Radio War Nerd EP #466 — The US Civil War, Part 18: Civil War on the Sea & Aftermath
The War Nerd USCW series returns with a new ep on the Union's blockade of the South, and the grim aftermath of Andrew Johnson's presidency
The War Nerd USCW series returns with a new ep on the Union's effective blockade of the South, and the grim aftermath of Andrew Johnson's pro-South turn as related through the memoir of Mary Ames.
Maps:
-Battle at Hilton Head, November 1861
*Sea Islands
Books mentioned:
-From a New England Woman's Diary in Dixie in 1865, by Mary Ames
-Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, by Jim Downs
Check out the War Nerd US Civil War Series
Total time: 1:16:33
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (48)
I love your work on the Civil War series. Two notes: Edisto is pronounced “EH-duh-STOW,” not “ah-DEE-stow,” and Gullah is pronounced “GUH-lah,” not “GAH-lah.” It’s still spoken but is a threatened language. There’s big effort to preserve it.
The Unitarians merged with the Universalists at some point to become what is now known as the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship, or UUF. They also officially dropped the Christianity and adopted a secular covenant. They are still big back East. I used to be a member in Missoula MT. Church for secular humanists, basically. They have the highest household income of any denomination in the country, last I checked.
No matter how much you hate the confederacy and confederboos, it will never be enough.
People talk about deaths of despair among those left behind by the world in the last few decades. I cannot even imagine the despair of having been given land and then seeing it snatched away again. And what could anyone do? Sue the government to enforce the original promise? Federal courts are where justice goes to slaughter.
3rd generation UU here (unitarian universalist). All jokes 100% accurate. I enjoyed growing up trading yugioh cards with kids in youth group at the Taft room but can’t find myself sticking with it. We used to have some good laughs reading the “adventure bible.” Lots of random pop stuff in the hymn books
I just came across this book about British gun-running through the blockade via the Bahamas. It looks to be worth a read: https://a.co/d/fh3xetG
John has become the Annibale of the American Civil War Memoir. 🤟
Incredible episode - really enjoying this series I would like to know more about Andersonville and other prisons during the war
Jon Voight - who tragically disappeared in 2003 after winning the Academy Award for playing Howard Cosell in Michael Mann's masterful Muhammad Ali biopic ALI - had a few featured roles prior to CONRACK: there was DELIVERANCE, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, and, my personal favorite, he was Milo Minderbinder in CATCH-22.
Deliverance holds up well. My mother took me to see it first time when I was 6. That was a mistake. My grandmother spent the whole night yelling at her for it. Buried it deep, then watched it again for the first time during Covid, and yeah, in this case, grandma was right.
Aww yeah. Civil war is BACK (don’t quote me on this out of context)
One of your best episodes
The discussion on wartime epidemics reminds me of all the talk a few years ago about revising the Civil War death toll. I think it was that the 661,000 number was the figure the government tabulated shortly after the war based on its records, and was just taken unquestioned. But about a decade ago people looked into it a bit more critically and realized that 1.) a lot of the records were incomplete/underreporting (especially Confederate ones) and 2.) this omitted a lot of civilian deaths, particularly from diseases and especially among slaves. So for awhile it seemed like people were coming to a consensus that the toll was probably closer to a million. But then it seemed like everyone just kind of forgot about it and went back to the 661k figure. And of course the death toll from the post war “Redemption” dirty war is even worse. The 3,500 count often cited is so low it’s a joke, since we know around 1,500 died in one election season in Louisiana. The problem is that the Freedman Bureau was the only one keeping records, and they were inconsistent and only covered half the period. Some counties kept very detailed tabulations, others were more glib. I remember reading one instance where they found a bunch of bodies of freedmen in the woods after an election and just recorded it as “too many to count.” Still, It’d be worthwhile if someone tried to do a statistical analysis to fill in the blanks. My own guess would be, conservatively, 10,000 people murdered in the period of Reconstruction, with a more likely figure of 20,000. That would make it comparable to some of the more aggressive dirty wars in South America, proportionally, which sounds about right. And generally the trend seemed to go from widespread stochastic, but relatively limited violence in the immediate postwar (e.g. “a freedman didn’t doff his cap at a woman and was shot today), to a few episodes of very acute violence in the later phases (like the Hamburg massacre), which I think speaks to the greater organization/institutionalization of the violence
Excellent comment.
The Bliss family goes waaaay back in Western Massachusetts, I think to the Mayflower. There’s a historical Bliss mansion, and a Bliss street in the town next to Springfield I grew up in. I had a very random connection to them recently, visiting in laws in Indiana who are very into racing cars and restoring vintage cars. We went to visit their garage workshop which is shared with another family, that family had recently acquired the original wagon thing that the Muppets band travels in in the movie (!!!) it had been rebranded with the logos of a company called “Bliss House”, which was a small company that licensed IP like the muppets and then re licensed the IP to people who wanted to make branded merch (Kermit backpacks or whatever). At some point they got the muppet mobile and used it for local Massachusetts parades and promotional stuff before it somehow ended up in a garage in central Indiana. Anyway, the Bliss’s probably are still and probably have been rich for like 400 years.
Saved by the Bell was based on a real Ms. Bliss?!?!
Fun fact: the rump faction that took over the NY Yippies were Unitarians
As always, enjoying the show. It is my understanding that many Blacks fled to South Sea Islands to form community and farm after Civil War. But their historic claims of ownership and deeds have been successfully contested by white developers in court. https://landtrustalliance.org/resources/learn/explore/the-gullah-geechee-have-owned-land-since-the-1800s-one-terrible-law-allows-their-land-to-be-stolen?queryID=002617b68bd042917e051fc8d64617a7
Yes, I checked out the current demographics of many Sea Islands and was surprised to find the population is overwhelmingly white. Apparently they became fashionable vacation destinations within the last 40 years.
Why was smallpox still a problem? This is 186ties, 140 years after inoculation came to North America and 60 years after vaccination was invented.
Poverty and remoteness. These areas of the south were incredibly poor and isolated from wealthy urban centers. Think about it, why do illnesses still thrive today in some regions despite vaccines existing? Poverty, lack of medical infrastructure, lack of established supply chains. Smallpox was far from eradicated at this time.
No direct link to the episode mp3?
click the three dots
We need this fat cat, smiling sailor photo
Emily Bliss, now that’s a name for a story
John, do you have info on the 99th infantry out of New York? From what I can see they were rejected by the general, then redeployed as a naval force. Anything you can shed light on is most welcome 🙏
I'll check it out.
As for the Sea Islands becoming a hot spot, don't underestimate cheap real estate with an ocean view and climate denial. I spent part of my childhood growing up on Chincoteague Island VA and was shocked to see it gain population in the last census after losing like half the island the decade prior
Can confirm that mosquitos in Astoria are way worse than in Harlem or inland Brooklyn
John’s point about how you’d think the South would’ve put more value on the Navy is especially interesting in light of Matt Karp’s book This Vast Southern Empire, which shows how the antebellum state departments and navy were basically totally controlled by Southern slaver interests. There were several key moments early in the war when USN ships nearly fell into Confederate hands, like when the Naval Academy packed up and fled Annapolis overnight, that could make for interesting hinge points in the civil war on water.
Is there a direct download link?
Stoked to get a Ross Mcelwee reference on RWN. Worlds colliding
A couple of years ago my family and I were driving to Hilton Head on vacation, and came across a billboard that read “Gen. Sherman and his Yankee Army are Terrorists, Arsonists, and Thieves!”
It's the present tense in that slogan that gets to me. He's not around anymore. Statute of limitations, mortality, etc.
Oh tremendous, I've just subscribed and been catching up on the Civil War collection. Having read Chernow's bio of Grant and hoping to hear some more about him (beyond just the Vicksburg campaign) as he really seems criminally underrated as a general.
I was just in Charleston a few weeks ago and can confirm it has, for the south, a remarkably temperate climate. The coastal breeze makes a huge difference. And in general Charleston is a very pretty, lush area. Downtown Charleston is creepy though, lots of meticulously maintained slave auction tourist attractions
Um there always used to be separate link to download this. Now I have to use a browser extension...
Had an issue with the server that's fixed now
I was waiting for a mention of "cottonclad" riverboats, with stacked bales of cotton as armor against musketballs and dismounted cavalry "marines". They must have been trying to find a use for all that surplus cotton.
That's incredible, and pretty daring given how flammable cotton is. That reminds me of a story from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, when they armor their ships with straw padding to draw Cao Cao's archers, retreat looking like pincushions, then recycle all the arrows.
Hope this isn't the last episode of the series, 2 more years and it will have lasted longer than the Confederacy.
I like how it's become an open-ended series they can dip back into. There's so much to learn about, it could - and should - go on forever.
Enjoy the episode as always. The tangent on how pivotal Lincoln's assassination was in rolling back reconstruction was excellent.
I'm sure most people know. But why is John constantly traveling?
I've heard he's either an 'Investment Consultant' for USAID, or that he's working to sow the seeds of international revolution... One of the two
Anyone know what they mean when they talk about the Navy Secretary being corrupt? Particularly these days?
My man. You gotta run the phrase “Fat Leonard” through the old Google search and enjoy what you find.
My mom has some people are from the Sea Islands. Lots of forced relocation of black people who had to move to N. Charleston.