that's an aggressive law. Yeah, and that's going to get pushed back, especially with ideally hopefully with an issue such as slavery.
Yeah, it's a big it's a big one. It's one of the bigger issues.
Yeah.
Forty eight ers in particular sort of pressured their own to take sides in the struggle because they show up right and they're like, well, our revolution failed, we're here now, we've got to keep going. We've got to keep trying to make the world better. And they were like, so when people showed up and we're like, oh, we're grateful to America for taking us in and we won't meddle in its political affairs, everyone just attacks the shit out of them. They are just hated as the hypocrites they are.
There's endless press about these piece of shit, coward hypocrite forty eight ers, Like there's only a couple of them too, but everyone's like, fuck these people. Their public support is
immediately taken away. Cancel culture strikes again eighteen fifty time. Yeah, cancel culture came for father Theobald Matthew from Ireland, who was more concerned with temperance than anti slavery, and he was like, well, you know, the pro slavery people are the ones who were like, like, if I'm trying to build all the support for no one should be allowed to drink, and so if I start talking shit on slavery, I'll lose a lot of my supporters because a lot
of the people who don't think you should be able to drink think it's okay to own people.
We all have to compromise.
Yeah, you know, it is wild to me how much old US politics were revolved around whether or not drinking is okay.
Oh yeah, and.
Now looks like a national identity. It feels like just Americans and Americans just have a beer.
I know. It would be like, yeah, like the KKK in the twenties was the armed wing of the fucking temperance movement. They were like running around specific trying to stop people from drinking.
The rebrand of alcohol is something fascinating. It should be studied. We should do that, We should do the rebrand of.
That's probably a bastards.
But yeah, no that I read, I guess I just met like I should learn about that, and I just know that you teach me things, and so that's what I meant.
But oh, you should do it on food could happen here, he can have been here.
It's a drink happen fascinating because that's an incredible one to eighty rebrand, you know, like.
It's I know, oh yeah, fully like embraced the idea of getting rid of that now that would start another.
That wasn't even that long ago, like that, it wasn't nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties. Very fascinating.
And it's interesting too because you also run across like basically straight edge revolutionaries all throughout history where people are like, hey, stop drinking so we can get some shit done, you know. And so it's been like both a radical and an anti radical stance to drink or not drink like forever, because like I read all this and it's like, man,
I should drink more. Like That's what I with. Whenever I read about the Temperance movement, my oppositional sidekicks in and I'm like, you know, who hated drinking slavers.
We gotta exactly got to show them, Yeah, you're dead now, but I gotta show them.
Yeah, Temperance being like the precursor to straight edge, Like it didn't I didn't realize it was so old.
Well, but so what's funny is it comes from a slightly different thing because what you have specifically is you have XBX straight edge vegans, the kind of revolutionary who in the nineteenth century didn't drink, but not because of the temperance movement, not for religious reasons, because of the revolution.
Usually was also like strict vegetarian aka vegan. That's interesting, And so there's like all of these like XBX heroes all throughout this whole thing, and then there's other people who are like fuck that, I'm drinking and eating meat on my way to revolution, you know, right, thanks.
All kinds everybody. You know, everybody deals with that in different ways. If you need to stay focused, that's fine. If you need to drown yourself, that's fine too.
We gotta yeah, because the world is a fucking nightmare and whatever helps you through it, exactly. So the father Theobald Matthew from Ireland got a hard time of it, as did Lajos Losith, a Hungarian revolutionary, would initially because he's a big deal revolutionary. He shows up and he's greeted with like parades and shit by the abolitionists in the US. They're like, here's our fucking guy. The forty eight ers are here. We're gonna get some shit done.
And then he was the one who said basically like, oh, we're grateful to America and we don't want to meddle, and it's domestic political affairs. And so someone published a one hundred and twelve page pamphlet called Letter to Kosith attacking his hypocrisy. Well, just like all these like bloggers.
Just I'm just imagine this long reddit thread like.
Exactly. That is, the people haven't changed the way that we do. What we do changes, But on this Tumblr thread it said, quote, how could you expect to neutral ground to please alike the traffickers of human flesh and those who execate that traffic to skulk behind the flimsy subterfuge of foreign non intervention, Which is just I read that in my snarky voice, but I actually agree with what I just read. Oh yeah, so.
You know they're in their little basement typing away like that's what yeah they sound like, but.
Yeah, well they're handsetting type right, sure, right, but one hundred and.
Disturbing.
Yeah, totally. In response to the first of what do you have to say on page seventeen of the pamphlet, I am a coward, I would like to say, yes, sir, you are. And so German immigrants actually got together and they put together a platform. They were going to start a party called the German Reform Party, and then they were quite came together, but they could put together a platform that was way too radical for like basically everyone else. It was pro labor, it was anti clergy, it was
anti slavery, it was pro women's rights. And while we're at it, let's abolish the presidency. Yeah. Interesting, not a demand run across anywhere else.
Yeah, you don't see that because.
Like anarchists want to abolish the whole government. But I haven't met anyone who's like the executive branch has got to go, right, like.
Democracy, good, we're gonna have government. We have like all this like assistem in place, but like no presidents.
Yeah, I mean, considering the way the US works, they were probably onto something.
Yeah, not a bad idea.
Yeah, their party never formed, but this platform that they wrote it was widely disseminated, and it just fucking threw open the Overton window because it was like someone finally was just like, yeah, what if we want all of this? And so people had to suddenly if they were moderate, they were now speaking in response to the more radical and they changed what it meant to be radical.
Yeah, you kind of have to like pick like, not everything. I'll pick one or two of these things. Keep the presidency, Yeah, we get the presidency, and like these are okay, and yeah, sort of sifting through to try to be still be a part of the discourse.
Oh god, if I come full circle on being positive on discourse, it's like usually my pin Twitter threat is I must not discourse discourses, the mind killer discourses, the
little death of Prince aliteration. So that said, while they were not as pro slavery as the Irish overall, again a ton of Irish people are going to fight for the union also and because they care about slavery, right, But the average German immigrant was more like, I guess slavery is bad, but I'm more concerned about protection from the sabbath and temperance laws, like I want to be able to drink and I want to be able to drink on Sundays because the only day I don't work,
and I want better wages and shit. That was like the average German immigrant was basically anti slavery instead of abolitionist, you know, yeah, or maybe they were abolitionists, but a little bit more wasn't their primary thing. Most German immigrants with the non forty eight ers were joining the Democratic Party,
which is the more racist party at this time. Right, they're both neck and neck for us while because the Democratic Party stands in opposition to that Northern Wasp thing that was trying to ban alcohol and force everyone to observe the sabbath and like, had closer ties to the nativists, the people who were shooting them in the streets for being from another country. So that is the America that
the forty eight ers show up in. As for what they did, which was really impressive, and I'm not going to tell you about it, well i am, but I'm gonna tell you about it on Wednesday, so today, well YouTube, I'll tell you too today, but everyone else you got to keep it quiet. Okay til Wednesday.
Yeah, yeah, suckers.
Yeah, So come back on Wednesday and I will talk about abolitionists in Texas, which sounds scary and it was, and they needed guns to get away with not dying, and also in Ohio, which is also cool. And we'll talk about them on Wednesday. But first we should talk about you and the things that you do.
What do you? Who are you?
How'd you get here?
Oh?
Jeez? Oh, thanks so much. I was invited. You invited me? Great? Yeah? No, huh. It'me's Cody Johnston. I host a show called some More News on YouTube. I cost a show called even More News on Place where Podcasts Live that's now on YouTube as well. I'm in a band called the Hot Shapes. I have to mention go check that out on the band camp soundclouds.
There's a drum set currently right behind Cody.
So there is a drum set currently that's true, a mandolin and a mandlin. I don't actually play the drums in the band.
Damn.
Sorry, oh you have like a park Those are like those are quiet practice drums. The symbols look like the rubber or something. They are nice, smart.
They're serviceable for what I need them for which yea, yeah, make that phones and doing that. Yeah, so check out the hot shapes. I like us were going on a new album right now. And I think that's probably all the stuff I do. Tell thea to shit in his own mouth sometimes on Twitter, uh the everything X or whatever the fuck. But yeah, I'm doctor mister Cody.
I learn about new people to hate, buy your shit talk because I don't keep up with modern politics. For shit, I like think I do, but then I like every day there's like a new guy that everyone's been mad at for ten years that I've never heard of. But I haven't seen you tell the wrong person to shit in their own mouth. So I'll take it, thank you.
I will. I will do my best to continue that streak. And yeah, I'm doctor mister Cody. And all the social stuff. If you want to see that kind of thing. Hell yeah, I'm nice sometimes too.
Yeah no, I yeah, I feel bad that I am highlighting this part of you. Also, I want to make it clear I don't think that you have pos your drums. They are awesome. It is cool that you have drums that are not designed to antagonize your neighbors. But still, oh yeah, no.
I try to. Yeah, yeah, one day. If I have a you know, real house, like a basement or roge or something, I might do that. Yeah.
I have a drum set in my basement, but it's mostly there to antagonize my dog totally. Yeah, if you want to hear my uh oh. I have bands. I do band called Feminosgical, where I also don't play the drums, but I do program the drums and people every now and then like, oh, it's a black metal but all these things are synthetic. Okay, so most black metal bands have fake accordions and real drums and guitars. We have fake guitars and drums, but we have real accordions, piano, mountain, dulcimer.
I play a Dane axe on one song. Everything that's a weird instrument is real, and then all the basic instruments are fake. And it's called and we're on wherever you want to listen to it.
I have a dulcimer in the other room. Oh hell yeah, I'm trying to get a new strings for it because it's old made. It's not the right type. I keep ordering them. It's never the right type. But huh.
One day harpkit dot com. This is a free plug. Is where I get my strings for weird folk instruments, and also it's where I get kits to build instruments from.
Oh that's exactly my next thing I'm gonna do. Oh yeah, no, this is perfect. This is my pandemic copy. This is my free plug for this company that I have no affiliation with, but I've made like six of their instruments from kits and they're really high quality and like they make me feel like I'm a really good woodworker, except for the ones that I completely fuck up and break and then I feel like a shitty woodworker and out a bunch of money because they're not cheap kits because.
They may just do it againstruments. That's what I did actually, yeah, actually was Mike Dulcimer. I built it from a kit, and the first one I built, I just didn't know what I was doing, and I like ripped up the soundboard while I was trying to cut sound holes in it, and then I had to Also.
Those like Dulsons are pretty like thin, yeah, supervisually, so it's hard to imagine. I imagine it's hard to construct one anyway.
Is showing you guy, I think you want to plug. No, okay, well you can catch serene on. It could happen high.
I know, I always try to avoid it.
You do it anyway.
I am one of the rotating hosts that it could happen here. I usually cover Middle East stuff right now. It's a lot about Palestine, or I do silly food episodes or history episodes to keep myself sane. So you can see me or hear me there. You will not see me anywhere.
That's the dream, all right, See you all on Wednesday. Bye. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on 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.