Radio War Nerd EP #378 — The US Civil War, Part 14: The USCT (US Colored Troops)

I live in the town that John Brown was born in. I think he would have been very proud that the USCT were literally singing his praises as they marched into Richmond. Then again, any rational person would be. There are still a few of us, especially those in his hometown, who believe that John acted rationally, and we are proud of John Brown.

great episode.

It fills me with no small amount of pride thinking of my ancestors fighting for their own and my freedom. I’m only sad that so many black people still think the US military has anything but a guilty conscience to offer them.

I’m not sure I agree that the Confederacy could have raised black soldiers (at least in any serious numbers: I don’t think the thesis that *no* black men would have been willing to serve is defensible). Slaves realized pretty quickly that the war was fundamentally abolitionist a lot quicker than Northern whites did. That’s why they kept fleeing to union lines even before Butler came up with the confiscation fig leaf. Yes, previous slave powers had been able to raise slave soldiers, but the context was very different. The closest historical analogue I can think of is the Haitian Revolution, where all the major imperial European powers offered groups of slaves (usually already in arms) freedom in return for service. Touissant himself ping ponged back and forth between service to Spain and France. But the equivalent to the Confederacy freeing slaves in this context would be the local plantation owners, the grand blancs, offering freedom in return for military service. Yes, just like with the Confederacy, the grand blancs would never have done that. But also just like the Confederacy, I don’t think the slaves would ever have believed them even if they had offered. Neither group was willing to tolerate free blacks, and everyone knew it.

I think I recall an old eXile Kino Korner review of Cold Mountain. It was pretty funny.

White southern elites wanted war, got it, got their asses handed to them, and haven’t shut the fuck up about losing since

My dad's a Civil War buff but he didn't know that Garibaldi business, that's incredible.

Great ep!

Ames calling john James Bond for driving a stick shift was hilarious🤣

May this never end :)

Had no idea Garibaldi was the original Belle Delphine.

Awesome episode - Just visited Petersburg in March (inspired very much by this series!) and can verify that the crater is still very visible, although eroded. The pictures put up by the park service are difficult to square with the real site in my mind’s eye. (Park service has great resources, highly recommend the battlefields) One senses that people were indeed smaller then (having visited burnsides bridge, I cannot imagine it possible to fit men 4-abreast on that thing) but that can’t quite account for the odd discrepancy of the reported dimensions of the crater vs what I saw remaining. Like, Lee was 6ft, 190lbs and while tall, wasn’t considered gigantic as far as I know. Something about the scale of Petersburg and the historical pictures just don’t seem to match. William Hogeland says something early on in “autumn of the black snake” that I like - that visiting sites can’t actually put us in that lost mental geography. Petersburg really drove that home for me (Also Nice Senator Jim Lane shoutout! Go Jayhawk(er)s!)

Had no idea that gamer girl bathwater had historical precedent https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/belle-delphine-gamer-girl-instagram-selling-bath-wate

Just 3 1/2 more years and then this series will have lasted longer than the confederacy