It is the Jesse Kelly Show, another hour of The Jesse Kelly Show on a fantastic Wednesday, and it is time to check out.
Meaning it's time to check out of current events in the news of the day. I will get back to talk about these things. The police officer who's in illegal, We're gonna talk about four thousand troops parked off the coast of Venezuela.
We're gonna talk about Adam Schiff maybe going to prison.
We're gonna do some emails, We're gonna do other things, but all that is going to have to wait, because now it is time to do history. I don't know how long it's gonna take. Maybe half hour, maybe an hour, I don't know. It's not a longer one like the other ones have been. But let me ask you something. Have you ever have you ever been fascinated with the origin of words, of terms that are commonly used. I'm
rarely fascinated by it. I'll be honest with you, as in, I don't want to look into it, but then I'll discover the origin of a term, and I'll be all, Wow, that's amazing. Have you ever used the word deadline? I'm on a deadline. I have a deadline. I'm on a deadline. Would you like to hear where that term came from? You're about to find out today. Now, this is a Civil War story, and so we have to do quite a bit of background, or at least a little bit of background to kind of set up the situation.
Here.
We are going to discuss Andersonville. It was actually officially Camp Sumter. No it's not Fort Sumter, but Camp Sumter, but it's known by the name of the small town in Georgia that is close to where it was located, Andersonville. It was a a Confederate prisoner of war camp. That is going to be the subject we're going through today. But before we get to there, let's talk about kind of the war, the way it went, the way it was set up, and what was happening at the time.
So obviously, you know North facing the South Civil War. A lot of people don't know unless you've looked into it, unless you've kind of expanded beyond a little more than you'll probably get in a history class. They don't know that the South never had much of a chance in the Civil War. That was because of logistics and manpower. They didn't have the industry, they didn't have the wealth. I would actually compare it to what we've talked about before when it comes to Japan VERSUS America and World
War Two. Japan had an excellent front line. You know, great navy, great fighter planes, initially, great troops. They were really good and a lot of ways they were better than we were initially. But the problem is if you are better but you can't build more stuff. You don't have enough stuff to make more stuff, more ships, more planes, more bullets, more everything. Things are going to break. If you can't replace it, you will lose. The longer it goes on. You can't win the longer it goes on,
and you can be worse. You can be a worse fighter, you can even in some ways have worse stuff than someone else does. But if you can just build more stuff and replace more stuff, then if it goes on long.
Enough, you'll win.
If you have a great cutting edge and nothing behind it, you better win quickly, quickly, fast, because if it goes on, because time is your enemy. I'll put it to you that way. That's exactly what the South was. Pretty much what the South was facing. When it comes to the Civil War or the War of Northern Aggression, depending on where you're listening to the sound of my voice. The story was in the beginning, and this I don't know that you can really debate this. Of course, you can
debate anything. But the South had better military leaders. They had better generals, Robert E. Lee in particular, but I mean so many under him, Stonewall Jackson, so many others. Remember Lincoln's first pick to lead the Union Army was not McLellan. He wanted Robert E. Lee. He's like, I want that guy, and Lee said, no, I'm fighting for the other side. Sorry, best of luck. They had great leadership,
They had an excellent, excellent initial crop of troops. For this simple fact, the South was more rural than the North. It wasn't that there weren't rural areas in the North, but the North is going to be more, bigger cities, bigger industrial areas, and rural troops have all ways made better troops. I don't care if that offends you. I know there are a main exceptions, so don't email me. I'm from Brooklyn, and I know I know, I know
there are exceptions. But this is just simply easy to explain rural troops go into the military already ten steps ahead of the urban troop, because he's more comfortable with firearms, he's more comfortable sleeping outdoors, he's more he's just more comfortable with a lot of things that are part and parcel for the military. When I was in the Marine Corps, we would do things like we would go out to
the field and do field ops. Well, I grew up hunting and fishing and camping in the mountains of Montana.
That's what we were always doing. I grew up.
Shooting with my dad. Firearms were I was familiar with them. And it wasn't that my buddy from Chicago, I've about to said his name about my buddy from Chicago, wasn't like that. He wasn't just as good or even a better marine than I was. I started out so far ahead of him. He never even there are bugs. Yeah there are bugs. We're outside, but of course there are bugs.
It's just different. The South had better troops initially, but as the war progressed, the South simply couldn't replace those troops and couldn't More importantly, and this is going to come into play in our story, they couldn't replace the stuff you need to fight a war. You know, I'll tell you something right now. If you were in a situation where it was just you and your mother, You and your mother, You're in a bunker, very safe, secure bunker, and you have all the food and water you could
ever want. And who are the baddest people on the planet. Delta fores we use Delta phores and Delta forhes showed up outside of your bunker trying to get you out.
They didn't have much food, they didn't have much water.
They better get you out quickly or you know, you're going to defeat Delta force. Even the toughest guy on the planet has to eat or he dies. Even the toughest guy on the planet has to drink water or he dies. The South started to lose. Now, let's go to Richmond, Virginia. Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the South during the Civil War, and there is all kinds of fighting that take place around Richmond, Virginia. We're going to focus right now for our purposes on the year
eighteen sixty three. Though, okay, don't worry about the date. It's not important. But the year is eighteen sixty three and there's all this fighting around Richmond, Virginia. Now, we because we are so blessed to be here in this country, we don't we don't necessarily understand the logistics of food. Just focus on food right now. We don't think about the logistics of it right because what do you do when you want something to eat? You go down to
a restaurant, or you go to the grocery store. Or I realized it'd be a bodega if you're in New York City listening to me or something like that.
But there's a.
Store close to you where you go buy meat and eggs and cheese and bread and things. Okay, you got me there, But where did that food that's in your store come from? Well? See, this is why we don't realize how spoiled we are. Everywhere. I can go down to Agib. AGB is a huge grocery store chain in Texas. I can go down to AGB. I have one fifteen
minutes from my house. I can go down to CHIB right now, and I can pick up ingredients, food ingredients from not just all over the country, all over the world. I can grab an avocado from Mexico. I can go get all of oil from Italy. I can go get if I want to spend the money, I can walk into hb in Texas and access food items that come from all over the planet. That is not how most
human beings have lived throughout history. Most food throughout history, because of the logistics of getting food to and fro, most food throughout history is locally sourced, locally sourced.
So what's this mean? I mean today.
Today we have kind of an older way of thinking when it comes to where do you get the best this or best at Like where can you get the best lobster role? Most people will say, well, you got to go to Maine, that's where the lobster is. Oh, you got to go to Boston's where the lobster is. I just went to Boston. He to lobster roll. Best lobster role I've ever had in my life is in a parking lot here in Houston, Texas. Why there's a place of food truck here. They fly in freshman lobster
every morning. I can have a lobster role just as fresh as your main lobster right here, right here. It was not always like that. You have to get local stuff. We'll go back to Virginia. We'll back to Richmond here in a minute and get to Andersonville. It is the Jesse Kelly Show talking some.
Andersonville history tonight.
Remember you can email the show love hey, death threats, whatever you'd like.
Jesseat Jesse kellyshow dot com.
I'ven't decided what's going to be next after this one, at least as far as history goes. We'll get back to politics in just a little bit. So Richmond, Virginia is the capital of the South during the Civil War and they are having a problem. You see, all these battles are popping up. The South doesn't have the industry. They don't have the stuff they need, not just for the troops, for their own civilians. As I mentioned, logistics
is not sexy, but it is important. The people who live in Virginia, the people who live around Richmond, they don't don't have enough stuff. And what they're encountering is there are lots and lots of POWs from the North held in camps around Richmond, and they're hoovering up.
All the food. I heard.
Look, I heard a bunch of different estimates. I've been doing so much reading and studying things on this. I heard one in five, I heard one in ten. Whatever, the number is, one in five or one in ten people around Richmond was a Union pow at one point in time. That's ten to twenty percent of the population you're trying to feed. There's not enough food already, not enough food for the civilians, not enough plus plus you're really close to the north, you're close to the northern lines.
They're worried about these POWs escaping. They're being a rebellion. What if the Union freese these camps. What if the Okay, so we got to move them. We have to move them south. Now there's another part of the res and they had to move them, and that was it's known as the dix Hill System, the dix Hill Exchange System, you could also call it. Those were who those were. It was one Union guy and one Confederate guy, and what they had was a prisoner exchange system they had established.
It's actually really fascinating. I took a huge nerdy deep dive into it, which I won't get into with you because you would hate me for it. But it essentially came down to this, Hey, let's understand, hopefully we're going to come together after this. Let's understand we want to exchange troops. Let's come up with a value for every type of soldier based on their rank, and from time
to time, let's do in exchange. Now, when I say a value, I mean this, the officers are going to be worth more in that value system than an enlisted man. You know, a general is going to be worth or they're a private. So let's say at general's worth one hundred and fifty points and a private's worth five points. Okay, will you go find me ten privates.
Wait, that wouldn't be right. It's more than ten, Chris.
Ten five, Go find me thirty privates. That adds up to one fifty. I'll give you your general back. You see what I mean. A prisoner exchange system. They had different locations for the prison exchange system. Where I show up with my guys, you show up with your guys. There's a representative from each time we exchange prisoners. Okay, we're gonna go.
You got it.
Prisoner exchange system. It broke down. It broke down for several different reasons. One of the main ones is they begin to lie. Each side begin to lie because you're trying to fudge the values. Fudge the numbers if you will, so you can get more valuable people back and not give them valuable people. So that's a big part of it. Another part of it was the North had people in its army. The South obviously did not. The South did not treat black POWs as if they were POW's. They
essentially treated them like they were escape ees. It treated them like they were property. They would just flat out kill them. That angered the North. And those are the reasons you mainly read. But there is one reason above all. The decision was made to essentially shut down the prison exchange system. And none of the none of the good reasons they try to give you are as cold and calculating as the real reason the prison exchange systems shut down.
The real reason was this, Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant, depending on who you believe, the North shut down the prison exchange system because the North had more men. The North had more men than the South. So oh, if we simply stop exchanging people, even if every one of our Union soldiers die in Southern captivity, we can replace them. You can't replace your men. Think about the World War two comparison we made if Japan has three aircraft carriers
and can't replace them. If America has three and can replace them, and let's say they're captured by the other side, America would probably say, well keep our aircraft carriers. I don't care, you can't build more. That same system happened, and so again it was either a Blincoln.
The sources are all weird.
It was either a Blincoln or Ulysses s. Grant, depending on who you believe that. Everyone has a different opinion. But the North shut down the prison exchange system. There's no more dix Hill prison exchange system. You South, we are keeping all your prisoners, and guess what you can keep ours? We will outlast you. We have more men, we have more stuff. Best of luck to you. So now the South has to figure out what to do because it's not like you just have the men you
currently have. The South is still winning battles, the South is still taking in prisoners.
What to do? What to do?
They found a big spot in Georgia and decided this was going to be their spot. And now we have to go to hell known as Andersonville. It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Wednesdayday.
Remember if you missed any part of the show.
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So the South.
It's eighteen sixty three. They have too many Union prisoners. The Union won't exchange them anymore because they know they have more men in the and they win. The prisoners around Richmond are eating up all the food. The residents are upset. The prisoners are too close to the northern lines. And so they find a place outside of a small town in Georgia called Andersonville, and they think to themselves, well, this is where we'll put them all.
Now.
I can't stress how terrible the supply situation was for the South at this time. When they began construction of the Andersonville prison camp. The troops themselves were not getting enough food, blankets, clothing that the South didn't have enough stuff. Without another major nation partnering with the South, the South was never going to win the Civil War. It simply was not possible logistically for them to do so. Try as they may, valiant as they may have fought, they.
Were never going to win this war.
And now, well, the stuff situation is getting worse and worse and worse. They start building this camp at first, they just put a big wall. The camp is shaped like a rectangle. And some of this stuff is going to be really really important, so you're gonna have to pay attention to it. The camp is shaped like it's a big rectangle. Okay, it's in essentially a big open field.
There's a slope to it. There is.
You can go look at it to this day. In fact, there's a million YouTube videos on it. You can go look at exactly what I'm talking about. But picture a big open field in Georgia, surrounded by woods, and they just start building a wall, a wall without anything in it. There's a place for the campguards and such to sleep, but everything else is just a big open field.
And and some of this is gonna get gross.
I'm sorry, but I have to describe what our Americans have gone through. There was a stream going through the camp, you know, the long side of the rectangle and the short side of the rectangle, the.
Short lines on the rectangle.
The stream paralleled the short lines and it divided the camp into a little stream. The camp is half built in February of eighteen sixty four. But the South can't wait any longer. They began to start shuttling prisoners into this camp. There is a train station nearby. They show up on the trains, they bring them into the camp. Already, we have a humanitarian nightmare on our hands. As I just said, there's no quarters, there's no barracks, there's nothing
but a field. This place was designed to hold ten thousand troops.
At its peak.
It held thirty three thousand troops. Thirty three thousand troops with no cover, no facilities, no nothing, herded in like cattle to a fenced in open field in Georgia. In Georgia, I don't know if you know this, it gets really really hot, It gets really really cold. It's not just that they don't have a roof over their heads, they don't have the proper clothing. And remember we talked about how the troops and the civilians weren't eating. Well, here's
the thing about prisons, and this is true today. What are the worst prisons in the world today. They're from poor countries. Why well, when you don't have the money to create a decent prison, decent beds, decent food, a poor country's not going to take its limited resources and put any of those resources into prisons and prisoners they're simply going to build cages and toss them whatever scraps of food they happen to have left. The worst prisons
are poor prisons. What we're dealing with here is logistically an unbelievably poor country in the South. They don't have enough food. Our guys don't have housing, they don't have clothes, and they get a tiny minuscule amount of food every day. It essentially amounts to a little bit of salt in corn meal, But most of the time they couldn't even cook the corn meal into a cake or something because firewood was also forbidden in Andersonville. They didn't want prisoners
starting fires and escaping. Now let's get gross. The stream thirty three thousand men, one stream, one stream. In order to get water for yourself, bathe, that is important. You have to clean your body, laundry. Remember we don't have changes of clothes. You better get naked at some point in time, clean your clothes one stream to use as a bathroom. Now pause for a moment. This is one of those things that is really really gross, and it's about to be a little gross. I'm sorry, but we
do have to discuss it. It's the least sexy part of war. Bathroom waste. What do you do with it? It's one of the things America is so good at because we've spent so many years studying it in logistics and whatnot. I remember one of the first things we did when we were in Iraq and we left Bagdad and we went to some tiny dump of a town called Najaf. We seized control of a walled in farmer's market they had, and it was day one. Immediately, where
are we using the bathroom? Build bathroom facilities over and now they weren't nice, don't get me wrong. It wasn't flushable toilets or anything like that. But let's immediately designate a place because we have to isolate the waste where all that disease in bacteria grows. If you are in a big fenced in camp without flushable toilets, there's no indoor plumbing. You have to have to use the stream
as essentially your flushable toilet. When you use the bathroom, you have to use it into the stream, so all that bacteria fodder flows out in a way from you.
Well that's a problem, but look, this is the military.
We have adult men in there, men in charge the prisoners.
So they knew they had to.
Come up with a system, obviously, and the system is it's a pretty obvious system, one you've probably figured out for yourself. Let's go as far upstream as we can. That is where we will pull the water out to drink. Right, that's where we'll pull it out to drink. The next system down, that's where we will clean ourselves. The next system down, that's where we will clean our clothes. And then as far down stream as you can possibly get in the camp, that's where we will use the stream as a toilet.
They weren't morons. They knew what they were doing.
They understood that's how it had to be set up, and in fact, they constructed for themselves what essentially is a a wooden wall system along the stream. You can go look it up by the way if you'd like to. Right now you'll see men washing their clothes and men sitting over the wall going boopy in the street.
You can go look at a picture of it.
To this day in Andersonville, they had a system set up. But I want to again stress it was a system designed for ten thousand men, not thirty three thousand men. And there was a flaw in the stream system the Union troops could not possibly hold or could not possibly help. It is a Jesse Kelly show on a wonderful Wednesday, Hoday doing a little history right now, we'll get back to politics here. I mean guess ten minutes that hopefully I'll finish this up ten to twenty minutes and then
we'll get back to more politics. Talking about Andersonville Pow Camp. Essentially, it was known as Camp Sumter. We call it Andersonville in the South. In World War Two. The camp is supposed to be ten thousand men expanse to thirty three thousand the South. They do bring in some more resources for the camp as far as wood and materials go, but materials are rare and they only use the materials to expand the wall system. Now I mentioned the stream,
and I mentioned the diet human beings. We talk about this all the time when we talk about our own nutrition. When I tell you about chalk, when I tell you about rough greens for your dog. You have to have things. You need things. Your body has to have certain vitamins and minerals your diet. You have to have them in there, and if you don't, you will begin to see physical evidence of it. Scurvy. Have you ever heard of scurvy? It's awful. Your gums swell up, your teeth fall out,
your mouth bleeds. Why do you get that you don't get vitamin C? It was one of the big struggles of oceanic explorer explorers, guys who got on those old sailing chips. How do you keep fruit good long enough so we can get vitamin C in our diet. They may not have known everything we know about medicine, but they knew without fruit, the clock is ticking. We will get sick and die scurvy. Scurvy becomes everywhere. It spreads like wildfire and Andersonville. Another thing that starts to spread
like wildfire is disease, several different kinds. But for our purposes here, I hope you're not eating. We're going to discuss dysentery.
Now.
I've had dysentery. That's one of the two parasites I've had. I know that you know what it's like to be physically sick in a way where you have to use the toilet.
Okay, I'll just put it that way. No, you know what that's like.
Everyone knows what that's like everyone's had a bad chili dog, right, I know you know what that's like. I can't stress to you enough when I tell you that is not what dysentery is like. If you took if you took a little midget and you shrunk him down even more so he's a four inch tall midget and you gave him two gigantic swords and then swallowed him. Imagine that little midget jamming his swords into your gut. That's what dysentery feels like. And when it's time to go, it's
not a hold out for five minute type thing. You are in physical agony and you better be at the toilet or it's going to be a problem. And it's not a one off where normally when you get sick in that way, you it's sick. And even if you're super sick, you've got twenty minutes half hour before you have to worry about it again. You'll go five minutes later, go again, five minutes later, go again. You can't you
can't stop. Now what else it's doing. On top of sucking nutrients out of your body, it's sucking water out of your body, and it's contagious thirty three thousand men. You can't get to the stream every time you have to go when there's thirty three thousand men. And even if, by the grace of God, you manage to get to the stream, it's not possible for you to locate the exact spot on the stream where you're supposed to go. I had to describe it because I wanted to drive
this point home. You're going, no matter what, you are going, stream not stream, whatever.
You're doing, you are going the midget stabbing you. You are going.
What the men describe all of them when they arrive in Andersonville. The new Andersonville POWs all of them. Every single thing I read was smell. Andersonville became oh my gosh, I have the squeamis just thinking about it. Andersonville became a mud bog, not of mud. Could you imagine what it would be like to live in a mud bog of diarrhea? On top of the disgustingness of that, the smell of that, the disease that would spread. You're not
getting nutrition, You're not getting water. Now the water you have is already bad. And oh, I meant to mention to you, you know how they had set up that system where the clean waters on one side, and then the laundry and then the toilet.
The Confederate Army.
They set up a camp upstream, and they were using the stream the same way.
So even where you thought you were.
Getting clean drinking water, you were still getting the toilet residue from the Confederate camp that was up the way.
Do you want to hear a.
Jaw dropping stat before we try to wrap this thing up. We've talked many times about the Japanese in World War Two and their unimaginable cruelty, especially to POW's. Most people know, some don't that if you actually, if you were an American and you were captured by the Nazis, there was very little cruelty, believe it or not. You were treated quite well. Two percent death rate. They fed you, clothed you, you were warm, you were there. Are are our Allied
POWs were treated quite well in Europe. In Japan, you know what, the death rate was twenty six percent. A quarter of them who went in there died. You know what the death rate was in Andersonville twenty nine. Andersonville had a death rate that exceeded Japanese pow camps in World War Two, men dying in droves, a third of them gone. The disease was terrible. And then that brings us to maybe the worst part of this whole thing, And it really might be. And I swear I'll try
to wrap this up next. What happens when men become desperate, desperate from disease, desperate from hunger, even your disciplined military men with unity. What happens when men become desperate enough. We will talk about that as we this up in a moment. Now, all this talk of vitamins and minerals and digestive issues hopefully has you thinking about rough greens.
You know your dog needs those things too. You Maybe you don't look at your dog and think, well, his coat is dull because you're with your dog every day. But your dog's coat is dull because your dog doesn't get nutrition. Your dog does not get nutrition from dog food unless you are finding a way to get real nutrition into your dog. Your dog essentially eats fast food every meal, empty calories. Sprinkle rough greens on your dog's foods so your dog can live longer, so your dog
can be healthier. How much money did you spend the last time you had to take him to the vet. What if you didn't have to go was often. That's something else you'll notice when you start giving your dog nutrition. Rough Greens is America's number one dog supplement for a reason. People are believers across this country. As I am, Fred gets it with every single man. Go to roughgreens dot com get a free Jumpstart trial bag, or call them two one four Roughdog. Just use the promo code Jesse.
They'll send you a free Jumpstart trial back. We'll try to wrap up Innersonville next