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Historical Hypocrisy: The Confederacy's Weird Stance on "Individual Rights" · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's get uh, you know, Max,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: as our super producer, you run the sound cues. Can
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  Speaker 1: we get some like kind of military music, maybe like
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  Speaker 1: a little fife and a drum with your woo. Doesn't
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  Speaker 1: have to be good military, absolutely not, absolutely not so
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: what even as good military? I mean, you know, it's
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  Speaker 1: just meant to focus sense of patriotism. And further, I'm
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  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what good is, but I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: can definitely find a lot of bad. Yeah. I I
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: was in a surprisingly thorough conversation with some good friends
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  Speaker 1: over the weekend about the national anthem of the United States,
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  Speaker 1: which is the Star Spangled Banner and is objectively just
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  Speaker 1: kind of an awkward song most people, you know, every
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  Speaker 1: few years you'll see a ground swell of support, sometimes jokingly,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes serious, to change the national anthem to something like
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  Speaker 1: America the Beautiful, or you know, a song that feels
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  Speaker 1: a little less unwieldy in the mouth and the lungs.
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  Speaker 1: But it's gotta it's gotta got, it's gonna have a
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  Speaker 1: good mouth. Field. By the way, Yes, they called me
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  Speaker 1: ben in many parts of the country and abroad. And
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  Speaker 1: right now is we are recording we are based in
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  Speaker 1: the United States here at ridiculous history. Despite having fifty
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  Speaker 1: very widely varied states that comprise as the Union as
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  Speaker 1: well as territories and overseas possessions, the US is one country.
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  Speaker 1: A while back this was not the case. There was
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  Speaker 1: something called the Civil War in the United States, and
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  Speaker 1: had we had the Confederacy had its way, then they
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  Speaker 1: would be there would be two separate countries where the
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  Speaker 1: US is one today. And it's funny because spending so
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  Speaker 1: much time in the South, as the three of us have,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: we have all run into people who have their own
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  Speaker 1: kind of spin on the narrative of the Civil War.
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  Speaker 1: One of the most stereotypical you'll hear, and it is
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  Speaker 1: a true stereotype, is you'll hear people say something egregiously incorrect.
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  Speaker 1: They'll say, the Civil War was not really about the
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  Speaker 1: enslavement of human beings. It was about individual and state rights.
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  Speaker 1: And that's pretty much not the case. So so that's
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  Speaker 1: sort of what we wanted to explore today. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. That is definitely not the case,
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  Speaker 1: and just sort of like a whitewashed spin off and
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  Speaker 1: employed by people who reside in the South and maybe
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  Speaker 1: still maintain some sort of sense of patriotism around you know,
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  Speaker 1: their region. Nothing wrong with having a you know, pride
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  Speaker 1: in your history and where you grow up, but it's
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  Speaker 1: difficult and it's made complicated if you come from a
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  Speaker 1: tradition that has kind of steeped in racism and and
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  Speaker 1: an apologism for something as awful as slavery. So it
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  Speaker 1: makes sense that you want to flip the narratives. They know,
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  Speaker 1: actually it was about this other thing, but it definitely
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  Speaker 1: was about more than just slavery. It was about identity,
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  Speaker 1: it was about some of those states rights things. But
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  Speaker 1: the biggie that actually caused it to go into a
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  Speaker 1: full on hot you know war, was slavery. That was
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  Speaker 1: the biggest issue, right, And you can see people arguing
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  Speaker 1: that the causes for the conflict were much more nuanced,
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  Speaker 1: but ultimately came down to that. So when you hear
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  Speaker 1: a body say, well, there were a lot of economic
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  Speaker 1: factors of play, you have to realize that one of
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  Speaker 1: the big economic factors at play was indeed the practice
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  Speaker 1: of mass enslavement that was a part of the South's economy,
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  Speaker 1: and we wanted to look at the idea of individual rights,
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  Speaker 1: which are often touted as one of the causual factors
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  Speaker 1: leading to the Confederacy's attempt at secession from the Union.
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  Speaker 1: But as we're gonna find in today's episode, the Confederacy
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  Speaker 1: when it was around wasn't quite the champion of individual
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  Speaker 1: rights that later revisionists would claim it to be. Between
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  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two and eighteen sixty five, officers of the
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  Speaker 1: Confederate District of North Carolina confiscated and sold millions of
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  Speaker 1: dollars eighteen hundreds millions of dollars worth of property from
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  Speaker 1: North Carolinans who had been a used to be alien enemies. Right,
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  Speaker 1: that's a fun term. And when we're gonna dig a
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  Speaker 1: little deeper into today, all of the cash that was
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  Speaker 1: procured from the sale of those properties was then sent
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  Speaker 1: to Richmond, and a lot of it was just buried.
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  Speaker 1: It was essentially theft. There was never a paper trail
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  Speaker 1: as to what happened to that money. Many of the
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  Speaker 1: court officers of that area, like David Shank, for example,
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  Speaker 1: of Lincoln County, all of a sudden overnight became quite
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  Speaker 1: wealthy as as a result of imposing these laws. One
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  Speaker 1: particularly known as the Act of Sequestrations A great word.
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  Speaker 1: It makes me think of castration for some reason. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's essentially taking something from somebody and keeping it for yourself,
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  Speaker 1: you know, under the pretense of some sort of like
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  Speaker 1: legal framework, like well, you know, you're acting outside of
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  Speaker 1: the the bounds of the law, or it's sort of
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  Speaker 1: like maybe the levalent might be. Let's say there's like
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  Speaker 1: a drug lord or drug cartel money that's wrapped up
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  Speaker 1: in property, and then the d e A seizes it
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  Speaker 1: and they can justify doing that because they say, well,
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  Speaker 1: you broke the law, so therefore we now own what
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  Speaker 1: is yours and we will you know, funnel that money
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  Speaker 1: into whatever else or the very least confiscated. But this
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  Speaker 1: was like that without nearly as ironclad a defense and
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  Speaker 1: and not any paper trail. Yeah. And the modern version
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  Speaker 1: to various repo laws also have a lot of problems
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  Speaker 1: here in the States in twenty two. You know, often
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  Speaker 1: if you see a police car that looks really cool
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  Speaker 1: and tricked out and you're wondering how that how that
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  Speaker 1: department ended up with this absolute beast of a sports
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  Speaker 1: car as a cop car, it might have gotten repoed
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  Speaker 1: from a drug dealer. Also, there's a lot of litigation
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  Speaker 1: ongoing now regarding the idea that in certain rays of
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  Speaker 1: the country law enforcement can just take cash if they
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  Speaker 1: think it's suspicious, and it can be very difficult for people,
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  Speaker 1: even innocent people, to get that cash back. This law,
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  Speaker 1: this Confederate law, the active sequestration, was actually kind of
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  Speaker 1: a clapback. Oddly enough. It was a reaction to the
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  Speaker 1: law passed by the Union, the First Confiscation Act of
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  Speaker 1: August six, eighteen sixty one. This laid out a legal
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  Speaker 1: mechanism for Northern forces to take the property of Southerners
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  Speaker 1: if those Southerners were suspected of aiding the rebellion or
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  Speaker 1: if their property was being used to aid the rebellion. Now,
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  Speaker 1: think about the word property at this time, fellow ridiculous historians.
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  Speaker 1: This is not explicitly mentioned in the First Confiscation Act itself,
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  Speaker 1: but it was later you know, was widely understood and
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  Speaker 1: then officially confirmed by the Executive branch at the time
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  Speaker 1: that property included enslaved people. And this really peeled the
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  Speaker 1: Confederate forces because they said, hey, we're protecting individual rights,
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  Speaker 1: the rights of individuals, including property rights, and without a
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  Speaker 1: shred of irony, without a shred of acknowledgement of the
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  Speaker 1: Orwellian double thing. Here, the Southerners who said they had
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  Speaker 1: these individual rights also said that one of their individual
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  Speaker 1: rights was the ability to own other individual human beings.
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  Speaker 1: And they did not think that was weird, No, they
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  Speaker 1: should didn't. They thought it was just great. They really
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  Speaker 1: liked it. They they gotta bet the farm on that one,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: ben yeh. And thankfully they lost in a stunning turn
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  Speaker 1: of events. But that's not exactly where we're going today.
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  Speaker 1: Let's just talk about it's a clapback idea. That's the thing,
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  Speaker 1: right when you have like a war between the states,
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  Speaker 1: where you're technically existing under one government, but then one
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  Speaker 1: side decides, you know what, that government doesn't represent my interest.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to form our own. You've got a lot
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of things that are pretty much out of whack, and
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  Speaker 1: people writing rules as they go, and then you know,
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  Speaker 1: one side writes a rule and says, well, this is
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  Speaker 1: what we're abiding behind, how we're going to proceed, and
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  Speaker 1: then the other side gets to basically do the same.
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  Speaker 1: So you get a lot of one upsmanship and back
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  Speaker 1: and forth three and um chaos essentially ensues because there's
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  Speaker 1: really no rhyme or reason and it's all about who
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  Speaker 1: can Yeah, I I legally based on this you know,
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  Speaker 1: idea that we just came up, we can take your property.
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  Speaker 1: But the question becomes can you hold it? You know?
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  Speaker 1: The question becomes can you defend it? And what are
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  Speaker 1: you gonna do about it if I try to take
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  Speaker 1: it back? So it's it's all this like charade of
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  Speaker 1: legal ease that essentially is just like what war is.
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  Speaker 1: I take what's yours, you come back and me and
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  Speaker 1: you take what's mine, and we see how it all
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  Speaker 1: shakes out in the end. But let's talk about the
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  Speaker 1: idea of what is an alien enemy? Ben Like, that's
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  Speaker 1: another Orwellian double thing, the idea we all live in
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  Speaker 1: the same country and yet now all of a sudden,
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  Speaker 1: we're dealing with alien enemies. Right, Yeah, that's that's why
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  Speaker 1: just uh god. Not even a month after the Union
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  Speaker 1: passed the Confiscation Act, the Jefferson Davis administration running the Confederacy,
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  Speaker 1: they responded with the Confederate Active Sequestration that was August
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  Speaker 1: sixty one, This is where we get to those alien enemies.
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  Speaker 1: So they wanted to strike at northern financial interests within
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  Speaker 1: the Confederate States. And so they appointed these Confederate agents.
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  Speaker 1: And it was actually very easy to be appointed. We'll
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  Speaker 1: see it turns into a witch hunt. These Confederate agents
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  Speaker 1: would locate quote all in every lands, tenements, hereditiments, goods,
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  Speaker 1: and channels, rights and credits within those Confederate States, and
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  Speaker 1: every writing interest therein held owned, possessed, or enjoyed by
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  Speaker 1: or for any alien enemy. Uh So, first off, points
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  Speaker 1: to hereditaments. Yes, good lord, we've learned a new word today. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start using that with uh. The second want
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  Speaker 1: to shout out New York Times this. We're getting a
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  Speaker 1: lot of this from a great blog, the opinion Eat
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  Speaker 1: or Corruption in the Confederacy Rodney Steward written in So, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: no alien enemies. This is strange because they may well
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  Speaker 1: be talking about people who have grown up in the
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  Speaker 1: South right who just didn't support the Civil or didn't
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  Speaker 1: support the Confederacy in the Civil War. They also talked
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  Speaker 1: about clearly maybe people who did business, say in Georgia,
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  Speaker 1: but they were you know, their real home was in
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  Speaker 1: New York or something like that, and this idea was
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  Speaker 1: that they would it's almost like their nationalizing this stuff
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  Speaker 1: is what we would call it today, Right, they take it,
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  Speaker 1: it all go to the c s A, not your local,
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  Speaker 1: not your local fruit and veg delivery service, but the
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  Speaker 1: Confederate States of America, and then they would sell that
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  Speaker 1: off at an auction and the proceeds would go into
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  Speaker 1: a fund. And then if you were a loyal Confederate,
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  Speaker 1: you could submit a claim to get a cut of
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  Speaker 1: that pie, a piece of that pie, a cut of
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  Speaker 1: that So weird, so random, like well, I can't think
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  Speaker 1: of really any equivalent of that today or anything like it.
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  Speaker 1: Like it's it's very odd, like like what am I
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  Speaker 1: entitled to in that same way? I mean, is it
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  Speaker 1: sort of like insurance? Like what what what would your
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  Speaker 1: claim be? Like I am a loyal Confederate, therefore give
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: me money from this car? Or do we have to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: prove damages in some way? Is it like a like
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a class action lawsuit? Like I don't understand. It's very unclear,
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  Speaker 1: and I think that's by design, honestly, And I don't
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  Speaker 1: think we're gonna get an answer to this, Like the
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  Speaker 1: idea even of what idental what it meant to be
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  Speaker 1: a quote true and loyal citizen couldn't be any more vague.
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  Speaker 1: And then like this idea of indemnity, this indemnity clause,
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  Speaker 1: Like what are the criteria for making such a claim,
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  Speaker 1: and like what would entitle me to more or less
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  Speaker 1: than my fellow, you know, true and loyal citizen. Well,
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  Speaker 1: let's say, just for an example, this is a good question.
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  Speaker 1: So indemnity means security or protection against some kind of loss.
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  Speaker 1: So if you are a true Confederate, however nebulously defined,
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  Speaker 1: let's say that you lost your house or your farm
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  Speaker 1: in an attack or occupation by Union soldiers. In theory,
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  Speaker 1: you could go to the c s A And say,
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  Speaker 1: these Yankees took my stuff, I need a place for
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  Speaker 1: my family, I need funds to build something new or
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  Speaker 1: something like that. And then again, in theory, they would
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  Speaker 1: pony up the cash. However, you can already see this
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  Speaker 1: was very very right for corruption. True confederate might be
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: someone who knows the person at the Treasury Department she
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: was a charge of saying this claim is legit, and
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  Speaker 1: then boom, boom boom, one hand washes the other people
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  Speaker 1: are scratching their backs left and right figuratively. And there
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  Speaker 1: is no criteria in any of the writing about this.
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  Speaker 1: There's no criteria that tells tells the public what constitutes
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  Speaker 1: a true and loyal citizen. I think that's what we're
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: talking about when we say corruption. And they stole the
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  Speaker 1: idea of alien enemies from the North from the Federalist era.
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  Speaker 1: But but they couldn't they couldn't really use those definitions
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  Speaker 1: because the folks the Lincoln administration considered enemies they were
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: true foreigners, right, they were like from another country, Yeah, right, right,
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  Speaker 1: they were not aliens. And again I just have to
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: shout out all my fellow X Files Unsolved Mystery nerds. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: the bummer that they're saying aliens, but they mean people.
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  Speaker 1: As much as I want there to be uh an
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: extraterrestrial contingent in the Civil War in the US, so
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: far history proofs that it's not the case. So you know,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: that's what imaginations are for, Ben and I think, you know,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: feel free every time we say aliens. Just picture your
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: little green, tentacled or whatever creature of choice. But it's right,
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  Speaker 1: the Lincoln um administration couldn't use this law to address
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: what was happening in the Civil War, because their whole
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: kind of framework for the war and justification for the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: war was dependent on not treating the Southerners as aliens
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: or foreign invaders. It was to treat them as Americans.
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  Speaker 1: That was the whole point. It was a different kind
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of war. So the military prisons in the North were
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: starting to become overcrowded with Southern born citizens and Southern
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: residents from some of these occupied areas. They started to
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  Speaker 1: refer to them more as political prisoners rather than alien enemies,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: which is interesting because you noticed they didn't go immediately
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: to prisoners of war. They became political prisoners. The Confederacy
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: did not have the same compunction or hesitancy about calling
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: people from the North alien enemies, because you know, they're
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: on the other side of this argument. To them, the
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  Speaker 1: entire point of the conflict is to prove the South
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  Speaker 1: is its own distinct and separate nation, and there was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: pretty much a unanimous consensus that it was legally okay
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  Speaker 1: to take any Union property. They said, look, the US
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: is belligerent, it's actively a war with us, and that means,
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  Speaker 1: due to the laws of war, we can confiscate their stuff,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and they even consulted international law on this. They said,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: doing this will help us assert our sovereignty in a
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  Speaker 1: new way, and it will also allow us to move
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  Speaker 1: much more quickly than those jerks in the North because
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they won't call us alien enemies. But we have no
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: problem doing that to them. So, you know, if it
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you're a US citizen, we're at war
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  Speaker 1: with the US. So that means the under Confederate law,
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  Speaker 1: you're a foreigner, and yes we have a Confederate Constitution,
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  Speaker 1: but you do not get the protections of that. You alien,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you enemy. And Noah was safe from this either. I mean,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: no matter how big your wig was. I mean, they
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: were gonna take your stuff. You know, the cops were
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: gonna come and try to snatch your crops. And the
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: crops that got snatched worth even the ones on Monticello
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: didn't he grow hamp Thomas Jefferson made that Cypress Hill
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: reference there, uh of them snatching his crops because those
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: pigs wanted to blow his house down, and his house
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was Monticello, which was in Virginia, which is a you know,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: it's I think of Virginia as sort of that like
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: middle ground between the North and the South. You know,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: it's got sort of like a hybrid sensibility. You know,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it's a little more kind of a hippie kind of town.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Don't really think of them as pure Southerners. But then
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: you have to remember, like back in the day, Virginia
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: was like Tobacco Country. I mean, it really was still
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: very much the South the same way I kind of
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: think of like Missouri, you know, like it's sort of
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: straddles the divide between the two ideologies. But to the Confederates,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it was in their territory. So on October eleventh, eighteen
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: sixty one, the Richmond and Choir reported that a Confederate
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: court officially ruled that Monticello is fair game to be confiscated.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: If you guys don't know Monticello was, you know, it's
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: still a place I think you can visit today. But
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that was Thomas Jefferson's like, you know, uh, family estate
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and House of amorous Shame, which is a story for
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: another day, but one that is absolutely true or a
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: family show. So we'll go to two into it. Yeah, yeah,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: you can visit Monticello today. And this takes place just
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a few weeks after the Confederate Congress passes that act,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and at the time, of course, Thomas Jefferson is long gone.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Monticello is owned by a US Naval Captain Uriah P.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Levy of Pennsylvania, and whenever I hear Uriah, I always
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: think of the wonderful Grinch story. Check it out, and
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: then go check out the Grinch Halloween Special, which is
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: even weirder. Yeah, I love it. Halloween is indeed Grinch Night.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I think that's one of my favorite Dr. Seuss things.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I love it. I I still like, what does the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Grinch do? That's so scary? Anyway, I'll watch it again.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: He's just a spooky guy. He's an agent of chaos. Yeah. Uh.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Anyhow So, also before Dr Dr Seuss pronounced Dr Soyce,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: if you want to be a lot of fun at parties, uh,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: there were these two Virginians who were managing the estate
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: on behalf of Captain Levy. They were Joel Wheeler and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: George Carr. They were out of Charlottesville and be because
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Levy was a U. S citizen, the Confederates called him
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: an alien enemy. And because they called him an alien
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: enemy and not a true Confederate, all of his property
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: within the boundaries of the Confederacy was up for grabs.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: They were gonna take it. They were gonna sell it
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and give the proceeds to any true Confederate citizens who
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: had lost out something due to the war with the Union. Yeah,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and I apologize if I overstated the case there. This
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: was this was Thomas Jefferson's estate, but at this point
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: he no longer owned it, but it was still represented
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: that kind of northern ideology. Yeah. Uh. And and that's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and they knew this was a spectacle, right, this was
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a propagandistics move as well. So the Confederate courts that
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: have to make this law actually work. They seized the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: estate and it had three and sixty acres of land.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: They assessed it twenty dollars an acre, along with a house,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and they called other improvements and they put the price
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: there at two thousand, five hundred. Then they confiscated for
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the whole house. Well, yeah, but this is again, this
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is in the eighteen hundreds. Oh yeah, I know, it's
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: just still And then they also took any other property
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they could find the Captain Levy owned nearby, including nine
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: hundred sixty acres of land as well as eight horses,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: sixteen head of cattle, seventy eight sheep, thirty hogs, and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: then quote a lot of household and kitchen furniture. So
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: they took all this ikea stuff as well, perhaps most
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: notably ten enslaved people. Again, the Confederacy considered them property,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: so they took possession of these people. Then I think
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I understand my my confusion here there are two separate
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: figures of the house was thats just for the house
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and stuff inside of it, and the rest of it
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: was the lot and the land, which was twenty bucks
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: an acre um, which was like what around three hundred
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and sixty acres? Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, So that would
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: make the land itself about seven thousand, two hundred dollars.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And just so we can all get on the same
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: page mentally, because it is weird money and numbers, let
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: us pop this in the old handy dandy inflation calculator.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Carry the one. Guys, I want to do some jokes too,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: but I'm actually doing the math. Math is the greatest
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: joke of all, all right, I had to hang out
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: for a second actually actually do the calculations. So this
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: gets us to a grand total of just under ten
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Illusion, we have a we have a thing.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I was allowed to participate in imagine. I had to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: do the math. So it's nine thousand, seven hundred dollars.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: That's the equivalent two hundred and twenty eight thousand, five
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: hundred eighty nine dollars in twenty five cents, which is
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. But you know, also it mightself
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: it sounds weird, isn't it, because maybe it's the housing
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: prices exploding in the US today, But that there are
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who say, that's not a bad
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: deal for all that land and a house. But here's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the thing. It wasn't like this was actually benefiting the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: little guys, the little Confederate people's you know, this is
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: all mainly design based on the size of your wig,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: you know, like how how much you were going to
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: benefit from these seizures, how much you were going to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: be able to build that quote unquote public funds? Right, yeah, yeah,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So they ran into a lot of corruption, like we said,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: they also they ran into some unexpected difficulties figuring out
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: what was Northern owned property and where it was located.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Because the Confederates, the authorities at least had to rely
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: on volunteered information. In many cases, ordinary Confederate citizens true
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: or otherwise, if if they thought that somebody is withholding
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: information and not playing ball or not playing the fife
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: as it were at this time, then those Confederate officials
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: had these enormous legal powers to search out and find
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: property to confiscate. This is where it becomes a witch hunt.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: There were two newly created parts of the Confederate d
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: o J. Department of Justice called receivers and Federal Grand Juries.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: So receivers are like our inquisitors here. They go out
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and they chase down rumors. I'm doing my arms like
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: this because it's like you're riding a horse or whatever. Yeah,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: they cup. They go out and they chase down these
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: wisp of speculation, and they say, okay, we're gonna find
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: stuff that might belong to a northerner on the other side,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: kind of like law and Order has the cops and
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: then the and then the courts. Doom doom. The federal
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: grand juries interrogate people whose loyalty is suspect, And the
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: problem with that is anybody's loyalty could be considered suspect,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: so there's no real oversight there's nobody really stopping them.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: This is to the point where like if you were
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: influential in a federal grand jury and you're going to
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: pursue the affections of maybe say someone you wanted to
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: marry but she preferred some other guy to you, then
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: you could literally go to your buddies on the court
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and say, you know who is probably not a true confederate.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: This guy keeps hitting on Amelia and they would be like,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: sounds legit, and hey, you know, maybe I'm beat unfair.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe that wasn't the case. We'll never know because they
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: left like no paperwork. This was no paper trail situation. Yeah,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: we sort of alluded to that from the start, the
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: idea that that's where corruption can run the most rampant
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of them. There's no oversight or the very least no
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: accountability where you can't really tell where the money is
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: going where it came from the idea of that you mentioned,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: which hunt Ben, because that's what it becomes when it's
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: just word of mouth. I could say, hey, Ben's a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Union loyalist, you know, and he owns this tool shed
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: over there in the next neighborhood. You better go grab it.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: They're probably just gonna grab it. Is it war anyway?
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: They're trying to justify it with some sort of vague
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: claim of like ownership or some vague claim of like justice,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and like, oh, we we have to do
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: this in order to protect our people. But it's really
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: all just about it as a cash grab and it's
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: a way to enrich the already rich. And then what
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: are you gonna like, you're gonna dispute it where where
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: are you gonna fill out this document in this this
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: comment card? So actually you you totally confiscated my property unlawfully,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: because it's all unlawful. It's all about which side is
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: saying that it's lawful. It's lawful based on our rules,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it's completely unlawful based on your rules. It's like the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: whole freedom fighter versus terrorist argument, or the way David
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Busters can say that David Busters card counts his currency
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: in their store, but not anywhere else. I've tried it,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: don't do it. So and the exchange rates is vague
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: because like you know, the David Busters, it's not like
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: a game cost like cents, and you know what that
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: amounts to on the card, it's some fraction of a
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: credit that is always changing and influx sort of like
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: buying airline tickets with like sky miles. It's all up
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to them to decide what the exchange rate is and
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you never really can bank on it or no depend
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: on what it's going to be from day to day.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: And this obstucation worked really well for UH, for airlines
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: and David Busters and for the Confederate government. So the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: the bureaucracy here was super complex. We know that, but
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the receivers don't usually leave a record of how they
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: got involved with seizing property these grand juries. They had
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: secret identities, so they were not accountable to the public
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: any interrogations they had where they kept minutes or notes.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Those written notes were destroyed after each and every session.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: There were no detailed records of all the property that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: had been taken, and there was no real visibility into
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: how much each property sold for an auction. Receivers only
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: talked about the properties that were sold. So this all
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: exists under a very corrupt umbrella of enigma and shadowy dealings.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: It was kind of like the Ppe loan controversy, right,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: who gets the money? We can't tell you. So again
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: we know that there may have also been conflicting definitions
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: of loyal confederate and alien enemy, depending on which official
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you asked, how messed up is that, Like, well, this
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: family has been here for four generations, they're true Confederates,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: they're older than the Confederacy. Or yeah, I know this
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: guy is in the Confederate Army now, but I don't
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: think he's a true Confederate because I don't like the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: way he says you all, or something like that. Could
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: be that arbitrary doesn't quite sit right with me. No, no,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it doesn't. So these judges, for example, could absolutely rule
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: with an iron fists. Their word was was binding at least,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: you know, in at the time, under these circumstances, and
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: there were Confederate judges. Asa Biggs, for example, was the
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: judge of the North Carolina Confederate District Court. He appointed
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: every single officer in his court in North Carolina personally,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: and that included the virulently secessionist David Shank, who will
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: become a very interesting case study in the depths of
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: of corruption and that this whole arrangement created. So the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: classification of the Union as this these foreign alien enemies
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: was very, very very important. Had a lot of far
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: reaching kind of implications. So while the North had similar
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: apparatus that that that would assess individuals loyalties and and
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and do chain of custody on property in order to confiscate,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the South had no such apparatus, So they could essentially
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: confiscate a property without ever having the individual have their
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: day in court, you know, literally. So they had a
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: very very aggressive system of confiscation, and they did it
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: pretty much willy nilly. By eighteen sixty five, the Confederacy
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: had seized and sold millions of dollars worth of property
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: worth of Northern property that was located all over the South.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And let's remember our our our handy dandy inflation calculator
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: segment where Monticello was basically valuated the two d and
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollar range we're talking, and that was,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: you know, a really pretty nice place. We're talking millions
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: of dollars in eighteen sixties and money. So this is
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: an absolute feeding frenzy. And this is where this is
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: where David Shank becomes unfortunately an excellent example for our purposes,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: because earlier I had said, you know, pretty much all
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the receivers with very few exceptions didn't leave a written
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: record of their activities. Shank is a little bit different
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: because he did write things down. He didn't have the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: most prestigious beginnings. He was a middle class lawyer by
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: no means a wealthy guy. He was struggling and he
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: got put out of work because of something called the
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Stay Act in North Carolina. This decimated or reduced by
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: a factor of ten, the number of cases and the
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: types of cases that could go to the court. He
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: did have a small farm on the outskirts of link Inton.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: He owned no slaves. He started working as a receiver
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: in the Western Piedmont and just and this was in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: September eighteen sixty two. In just a few days after
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: he started, he began bragging to himself in his diary.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: He said, I've already sold twenty thousand dollars worth of
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: sequestered real estate, and that was bigger than the value
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of all the taxable property into local counties combined. We
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: know that other receivers like c In White, sold three
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: hundred fifty four acres of cotton land for five dollars
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: an acre at an auction. And then if we use
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: see in White's numbers as a reference, we know that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Shank would have sold four thousand acres of land around
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the same time period, and then he started buying enslaved people,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and then he started buying land to build a new house.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: And at the end of just one year he estimated
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: his earnings to be nine thousand dollars. So whatever their
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: ideology may have actually been, these receivers were making money
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: hand over fist, and there was like it was just
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: so corrupt. It was so corrupt individual rights went out
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the window. Well, so also think about like I mean
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: again back to the inflation. You know, if you're amassing
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: this level of wealth by taking it from others, you know,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: in theory, you're amassing what will become generational wealth. They
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: will be passed down to you know, future members of
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: your family, and that will appreciate and become like, you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the makings of an empire. That's what this guy Shank
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: was doing. Wouldn't you say, yeah, yeah, let's look at
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: how dirty the money gets here as well. So I'm
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: laughing because uh, he was paid in Confederate currency, is
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the issue, and Confederate currency was depreciating pretty rapidly, like
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: on a daily basis. But we know it reminds me
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: of that palette of US dollars. There was like a
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: billion dollars that just disappeared during either the Gulf War
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan. Because yeah, because there's no oversight,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: we have to kind of guess at the gaps and
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: read between the financial lines. So his district only sent
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: three thousand, six hundred ten dollars and cents to the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Confederate Treasury in eighteen sixty two. Official records say he
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: was paid just under three to cover his expenses while
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: he was working as a receiver, so like you know,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: his per diem. Basically, there is no evidence that all
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the money from confiscated property sold at auction ever made
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: it to this sequestration fund. So what seems to be
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: the case, and not to not cast unfair aspersion, but
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: what seems to be the case is that these guys
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: saw the opportunity in the chaos and they just started
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: seizing stuff, selling it, maybe putting a little bit into
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the community kitty, but then keeping the rest for themselves.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, that's almost certainly what happened,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: at least in this guy's case, which leads to another question. Noel,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: who was buying all this stuff. Who who is like
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: saying They're saying, well, I know there's a war on,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: but I always kind of liked Monticello. Yeah, let's get
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: a deal, you know, why not. So in Wilmington's you
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: had a guy named du Brutes Cutler's great great name.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: He was seizing real estate that belonged to J. B.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Allen when one of their neighbors, a guy named William Gordon,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: accused Allan of being this loyal there's the weares of
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the witch hunt kicks in the full swinging. When Cutler
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: auction the property of Alan, it was then bought by
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: William Gordon. So in Union County, a receiver by the
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: name of C. N. White sold mineral rights, which we
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: know is a thing. It's basically like life rights for
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: a story, but it's the right to drill, you know,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: on a piece of property, the rights you know, for
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: a certain period of time, on two acres of land
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to a fellow named Robert Hall Morrison, who was the
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: father in law of the General's Daniel Harvey Hill and
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. You might have heard him. Morrison
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: had acquired this land bordering land that he had purchased
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: from White. Um. So Shank came out of the Civil
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: War owning six lots in lincolnn and uh lots of
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: other smaller parcels nearby. Um, what happened to the officers
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: of the North Carolina District Court, you might be asking yourself. Well,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: du Brutes cutler Um such a great name, and Asa
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Biggs were lawyers in tar Borough and Wilmington, And David
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Shank was a lawyer in Lincolnton after the war, and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: he would go on to become a superior court judge
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: for the ninth Judicial District and also the leader of
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan. Yeah, in western North Carolina. So
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: back to what I said, I mean he he had
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: amassed what would amount to a lifelong legacy of property
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: and wealth that is clearly wrapped up in pretty awful
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: racism and uh just terrible nous all around. Yeah, that's
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: what I would say it the whole time. It's it
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter how people felt about the philosophical differences or
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: ideological differences between the North and the South. At that time,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: it was inescapably inarguably corrupt. And it was also due
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: to the the statements of later revisionists. It was also
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: clearly a hypocritical endeavor. Individual rights were not being respected
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: in any shape, form or fashion here except when it
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: was convenient to do so, which makes it, officially I
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: posit ridiculous history. And there's much more we could go
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: into in this regard, but I think this is where
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: we wrapped the story up for today. It is also,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: to be fair, it is also very common in any
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: conflict for a lot of corruption to occur, for a
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff to go missing, just like the palette
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: of money I mentioned earlier, that's a true story from
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: modern history. Or just like you know, munitions, property, anything
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: can be up for grabs. But luckily I've got one
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: thing that's not up for grabs, which is you are
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: fantastic ridiculous historians. Thank you as always for tuning in.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Thanks also to our superproducer, the one and only Mr
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Max Williams, who just kissed the sky. That was just
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Also, hughs. Thanks Chris
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Frosciodas here in spirit He's Jeff Coats, Jonathan Strickler, and
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the quiz sterre he may ever, ever, may he rain
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: in quiz quizzendom Man. Thanks to you, Ben, this was
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: a weird one, fun one, but I think important one. Agreed. Agreed, Max,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: you want to want to play us out with some
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: more of that terrible, purposely terrible music. See your next time, folks.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
• 39:47
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• 39:50
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.