6 | Civil War

gravestone there. The gravestone reads Owen Brown, son of John Brown, the Liberator, died January nine. You may not know Owen's name, but you might remember his father, John Brown from a middle school history class, because back in the eighteen fifties and sixties, John Brown was among the most famous in the United States. To some, he was a martyr. To others, he was a terrorist and a murderer. Here's David Reynolds, author of John Brown Abolitionist. So I see him. It

really is a warrior against injustice. Never at the time four million people held in slavery in bondage, and he considered slavery a war against an entire race of people. Frederick Douglas said, I could live for the slave. John Brown died for the slave. John Brown was an anti slavery activist known for his sometimes violent tactics. He sealed his place in history on one deadly night in the

fall of eighteen fifty nine. In the early hours of the morning, John Brown, in a small group of supporters invaded a federal armory in the town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to steal the weapons stored inside, give them to local enslaved people, and lead an uprising against their captives. John Brown does take over Harper's Ferry. They do emancipate um a fair number of enslaved people, and they took captive. They're enslavers because John Brown wanted to

use these white masters as hostages. What happened, however, is that he stalled too long. The plan went sideways, and after a standoff that lasted several days, John was captured and many of his men were killed. The raid on Harper's Ferry was a failure, but it electrified the country. Today, the rate is viewed as a pivotal moment in the collapse of the US into Civil War. The South said, Aha,

you see what the North really wants to do. It wants to go in the Constitution and wants to advance abolitionism. In the aftermath of the raid, John's son, Owen, managed to escape. Years later, he would relocate to California, where he was greeted as a hero. His father, though, was tried for treason murder in the incitement of a slave rebellion.

John Brown had been wounded in the raid, so most of the time during the trial he was lying on his back on a cot, But he managed to get up at the very end after his sentencing and said, you know, I simply came here to free enslaved people, and I willingly will mix my blood with that of the millions who have died as enslaved people. On December sewo eighteen fifty nine, John Brown was hanged. He was the first person executed for treason in the history of

the United States. On his way to the gallows, he passed a note to his jailer. It read, in part, I, John Brown, I am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be parched away, but with blood. He was soon proven right. Things I couldn't change him, look him back. I'll live in the past ship, in of my past years, trying to stop myself from run him back. I'll see what we're going on. Taking back from Interval presents an awfully nice This is the

last resort I'm sho. Episode six, Civil War. The FBI is investigating former President Trump for potentially violating the Espionage Act. This past August, FBI agents conducted a search of Donald Trump's resort in Florida. They were looking for se good documents that he had kept after leaving office. To some, the search was a signed that Trump might have broken the law. But the Trump supporters it was a sign of something else, entirely that the government was corrupt. We

have got to change our federal government. We have got to say to ourselves, this cannot be our country. This is gestapo crap and it will not stand. Find an administration to Democrats are weaponizing to FBI, and it has to stop. For some of these supporters, there was only one solution to a corrupt the government. In response to the FBI search at Moral Lago, some Trump supporters have also increased calls for a civil war. Let's go term

everybody knows exactly what I'm talking about. The Democrat Nazi has gone too far. He just pulled the pin on the granite, and motherfucker's give me five thousand, motherfucker willing souls, we go to war. These calls for civil war weren't just talk. Threats against the FBI I spiked dramatically, and one arm Trump supporter attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati. He was killed in a shootout with police, and one of his last posts on social media, the attacker wrote, impart,

this is your call to arms. I am proposing war. Killed the FBI on site. Incidents like these are fueling a lot of anxiety in the US. In a recent poll, more than fifty of respondents said they expected a civil war in the next few years. But how that one might start is an open question. Here's Stephen marsh, author of The Next Civil War. It could be a massive

act of violence. It could be the abortion laws. If the Southern States try to sue people in other states for medical procedures they've had in other states, that creates the whole legal crisis that proceeded the First Civil War. You know almost exactly what caused the first civil war. If you ask the average person on the street, they might say slavery or states rights. Some others might say it was secession. Starting in late eighteen sixty, Southern States

began succeeding from the Union. By the following April, the United States was in a full blown war. Over the last five episodes, we've tried to figure out what would happen if California seceded from the United States. Today we focus on the question that looms the largest. Would cal exit cause a civil war? Stephen marsh thinks the answer is, yeah, probably a peaceful, negotiated exit would just be too hard

to pull off. The political requirements for secession actually require a lot of goodwill and a lot of common sense. And of course, you know, the reason we're having this

discussion is exactly because serious political discussion has broken down. So, I mean, that's why I think violence is much more like we Not surprisingly, Lewis Minnelli disagrees, that's kind of the the irony of it, because we believe that the best way to preserve peace in North America, to avoid a civil war in North America, is to have a national divorce, and that means that we can agree to disagree. The rent states in the Blue States agree to disagree

on these hot button social issues, abortion, transgender issues. All of these issues are where people are fighting about now. So which is it, would Collex it cause a war? Or is it, as Lewis claims, our last best chance to avoid one. Lewis is right about one thing. Secession by itself didn't cause the first Civil War. People say that state cancers seat from the Union because it automatically starts civil war like we saw in the eighteen sixties,

and that's not historically act year. It actually because if you looked at the timelines of when the South seceded from the Union, some of them had seceded for several months before the hostilities started. Here's Professor David Reynolds again. Lincoln was to voteed above ball to the Preservation Union, and he knew that if he pressed the issue of slavery too hard then he would alienate a bunch of

states that later became the border states. After the South seceded, President Abraham Lincoln tried to bring them back, even if it meant keeping slavery. It was only when the Confederacy attacked the U S that war broke out. The Civil War did not start because Arkansas or Texas, or Louisiana or Mississippi said we seceded from the Union. It started

when there was a military conflict at Fort Sumter. So, according to Louis, if the Calleges of movement stays peaceful, there would be no reason for the US to declare war. Our campaign was always about a peaceful vote. Let the people vote. If the vote had passed, we already won. At that point in time. The victory is already there and you can't take it back, and the whole world

would see it, and that would be the victory. Louis has repeatedly pledged the Callegs it would be peaceful, and you can't have a war without two sides that are willing to fight. But on the other hand, can we really take Lewis's word for it? Got some shocking news to report now California secessionists have claimed they've opened an

embassy in Moscow. Louis Marinelli told the l A Times quote, we want to start laying the groundwork for a dialogue about an independent California joining the United Nations right now. In December of news broke the callegs it had opened an embassy in Moscow and that Louis was actually living in Russia. The revelation sparked confusion and alarm. Was cole exit somehow a Russian operation? Imagine if goal was to

take the United States dawn a few pigs. Imagine how helpful it would be to that goal if you had a chance, even a slim chance, of splitting off from the United States one of its fifty states that on its own terms, is the sixth largest economy in the world. It led some people to wonder maybe a civil war wasn't just a potential risk of callegasy. Maybe causing a civil war was actually the whole point, And it raised

another big question. Who the fuck was Louis Marinelli? Today, the leader of a ballot initiative for California to withdraw from the United States address claims he's working with the Russian government to undermine democracy in the US. He promoted the idea of an independent California at a conference in Moscow last year. Do you think people might grow skeptical and concern this movement is just part of some sort of a bigger strategy by the Kremlin to destabilize the West.

If mar Nellie does have a close relationship with Russia and is attempting to weaken our country, that could be kriminal ladies and gentlemen, So you much, the community Presidience Cable a few hours ago. Presidential elections have finished in the United States of America. On November eight, Americans cast their votes in the presidential election, and the world waited to find out would the winner be Hillary Clinton or

Donald Trump. Louis remembers the moment distinctly. I was in Russia and it was morning there actually, because it's the time, James, it was morning, so I actually was in the middle of a class and I would had my phone. They're kind of watching the results come in, and I'd also like to congratulate Mr Donald Trump with his victory in these elections. And once the results kind of came man that he won, I canceled the class and we had a party with my teenage Russian students who were there

to learn English. We had a little party that I didn't like Hillary Clinton, and I didn't want to live in a country that Hillary Clinton would be the president of simply because she was a woman. We were a fringe movement that most people believed was a pie in the sky, and so I didn't really anticipate there being any kind of sudden growth of support. So I decided I was going to go to Russia and start a new life there, just go off into the sunset type

of thing. And then Donald Trump hadn't like and screwed everything up. This wasn't Louis's first time living in Russia. His ties to the country go back years. My first time when when I was in Russia was as a student. I went to the Russia to study abroad in two thousand and six or two thousand and seven, and I had a Russian wife during this time, who I brought to the United States from Russia. And I had lived in Russia, and I had worked in Russia before campaign

for Carol Oxi. Lewis's politics and his ties to Russia started to align in the summer of when cal Exit was invited to a conference in Moscow called the Dialogue of Nations California. They declared in California. The Dialogue of Nations brought together secessionists from all over the world, from places like Catalonia and Northern Ireland, but also from the US.

Here's journalists, Casey Michelle. You have the Texans, you have the Californians, you have all these Europeans that are just going around on a table, introducing themselves, talking about what they want, talking about the history of the movement, talking about why they need Russian partners to succeed. While he was there, Louis got to know a guy who would change his life, an extroverted Russian named Alexander Yanov. It

was and Off who would put the conference together. It's organized by one guy, one Russian national, Alexander Jonov, who is really this strange character you kind of can't make up. He's like six and a half feet tall. He likes to wear these dapper suits and these alligator skin shoes. I mean, he's a he's a very well dressed man, and he's definitely a presence in a room. But he's also this incredibly goofy character that runs this supposedly nonprofit

charity called the Anti Globalization Movement of Russia. So what is the Anti Globalization Movement of Russia? And you go on the website, you go on to social media, and it's all about how everyone should support like Bashar al Assad in Syria should obviously support Putin in Russia. Jonah's group got funding from the Kremlin. He has this um thank you letter from President Putin himself saying what a good job he was doing. He hasn't framed on his

his wall in his office in Moscow. After the conference, the collaboration between Louis Marinelli and Alexander Janov continued. When Kyle Exit wanted to open a California embassy, Janov provided them space in his office rent free. At the press conference announcing the embassy, Yanov can be seen sitting next to Lewis, wearing a large gold watch and a dapper maroon suit. Journalist Kasey Michelle remembers watching the press conference, he couldn't believe that the Lewis would be seen with

someone like Janov. The guy who's supposedly leading the California independence movement is sitting in Moscow next to this guy who's we know is funded by the Kremlin. Under this banner of California embassy. Things got worse. Reports emerged that Russia wasn't just inviting kylegs to conferences and giving them free office space, it was also helping them out online. There was also a huge upsurge in social media rhetoric around you know, California, get out, you know cal Exit now, yes,

californ etcetera, etcetera. Um. Much of that was tied directly to Russian uh social media trolls. Back in California, Marcus was reading all the negative press about Louis and Russia with increasing astonishment and anger. I think within a week it was well, Russia must have backed the whole Calaxic thing, and that it's all financed by Moscow and it's some

secret plot, and I mean, that's just not true. Marcus thought the Russia controversy was being blown way out of proportion, but from the outside the situation looks sketchy at best. In by February, it was clear that the movement was in big trouble. Marcus tried to do damage control, starting with Louis. I begged Louis to come back, and I said, brother, we both thought it was a good idea for you to go out there, but now it's a horrible look. The look is just horribly. You have got to come back,

and I couldn't convince him to do it. Meanwhile, Marcus was also trying to keep Callegs as supporters from bailing. We were just hemorrhaging people, hemorrhaging people, hemorrhaging people. So I mean it really hit us bad. Marcus, I think, found a spiel that he could give people to explain why I was in Russia. It wasn't actually all true, as I understand, but he found something that he could say to people that would placate them, and he found

his job to be easier after that. One group of allies the Marcus wasn't able to smooth things over with was the California National Party or the CNP. If you recall, the CNP was another Calasy group THEOS later was a member. I mean, the biggest mistake I ever made was meeting with Lewis at all. Louis going to Moscow and starting what he called an embassy there. I think that was a huge mistake, especially in the context of just how geopolitics were going at the time. That mistake is ever

more obvious today. The CNP loudly condemned Louis's actions, trying to distance itself from the bad publicity. Marcus thinks this is what ended up hurting the colleagues and movement the most. Yeah, a lot of the other collegic groups were immediately like, we are associated with you. We lost half our members more to the c n P saying these guys are backed by Russia. Their criticism cost us as much as the Russia angle. That's the point I want to make.

For Louis though the whole Russian scandal was missing the point. Sure, he thought maybe Russia did want to destabilize the United States, but Americans didn't need any help doing that. Okay, how many how much political animosity there is in the United States, it's not because of Russia. It's because of the Americans and are diverging values and things that we believe in. The Russians are responsible for the abortion debate and roll versus weight, and there's more and more political violence in

the United States on a daily basis. That's not because of Russia. It's because we have diverging values and it's increasingly divergent, and at some point in time, I believe that we're going to have a civil ward we don't agree to disagree or find another solution. On November two nine, the abolitionist John Brown was convicted of treason, murder, and inciting a slave rebellion to try to save his client, John Brown's lawyer had made a surprising argument that he

had lost his mind. As evidence, he presented to the Core a document that Brown had helped write. It was a new provisional constitution for the United States. Here's author David Reynolds. Again. One can see why his constitution was considered insane because it was so forcefully anti slavery and so distant from the original Constitution in many ways, both in its defense of enslaved people of other oppressed people such as Native Americans, also in its form of government.

In some ways, John Brown's constitution was familiar. It had three branches of government and ideas like the freedom of religion, but it also called for a few radical changes. Citizens of all races and sexes would have equal protection under the law, including the right to vote for him. To even countenance the idea of African American suffrage, Native American suffrage, and possibly women's suffrage is rather astonishing uh and very

very different from the original US Constitution. It abolished the Senate and set term limits for elected officials, and it ended the electoral College, establishing the direct popular election of the president and of Supreme Court justices. In short, it brought the US much closer to being an actual democracy. You see that he wants a pure democracy, unfettered by the devotion to the so called republic, which today we

tend to be. There was some weird stuff in there too, for example, no swearing, But on the whole, John Brown's provisional Constitution laid out reforms that today a lot of us would see as visionary. The lesson that we can take from John Brown's constitut tuition is a belief in the equality of people of all ethnicities who make up the United States of America. It makes you wonder what if John Brown's Constitution had become the law. Could Donald

Trump have become president without the Electoral College? Would Roe v. Wade have been overturned by a Supreme Court that was elected directly by the people? Here Stephen Marshigan, the problems in American government are structural. They have nothing to do with the American people, or the goodness and the hearts of the American people or whatever. The Texas Separatists and the California Separatists go to the lengthy claims that they're

constitutional right, Like if you go to their website. It's almost the first thing on there. Why this is constitutional? Why do you care? If you're going to found a new country, you're gonna need a new constitution. If America isn't working for you, it's probably because the American Constitution is broken. What caused the last American Civil War? Volumes have been written trying to answer that question, but some experts think you can boil it down to one thing.

Not slavery, not states rights, not even secession. It was caused by the constitution. The structure of the Constitution to a large degree, cause the Civil War. There's no doubt about that. The U. S. Constitution was very pro slavery, and then the South, of course, said, hey, we're just

following the constitution. The U. S. Constitution was always designed to give some people, specifically white man, power over all others, and from the Senate to the Electoral College to the right to vote itself, safeguards were put in place to make sure rich slave owners could never be held to account by a democratic majority. When people like John Brown tried to change this broken system, the South succeeded rather

than surrender their grip on power. The result was, as John Brown predicted the bloodiest conflict in the history of this country. More Americans died in the Civil War than in all other American wars combined. Our last Civil war gave the United States an opportunity to fix the problems in our system of government. The forefathers missed that opportunity.

They declared enslaved people to be liberated, and then in the name of unity, they allowed the South to go right back to enslaving them, just under a new term Jim Crow. They kept the Senate and eventually created more tactics like the filibuster that made it even more undemocratic. They kept the Electoral College so that unpopular leaders could win the presidency, and they kept the unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court just as it was. They maintained the status quo

through that lens. It's no surprise that some people might think we might be on the verge of another civil war. The only surprise is that it took so long. The Russia scandal set into motion a rapid collapse of the colleagues at Movement. Tens of thousands of supporters abandoned the cause. Left to clean up the mess was Marcus Ruiz Evans

I got all the angry phone calls. Let's be clear, Louis never dealt with any of the angry phone calls or any of the angry members or anyone in California asking about what the hell are you doing in Russia. He never took the calls. So I gotta deal with about a hundred phone calls for people yelling and screaming, and I gotta do people accusing me of being a foreign spy. So I know better than anybody the repercussions

in the fallouts. With Louis still in Russia and a few allies remaining back in California, it was clear that Marcus would never be able to gather an of signatures to get calls on the ballet. It was impossible to organize signature gathering because you know, you get an email going, oh my god, I heard your drug like Russia, or

a phone calling and they're yelling and screa. You gotta take that right, because otherwise they're gonna start going and yelling and screaming on your channels and getting more people to leave in a mass hysteria. In April, Marcus and Lewis announced that they were giving up on the ballot initiative and Louis he was going to live in Russia permanently. It all hit Marcus pretty hard and threw him into a year's long depression. And uh, that was probably the

worst darkest point in my life. And I honestly, I don't there's about four or five times there. I don't know if I was gonna make it real talk. It seemed like CALEX had blown its big chance, but Marcus wasn't giving up. He believed that these kinds of movements take time and walk. CALEXIT had lost some moment him. It had come a long way since he first started

writing about it in two thousand and twelve. Remember when I wrote the book and some of my friends were saying, this is going to take you years to pull off, and I kind of looked down at my feet, going, God, am I up for this? I didn't know. You have a dream, you stick with it for ten years and you see it come to fruition. And then I had the darkest point in my life. If I was gonna quit, I should have quit in eighteen. I'm still here. Marcus

dedicated himself to rebuilding his life and call exit. But as you'll hear his challenges were only just beginning. We should also point something out. Marcus is definitely right about one thing. Movements to transform governments often unfold over years, if not decades, and they don't always fail. In fact, there is one example of an independence movement right next door to California, where support is fought for autonomy for generations,

and in the nineties it finally happened. Hundreds of m peasants have seased control of four towns in southern Mexico in the protests of the land rights. In our next episode, we'll tell you the story of the independence movement that worked, a story about revolution, about justice, and of course about land. What would it be like to live in independent California?

To answer that question, will look to Mexico. So they just said, you know what, we've been here for thousands of years, and we're declaring this area autonomous, and we're going to grow our own food, make our own clothing, teach our children in our our ways, our value systems. We're going to organize ourselves so that we can survive the next thousand years. That's next on the Last Resort. The Last Resort is an interval presents original production from

Awfully Nice from Interval Presents. The executive producers are Alan Coy and Jake Kleinberg. Executive producers from Awfully Nice are Jesse Burton and Katie Hodges. Written and produced by Jesse Burton and Dana Bulut. Associate producer is Suzanne Gaber. Project management by Kadi Kama Kat Editing, sound design and mix by Nick Sabriano and Keiana McClellan of Bang Audio. Post original music by my Boy Mattaway, Yuhi and Me, shoot Test Scott. Theme song by Me shoot Test Scott and Sweet.

Sound fact checking by Lauren Vespoli. Script consultation by William Bauer. Operations lead is Sarah You, business development lead is Cheffi e Lnswig, and marketing lead is Samara Still. I'm your host, shoot Test Scott. For a full list of the sources used in this episode, please check the show notes. Make sure to follow, rate and review The Last Resort on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. I wrote the Wars.

We won't do wrong when we wont I wrote the Wars. Yeah,