Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that when there's bad things, there's good things, and then sometimes bad things happen to the good things, but then good things come out of the bad things that happen to the good things that were in response to the bad things. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today is Bridget Tod.
Hi. How are you, hey, Margaret. I'm so excited to be back.
I know it's nice to have you. And wait now, I don't remember what the last I usually try and remember and look up with the last episode because you've been on a bunch.
Yeah, was it Wendy Carlos?
Oh shit, it might have been that one?
Was it might have been Wendy Carlos.
Yeah, people should go back and listen to me talk about the trans woman who invented electronic music. Bridgetod is the host of There Are No Girls on the Internet, which is an untrue title. I've been meaning to tell you this.
Yes, oh god, the title is like I mean, first of all, it's a mouthful. If you ever have to name a podcast having a long title, just give it some thought. If that's really what you want to do. I know, I guess cool people who I mean, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, it's I think it's worth it. It just means that every time you go anywhere, people get your title slightly wrong. People are like, I'm adage fan of cool people who did cool things, and you're like, sure, good enough. I don't correct people. What do people get your your's a mouthful? What do people say instead?
Oh?
Sometimes it's like girls on the internet, which feels like vaguely pornographic, like.
Whatever I type that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally it's some combination of correct ish words in not correct order. But yeah, I don't correct them either. I actually love hearing the incorrect podcast titles.
Keep them coming.
I know me too. And I'm also like, I don't know, I'm glad that people listen. I wouldn't remember the name of my own podcast. Like we even had a long fight, not fight, we had a long discussion. I don't think anyone actually took any strong positions whether we were going to call it cool people did cool things or cool people who did cool stuff.
Is there a functional difference between the things and the stuff, the stuff and the things Sophie do you remember why we ended up with stuff.
I think it just sounded better.
I think you're right. Also, people who listen every week might notice, is that Sophie and it is our producer. Sophie's here. Hi Sophie, Hi.
Magpie, Hi be Hi Sophie Sophie.
Speaking of podcast titles, I was interviewing Molly Konger about Weird Little Guys and I asked, where did that title come from? And she said, oh, that was a Sophie a Sophie production right there.
Not exactly, She's very nice to say that, but it's something she said in a meeting, and I wrote it down on my like creepy notepad of like that could be a podcast title. And then when we decided to do a weekly podcast with her, I was like, lardy have the title. So it was her idea. Originally, I want to make sure she credits herself as well.
Which is a podcast that people should go listen to absolutely, but.
Nope.
I was trying to come up with a segway, but I don't have one. Okay, So lately I have been burning through my short list of topics that I've wanted to cover since the very beginning of this show. I had like maybe ten things that I set out being like, I, however long the show goes, I need to make sure to cover these at some point. And in earlier this week, I went to a little national park. I accidentally, I
mean on purpose. I totally went on purpose when on the day that everyone had protests at the national parks, I went to a national park called Harper's Ferry in West Virginia and I got like every book there. It was amazing. I went up and was like, here's all the books, and the person behind the counter was like interesting. This week we are talking about the raid on Harper's Ferry of eighteen fifty nine that not only presaged the coming Civil War but essentially sparked it. I know the
answer to this because I asked you earlier. But have you ever been to Harper's Ferry.
I have been to Harper's Ferry many times. I love Harper's Ferry.
It's so beautiful there. When I was a little kid, it was just like the place to go get taffy. And also there's something that happened during the Civil War there, you know.
Yeah, when I went there with my parents, it was the place where they have you know those like historical markers of like historical thing happened here. And I have many many memories of my dad being like I'm going to go read this time to find out what happened here, and we're like, Dad, let's go like that, Like that's the space that Harper's Ferry occupied when I was young.
Yeah, yeah, totally. It is a very beautiful place with some historical markers, and now it's a place that I like just like go and cry because I think that the people who fought there are wonderful people. But the most famous of those people is not who we're talking
about today. Ooh, John Brown is the most famous Harper's Fairy adjacent person, right, Yes, I think people hold on to him because he's the best white guy in American history, accurate, especially at a time when like decent white men were like real thin on the ground.
You know.
Yeah, not a ton of them back then, not really a lot today either, really.
No, yeah, fair enough, And so people should go and learn from John Brown's example if you're a you know, a white man living today, that is a thing to go read about, you know. But John Brown has been covered a fair amount, But like I like him but he's been covered a lot, including in an excellent series of Christmas special episodes on Behind the Bastards. So you can listen to a Cool Zone Media special all about
John Brown this week. I want to talk about the other Raiders because twenty two people participated in the raid on Harper's Ferry, and even that's not true. Twenty two people set out to participate on the raid on Harper's Ferry, an unknown of additional enslaved people joined them. I've read fifteen and I've read fifty, but I want to talk about these other raiders, and in particular, I want to talk about the five Black Raiders who set out with
the intention of joining in this raid. Have you heard much about this story besides the just the John brown Er.
I have to admit I have not, Like I definitely John Brown is the name that looms large when I think about Harper's Ferry, So I'm excited to learn more.
Yeah, and it's like one of these things where it's like I understand why people were doing the like big man of history stuff, but it's not interesting to me. Like he's great. I really am not trying to put this man down, but like there were other people who fought and died and sometimes survived who were part of this, And uh, yeah, I don't know, so I want to
talk about them. The shortest version of this story is that during the first half of the nineteenth century, US politics were growing more and more tense over the issue of slavery. It helps that the century kicked off with Haiti proving that you can, in fact, just grab a bunch of pikes and guns and then kill all the people who claim to own other people, which scared the piss out of America. Like I didn't, I didn't know as much about how Haiti influenced American politics until it
started reading history books for a living. Rebellions were popping off everywhere, and even in the halls of power, people were discussing the issue more and more. Abolitionist tensions were reaching a boiling point when in eighteen fifty nine, nineteen abolitionists stormed the federal armory in Harper's Ferry. I said twenty two earlier, But that's because three of them stayed back at the farmhouse to guard all the guns that they were going to give to enslave people if the
whole thing worked out. So nineteen of them stormed the Federal Armory in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia now regular Virginia at the time, with the intention of seizing arms, freeing slaves, and starting a generalized rebellion as well as an independent black nation right here in Appalachia. And that was another part that like never really got explained to me. Like maybe maybe whenever I keeping like, I didn't learn about
this in school. Maybe I was just asleep. I don't know, but I don't remember learning that they were going to start an independent black nation in Appalachia, that was the purpose of this raid.
No, I definitely didn't learn that either.
I went I went to school in like the former capital of the Confederacy. So I have come as an adult to realize all the different ways that specifically the Civil War curriculum was taught to me. Is like so messed up. But no, I did not learn about this either, Margaret.
I know.
I even like, when I think back about I don't remember whether school taught me that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, not because I remember being told, Oh, people say that, but it's really states rights, you know.
Yeah.
I So I grew I went to school in Richmond, right outside of Richmond, Virginia, and we explicitly did not learn that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War. It's all states rights, yeah, like it. And it's so funny because like I'll look at my like cousins, like their history books and the way that they go out of their way to be like, well, you know, sure
slavery was bad, but like it's it's yeah. So I didn't learn it that way either, Yeah, And it's it's kind of wild how like some of these talking points haven't changed since the end of the Civil War, like this idea that like slavery was bad, but enslave people.
Were kind of happy.
You know.
It's really well.
Yeah.
And so most people claim that the raid on Harper's Ferry did not work. It was an abject failure. To be certain, it was a military failure. Only one of the raiders who actually went to Harper's Ferry, a black man named Osborne Pierce Anderson, survived the raid. John Brown himself was hanged. They had ordered a thousand pikes to be handed out to a thousand enslaved people, and only about twenty to fifty ended up handed out. They did
not themselves. These raiders personally wage war on the slave states, successfully as they intended. But my argument here is an argument that I think modern historians tend to just actually agree on now, is that they succeeded. The raid on Harper's Ferry was the spark that ignited the Civil War, the end of chattel slavery. It didn't pan out like the raiders had planned, but it happened, and they used
their own deaths to spark the war. And the thing that I didn't realize until doing more research on this now, that was k kind of their plan b all along. Like their goal was to have a raid and arm everyone and go and create this independent black nation. But they were like very consciously. Okay, I feel weird saying the majority of the raiders were white, because it's not true. The majority of the people who marched there were white, but the majority of the people who fought were black.
But the reason that the majority of the people who march there were white is that they were like, we think that if a bunch of white people die, it will cause northern white people to actually grow the fuck up and do something about this.
Wow, I mean I get that as a strategy. I totally get that as a strategy.
Yeah, and what a what a wild one one of the wild. Like like the Raiders had planned, the enslaved people of the South had a hand or millions of hands in their own liberation. As I've covered before on the show, the General Strike conducted by enslaved people in the South was the most successful labor action in US history. They grinded the Confederate economy into dust while black and white gorillas waged a civil war within the Civil War.
And this doesn't even mention yet the one hundred and eighty thousand black soldiers who fought in the Union Army or the thirty six thousand of them who died, and the Union Army when it marched into the Civil War, it marched with a song on their lips. And the song was John Brown's Body, which states John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave, but his soul is marching on. To me, this was the people marching into the South to end slavery. Was his soul marching on
like a for me a kind of literal sense. And so my argument is that the Raiders fought, died, and then won. And I think there are many such cases of this throughout history. One of the reasons that I think so much about this. Okay, So I went, oh, I'm not going to go off script. I'm just gonna read my script because I'm going to say what I was going to say. The raid itself was fought and over within a couple of days, about thirty six hours in eighteen fifty nine, but the battle over its story
is still being fought. I live not terribly far from Harper's Ferry, and I grew up going there as a kid. I went a couple years back and I saw a private tour guide giving a talk. He said, basically, oh, well, the raid was ill advised. No matter how good his intentions. John Brown was basically just this white guy who is disconnected from what the black enslave people here actually wanted.
You know, they didn't want someone coming in to liberate them at gunpoint, and I wanted to scream in retrospect, I kind of wish I had, but I had my dog with me, and I didn't want to go to jail because this is the talking point that even like sympathetic people have started to believe. And when I say started immediately this was an active media campaign right away to disconnect John Brown from a racially integrated abolitionist movement
that he was an integral part of. I got really angry about this stuff.
Why do you think that attitude person or like, how have that attitude managed to persist today that you're hearing it from a tour guide in a park.
I have a lot of thoughts about it. So I think he wasn't an official tour guide because I actually went back and I think the actual National Park the information that the National Park Service is presenting is actually fairly accurate for now. If you're listening to this next year, it might be not anymore. They'll just be like John Brown, a trader who just went and died, and all black people hated him. But I think there's a couple reasons. I think that people immediately people painted him as a
zealot and then ignored everyone else who fought right. It was just him and he was crazy. He had to be crazy in order to do what he did. So for racist white Southerners it was a way to be like, oh, well, obviously that's the wrong way to make change. But I think vaguely less racist white Northerners. It was kind of the same thing. It was kind of a way to get yourself off the hook, to be like, oh well, it wouldn't really have work to take militant action against slavery.
So it's okay that all I did was hold up a ping pong paddle that says we don't like fascism or whatever.
You know.
Because after the raid, the Southern media presented John Brown as evil and as a threat to all humanity. Eventually, the basic moral rightness of his cause couldn't really be argued right, and in order to reach that, seven hundred and fifty thousand people had to die. But the conservative position, I'm back on script saying the same things I just said, sorry about that. The conservative position switched quickly to claim
that he was a zalot and crazy. His followers were misguided or crazy too, and they wanted to deny that he was a well connected and well loved abolitionist too, as part of an international movement to end shadow slavery in the US. He also was a bit of a zelot. I think it might take a bit of a zelot. And when I read about the rest of his followers, I think they kind of were too.
They're nice though, Yeah, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that this kind of action would take a bit of a zelo it to organize, I.
Know, especially especially once they found out what the real plan was. They were like, wait, our plan is to just go there and try and win. We're just gonna twenty one of us are just gonna take over the South.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta a.
Zelot might be the type of person that would go along with that plan.
Yeah, totally. But you know, it doesn't take much as ellotry going along with Wow, taking advantage of the excellent that are offered by all of our sponsors, which absolutely would later claim to have been on the right side of any given large thing in history. Allegedly, here's our.
Ads and we're back.
So it is true that Frederick Douglas, the most famous abolitionist, a man who had self emancipated from slavery, turned John Brown down when he was invited to the raid, but one of Frederick Douglas's close friends, who was at the same meeting, agreed to join. Harriet Tubman, perhaps the single most impressive badass the US has ever produced. Like, honestly, I'm like I bring her up like here and there in other episodes, but mostly because it's just like I'm
just slowly collecting books and I'm just I don't know. Anyway, she was amazing.
She's the coolest fun fact.
She's like, I'm an avid outdoors woman, and whenever people are like, oh, black women hiking, I'm like, oh, Harriet Tubman was like, people don't think of her this way, but avid outdoors woman, you know, Like that's true. Yeah, I really I really own her as my like black woman outdoors woman, you know, idol.
Honestly, there's a lot to be said there about like people who were using the outdoors in real interesting ways during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Like, oh, yes, that's cool.
I'm so.
I mean something told me that that might be a spirit that we have to embrace at some point in the future.
I'll put it that way.
It's fair enough. Yeah, Honestly, one of the people involved in this story is going to die because he can't hike far enough.
Uh there you go.
So uh so Harriet Tubman wasn't on the raid because she was sick when the when it was planned, so she didn't make it, but she proved contacts for it,
She raised funds, and she recruited soldiers. And there's so much focus on John Brown himself and his psychology that I think that disconnects him from the vibrant movement he was part of, right, because not everyone involved in that movement was like a zalot, but he was still part of that movement, if any, he was kind of the wing nut fringe of it, and that movement that he was part of did in the end and through bloodshed and legal chattel slavery in the United States. There were
twenty two people who were part of the raid. Nineteen of them marched on Harper's ferry. John Brown was one of them. And we're going to talk about some of the other ones. But first context, those are the other instead of ads. That's the other thing I cut to context.
We should like play the Jaws theme song whenever you say context.
We absolutely should.
The South was always internally divided on the issue of slavery, as we've talked about before on this show. Of course, four point five million people living there had a particularly personal reason to be opposed to the institution of slavery. There was a free black population, and as there were a few white people arguing against it as well. For about three years, from eighteen twenty nine to eighteen thirty two,
debates raged in Virginia about slavery. And I think this was happening elsewhere, but like I read about it in Virginia because the western half of the state, which is now West Virginia or Greater Virginia. Actually people have told me I shouldn't call it Greater Virginia, I should call it Best Virginia. And that makes sense.
West Virginia Best Virginia it is.
And whenever people are like, why do you call it Best Virginia, I'm like, hello, I would like to introduce you to why West Virginia exists. It's because they did not want to fight for the Confederacy. On the other hand, the tables have turned politically a little bit, but I'm still holding out that people will anyway whatever. So just don't look at a modern voting map of the country, and we can still hold the by the Best Virginia. So the western half of the state was mountainous and poor.
Most people there didn't own other people, and they were firmly in favor of abolition. Overall. Quakers throughout the state too, fought for abolition as well as free black people and enslaved black people, and some of the Quakers were also black. Just to be clear, in eighteen thirty one, Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia. We've covered this a bit on the show before. This also scared the shit out of everyone.
All the slavers were like, oh fuck a black man named Nat Turner and a bunch of other people were like fuck this, and they started killing white slavers and the white slavers families. This scared the shit out of the legal institutions of the South. Laws started getting passed everywhere in the Slave states restricting the rights of free black people even further, like laws where black people weren't
even allowed to preach anymore. Church services were banned for black people after dark because preachers were doing a lot of the itinerant. Preachers were going around and being like, oh, yeah, this is what the Bible says. Also, the way to the swamp is this way, and that's a good place to be.
Free.
Progress is never linear. Free black people started having more of their voting rights taken away, including in the North. Now I didn't even realize this. I had just assumed free black people couldn't vote in the South, but it
turns out at various times they could. It's very easy to fall into the sort of like linear things you just slowly chip away at oppression, yeah, you know, but it turns out sometimes you start chipping away at a depression and then they're like, how about twice as much oppression.
Yeah.
It's a good reminder that these things are not always like so binary or yes, it's easy to think of them as switch flip as opposed to like, oh, it was a chip away and then this, you know.
It's a good reminder.
Yeah. And it also it's like worth understanding how like I mean, even the I mean, obviously, the Civil War was in many ways terrible. It was the bloodiest thing that's happened in the US besides the destruction of the indigenous population here. But like it ended legal chattel slavery in the United States, and it came from the right
wing reaction to people helping people become more free. It came from the right wing being like, fine, more oppression and then people are like, nope, we've had enough of it. You know. But before all of that, as free black people are having more of their rights taken away. In Virginia, people were like, what are we going to do with all these free black people? It's scary, We're scared. We are terrible and cowardly people. I think that's what they said.
One of the answers was send them back to Africa. Both slave owners and white Quaker abolitionists agreed send free black people back to Africa. And obviously there was a okay, so the slavers really liked this argument, but so did some like there were black abolitionists argument for this as well, like we're gonna I think even some of the people involved in Harper's Ferry's raid were on both sides of
this particular issue. But a man named Henry Wise, who would later become the governor who signed the death warrants for all the Harper's Faery raiders, he was really in favor of this. He said to the Virginia Colonization Society of eighteen thirty eight, quote, Africa gave to Virginia a savage and a slave. Virginia gives back to Africa a citizen and a Christian.
Wow.
Wow, it's so bad, thanks guys, Yeah, wow, so bad? Oh God, I mean I've actually I've heard like that argument from like some black radicals really did feel like black people should up and leave the United States and go back to the continent, like uh, totally. But then hearing that, it's like, yeah, this was not an argument you know, grounded in self determination and respect?
What help woult it that way?
Yeah? Yeah it was.
And for some people it was like yeah, for some people it was like, oh, we can get the fuck out of here. We never wanted to be here in the first place, right, And then other people were like, no, we're here now, like you can't just fucking get rid of us like that, you know.
Yeah, I mean that's I mean, like y'all brought us here, y'all, y'all are all ride like.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah. And this deepening racism that was happening in the South, which is a weird thing to say because in my mind, I'm like, you're it's already a horror movie set, you know, it led a lot of free people to migrate north. The deepening racism of the North led a lot of free people to migrate even further north to Canada. A lot of people, at least a lot of people relevant to today's story. When they went to the north, if they didn't go all the way to Canada, they made
their way to Ohio. In particular, they found their way to a little college town in Ohio that was trying in its way to be the most anti racist place in the country. And this was to me, this is a twist. I don't know if other people are going to find as much of a twist. The most anti racist place in the United States in the eighteen thirties, forties and fifties Oberlin, Ohio.
Oh my god, that actually totally tracks with me. I had no idea where you were going. Oberlin is a surprise. But now that I'm thinking about it, like, yeah, I've known so many Oberlin college grads.
I've had two.
I've had two as roommates, by the way, terrible roommates and they don't make brave roommates, but we love them anyway.
Yeah.
I was literally about to say the same thing bridge not me personally, but a friend of mine had an Oberlin roommate, and wow, yeah, by you guys. If you're if you're if you're an Oberlin roommate, work on your reputation.
Thank you. Yeah, that's a good advice holer not so good.
I once drove the only time I've ever been to Oberlin. It was to help my friend drop out of Oberlin to join the environmental direct action movement, which is actually a fitting thing that parallels to a lot of John Brown's raiders. It turns out a lot of them went to college at Oberlin for like a year.
Interesting before dropping out.
Yeah then.
Starting an insurrection.
Yeah, Like this Oberlin business is not radical enough for me.
Yeah.
So I did not see Oberlin College as showing up as one of the cool people in this week's episodes. But here we are in eighteen thirty three. I'm not like a big college person. I mean, it's fine, Hey, I recognize its importance. Oberlin College was founded in eighteen thirty three specifically to be a Christian college teaching good Christian values like the abolition of slavery. By eighteen thirty five, with a slim majority vote of the trustees, they started
letting in black students. It was like literally a one person majority, and one of the trustees who voted and therefore could have been the deciding vote, was John Brown's dear father, a Tanner named Owen Brown. This makes Oberlin College one of the first colleges in the US to let black students in, and it's the first to formally say we allow black students in.
Wow.
The first historically black university didn't actually open until two years later, the Cheney University in Pennsylvania in eighteen thirty seven. Oberlin then also became the first gender integrated college in the US. So they kind of came at the gate real fucking strong.
Oh Oberlin, who knew.
I know, I know Oberlin.
The town became a hotbed of abolitionism. Black families would move to the area. It became an important stop on the under ground railroad. The local public schools were racially integrated, and there was a Liberty school at night for fugitives to learn how to read and write. The town refused to celebrate the Fourth of July because that celebrated a
document that excluded black people. Awesome. Instead, their official celebration was August first, after the eighteen thirty four abolition of slavery in Jamaica.
Awesome.
Yeah, Like, and if you're currently Oberlin, get back to your roots. And a disproportionate number of the Raiders came from Oberlin or like lived there or went to school there for a year or so. Some of them said that they went to Oberlin, but there's no record of them going to the college. They might have like audited classes, or they might have just been like patting their resume a little bit, you know.
Is it like a status thing to have gone to Oberlin and like, oh, I went to Oberlin, don't fact check.
That, I think So we'll start with a raider named John Anthony Copeland. John Anthony Copeland was born in eighteen thirty four in North Carolina. It is worth understanding how just fucking nonsensical and confusing slavery was at the time. Having a race based slavery chattel system doesn't make sense obviously morally is one of the worst things that's ever happened in the history of the world. But it doesn't work. There's gonna be a bunch of cases like this that
are gonna be confusing as shit. John's father, John Copeland's father had been born enslaved by his own father, but was then freed on the death of his father owner when he was eight, and then became a carpenter working in Raleigh, North Carolina. Copeland was the oldest of eight children. When North Carolina removed the vote for free people of color in eighteen thirty five, his family was like, Nah, fuck this, We're getting out of here. This doesn't seem safe,
and so they moved to Ohio. It wasn't eat. They needed letters of recommendation from white people to say that they weren't evil, subversives or whatever in order to be traveling freely. And they made their way to Ohio with lots of letters of recommendation. Folks from the underground Railroad helps them get It's one of things I also didn't realize. Undergroundrailroad also helped with a trip like helped free people,
and also abolitionists move constantly helps them. Once they were in Ohio to settle an Oberlin, where Copeland grew up. He learned carpentry and joinery from his father, and eventually he went for one year to Oberlin. I think he's the one that we actually have record of going to Oberlin. He was a diehard abolitionist. He would attend meetings at the Liberty School and he realized his purpose in life was to abolish slavery, to free the four and a
half million people in bondage in the country. He started speaking out about slavery everywhere he went. He also spoke regularly about how sometimes individual revolutionaries must die for the revolution to succeed. So like again, not just a bunch of deluded people who got led to their deaths by John Brown. Ohio at the time was pondering in secession. And this is the like we all kind of got taught states rights or the reason for the Civil War.
Ohio was really concerned about some states rights. They hated the South. They didn't want to be in the same country as the South. The eighteen fifties was full of offenses to the North, like the eighteen fifty Fugitive Slave Act that meant the North was suddenly expected to return fugitives back to slavers in the South, and it became a federal offense to help people hide from people who
were going to put them in cages. Then there was the dread Scott decision of the Supreme Court in eighteen fifty seven, which declared that black people couldn't be citizens, among a whole mass of other wild racist shit. It was like, if you go to the Wikipedia page for the dread Scott decision, I was like trying to track down some other parts of it, and it was like widely considered the worst decision the Supreme Court has ever made in the United States. Ohio looked at all this
shit and was like, are you fucking kidding me? We have to let slavers come here and capture people? No, no, fuck this. Local legislations started passing resolutions like we condemn this act. I want to read the actual language of one,
because it goes hard. Heart'sgrave, Ohio is worth quoting. They agreed to quote hold the Fugitive Slave Law in utter contempt as being no law, and pledge ourselves to despise the conduct of the makers of it for their utter destitution of principle, and that they would quote sooner than submit to such odious laws, we will see the Union dissolved. Sooner than see slavery perpetual, we would see war, and sooner than be slaves, we will fight.
Awesome. I'm glad you read that because it does go hard.
Yeah, Like at the end, I decided the title probably will be something more shortened to the point, but it absolutely for a long time was sooner than see slavery perpetual, we would see war.
And you know what's wild to me is that when you drive through certain parts of Ohio when you see massive Confederate flags, I'm always like, what are you doing?
Like, I know, what are you doing?
I know the Ohio River was like the sacred line of freedom. Like yeah, and in West Virginia you see the same and you're like, do you know why you're in West Virginia?
Yes? It boggles my mind.
And I feel like these states have such rad histories that I feel like it's like flinging this like very cool legacy of why your state exists or something that was foundational to your state in its space.
Yeah.
Absolutely. So the idea of sanctuary cities goes back a really long way, and I hope the modern sanctuary cities, which are more and more needed right now, I hope that they go as hard and care as much as Heartsgrove Ohio.
Yeah, be better than Ohio.
Yeah, sorry, Ohio.
That's a slogan, be better than Ohio.
And then the back says, it's a higher bar than you think. That's so funny, so Oberlin itself. In eighteen forty one, two people who were on the run from slavery got caught in Oberlin, and they were taken to the jail. So a crowd of five hundred people white and black, brought guns, clubs, and rocks to try to fight back the cops to break the people out and free them. They failed during the day, but as best as I can tell, and this is I read literally
a two hundred year old newspaper article about this. Of like my understanding of it is slightly imperfect. It might be a different incident. I believe this is the same an incident. At night, they came back a smaller crowd. The newspaper called them fanatical abolitionist anarchists, armed with axes and saws. They broke the two fugitives out and freed them. And then in eighteen fifty eight, an even more famous
version of something similar happened in Oberlin. And it's more famous because it is considered one of the things that sparked the Civil War, like the bubbles you could see simmering in the pot, you know. And this one involves our man John Copeland as well as another raider that we're going to talk about in a second. In eighteen fifty six, an eighteen year old named John Price escaped slavery in Kentucky, and he crossed the river into Ohio
and to what he hoped would be his freedom. He made it to Oberlin and he lived as a fugitive for two years before he was caught. Basically, someone like set him up because they knew that even though would have been legal to come capture him, they kind of couldn't in the town because people wouldn't let them. So someone was like, oh, we got a job for you. It's right outside of town. Don't you want a job? And as soon as he left, they was alone on
the highway. They nab him and they're like, Oberlin isn't a safe place to hold this guy. So we're going to go to Wellington, Ohio, which is right nearby. But two Oberlin students saw him go by in the buggy and they gathered a posse of between two hundred and six hundred people white and black, surrounded the hotel that was holding him. Price was up in the attic. They started trying to negotiate. They were like, I mean, their negotiation point was like we're armed and we're not leaving, you know.
But a solid negotiation tactic, I know.
As Frederick Douglas says, and I quote all the time. Power concedes nothing without a demand. And Copeland was there in the crowd. He had a handgun and he shouted that he would shoot any damn rascal who interfered with their plan to direct him. In one of the coolest things that college kids have ever done, a bunch of white Oberlin College students ran in through the front door of the hotel, distracting the guards while Copeland and some other folks climbed up the balcony at the back of
the hotel. People tried to stop them, so they shot guns towards them, and then the people stopped trying to stop them.
Wow.
I think these were warning.
Shots when you were like, when you were like one of the cool I was like, I was like, that's a high bar. College kids do cool things all the time.
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, no, it's true. And uh.
They stormed the attic and rescued Price. There's this story about like the guy who was keeping them out was holding this rope that would hold the door shut. I think it was like one of those old doors where it's just literally a rope that's the handle, you know, and he's holding it, but there's a hole in the wall, and so one of the college kids just punches the guy in the head through the wall, and so the guy drops the rope. They storm in and they rescue
John Price. Speaking of prices, Our prices are great.
No why more stuff? No way?
Oh wow, here's the mats.
And they're back.
So they get John Price out and they smuggle him out to the home of the guy who like later went on to become the third president of Oberlin College. Like the entire town was in on this, and then someone, most likely Copeland, took John Price and escorted him up to Canada and to freedom. A ton of people involved in the rescuer arrested around like thirty six or something
like that. But Copeland himself, even though a warrant went out for him, was not arrested because he was probably he disappeared and he was probably in the middle of escorting him Price up to Canada. The prosecution of these rescuers is a big fucking deal in the history of the abolitionist movement. No one wanted to convict them, like in Ohio, right, but they like felt like they had
to because the law and stuff, you know. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, and ten thousand people rallied in Cleveland on the But have you considered that? Fuck that law though, and therefore fucked the Supreme Court. The courts trying the rescuers were pretty lenient. People got a few months in jail basically, I think, actually I think like two people got actual sentences. Everyone else was just like held in jail for a while and then
released it. But the jailers were sympathetic to their cause, and so they made a newspaper while they were in jail. And because they just were given access to the jail's printing.
Press, they've got a jail zine.
They have a jail zine. The rescuers made a jail zine called The Rescuer Ah great, Yeah, and they like sold it outside to raise money for the abolitionist movement.
And shit.
As for John Price himself, no one ever wrote down where he was ever. Again. I hope that he lived a long, happy and free life, and frankly, I have no reason to suspect he didn't. The abolitionist movement knew how to take care of people. Another Oberlin man, a friend of Copeland's, Lewis Sheridan Leary. He was also born in North Carolina on March seventeenth, eighteen thirty five. His father was a fairly well to do free saddle maker who was part Irish, Croatan, Indian and Black. His mixed
race mother was born in the French West Indies. Their family was wealthy and owned slaves, but would also regularly give their enslaved people enough money to buy themselves their freedom and then help set them up. And I am unsure whether they freed everyone they bought or not. I read some sources that were like, oh, yeah, they just freed everyone, and other ones were like, uh, they kind
of did it sometimes, you know. Leary was raised to about as much wealth and privilege as was available to free black people in the South, which was not that much. In a lot of ways. He had a reputation for being hot headed and rash, but also I believe, moral and brave. He left North Carolina in eighteen fifty seven when he was twenty two years old, on the advice of his father. The reason his father advised him to leave North Carolina was this is the only version of
the story, but there's no whatever. There's no specific evidence of this besides oral tradition, but I have no reason to doubt it. One day, Leary is walking down the street and he sees a slaver whipping a guy, so he grabs the guy's whip and starts whipping the slaver instead, at which point his dad was like, you should get the fuck out of the South because they were going to kill him. He got the fuck out of the South. He went to Oberlin. He started working as a saddle
maker too. He fell in love with an abolitionist woman named Mary Simpson Patterson, who was the first black woman to attend Oberlin College. They got married and had a daughter named Lewis and Mary Simpson Patterson. Her grandson by a different father is Langston Hughes.
Oh my god.
Yeah, Like, there's so.
Many people alive in this time, what are the fucking odds? Yeah, the couple did a bunch of underground railroad work together. Leary at least, I have no reason to believe his wife wasn't. But it isn't written into history because why would anyone write that down, even though she went on to do more work than he was able to, because she survived and he dies. Anyway, they were part of
the Price Rescue, the one at the Hotel. Leary, who had Irish heritage, liked quoting poems by an Irish nationalist, William Smith O'Brien, who was part of the Young Ireland movement that I've talked about sometimes on this show. Specifically, Leary liked to quote the following lines, whether on the Scaffold high or in the battles Van, the fittest place for a man to die is where he dies for man. So yeah, when when John Brown came through Oberlin looking
for recruits, both Copeland and Leary volunteered. Leary told John Brown, I am ready to die. I only ask that when I have given my life to free others, my own wife and dear little daughter shall never know want. And that's what happened. He dies and the abolitionist movement takes care of his family.
Well, it's like you were just saying that part of the movement was taking care of each other, and I don't know, I find such power in that, especially now that like, our strength really does lie in our ability to care for each other totally and even to care for people who aren't, Like it's not just care for
the frontline soldiers right, like price to anyone's knowledge. I mean, he might probably changed his name in and went off to do other stuff, but like, they didn't help him escape slavery so that he could join Danaris Targarian's army of enslaved people to go attack something. You know, they freedom because he needed to be free. And yeah, a lot of enslaved people, formally enslaved people fight militantly for abolitionism,
but no one's telling them that they have to. And if you just want to get out, they'll help you get out. I just I really like that.
I really There's a lot of bad stuff in American history, and the abolitionist movement is one of the coolest things that's ever happened.
Yeah, he absolutely should be learning a lot from it today.
Yeah, absolutely, especially the way that they like work together across intersectional politics. And it's not a coincidence that the first college to formally let black people in also was the first college to let women in, you know, and let black women in. And I don't know it just I can really, I don't know. I went to Harper's Ferry and cried a lot, decided to write this episode.
The pair raised up the money to get train tickets east and they headed off towards the farmhouse in Maryland, five miles from Harper's Ferry, where the conspirators were building their army. Okay, those are those two. Now we're going to cut to another one of them. This is the one who I was like, literally saw in the John Brown Museum that reading about it made me cry, and I was like, I just now, I'm just telling you, ever,
how often I cry whatever. I read history for a reason, it was this man's story was the reason that I decided to do this episode.
Crying can be good. It reduces stress.
That's true. There was a man named Dangerfield Nuby, and Dangerfield is a good name. Just gonna get that out there.
Dangerfield Newby is like a very good name.
Yeah. Absolutely, there is going to be someone who has a better name than him in all of this, and it's someone who picked his own name. But we'll get to that later.
Oh I can't wait.
Oh that might he can be a clifhanger for Wednesday. I think he might not even show up to a Wednesday. But Dangerfield Nuby was forty four and he was the oldest of the raiders after John Brown. John Brown did his thing when he was fifty nine, so never feel too old. John Brown was fifty nine when he started the Civil War. Dangerfield Nuby was born in eighteen twenty in Virginia. He was the oldest son of eleven kids.
His father was a white man named Henry Nuby. This is the complicated ass one that I'm just like, what the fuck is? Obviously, this is just like whatever. His father was a white man named Henry Nuby. His mother was Henry's enslaved common law wife, but not enslaved by Henry. Elsie. His wife was actually owned by an eccentric slaver named John Fox, who did shit like let Elsie live with someone else. Just be like, I don't know whatever, you
can go live with your husband. Okay, this isn't entirely benevolent. All of Henry and Elsie's kids are immediately John Fox's property, and there's all this stuff. People are like, John Fox did free a fuck ton of he actually he freed to everyone when he died, but he freed a fuck ton of people while he was alive. But I kind of have this bar where I'm like, if you don't just immediately free everyone you own I kind of, I don't know whatever. But Dangerfield was owned by his mother's owner,
John Fox. So this kid, well, he's not a kid. He grows up and he gets leased out as a blacksmith. While he's enslaved in Virginia, he gets married to a woman named Harriet, who was owned by yet another man, and together the pair of them had probably seven kids. His brother described Dangerfield as a quiet man, upright, quick tempered, and devoted to his family. In eighteen fifty eight, his father took him and some of his siblings and moved to Ohio with John Fox's blessing. This means that they
were freed. Ohio wasn't fucking around with that. If you set up residency in Ohio, you are formally freed. At this point, the Ohio Supreme Court had decided in eighteen fifty six that's setting up residency in Ohio freed you. They wrote that the chains of slavery had to be broken and quote crumble to dust when he who has warned them obtained the liberty from his oppressor and has afforded the opportunity of placing his feet upon our shore,
go Ohio. I know they know, so He's thirty six years old when his dad frees him by moving him to Ohio. Like fucking if it wasn't just like a nightmare land of horror, it would be comical, how fucking Anyway, Dangerfield had a problem. His wife wasn't free. I suspect this story might have influenced the plot of Django Unchained, but I'm not sure it might have. This kind of story might have happened a lot.
I was literally just thinking the same thing.
Yeah, because Dangerfield dedicated the rest of his life to trying to free his family. For years, he did this by working his ass off and saving every cent he could to buy Harriet and his kids. But the slaver who owned her kept doing shit like and the historical record isn't certain here either taking his money and not freeing his wife or upping the price at the last minute. All the while, rather than go to a safe place like Oberlin, he stayed along the Ohio River and helped
shepherd people to safety working the underground railroad. This is how he met John Brown, who offered him a different way to free his family, Force of Arms. The last letter he ever got from his wife Harriet read quote it is said, master is in want of money. If so, I know not what time he may sell me, and then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted. For there has been one bright hope to cheer me in all my troubles, that is to be with you. For if I thought I should never see you, this
earth would have no charms for me. Do all you can for me, which I have no doubt you will. I want to see you so much.
Like that's a beautiful letter.
It's I know, oh, I know. Basically like she was worried that she would end up like sold down the river to Louisiana, where conditions were worse, and in fact that is what happens. I don't know. There might be more information in more of the books than what I got to about what happens to her after. But fortunately her husband starts a civil war which ends up ending slavery. So if she made it through a couple more years,
so yeah, he's in. And then there's Osborne Anderson. Osborne Anderson was born on July twenty seventh, eighteen thirty, to a free black mixed race family in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania, which is a bit west of Philly fun fact.
When you said Osborne Anderson, my dog with excellent hearings, ears went up.
She was like me, She was like, hello, this is who Anderson's named after. Probably I don't remember who Anderson's actually named after.
She's named after Andy Anderson from him How to Lose a guy in ten Days.
Oh okay, similar, very similar, similar, similar journeys.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna start calling Anderson Osborne Anderson.
Both my dogs are named after fictional movie characters because you can't really name anybody after a real a real person, because you.
Know history and finding out that they're terrible people in the end.
Correct.
Yeah, well Anderson, he does good, wonderful. We might need to change her name origin story.
Yeah, just just multiple name origins. There you go. Osborne Anderson grew up deep and Quaker territory, so deeply abolitionist area. Public schools there were integrated, and he got an education. Most sources I say I've read say he went to Oberlin College, which would have been a nice tie in for the story. This is the guy who probably didn't actually go to Oberlin College. I actually think that this is going to be our tends to exaggerate guy of the story.
Tends to exaggerate his association with Oberlin College.
Yeah, and some other stuff too, but like he's still so cool that like and none of the things that he's like, I don't know whatever. Anyway, he didn't necessarily go to Oberlin.
He might have.
He was family friends with another free black family, the Shads, specifically a woman named Mary Ann Shadd who is around seven years older than Anderson. She was a school teacher until, like thousands of other people, she was like, fuck America
and got the fuck to Canada. In eighteen fifty one, she moved to the sort of center of Black Canada, a naval town called Chatham, which is east of Detroit, where she set up a school, and in eighteen fifty three she became the first woman in Canada to publish a newspaper, also the first black woman in North America at all to publish a newspaper. She started a newspaper called The Provincial Freeman with the motto self reliance is the true road to independence. She and her contributors argued
fiercely against begging white folks for funds. She traveled as a public speaker, something that women didn't really do at the time, let alone a black woman, but she did often write and publish under the name Mas Carrie carry as her married name. She married a guy. He wasn't important enough to include the story. She married a guy. He died right away, but she kept his name to
avoid gender discrimination. She went by Maas Then her childhood friend Osborne Anderson, moved himself to Chatham somewhere along the way. He worked as a farmer for a bit that wasn't really his thing, and so we started working for the provincial Freeman, first as a sales agent, then as a printer and a contry and he wrote extensively, and he wrote against the send Black People to Africa movement as
one of his main things that he wrote. There was kind of two competing, like I was saying we were talking about earlier, but in Chatham there was like a It was hotly contested between these two positions of like do we go back to Africa do we stay in North America? And since this was in Canada, where so many black abolitionists lived and where the underground railroad often took people, Chatham became the logical place for folks to get together and figure out, So how exactly do we
destroy that slave empire to our south? And since that was a good place to go do good plotting, John Brown went there. He'd cemented his reputation a few years prior in Kansas. But what happened in Kansas? In Chatham, in Harper's Ferry? And what about the man with the amazing name? We'll talk about them on Wednesday.
Wow, I can't wait to hear this name.
It's so good. It's multiple good names. He has so many good names.
I really, Rory, Rory, who edits the podcast, I really need us to start thinking about putting in like music sound effects for Magpie. She needs a cliffhanger music sound effects so badly.
And what about the man with the amazing name? We'll talk about them on Wednesday.
She needs a context sound effects so badly.
Context context, context, context, context context.
There it is there, it is. I feel use that.
She simply deserves it. And Rory, I know you can, I know you can. Rory also edits a weird little Guys, so he is extremely talented at doing sound design music, so we could add it in here. Magpie, you deserve it.
Hell yeah, let's do it. Thank you, Rory. Even though we didn't shout you out this episode, I forgot everyone's to say.
Hi to Rory.
Hi, Rory, Hi, Hi Roy. And our theme music was written for us by own woman, bridge Is Todd. How can people find you on the internet where you probably aren't because there are no girls on the internet.
Well, surprise, surprise, I actually do show up on the internet. You can find me at Blue Sky, where I am Bridget Todd. I think that's right. I'm not used to calling out my Blue Sky. Let me just double check that that is accurate.
I hear you on that.
And you don't want to be like dot BSk dot as what are you.
Supposed to say? Are you supposed to say? Like your name dot like b Scott like you can. You'll figure it out. Yeah, you'll figure it out. You can listen to my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. On iHeartRadio, yeah.
All the things.
Hell yeah, I have a Kickstarter going. You probably have heard me say that before, but that's what I talk about when I have one that's going on YELP. The third book in the Danielle Kaine series, The Immortal Choiral, holds every voice speaking of naming things very long things that then get mixed up. Is being kickstarted right now. We've already as of this recording done two and a half times our goal. But if we get enough money, everyone involved in publishing is going to get tattoos from it.
That's one of our stretch goals. So I don't know, maybe you'll like it. And also one of the cheapest thing is for fifteen dollars you get three audio books, which is the entire series, so hard to beat and what bargain. I know, we decided where this like small collective publisher, and it's really hard. Book prices haven't gone up yet to match the fact that paper prices have gone up, and so as an independent press, it's really
hard for us to have competitive print book prices. And so what we decided is that our digital content is going to be kind of as cheap as we can get away with because we have to pay so much for print, which is our print books are still affordable, they're just not as affordable as we wish they were. Because we're a bunch of punks anyway, uh and listen to weird little guys and take care of each other
because the world is a nightmare world. But it's not always because we can take care of each other.
This is true.
Okay, Bye, I see you Wednesday.
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