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Rafters · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone in Hanoi's neighborhood had a secret in their garage.
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  Speaker 1: Each family worked under cover of night, bringing strange materials
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  Speaker 1: from their workplaces. Boil drums, styrofoam, old car engines. They
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  Speaker 1: used whatever they could find. It was August of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety four in Havana, Cuba. Food and other resources were scarce.
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  Speaker 1: The people longed for a better life, and it was
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  Speaker 1: only one hundred miles to Florida, one hundred miles of choppy,
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  Speaker 1: shark infested water, but they were willing to take the chance.
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  Speaker 1: Many garages how secret bus us makeshift rafts that families
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  Speaker 1: could use to send loved ones to America. The name
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  Speaker 1: is derived from the cheap, flimsy balsa wood some Cubans
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  Speaker 1: used to construct their rafts. The government didn't approve of
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  Speaker 1: its citizens leaving the country, though so they kept tight
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  Speaker 1: control over materials such as plywood and inner tubes, and
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  Speaker 1: so the people used what they had. The rafts were
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  Speaker 1: as numerous as they were strange. Some were barely better
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  Speaker 1: than a cork bobbing in an ocean, truly just a
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  Speaker 1: square of foam and aluminum, but some were more elaborate too.
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  Speaker 1: Entire cars were hollowed out and then placed between two
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  Speaker 1: rows of floating oil drums. Hanoi and his family members
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  Speaker 1: worked on their raft in secret. They used tar as
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  Speaker 1: an adhesive to attach blocks of styrofoam to a wooden frame.
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  Speaker 1: An old shower curtain was used to line the interior.
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  Speaker 1: Hanoi would try alone in the small compartment. The thought
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  Speaker 1: filled him with anxiety and despair. He might drown or
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  Speaker 1: die of thirst, or be eaten by sharks. Even if
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  Speaker 1: he was successful, he might never see his family again.
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  Speaker 1: But they wanted this for him. They wanted him to
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  Speaker 1: have a future, and as it turns out, they didn't
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  Speaker 1: have to bring the raft to the ocean. Under the
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  Speaker 1: cover of night. On August eighth of nineteen ninety four,
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  Speaker 1: the country's leader, Fidel Castro, lifted the emigration ban, allowing
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  Speaker 1: Cuba citizens to flee on their rafts without fear of capture.
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  Speaker 1: People like Hanoi and his family lined up along the
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  Speaker 1: country's beautiful beaches, preparing to say goodbye. The sunrises in
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  Speaker 1: Cuba are magnificent and the ocean is bright blue. But
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  Speaker 1: of course you can't eat the view, and so Hanoi's
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  Speaker 1: family fed him a simple meal of rice and beans,
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  Speaker 1: and then helped him into the raft. They pushed him
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  Speaker 1: off and into the ocean. He waved and waved, not
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  Speaker 1: stopping until Cuba and his family were a dot on
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  Speaker 1: the and then he got to rowing. The trip could
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  Speaker 1: be completed in about a day and a half. The
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  Speaker 1: shorter the better. Of course, the rice and beans were
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  Speaker 1: all the food his family had. It would be his
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  Speaker 1: last meal unless he could reach America. Similarly, he didn't
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  Speaker 1: have any drinking water, and unfortunately, the choppy waves meant
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  Speaker 1: that not even the rice and beans would stay in him.
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  Speaker 1: He soon got sick and threw up over the side
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  Speaker 1: of the raft, and as he traveled he could see
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  Speaker 1: other rafts dotting the ocean. He and the other sailors
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  Speaker 1: encouraged one another, but as night fell and darkness surrounded him,
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  Speaker 1: he could no longer see them. However, he could hear screams.
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  Speaker 1: All of these balsaros, the Spanish name for rafters, soon
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  Speaker 1: found that some of the rafts were better designed than others.
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  Speaker 1: Some were little more than a frame, and the blsaro's
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  Speaker 1: feet dangled into the water, and at nighttime, hungry sharks
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  Speaker 1: took advantage of this. More than one Balsaros lost a
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  Speaker 1: limb or their life. When morning came, Hanoil was alone.
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  Speaker 1: He continued rowing, pushing himself in the heat. His mouth
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  Speaker 1: was dry and his hands were blistered, but he kept
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  Speaker 1: on rowing. Finally, mercifully, land appeared on the horizon. It
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  Speaker 1: was Florida. He was nearly there, but now he was
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  Speaker 1: sharing the water with a very different type of sailor.
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  Speaker 1: The United States Coastguard descended on Hanoi and his fellow bolsaro's.
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  Speaker 1: President Clinton had ordered that they be rounded up and
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  Speaker 1: taken to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. They would not be
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  Speaker 1: allowed into the United States as their predecessors had in
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  Speaker 1: the sixties, seventies, and eighties, The country, they seemed to say,
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  Speaker 1: no longer had room for them. There were thirty thousand
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  Speaker 1: detainees in total. The thought of returning to Cuba was
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  Speaker 1: heart wrenching, but being kept at Guantanamo actually had its upsides.
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  Speaker 1: The soldiers there provided the Cuban refugees with tents, food,
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  Speaker 1: and water, but it was excruciatingly boring to wait in
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  Speaker 1: the hot, dry, dusty camp while the world powers argued
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  Speaker 1: what to do with Hanoi and his countrymen. All he
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  Speaker 1: could do was hope, and ultimately that was enough. After
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  Speaker 1: nearly a year, the Clinton administration relented and allowed the
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  Speaker 1: Cuban refugees into the United States. Hanoi's long ordeal was over.
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  Speaker 1: Now he could begin the equally hard work of building
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  Speaker 1: a new life for himself. But that was what he
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  Speaker 1: had always wanted. The ingenuity of his family and his
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  Speaker 1: curiosity in facing the unknown finally delivered him to America.
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  Speaker 1: On December twentieth of eighteen sixty, South Carolina seceded from
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  Speaker 1: the United States. They was the first of eleven states
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  Speaker 1: to secede, which would form the Confederate States of America
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  Speaker 1: and kick off the American Civil War. Their secession, by
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  Speaker 1: the way, was all because they wanted to keep owning
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  Speaker 1: and enslaving other human beans, beans, refusing them rights and
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  Speaker 1: dignity and freedom. You'll often hear it said that the
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  Speaker 1: Civil War was about states' rights, but folks who say
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  Speaker 1: that rarely elaborate. The state right that South Carolina and
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  Speaker 1: all the others wanted to protect was their right to buy, sell,
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  Speaker 1: and use other human beings. South Carolina said so right
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  Speaker 1: in their declaration of secession. The fourth state to secede
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  Speaker 1: was Alabama on January eleventh of eighteen sixty one. The
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  Speaker 1: vote in Alabama was sixty one to thirty nine in
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  Speaker 1: favor of secession. However, when the vote was secured and
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  Speaker 1: the state officially decided to leave the Union, there was
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  Speaker 1: one holdout in the Alabama House of Representatives. Christopher Sheetz,
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  Speaker 1: a school teacher in his early twenties, refused to sign
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  Speaker 1: the ordinance. He was the sole representative of Winston County
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  Speaker 1: and his county did not want to secede. The push
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  Speaker 1: towards secession was driven by slaveholding plantation owners, and Winston
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  Speaker 1: County was not a large participant in that system. A
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  Speaker 1: county of less four thousand people, it only had fourteen
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  Speaker 1: slaveholders in around one hundred and twenty enslave people within
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  Speaker 1: their county lines, a vanishingly tiny portion of their already
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  Speaker 1: small population. Christopher Sheets was ultimately imprisoned for treason against
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  Speaker 1: the Confederacy for this, but spent the entire war awaiting trial. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: his home county became an ideological battleground in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of a civil war. Not long after Alabama's secession, Winston
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  Speaker 1: County residents loyal to the Union gathered in Looney's tavern,
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  Speaker 1: where they declared it the Free State of Winston. The gathering,
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  Speaker 1: while informal, declared Sheets a hero for opposing secession, and
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  Speaker 1: said that if Alabama could secede from the United States, well,
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  Speaker 1: then Winston County could secede from Alabama. That same year,
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  Speaker 1: an opposing gathering of Confederate sympathizers occurred, where they wrote
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  Speaker 1: a petition to the governor asking for his support to
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  Speaker 1: quell the growing Union sentiment in their county. They said
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  Speaker 1: that citizens needed to be forced to swear a loyalty
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  Speaker 1: oath to the Confederacy. Starting in eighteen sixty two, the
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  Speaker 1: Confederate government attempted to force Winston County residents, even those
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  Speaker 1: who supported neither the Union nor the Confederate sides, to enlist.
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  Speaker 1: Many wound up fleeing north, joining the first Alabama cavalry
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  Speaker 1: with the Union Army. Enough farmers fled conscription that Winston
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  Speaker 1: County farms struggled to grow enough food for their remaining residents,
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  Speaker 1: a problem that worsened when Confederate soldiers confiscated food for
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  Speaker 1: their own use as they passed on through. For the
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  Speaker 1: next several years, conflicts broke out across the county. It
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  Speaker 1: was the target of several raids from both Union and
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  Speaker 1: Confederate units. Neighbors turned against neighbors. There was little strategic
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  Speaker 1: value to this northern Alabama county, nor were there any
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  Speaker 1: huge political values to its capture. All the same, the
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  Speaker 1: county became a microcosm for the war itself. Families found
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  Speaker 1: themselves split down the middle, and even after the end
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  Speaker 1: of the war in eighteen sixty five, when the South lost,
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  Speaker 1: tensions remained between neighbors who had served on opposite sides
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  Speaker 1: during the conflict. Christopher Sheetz was let out of prison
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  Speaker 1: and attempted a rocky return to politics that concluded with
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  Speaker 1: him serving in the House of Representatives in the eighteen
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  Speaker 1: seventies and briefly served as the US ambassador to Denmark.
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  Speaker 1: Like the rest of the country, Winston County did its
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  Speaker 1: best to move on from the turmoil of Civil War,
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  Speaker 1: but the reminders of its particular role in the conflict
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  Speaker 1: remained to this present day, most prominently in a memorial
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  Speaker 1: statue in front of their courthouse. The statue depicts a
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  Speaker 1: Civil War era soldier whose uniform is split down the middle,
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  Speaker 1: half Union, half Confederate. The statue bears the title Dual Destiny.
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  Speaker 1: There's a lot to say about the Free State of
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  Speaker 1: Winston and its unique history. If the rallying cry of
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  Speaker 1: the South in the Civil War was states' rights, it
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  Speaker 1: should be abundantly ironic that they tried so hard to
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  Speaker 1: suppress a county that asserted its own independence in the
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  Speaker 1: face of a state in active rebellion. The county never
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  Speaker 1: actually seceded from the Confederacy. It remained officially Confederate territory
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  Speaker 1: until the end of the war, but not by signing
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  Speaker 1: a single piece of paper. Sheets determined that his county
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  Speaker 1: would retain its integrity after the war. In the long
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  Speaker 1: arc of history, a rebellion, even a symbolic one, can
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  Speaker 1: carry real weight. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by
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  Speaker 1: me Aaron Mankey in partnership with iHeart Podcasts researched and
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  Speaker 1: written by the Grim and Mild team and produced by
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  Speaker 1: Jesse Funk. Learn more about the show and the people
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  Speaker 1: who make it over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores and online, as well
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  Speaker 1: as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an
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  Speaker 1: ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the
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  Speaker 1: same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee.
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  Speaker 1: Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com
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  Speaker 1: slash Grimanda and until next time, stay curious. Mm hmm.