Caleb Can't Read
Caleb Can't Read
Episode 90: Harriet Beecher Stowe
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TW: Abuse, Dead kids, Suicide, Torture
Ah, yes. Here on this wonderful 4th of July weekend, as we celebrate the country's 250th birthday, Nicole and I are here to remind you-- in case you didn't know-- that America was not always such an uncontroversial place. Indeed, there was even a time that our nation could've been called inept, backwards, and our leadership so deep in corruption that having a dead goldfish in the Oval Office would've done less damage to our people than whatever the hell they're doing now. But as those times luckily are so far in the past, allow us to introduce you to the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", and her family's rivalry against the South, Harriet Beecher Stowe!
Welcome to Caleb Can't Read. I'm Jordan Rabel.
SPEAKER_01I'm Nicole Rabel, and I'm doing what I'm told. Good job.
SPEAKER_04Here on this glorious 4th of July. And so I figured, um, yeah, you you might hear some background noise, but for some reason I feel like for a lot of people there's not too much to celebrate about this country. So I'm really not hearing a whole hell of a lot for past eight o'clock.
SPEAKER_01Are you kidding, Jordan? That's the new thing is the war on Independence Day.
SPEAKER_04Ah oh, it's not the war on Christmas anymore, even though we had it like if you say happy fourth, it is a bastardization of our American rights. We did hear your mother say that today. Yes, fucking weird. Like somebody went out their way to say Happy Fourth of July, and they were like happy independence day.
SPEAKER_01Because they don't get given real problems to be mad about.
SPEAKER_04I know.
SPEAKER_01They're they're blinded by the by Well, so blinded by the the culture war.
SPEAKER_04Uh wrapped up like a douche. Alright, so let's get started, shall we? I figured this would be a good a good one to go with for 4th of July, just to remind us all about our great nation's history.
SPEAKER_02Oh god.
SPEAKER_04Alright, ready? Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born June 14th, 1811, in Lichfield, Connecticut, to her mother Roxanna and her father Lyman. As will happen in our episodes here on Caleb Can't Read, Harriet's mother Roxanna passed away when Harriet was only five years old, leaving behind eleven fucking children.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's why she died, right?
SPEAKER_04I would imagine Christ! Well, her open wound ain't fucking healing. Harriet's father Lyman, on the other hand, was already a well-known name by the time of her birth. Lyman Beecher was a Calvinist preacher earning the meager sum of $400 a year, about eight grand today, which wasn't good even back then. However, the trade-off was that Lyman was also paid in firewood. And I'm sure I'm sure Hey, let's mitigate our circumstances here for a minute. Just fucking I'm I'm sure that sounds a bit strange when you first think about it. But when fire is your main source of light and heat, you're gonna go through a lot.
SPEAKER_01I am still stuck on 11 kids, and now you're dropping this on me. Like that woman was a worker factory. Getting and her only benefit was just feeling a little bit toasty.
SPEAKER_04How much to bury her doctor? About two bundles of hay. What is a bundle of sticks? We're not gonna go into that. Frankly, chopping that much wood would be a tremendous pain in the ass when you think about it. Like for heating for 11 children, no longer a wife as well to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01What do the people who chop the firewood get?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. Fuck them though. They're they're they're poor. Still, since Simply Preaching wasn't paying the bills, Lyman got to work on publishing his sermons on certain subjects. Things like drunkenness and dueling were seen as modern issues against morality. And Lyman's pamphlets would actually earn the family quite a bit of fame. Enough so that these works got translated as they made their way throughout Europe as well.
SPEAKER_01If you uh run out of firewood, you could start burning those pamphlets.
SPEAKER_04You start burning your kids too. Like how many fucking kids. Jimmy, give me your arm.
SPEAKER_01But then who will run your fields? Who will chop your firewood?
SPEAKER_04That's why people had so many kids back then. I hate to say it, they're working factories.
SPEAKER_01Because women were worker factories.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, quit saying it like it's a bad thing. You didn't have anything to do, says Jordan Peterson. Women have never once had a bad point in history. So just calm your fucking ovaries, please. Now, when Harriet turned 21 in 1832, she moved to Cincinnati to join her father, who called the city, quote, the London of the West. Cincinnati. I I have a feeling the food also sucks in Cincinnati, so maybe it wasn't wrong. But there, Harriet was lucky enough to attend a school that was run by her older sister Catherine. And after graduating, she started teaching there as well, while also attending the Lane Theological Seminary, where her father Lyman had recently become president. You see, Unitarianism was beginning to sweep the nation. You know what Unitarians are?
SPEAKER_01Unitards.
SPEAKER_04Damn, it kinda it kind of that's a good one.
SPEAKER_01Also, I think it's funny that her father was a preacher named Lyman.
SPEAKER_04Why?
SPEAKER_01Because he lies, man.
SPEAKER_04That's dumb. Going in time out after this. So Unitarians, though, are basically, and it's funny because my coworker actually grew up Unitarian, and when I was like, oh, what was like you and normal? Oh, dude, they're they're like the most chill fucking people. Their whole thing is basically like, yeah, dude, like the you know how there's that whole thing where like any college professor talking about fucking um world religions always just says, like, yeah, you know, uh every religion just has the same basic rules. Be good to yourself and to others, and everything else is just commentary. That's literally what Unitarianism preaches as their own thing.
SPEAKER_01So I feel bad now for saying what I said.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, they're dumbasses. Oh you see, no, no, Protestant is where it is. No, I'm kidding. But it's just it's funny because I was like, so what did you do in church all day? And they were just like, honestly, we just kind of had a little sermon of like, y'all still being chill about it? Alright. Here's veggie tales, you know. It's kind of neat. Well, it's basically someone uh oh, I guess I wrote it down as an explanation better than that. It's basically someone who rejects the idea of the holy trinity, seeing Jesus as more of a great teacher, but not any more holy than anyone else, because everybody is holy. God is in everything, you know. Hearsey. Well, Lyman Beecher.
SPEAKER_01Is it hersey? Is that how you say that? I always thought it was heresy.
SPEAKER_04Hersey?
SPEAKER_01Are you saying heresy or are you saying hersey? Or is it a completely different term?
SPEAKER_04We're gonna move on. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm at least I know how more educated than my wife. Well, I am, but I still don't know how to say hersey, heresy.
SPEAKER_04Well, Lyman Beecher was at the forefront of the war against Unitarianism, publishing pamphlets and giving speeches throughout the United States about it. Well, the board of directors at the Lane Theological Seminary were so impressed that they wanted him to be president. But Lyman declined. Why? Because the Lane Theological Seminary was Protestant.
SPEAKER_01But when they mentioned that Lyman's Unitarian's.
SPEAKER_04No, he's Calvinist. But he was publishing a bunch of shit about how you about how Unitarianism is stupid. And so then these Protestants were like, We're saying. No, he said that they all sucked ass. And so basically they were just like, oh my god, you should join us. And he's like, Great, what's what do you guys teach? And they're like, We're Protestant. He's like, fuck no.
SPEAKER_02Uh but there you go.
SPEAKER_04But when they mentioned that Lyman's annual salary would be bumped up from $800 to $20,000, which is a little over a million dollars today. How many miles of firewood is that equal to? Lyman realized he was Protestant all along. It's at least a couple trees. At least so you gotta understand. But also, I'm gonna say at Cincinnati, they made no, there's no way they had electricity at this point, right? Nah. It's like the mid nah. Nah. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01No, my phone, I can't look it up. Google. Just to pay attention to you.
SPEAKER_04No. So so you gotta understand when you have a big job like that, you gotta escalate things a little bit to show that you're serious about your job, right?
SPEAKER_01Earn that firewood, baby.
SPEAKER_04Well, back then, there was a huge push against Catholics. People in America saw the Pope as some controlling ruler from afar that looked to stick his finger into government and take over the world. He is.
SPEAKER_01He rules all the Catholics.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that's true. Oh, it's kind of funny too that like when you started getting first American citizens. When you stopped going to Catholic Church, you're like, you you all of a sudden were just like, there's a buzzing in my ear. I don't know what that is. And I was like, oh my god, the hive mind is releasing you. They basically, but people back then, they basically treated Catholics with the same suspicion that we give Scientologists today. And not that they don't deserve it. So Lyman jumps on board. He makes a few anti-Catholic speeches that seem to drum up support. He says we gotta protect Massachusetts from the quote, hostile designs of popery. On August 10th, 1834, he makes his speech at three different churches alone. The next day, people began smashing the windows of the Ursuline Convent in Somerville, Massachusetts. They set fire to tar barrels placed around the building, which set the building ablaze. But after the fire died down, and the rioters realized that the cops weren't going to do anything, they ransacked the place and burned it down again. Oh my god. Well, there, I mean They're just behind the bushes, like, are they fucking around?
SPEAKER_01If you were going to ransack a church, I guess you would pick a Catholic church. There's like a lot of Catholicism has the bossest shit. They are they out of all the different Christian gangs, I don't know if they have the most style.
SPEAKER_04The Great Dragon smog was meant to be Catholic in Tolkien's idea of things, but let me tell you, they do hoard the world as well. Yes, yeah. And although although a large crowd of people were responsible for this incident, the police managed to pin the crime on just 13 people. However, 12 of them were acquitted, with all the blame being placed on a 16-year-old boy who was sentenced to life imprisonment. I have no idea why they hated him so fucking much.
SPEAKER_01I just Well, you don't know do you know anything about the 16-year-old? Because what if he's just like I did look into it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. They're just like Tyler did it. He did get released early after the nuns at the convent like wrote a letter to the mayor telling him it was kind of fucked up, though. So I will say that. Like who that's really fucked up, you're pinning it all on this kid. Yeah, basically, the the people who were actually victimized were the ones that were just like, bro, even though he didn't fuck. They were really planning on putting it. Well, nuns.
SPEAKER_01But you know, it's I guess that's the point, right? Of organized religion, at least in capital. If you actually pertain to it, yeah. Forgiving a good person is a virtue.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and and just I I just they were planning on letting him die there.
SPEAKER_01She's well, oh yeah, I guess so. Because it's old timey prison.
SPEAKER_04I mean, the rest of his life could like he didn't go on to become like a the fucking Rockefeller or anything like that. Like it's it's kind of fucked up.
SPEAKER_01This was before prison let you read books and work out on your downtime, I guess.
SPEAKER_04I I suppose so. Now when Harriet first moved to Cincinnati to start school at the Lane Theological Seminary, she could see some room for growth in the city. Partly for the better, as Cincinnati was expanding thanks to the trade deals being made up and down the Ohio River. But she could also see that there were parts of the city that were being rebuilt from a riot that took place just a few years prior. You see, we were still in the slave days of America, and the Ohio River was an important border between the free state of Ohio and the slave states of Kentucky and Virginia.
SPEAKER_01No, that's not how you say that.
SPEAKER_04You got me distracted. What's up?
SPEAKER_01You're just really sweaty. Are you okay?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm fine. I'm gonna set up a fan.
SPEAKER_01Virginia.
SPEAKER_04Sorry that it's a lot of effort to be a white man in America. Virginia. Virginia. Alright, well, in 1829, some Irish immigrants were afraid that former slaves would be too used to working for a smaller wage, so they ransacked a bunch of neighborhoods. But don't worry, Harriet would be able to see these things for herself. As the same shit would happen again in 1836 and again in 1841. So a recurring problem, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Of Irish immigrants?
SPEAKER_04Just ransacking shit because they're like, the blacks are gonna do us better. Yeah, I dunno I guess. Now at the Lane Theological Seminary, they had a book club of sorts called the Semicolon Club. Here, students would delve into the classics while discussing their theological and philosophical themes. You know, the usual nerd shit. But what was unusual about this club was that it was a mix between both boys and girls. Usually schools kept their clubs segregated. I mean, you wouldn't want chicks to- They let girls think? You wouldn't want chicks to bleed all over the chairs and talk about their periods and shit, right? You know? But instead, this mix allowed for a more balanced discussion from different walks of life. Turns out it's beneficial. Who knew? Because of this, people like Harriet Beecher got to discuss literature with people like Elizabeth Blackwell, who would go on to become the first female physician in America. And Salmon Portland Chase, the future Chief Justice under Lincoln, who would go on to refuse to hire Walt Whitman because he thought Leaves of Grass was pornographic.
SPEAKER_01Salmon?
SPEAKER_04Salmon Portland Chase.
SPEAKER_01Salmon Portland.
SPEAKER_04His name is Salmon Chase. I don't know. I don't hey. After you have eleven kids, you start to run out of ideas. That's true. You can't call them all Jeremy.
SPEAKER_01This is Jeremy, Jason, Elizabeth, Braden, O'Caden, Salmon.
SPEAKER_04Well, from the discussions the kids had between different theological subjects, one was more contentious than all the others. One that seemed to be at the very core of America itself. Slavery. This grew into a debate that would take over the entire school, whether you are part of the semicolon club or not. Eventually, the school decided to hold official debates between the students across 18 days in the month of February 1834. Now Harriet didn't attend every debate, but she was there for the majority of it. And let me tell you, the debate soon grew outside the doors of the Lane Theological Seminary and became national news. Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher, was there to take part in the debates as well. And the Beecher family were staunch abolitionists, very against slavery. But that's not to say that Lyman thought black people should stay in America after they were freed, though. He thought the best thing to do was to put the slaves on a boat a second time, send them to some remote colony in West Africa.
SPEAKER_01That's what I was gonna ask. Like, cause you get people who back then, at least, it was like, if I remember my high school history correctly, Oregon was very much like, no, we don't want slaves.
SPEAKER_04But it's not because we don't agree with it, it's because we just don't black people here. Pretty much, yeah. Like essentially. Well, that's the thing that like a lot of people will be like, oh come on, like people were okay with slavery back then. No, dude, slavery was not cool for like a big majority of human history. People did not like slavery. It does not mean that they were okay with other people. Yeah. It just it we were fighting a war about it, but it was also just like we don't want them near us either. Same thing with civil rights. A lot of people were just like, yes, they should be allowed to vote. I don't want them here in my city, though, you know.
SPEAKER_02Like Yeah.
SPEAKER_04As word of the lane debates grew, more speakers began showing up for each side. And of course, on the pro-slavery side were a bunch of privileged white kids that were the children of slave owners. However, the pro-abolitionist side had their share of kids from slave-owning families as well. So for every kid that said, Oh, they're fine, they get fed and have a roof over their heads, that's all they need. There were kids that could actually speak to the abuses that were happening, such as, quote, because they did have stenographers for this shit. The master took him into the barn, stripped him entirely naked, tied him up by his hand so high that he could not reach the floor, tied his feet together and put a small rail between his legs so that he could not avoid the blows, and commenced whipping him. He told me that he gave him five hundred lashes. And on both sides, no one could say that they didn't know of a story where a slave got tortured to death. But of all the speeches, the most important came from a man named James Bradley. James was a former slave, and the speech he gave that day was actually the first instance of a black person addressing a white crowd in America. How strange it is that anybody should believe that any human being could be a slave and yet be contented. I do not believe there ever was a slave who did not long for liberty. I know very well that slave owners take a great deal of pains to make the people in the free states believe that the slaves are happy. But I know likewise that I was never acquitted, uh sorry, acquainted with a slave, however well he was treated, who did not long to be free. There is one thing about this that people in the free states do not understand. When they ask slaves whether they wish for their liberty, they answer no. And very likely they will go so far as to say they would not leave their masters for the world. But at the same time, they desire liberty more than anything else, and have perhaps all along been laying plans to get free.
SPEAKER_01It's what they don't seem to get.
SPEAKER_04At the end of the lane debates, the majority of the crowd agreed that not only was slavery wrong, but displacing freed slaves to Africa would actually be bad too. And wouldn't you know it? The pro-slavery guys were pissed. Turns out the school's trustees were pro-slavery as well. So when students asked if they could extend the debates, the school said no. And when the students asked if they could talk about the priv the matter more privately, the school still said no.
SPEAKER_01And when it sounds like a free speech issue.
SPEAKER_04When they asked if the school could be open to students of all colors, the school said fuck no. This led to all the pro-abolitionist students, about 40 in total, which made up most of the school, quitting the Lane Theological Seminary to move to a better college. They were designated the Lane Rebels.
SPEAKER_01See, it's funny that the lay the administration for the Lane School was just like, no, we don't want to open it to people of color. But like at this point in time, how many people of color would have been able to go to call that college realistically?
SPEAKER_04I I mean realistically, it's hard to say.
SPEAKER_01I know that there were majority of it sounded like the majority in their were still slaves.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's the thing, is that they were saying that like Cincinnati was, I think I I said that it was a free city, but but it basically was on the edge across the river from places that had slaves. If slaves ran across the fucking river, I'm sure that they I mean, you know, some of them didn't have a few.
SPEAKER_01There is a system in place for assholes to take them back.
SPEAKER_04I'm well that is true as well, yeah. Now for a time the Lane Rebels decided they you know what that's true though, they could have also just been like, well, we'd handle each administration privately, and then just like what let one or two guys in, like black guys or something, and then just be like no to the rest.
SPEAKER_01I mean I'm just saying I I don't know, they could have been more diplomatically they could have been more surfacely diplomatic while still just very realistically being a piece of shit. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Oh, it's Pride Month. We here at McDonald's support your right to express love however you want it. Eat a Big Mac.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And then as soon as July hits, like whoop, all their Twitter handles just drop the rainbow.
SPEAKER_01Drop the rainbow.
SPEAKER_04Now for a time right in blue. For a time, the Lane Rebels decided they would open their own school in a town called Cumminsville.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04And as short a while as this school was open, the rebels would have evening classes to teach subjects to the local black population.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they had evening classes for The Cummins School.
SPEAKER_04Stop. Okay. But as their class size grew, the rebels decided to migrate to the newly opened Oberlin College. Their condition? Open the school to people of all races. The board was not super down with the idea, and their decision came by a split vote. But in the end, well, they were new, they needed students. So yet the newspapers were documenting all of this. From the rebels leaving the Lane Seminary to their immigration at Oberlin. The whole thing was a major sensation in America. And this would actually be documented as the first act of student revolt in America. Fucking they should have done that way, way, way before. Now, Calvin Ellis Stowe was born April 6th, 1802, in South Natick, Massachusetts. Calvin's father died when he was young, making him the hopeful breadwinner for his family. He apprenticed a paper maker when he was 12, eventually earning enough at the paper mill that he could afford a single year of college at the Bradford Academy at age 16.
SPEAKER_01That's such a waste. Do you know how much firewood that you could get for that? He should have gone to a junior college.
SPEAKER_04Honestly, a 16-year-old boy, as a mother, I would have been like, do you know how much fucking firewood you're worth?
SPEAKER_01How many winters we could survive?
SPEAKER_04But instead of this being his only education, Calvin's teachers saw how much of a future he actually had and paid his way to college in Maine for the next two years.
SPEAKER_01Damn, that good, huh?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, right. Future president Franklin Pierce once said that sitting next to Calvin at college was the only reason he was able to graduate.
SPEAKER_01That's so funny because I feel like I've heard this thing before where a lot of presidents weren't the brightest students.
SPEAKER_04No way. No fucking way, Nicole. Wow. Wow. I know of a recent president. Might be our current one too, where his teacher said that he was the dumbest fucking student he ever had.
SPEAKER_01I meant like presidents besides that guy.
SPEAKER_04Well, after this, Kelvin continued his academic studies at the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, where he would meet our very own Eliza Taylor. Married her in 1832, but unfortunately she would pass Amir two years later. However, someone who would be there in his time of need was Eliza's friend, Harriet Beecher. They would marry just two years later on January 6th, 1836, when Harriet was 24 and Calvin was 33. I know.
SPEAKER_01Normal for back then, but still.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I guess they're still both in college. I guess. No. That's like teacher age, though. He can't just be old guy old guy in class, you know.
SPEAKER_01No, if it's okay, he was 33 and she's 24.
SPEAKER_04Uh, yes.
SPEAKER_01Dude, if it's over seven years, I I mean it gets more acceptable as time goes on, but that's the thing. But like when you're under the age of 25.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But but I guess they did know each other beforehand. Like, you know, she was he was his ex well wife's uh No.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04Either way, this is of course how the whole world would forever know Harriet as Harriet Beecher Stowe.
SPEAKER_01Queen above 18.
SPEAKER_04Shut up. It was their first year of marriage that the Stows would have their first children, twins, born September 29th, 1836. The first was also named Harriet Beecher Stowe, whom they called Hattie, which I feel they could have they could have just named her. Well, they could have just named her that to lessen the confusion.
SPEAKER_01Hattie doesn't seem like a formal name. I don't know. Um, is that side note? This is the longest it's ever taken you to get to the writer and the subject of today's podcast.
SPEAKER_04No, that she started from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_04This has all been her story. So no. But I feel like that was probably Lord Byron, who we had to go through like four pages about. And then technically I was starting Mary Shelley, and then I found out that her mom was so interesting that I was like, I'll just give her her own episode.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's true, that's true. You had to give someone a whole episode of it.
SPEAKER_04Either way, uh so their first kid of those twins named Hattie, uh, but the other was named Eliza Tyler Stowe after Calvin's first wife, which is kind of just as strange.
SPEAKER_01I would be pissy, but a little, you know, but like I what were her rights realistically?
SPEAKER_04Fair. Anyway, as were the times, the Stows would have seven children in total. Henry in 1857, Frederick in 1840, Georgiana in 1843, Samuel in 1848, who unfortunately became the token dead kid when he died of cholera 18 months later, and Charles in 1850. Well, it was also in this first year of marriage that the 1836 Cincinnati riots took place. Same thing as the last one, people just hating how many black people there were. Well, the Stowe family as well as the Beechers became instrumental in people's protection during that time. And it's hard to say when they became a part of this loose organization. Because it was illegal, so records are few at best, but it was probably around this time that their families decided to join the Underground Railroad.
SPEAKER_01Cool.
SPEAKER_04There's no trains.
SPEAKER_01I know. I remember my lessons.
SPEAKER_04Well, now as a little kid, that confused the shit out of me.
SPEAKER_05Oh, really? Well, is railroading the thing that happened to Tommy's mom? No!
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Our teachers always made very much.
SPEAKER_04No, our teachers were quick to be like there was no training. I know, and then we were always just like, then why did they call it that? And she's just like, I don't know. Look. It's a metaphor, fool. Oh. Okay, now I get it. Well, by 1850, Harriet and her family were living in a house in Brunswick, Maine, while Calvin taught at Baldwin College. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow actually lived in this house some years before them. And although Congress had just recently passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which forbade anyone from housing or assisting runaway slaves, the Stowe family government is too much. Our government would never do that. What a lie. The Stowe family still assisted them to safety in Canada anyway. One slave named John Andrew Jackson, that feels like a dig, would even write about his experiences while hiding at the Stowe estate in a book he released in 1862 called The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina. Quote, Her name was Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She took me in and fed me and gave me some clothes and five dollars. She also inspected my back, which is covered with scars, which I shall carry with me to the grave. She listened with great interest to my story and sympathized with me when I told her how long I had been parted from my wife Louisa and my daughter Jenny, and perhaps forever. Which damn, give her a fucking alias at least. Her name was Harriet Stowe. Yeah. When Harriet and Calvin's eighteen-month-old son, Samuel Charles Stowe, passed away from cholera in 1849, Harriet was broken in ways few can understand. But rather than focus on her own grief, she turned an empathetic ear towards those who had it worse. While attending service at Brunswick's first parish church, Harriet claimed to have received a vision. A vision of a dying slave being whipped by two others that were being commanded to do so by their brutal master. And yes, that might be crazy, but apparently it was quite normal to just quote unquote receive visions in the 1800s. I feel like it was a a mix of cold and hunger.
SPEAKER_01Not enough firewood.
SPEAKER_04Not enough firewood.
SPEAKER_01Husband doesn't make that much.
SPEAKER_04I was gonna make a joke about the dead baby maybe only uh giving you a couple twigs, but never mind. Her husband Calvin, for instance, still spoke with his dead wife Eliza, which I'm sure Harriet loved. Yeah. No, she doesn't do that thing with her tongue that I liked you doing. Yeah, no, she doesn't she doesn't do that. She doesn't do that at all. Yeah, weird. But it was this vision, she says, that inspired her to write a book. Now Harriet had actually published short stories and essays here and there before, starting all the way back in 1839 with a temperance story called The Drunkard Reclaimed. But this would be different. Sounds like an action movie. The Drunkard Reclaimed. I bet it that actually that would be sick as fuck. But they can't make it a temperance movie.
SPEAKER_01Jackie Chan. I don't want no trouble.
SPEAKER_04I don't want no trouble. I guess that's a Chinese accent, isn't it? I should probably cut that.
SPEAKER_01Sorry.
SPEAKER_04You can do that when you're Asian, I guess. It's funny because Asians are some of the most racist people.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say it feels like the most Asian thing to not with love. No, not really. Uh wow. Well, Asian, uh, that's that's not where I was going with, but like it's like the most Asian thing to be against other Asians.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like we've brought this up on the channel before. I don't know. But either we're not gonna go on to look, this this episode is very much about racism. We don't need to go into our own problems, alright. Either way, this novel would be different.
SPEAKER_01I don't have a problem, you have a problem.
SPEAKER_04This would be about the immorality of slavery itself. On June 5th, 1851, an abolitionist paper called The National Era would publish the first installment of the 40-year-old Harriet story, and it would of course be titled Uncle Tom's Cabin.
SPEAKER_01Whoa! Whoa!
SPEAKER_04There's no way anyone saw that one coming.
SPEAKER_01The subject of today's podcast. Quote.
SPEAKER_04And this is gonna be a long quote, but Are you gonna read the whole book? Yep. Late in the afternoon sorry, chapter one.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine in a well-furnished dining parlor in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen with chairs closely approaching seemed to be discussing some subjects with great earnestness. For convenience sake, we have said hitherto two gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much overdressed, in a gaudy vest of many colours, a blue neckerchief, adrobed gaily with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings, and he wore a heavy gold chain watch chain with a bundle of seals of pretentious size and a great variety of colours attached to it, which, in the ardour of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. Mr. Haley is visiting Mr. Shelby, a local slave owner whose plantation has been a little on the rocks lately. And Mr. Shelby will need to sell some slaves to keep afloat. But Mr. Shelby also wants to make sure he's doing right by Mr. Haley. No, no, no. And that that was a little break in that to show. End quote. So he offers him one of his best. The hardworking, honorable, Christian man colloquially known as Uncle Tom. But to Mr. Haley, one will simply not do. Now nearby is a slave named Eliza. And now that I'm realizing it, was it's was his first name's first wife's name Eliza? Yeah. Well are you are you sure about that?
SPEAKER_01Because it was because that was because the daughters, the twins, Hattie and Eliza, named after his dead wife, and the slave named Eliza.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I never realized that before. That's a little fucked up. Alright. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm only familiar with the Siam version of this story. Siam version? Yeah. Burma? I'm making a reference to the King and I.
SPEAKER_04Is that really what it's based on? I have no idea.
SPEAKER_01I never the King and I isn't based on. That's a good brenner, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's not based on Uncle Tom's Cabin, but they the the woman teaching the people of the palace teaches them about Uncle Tom Uncle Tom's cabin because they have slaves there.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01So she teaches them about the book, and the slaves get so excited that they decide to put on their own production of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
SPEAKER_04That's weird.
SPEAKER_01It was my favorite part of the movie.
SPEAKER_04I bet it was you fucking racist Asian. No, so it's funny though, because the whole time you're talking, all that I'm thinking of is Joel Brenner as a killer robot in Westworld when he's all just like bring him in, partner. I fucking love that movie. Anyway. Did you know that there was a sequel to Westworld called Future World?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's not good. You told me about it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's not good, man.
SPEAKER_01Because I remember asking you, man, there's a sequel? Should we? And you you literally went, don't.
SPEAKER_04It was so disappointing. Because Westworld with Yule Brenner is a really good movie. Yes. And that first season of the TV show, very good show.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh man, Westworld's so cool.
SPEAKER_01For the first movie and first season.
SPEAKER_04There's literally like when it can take hours is when it's 10 hours of good content in the Westworld universe, you know. Great shit. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01Anyways, Uncle Tom's cabin.
SPEAKER_04Now nearby is a slave named Eliza who's worried that Mr. Shelby will sweeten the deal with her son, Harry. You see, Eliza is very protective of Harry as she and her husband George have already lost two children. And Harry is their last. So when Eliza sees Mr. Shelby and Mr. Haley talking, she goes to Mrs. Shelby with her worries. But Mrs. Shelby says, Oh, don't worry. We would never sell Harry. Though meanwhile, Mr. Shelby is already drawing up the contract to sell both Uncle Tom and Harry. Later that day, Eliza's husband George secretly meets up with her, telling her that she and Harry need to come with him to flee towards Canada. But Eliza says it's too dangerous. That he's doing everything he can to keep their family safe. But George says their time is short, as they plan to marry him off to another woman on another plantation to start making more slaves. And Eliza says, They can't do that, we're already married. Yes. But of course, you know goddamn well that they do not care. So with a heavy heart, George announces that he's running away to Canada without her or Harry. His plan is to find work where hopefully he'll just make enough money to buy both his wife and son their freedom. Meanwhile, in Uncle Tom's cabin, he's having a good old time with m the Shelby son, Master George. They're eating pancakes, they're singing hymns. And by the way, Uncle Tom is not some old grandpa, like you're probably thinking. He's actually kind of young. Perhaps a middle-aged, muscular dude. What?
SPEAKER_01Well that makes it, I don't know. Well. What? Keep keep going.
SPEAKER_04Okay. I just, you know what, maybe you don't pull on that thread.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to pull on that thread.
SPEAKER_04I want you to pull on that thread. What's going on? I can cut it.
SPEAKER_01Does it make it weirder? I just think it's always weird. I guess it's it's just the now times, but like I always think it's weird when adults are hanging out with kids.
SPEAKER_04It is the master's kid though. That's true. He's doing it under direct.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's gonna bartend and be like, Yeah, as you're gonna be Roblox.
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, yeah, I I would love nothing better.
SPEAKER_01Like But young sir, I'm going to get whipped if I don't finish my chores.
SPEAKER_05No Roblox! No! You got you gotta be games on your phone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, no, don't go to the app store. Yeah, no, I always wanted Angry Birds 4 on there. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01God, that's like um when they put those fucking tablets and and red robins so you can pay for yourself, but then there's also on there.
SPEAKER_04That's right. I think we were with your little cousin Dean went like one time and he just clicked. Yeah, and he's just clicking yes on all this shit, and it's just like, the fuck is this $20 charge for It's how they get you. No, dude, that is. That's predatory. It is. That's fucking terrible. It is. Anyway. But either way, Mr. Shelby comes knocking on Uncle Tom's door with news that both he and Harry have been sold, much against the promises of Mrs. Shelby. Mrs. Shelby, of course, is distraught at the news because you see, she's one of the good ones. She offers to sell her watch to save Harry at least, but alas, the paperwork has already been signed. Overhearing this, Eliza sneaks away to Uncle Tom's cabin with Harry that very night, explaining her situation and the conversation she had with George and runs into the dark. Mr. Haley, the man who bought Harry and Uncle Tom, finds out about their escape the next day and goes to a slave catcher for help. The slave catcher agrees to take the job, saying he'll return Harry so long as he can keep Eliza when he finds them. Mr. Haley agrees. Several times later, the slave catcher and his crew manage to catch up to Eliza. But when she spots them, she runs out towards the frozen Ohio River. Thinking she's cornered, the slave catchers approach Eliza, who manages to hold Harry tight as she leaps onto an ice floe while the river slowly drifts. In desperation, Eliza and Harry dangerously run across the ice toward freedom on the other side. This right here is one of the most memorable scenes in Uncle Tom's cabin.
SPEAKER_01It was a really memorable scene in the Siamese version. Are you fucking kidding me? They had that too? Ah yes!
SPEAKER_00It was like starting to be a good idea.
SPEAKER_01I know we have it on BBS. Maybe we should watch it. I was gonna make you pull it up on YouTube. Cause it is a trip.
SPEAKER_04No, no, we're gonna watch it in its most authentic version.
SPEAKER_00Oh god.
SPEAKER_04They have stage effects.
SPEAKER_00They do!
SPEAKER_01Cause it's and and it's because it's funny, because it's it's their the way they present it is they're trying to like I don't know, do this Siamese workers um per like imagination, like their perspective of how they're interpreting like running across a frozen river.
SPEAKER_04It's so funny that you've actually got like a a bit of knowledge about this from like a movie within a movie of honestly not even a a play within a movie, and then it got explained when uh we leave the. Well, back at the Shelby farm, Mr. Haley comes to collect his other prize, Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom's wife feeds her husband a final meal while Tom talks about believing in God's plan, much like Eliza did to her husband George. Unfortunately, Uncle Tom will never see his wife again. Tom is loaded onto a river boat along with Mr. Haley and a crowd of other people, just making their way down the river. Uncle Tom manages to convince Mr. Haley that the chains he's in aren't needed. He tells him, Look, all I want to do is hang out in the hayloft, read my Bible. And Mr. Haley doesn't see much harm in it, so he agrees. Well, during their long journey down the river, Uncle Tom befriends a little white girl named Ava St. Clair. They have a friendly little conversation, and at the end, Ava's like, I like you, I'm gonna buy you. And Tom's like, Well, that's cute, I guess. Either way, Ava ends up doing some dipshit kid thing during their journey, and she falls into the fucking river. And while every Everyone else just stands around all shocked. Uncle Tom leaps in and manages to bring her to safety. Ever thankful? Ava's father, Augustine St. Clair, decides to buy Uncle Tom from Mr. Haley right then and there. While arriving at the St. Clair farm, it isn't long before Tom's greeted by Marie St. Clair, the matriarch of the plantation, and local crazy bitch. She says that all slaves are selfish, just leeching off their masters for food and shelter, all the while being ironically attended to by an old black woman named Mammy. Who has to follow her I saw your face, this is where it comes from. Just stop. Hang on.
SPEAKER_01I'm okay.
SPEAKER_04Who has to follow her around and be ready to for any given orders. And yes, this is one of the oldest depictions of a mammy character. We'll get into that later. The years go by on the St. Clair plantation, with Uncle Tom surrounded by a new audience for all his biblical teachings. We also get to hear a lot of backstories from slaves, which honestly do not seem like Harriet Beecher Stone made them up. Like, there's some horrible shit in here that kind of break off from that 19th century style of writing when people talk about their experiences being tortured. Well, during his tenure on the farm, Uncle Tom sees a new young slave girl about Ava's age named Topsy. And Topsy and Ava I see your face again, man. Look, the the king of Siam cannot know all this shit, I swear to God. And Topsy and Ava become fast friends, paying no mind whatsoever to the social cues of the time. As if to say, you see, racism is taught, not learned. Which really upset a lot of people after the book's release. Anyway, one day, as Uncle Tom sings a hymn about angels to Ava, she says, I seen angels.
SPEAKER_05They live up there, and I'll be joining them soon.
SPEAKER_04And Uncle Tom's just like, Alright. You got something on your mind?
SPEAKER_01Alright.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I know. You know, it's like all those times that like, look, I love I love those like ghost compilation videos. But did you see that? Yeah, no, but it's just number five.
SPEAKER_01Number five twerking chicken.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no. I love those videos. I don't believe in any of them, but a lot of the times it's just a kid saying some shit, and I'm just like, oh, you mean playing pretend? But did you hear that? What does he mean by I smell like beef? Beef. But yeah, no, it's just like, I see Grampy up there. And it's like, oh my god, he says Grampy. And it's like, children play fucking pretend, dude. They do. What is like I remember doing that shit. Yeah, you're seeing anything.
SPEAKER_01We were trying to teach my ki my my youngest cousin Dean.
SPEAKER_04Same one that was touching the fucking screen at a nasty ass Red Robins. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, no, we were trying to teach him, you know, Red Rum. Dean's not here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it did it, yeah. At first it seemed like it didn't take, but then all of a sudden, one day he just turned to us with like the finger and all and funny voice. Red rum.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. Red Rum. He's never seen the fucking movie even now. He's like 15 now. He's never seen that movie. But he still remembers the movie.
SPEAKER_01Remind me how much time has passed. Fuck.
SPEAKER_04It's just funny because you taught him some weird shit. He'd just be like, he put your sister in like some plastic bag or something.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it was a blanket.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay. And then he was just like running away, clapping his hands. We're like, what are you doing, teen?
SPEAKER_05I'm going to burn the bodies.
SPEAKER_04It's like that. Nicole taught him that for sure. Anyway.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well. Ava, Ava does end up slowly dying from some illness.
SPEAKER_01Tuberculosis.
SPEAKER_04You know, fucking probably. Consumption.
SPEAKER_01Would she get tuberculosis? She's not the one working.
SPEAKER_04Well.
unknownOops.
SPEAKER_04Well, Ava does end up slowly dying from some illness. That fucking consumption, tuberculosis, probably. And as her family gathers around her. Nope. We're not running with that. She has just one dying wish for her papa.
SPEAKER_05Free the slaves.
SPEAKER_04Well, of course, the farm ain't gonna run itself. And although Ava managed to speak her mind in previous chapters about abolition coinciding with Christianity to her father, he just can't bring himself to let his slaves go. Felix money.
SPEAKER_02Well, he he ain't free labor.
SPEAKER_04He ain't no man of God. But Uncle Tom He's a poo-poo butt face. Free labor, Nicole. They're earning an education.
SPEAKER_00Oh right, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_04They're getting paid in firewood. But remember, Nicole. Remember, they didn't have it that bad. We saved them from their fucking horrible lives and families. Lions. And for the maybe a lion. A giraffe. Giraffes are scary.
SPEAKER_01Have you seen a giraffe fight? Oh, they're so funny.
SPEAKER_04It just reminds me and me of me and Caleb in the restroom together, just fucking fighting. Woo! But Uncle Tom tells Mr. St. Clair that when he's weak, he'll always be there to pray for him. Mr. St. Clair, as he wrestles his demons at a local bar, thinks on the ways of Christ and all he's done. And he realizes little Ava was right. Suddenly, Mr. St. Clair gets stabbed during a bar fight. In his last moments, Augustine St. Clair sees heaven.
SPEAKER_01They didn't have that part in the King and I.
SPEAKER_04No, this book. I I do like this book, but it is about as heavy-handed as those Christian movies that are coming out with Zachary Levi. Like it's it's pretty fucking heavy-handed. Now, being a widower, Marie St. Clair finds running a plantation on her lonesome a little too much to bear. So she decides to sell the slaves. At auction, Uncle Tom is sold to a vicious man by the name of Simon Legree, who, along with Tom, buys a 15-year-old girl named Emmeline. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01More like Simon Le Disagreeable.
SPEAKER_04More like Simon a Disagree, am I right, fellas? I'm not a pedophile. The Legree farm is about as bad as they come. Legree has bought Emmeline to replace, of course, his old sex slave named Cassie, who he tosses into the cotton fields with zero remorse. Legree also has certain slaves that he treats better than others to work as overseers, so they can beat whoever falls out of line and get rewarded. So when Uncle Tom is seen helping Cassie fill her bag, the overseers have them both brought before Mr. Legree with the intention to have Uncle Tom whip Cassie as punishment. But Tom refuses, so Simon Legree's overseers take Uncle Tom outside and nearly beat him to death instead. All the while, Uncle Tom's faith falters. But when he has a vision of Jesus Christ and little Ava St. Clair, he knows he must continue spreading the good word. Well, one night Cassie, remembering the years of sexual abuse she faced under Mr. Legree, manages to help Emiline evade the same fate. Just as Eliza did before her own escape with Henry, Cassie comes to Uncle Tom's cabin and tells him their plan of escape. Come the next day, of course, Mr. Legree sees that both Cassie and Emily have fled to the plantation. And he believes that Uncle Tom knows where they've gone. Uncle Tom is beaten all day and all night. And when Legree gets tired, he brings in two overseers to take over. Kind of like the vision Harriet features too.
SPEAKER_01That's what I said later earlier.
SPEAKER_04But even while he's being beaten to death, Tom manages to reach out to the men and turn them towards God. Yet with Mr. Legree watching over them, they continue to beat him.
SPEAKER_01Just like in that in that vision that uh Harriet had little dream that she's had inspired to write this novel.
SPEAKER_04You know, it's kind of like that vision. Now if if you'll remember Mary Shelley had Frankenstein. What does that have to do with anything?
SPEAKER_01I don't know, just women two female authors having dreams and then writing about it.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, I guess so. Well, you know, good callback, I guess. Women. Just dreamers. Now, if you'll remember, back at the Shelby farm at the very beginning, there's the Shelby boy by the name of Master George. Well, he's all grown up. And he's tracked down Uncle Tom over the years to reclaim his favorite slave. Unfortunately, he arrives at the Legree farm in just his final moments of life. Uncle Tom sees Master George and dies with a smile.
SPEAKER_01Even the good white people still view black people as property.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I didn't really like it, but like it's spelled in the book every time. It's not Master George. It's M-A-S Apostrophe R. It's Master George the entire way through. Anyway, the novel concludes with Master George's sermon. Quote, think of your freedom. Every time you see Uncle Tom's Cabin, in all caps, by the way. Every time you see Uncle Tom's cabin. And let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps and be honest and faithful and Christian as he was. In the afterword, Harriet Beecherstow reflects on the truthfulness of her story. She explains that while the story as a whole may be a fictional one, some of the narratives within are actually based on fact. For instance, that moment when Eliza runs across the ice flows of the Ohio River to freedom actually happened. Back in 1838, a woman named Eliza, okay, so she didn't she wasn't digging at her, thank God, ran away from slave catchers with a baby in her arms, jumping from ice floe to ice floor with nothing but a fence post for support for about a mile while the slave catchers just fucking watched in awe. It's almost like they should have had a fucking realization at some point. Like, no, the general speed of the Ohio River is only about half a mile an hour, but still, you fall into freezing water, you can die. The baby would have guaranteed, at least. And these weren't like iceberg-sized flows, by the way. They were uh apparently no bigger than a surfboard at best. People watched as Eliza jumped all the way to safety on the other side, where of course there was already a slave catcher waiting, but he was so amazed by what he saw that he just pointed in the direction of safety and he let her go. This incident was immortalized in Harriet's book where she felt it was a disservice to name the character anything else but Eliza.
SPEAKER_01I get her intentions, but I know, I know. Like I bet the first draft she's just like Calvin, check this out, and he just goes about like her creation being used.
SPEAKER_04As a like the actual Eliza?
SPEAKER_01No, like just how do you think Harriet Beecher's show would react to like what it's become with like the whole you know the term Uncle Tom and Mammy thing.
SPEAKER_04We'll get into that for sure, for sure. We're we'll get into that.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04This is a chronological story you'll see. No, no, no. This is um she's got quite a life ahead of her. That she wrote this shit at 40, so give me a give me a minute. Now, as I mentioned before, you can kind of tell which of these stories Harriet made up. At least I think. Like when Cassie and Emmeline run off the Legree plantation into the woods, they come across an old abandoned house to hide in. And when the slave catchers come around, Cassie and Emmeline start making wailing sounds like ghosts. Oh, they get so scared that they just run off, you know.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say George, like grown up and looking for his favorite slave, Uncle Tom, just to buy him back, sounded kind of far-fetched.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I could see it happening, I guess, you know. Like, oh, my dog's really alive, you know. Well, but here's the thing that scene in the fucking woods with the fucking abandoned house and shit, that's a very stark contrast from when a slave talks about how they were used to breed more slaves, and when she tried to keep one factory, when she tried to keep one, the plantation worked her so hard so hard that she couldn't produce milk, so the baby died of starvation. That that story, I believe. I don't believe the fucking ghost in the forest.
SPEAKER_00You don't believe racists are that stupid?
SPEAKER_04I mean I don't think that they were just like I don't think that they were out in some cabin just like the slaves you're looking for are gone, G.I. Like Matter of fact, the biggest criticism Uncle Tom's cabin had from both the North and South was that it was written like a romance novel. Which it is. It's not a bad book by any means, but it's certainly not groundbreaking in anything besides the subject matter. Now, as far as themes for the story go, you must remember that what Harriet was trying to get across to her audience was some good old-fashioned Christian morals. So the theme of this novel are very surface level. You've got temperance, feminism, and of course, the evils of slavery. All of which are easy to spot without even fucking looking at for it. So anyway, Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in weekly installments between June 5th, 1851 to April 1st, 1852. Almost a year's worth of chapters. And while initially this story was given the subtitle Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Man That Was a Thing, it was soon changed to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Life Among the Lowly. Across the seas, however, the story was called Uncle Tom's Cabin. The history of a Christian slave. Now initially, Harriet Beecher Stowe was paid just $400 by the National Era for publishing rights, whereas the rights for the book went to John P. Jewitt. I don't like saying his name. Uh, who released the book on March 20th, 1852. This was actually 12 days before the last chapter would be serialized in the National Era. Meaning weird. No, no, no. If you wanted to see how it ended before your friends could spoil it for you, you could always just get the book. I think that's that's a really good idea.
SPEAKER_01That's what you meant.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like that fucking Yeah, that's that's that's smart, dude. That's good. And trust me, everyone was reading this. While the first edition was initially printed to just 5,000 copies, they sold an astounding 300,000 by the end of the year. It became the second best-selling book of the entire 19th century behind the fucking Bible. That's including fucking, you've got Kipling, Dickens, all of those guys. Chuck Tingle. Boom, Chuck Tingle. No, don't get me wrong. This wasn't the first pro-abolitionist work of fiction to have been published by any means. Not by a fucking long shot. But it was the first time where their response was so massive. The idea behind the book was to educate northerners about what was happening in the South with the hope that Southerners would be a bit more empathetic to slaves. All I can say is that as much as the pro-abolitionist movement was gaining steam amongst Americans, Uncle Tom's Cabin made slavery the number one issue in the country. People started naming their fucking babies Ava after Ava St. Clair. That seems like a curse to me. Like, oh, let me name you after the dead one. Uh, plays based on Uncle Tom's Cabin hit the stage, one of which was penned by Har Harriet herself in 1851.
SPEAKER_02Oh.
SPEAKER_04You had topsy tobacco, Uncle Tom dinner plates, fucking trading cards. Do you remember when Tarantino had to stop selling those Django Unchained action figures because everyone said you were technically buying slaves? You remember that shit?
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I remember when they first came out too, and I told your sister, I was like, she was like, oh, maybe I'll get one or something. I was like, listen, get his wife because no one is going to buy that one first, and they're going to discontinue the shit, and everyone will need her to fucking complete their set.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04And she never got any of them. And then, like, I remember like a few months after they had discontinued them. I was at uh we were visiting your cousins down in LA. We go to Frank and Sons or whatever, and that was a cool ass place. I go there and I look at one of the dolls as like $200 for the wife, and I was like, yeah. Meanwhile, in the South, Uncle Tom's cabin was taken with a lot more malice. Critics were quick to point out that not only had Harriet Beecher Stowe never been to a plantation, she's never even been to the fucking South. At all. I don't blame her. Well, yeah, exactly. I gotta say, so fucking what? Do I have to visit North Korea to know it sucks? You know? But it's not like Harriet was just grabbing these stories out of thin fucking air. Not only was her family participating in the Underground Railroad, but just a year after her move to Cincinnati in 1833, she traveled to Maysville, Kentucky to witness a slave trade first hand. A scene which she replicates in her book with the selling of Uncle Tom and Emmeline.
SPEAKER_01So technically, yeah, she has been to the cell.
SPEAKER_04Well, they don't count Kentucky, whatever, you know, for whatever fucking re I I don't know. But they didn't count it.
SPEAKER_01They were like, you're not in Louisiana State back in those times. Were they?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_01I want to say, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Now, as strong as a of a response as Uncle Tom's cabin would have, it's not only increased the sales of abolitionist literature everywhere, but also birthed a new type of genre. These were called anti-Tom novels.
SPEAKER_01Oh. So it's like just a knee-jerk response like slaves love being slaves. They'll take what we give them. Including 500 lashes.
SPEAKER_04And a bundle of firewood for their service. Yeah. Seven, seven books were published the same year as Harriet's novel alone, and six more the following year in 1853. Yeah. That's more of a that's not really a knee-jerk, that's more of a fucking jump.
SPEAKER_01Salty. So mad. So salty they suck.
SPEAKER_04One of these published in 1854 was called The Planter's Northern Bride. It was written by a former semicolon club classmate of Harriet's by the name of Caroline Lee Hence. The story is of a girl who's completely brainwashed by her northern abolitionist father. But luckily, she marries a sweet, caring slave owner who moves her onto his plantation where she can see the error of her ways.
SPEAKER_01What was her name? Caroline.
SPEAKER_04Caroline. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Caroline. Get the fuck out of here.
SPEAKER_04That's great. Good comeback. Since, you know, her husband just treats all these guys so damn well. Caroline hence would never get to see the error of her own ways, unfortunately. As she died from pneumonia just two years after her own book's release.
SPEAKER_01Oh, pneumonia.
SPEAKER_04However, someone who did live to change their views was an anti-Tom author by the name of Mary Henderson. Her 1852 book, released the same year as Uncle Tom's Cabin.
SPEAKER_01These are all women?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Hey, you don't give them a job. What are they gonna do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I guess so.
SPEAKER_04If they can't bah bah bah someone they've got to make it. That's why women are always so cold. You just gotta put them in front of a stove and they'll heat right up. Anyway, so her book was called Aunt Phyllis's Cabin.
SPEAKER_02Oh god.
SPEAKER_04The book lectured the idea that the South would never be able to get rid of their slaves because they've built their whole society around it. If you got rid of slavery, then everything would crumble.
SPEAKER_05When I don't want to.
SPEAKER_04And while Aunt Phyllis's Cabin didn't even compare to Harriet Sales, it was still the most popular anti Tom novel out there. But at the conclusion of the Civil War, Mary Henderson would publicly change her stance on slavery. Some think it's because her husband became an advocate for the ethical change. Treatment of natives, and she realized how similar they were being treated, if not worse, to slaves. But something it's because both of Mary's sons fought for the Union and refused to speak with her because she was being a stupid racist bitch. Either way, I'm glad. Now, one of uh one particularly interesting anti-Tom novel is by a woman named Sarah Josepha Hale, called Liberia, or Mr. Payton's Experiments. This book, published in 1853, is about a na a man named Mr. Payton, who isn't quite sure what to do with his slaves. He wants to free them, but he isn't sure if that'd be the right thing for them. So he sends a few slaves into the Deep South, some to the northern colonies, and some to Canada. And wouldn't you know it, they all come crawling back, because they're all just so unhappy when they aren't being treated like slaves. But Mr. Peyton, good man that he is, he's told by society that slavery is wrong. So Mr. Peyton sends his slaves to Liberia where they can run about happy and free. So this story is regarded as an anti-Tom novel only because it doesn't agree with Harriet's solution, which is to just abolish fucking slavery and let black people be treated as equals. But it's still an anti-slave novel as well, which I found interesting. I also thought the author was fascinating as well. Twenty years prior to this, Sarah Josepha Hale had written the nursery rhyme, Mary Had a Little Lamb. What that bitch!
SPEAKER_01That fucking bitch.
SPEAKER_04And ten years from now, in 1863, she'd convince President Lincoln to make the southern tradition of Thanksgiving into a national holiday. I don't know what to think of. What?
SPEAKER_01Thanksgiving is a Southern tradition?
SPEAKER_04I well, yeah, no, didn't it technically first happen with Spaniards in Florida? Look, I I'm going off of like elementary school knowledge.
SPEAKER_01I don't know, but my elementary school knowledge is that the pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, Massachusetts. And then um stuff happened. They were struggling, and the Native Americans were like, hey neighbor, I see you struggling. Want some snacks? Here's some corn. And then the pilgrims were like, Oh shit, yeah, you're so nice. Let's have dinner.
SPEAKER_04You know, here's the thing though, this is like fucking so she did that shit in 1863. We landed in fucking 1492, sailed the ocean blue, and then we um yeah, I feel like that's a long time. That's almost four hundred years? That's almost four hundred years of shit in between. I'm sure there's a lot of like questionable origins of Thanksgiving. I feel like, you know.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it's like it it who knows. But either way, I guess Thanksgiving was just known as a southern thing. And then just she was like, hey, how about everyone do this? It's kind of fun. So is it though? Yeah, so then everybody shows up and tells you about how other people should be slaves. So anyway, yeah, it's still happening today. So anyway, people were uh quick to start bashing Harriet's novel as completely made up, saying that slaves were treated better than she accused them of. You know, the conditions aren't that bad, shit like that. So a year after Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe released a companion book titled A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded, together with corroborative statements verifying the truth of the work. That's the end of the title, by the way. This was a book of testimonies to show people that her sources were real.
SPEAKER_01This makes me think of those Isekai stories. I died and got reincarnated into the villas of my favorite video game, and everybody loves me.
SPEAKER_04And even the masochistic slave owner Simon Legree was based on Josiah's old master, Bryce Litton. Harriet's descendants Damn, she's naming names. She is, yeah. No, she's got the actually She was actually naming fucking names. Like these people are still alive. Not today, but I mean like back then. They were just like, she was just like, oh yeah, no, and here's his address. Harriet's descendants uh like to uh talk about how she actually met Josiah and was inspired to turn his stories into a book, but in reality they they didn't meet until way after her book was published. Now, while Harriet's first book raised the public consciousness on the problems of slavery, it was a key to Uncle Tom's cabin that fueled the debate even more. While it wasn't more commercially Another log onto the fire. Basically kindling wood as payment. While it wasn't more commercially successful, it was more critically successful. Before, you had true stories mixed with fiction, and for some it was hard to tell if Harriet was stretching the truth or if this was really what was happening in the South. But since the first book grabbed their attention, people rushed to the second only to find that things were actually much, much fucking worse. But although Harriet was giving accounts of the horrors of slavery by former slaves themselves, it didn't stop people in the South from criticizing her work as a complete fabrication. One newspaper called the Southern Literary Messenger called Akey to Uncle Tom's Cabin a quote, Distortion of the Facts and Mutilation of the Records for the sake of giving substance to the scandalous fancy and reduplicating the falsehood of the representation.
SPEAKER_01I don't like being called out for being an asshole.
SPEAKER_04The thing is, most Southern critics didn't even deny these things were happening.
SPEAKER_01They just don't like being called out! Yeah, they just don't want to be told they're being bad. Did they believe bad things?
SPEAKER_04They just said Harriet was cherry-picking the worst examples and claiming that it happened all the time. Which to some degree is true. Things like being forced to act like a scarecrow in the North Carolina heat until you pass out, or being burned with hot iron until you die, weren't what I would call everyday occurrences. But is it still a huge fucking concern? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All it takes is one fucking third to ruin the pools.
SPEAKER_04Hey man, you know the problem with like police and how they like to shoot people in the back? Once is enough. Yeah. It's enough to call that guy to question. But the fact that it happens a lot and those guys keep just like walking scot-free and getting a bunch of money in and taxpayer money, I'm not okay with it. Like that's what it fucking means, dude. It's bad. Above all, critics down in Dixieland attacked Harriet's character, saying that a woman who would dare to write about such atrocities was clearly someone with a diseased mind who lived a life of sin.
SPEAKER_01You could say the same thing about the women that wrote The Anti-Toms, though. Like them writing about the same subject, but I love them that is sending so they're mentally sound.
SPEAKER_04That's fucking true, actually. Like, yeah, but they love to torture men and suck on their one of the good ones. Southerners were so pissed that a man in Mobile, Alabama, who'd actually dared to sell Harriet's work was run out of town. And at least one person out there was so convinced that Harriet lied about her harsh descriptions of slavery that he cut off a slave's ear and sent it to her in a box. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then really turn that all slave owners are nice, kind, and rude. You can do a ton of much with a fireboard, you can make a house with this firewoman.
SPEAKER_05I was so mad I cut off this man's ear and sent it to you in a box. I like to make you seem less right. Fucking wild.
SPEAKER_04The popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin didn't just stop in the Americas, however. It did just as well overseas. But as we've discussed in previous episodes, copyright laws back then didn't really have the same traction they have today. As good as Uncle Tom's cabin sold in Europe, Harriet didn't see a goddamn dime. But with the insane response that her book was getting, Harriet soon took a t a tour of the UK in 1853. Did she get paid then? Where the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery set up a charity for her called Uncle Tom's Offering. Yeah, no, it was kind of a pay as pay pay what you want for her. Yeah, no, I'm sure she made fucking bank. Now, if you're unsure who Frederick Douglass was, he himself was a writer. Someone we'll honestly probably cover in a future episode.
SPEAKER_02I remember him.
SPEAKER_04He sometimes better remember as a close advisor to Abraham Lincoln and a former slave.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, he spoke with Harriet Beecher Stowe before she took off for England, and they had spoken about plans to build a local trade school for black people. However, although the plan was for her to collect money on her tour, all we know is that Frederick Douglass claims that Harriet, quote unquote, reconsidered their plan. Sounds to me like she ran off with the money when she saw just how much she was really getting.
SPEAKER_01Just like her father. Was that her father, or was that her father-in-law?
SPEAKER_04No, that was her father. Just like her father.
SPEAKER_01Calvinist turned Protestant Father. Money changes you.
SPEAKER_04Money really changed you, dude. Ever since you got Instagram famous with 9,000 followers, money changed you, dude. What's funny is that Frederick Douglass was initially a big advocate for Uncle Tom's cabin, but after speaking with another former slave and black social reformer named Martin Delaney, he reassessed his position, agreeing that Harriet was basically selling black stories for white profit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's what it's looking like.
SPEAKER_04I I gotta agree that is but look, but look, like that there were slave stories back in the day. People weren't picking them up. They were written by black people.
SPEAKER_01It's like how they're trying to make a female president happen, but no one's fucking ready for it. Because we hate uh this country hates women.
SPEAKER_04I I put you on this podcast as a second choice.
SPEAKER_01See?
SPEAKER_04See? Regardless, Uncle Tom's Cabin was now a worldwide sensation. Charles Dickens said, quote, Uncle Tom's cabin with all its faults, and is not free from the fault of overstrained conclusions and violent extremes, is a noble work, full of high power, lofty humanity, the gentlest, sweetest, and yet boldest writing. Its authoress, Harriet Beecher Stowe, is an honor to the time that has produced her, and will take her place among the best writers of fiction, inspired by the best and noblest purpose. Tolstoy said her writing flowed from the love of God and man, making it better than any work ever written by Shakespeare.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny to think of them as contemporaries.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, also just that these I'm I'm not gonna lie, man. Both of these guys are better writers too. But it is like it's you know, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01I think it's more of like a reaction to wow, the sh the like the shock of the content.
SPEAKER_04It it well, it's true. Yeah, no. I mean, that's what this whole fucking episode is about, is just like this book really started some shit for people, regardless of how well or well it got how well it would written. But it um I mean fucking sometimes that's all that you needed too, though. Like, was just a little push. It it's it is a it was a fun book. I did like it actually.
SPEAKER_01It was not fun, Jordan.
SPEAKER_04It actually was. I enjoyed it. It was not by any means the worst written book.
SPEAKER_01He died. So they got a new one. That's fine.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Listen, I'm light, you know. I guess. Yes, other countries were just as enamored with Harriet's book as they were in America. It became the first American novel translated into Chinese.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And within five years was translated.
SPEAKER_01Well, they did make a play in Siam.
unknownShhh.
SPEAKER_04Shut the fuck up. And within five years, it was translated into over twenty languages. Today, at least thirty-seven. In eighteen fifty-four, Harriet Beecher Stowe released Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, which detailed her trip through Europe, including England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. While Germany and the Netherlands wouldn't outlaw slavery officially until 1890, Harriet's book was well received by everyone. However, Switzerland just kind of forgot that slavery was legal for them until 1974, when they realized they should probably make an update on that.
SPEAKER_01Swiss are classically neutral. I fucking guess.
SPEAKER_04I mean that's Harriet Beecher Stowe became the face of the abolitionist movement. When in 1855 a book titled The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution by author William Cooper Nell hit this the hit the shelves, Harriet was asked to pen the introduction. She stated that black history is too often forgot by the masses, but only because it's repressed on purpose. It was books such as William Cooper Nell's that would always carry on the story. In 1856, Harriet released Dread, spelled D-R-E-D. A tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, her second novel. Like everything she would make, it did less well financially than Uncle Tom, but would still be a classic on its own merit. Dread is about the escape slaves that really did live in the swamps between Virginia and North Carolina, with the super fun name of the Great Dismal Swamp. Super dangerous area as far as the wildlife goes. But if you're an escape slave and you're looking for a place where no one will follow you, what other choice do you have? But one thing people noticed about Dread was that it had more of a revolutionary feel to it than Uncle Tom. No longer were the characters talking about leaving America to make a home back in Africa. Instead, they were talking about rising up against Whitey. Now, if you're unaware of who Nat Turner was, he was a slave that led a four-day rebellion across Virginia in August 1831, where he went from plantation to plantation with a group of dudes killing slave owners and freeing slaves. But as great as that sounds, the rebellion was very much focused on killing anyone who was white, regardless of age, sex, or occupation. Meaning that of the estimated 55 deaths Nat Turner and his followers were responsible for, half of those were children. What do you say now, Nicole? Go ahead and give me your thoughts. Did they teach that King of Siam and the Catholics?
SPEAKER_01How many black children, you know, died as how many that gang got.
SPEAKER_04Well, when the local militia got wind of this, their response was likewise a little reckless. They just went to town and started killing black people indiscriminately. They ended up killing about twice as many as already, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_04They ended up killing about twice as many as Nat Turner and his crew ever did. During his arrest, Nat Turner would tell his story to his attorney, Thomas Ruffin Gray. And Gray would later publish these confessions in an attempt to show Northerners how their abolitionist stances were poisoning the minds of lowly black folk. Harriet Beecher Stowe, on the other hand, put Nat Turner's confessions at the back of her book, Dread, as a call for more action. On July 9th, 1857, Harriet's son Henry would drown in the Connecticut River beside Hanover College in New Hampshire at the age of 19. Not much is known about his personal life, or death for that matter, except what we have from the Hanover College's records. Young Stowe went into the water with several of his classmates to bathe, and after being in a few minutes, became exhausted and cried for help. His roommate and another young man went to his relief, but their efforts to save him were unavailing. Stowe sunk but once and remained underwater twenty minutes before he was taken out. Life was not then extinct, but he was so far gone that he expired in a few moments. He was drowned.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry, if you're twenty minutes under the water and you come out still alive.
SPEAKER_04I yeah, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01What kind of a college was this?
SPEAKER_04Not a very one Alistair Crowley's College of Young Minds. He was drowned only about four rods from the shore. I looked up what a a rod length was, I have no idea. And his body could be seen when lying at the bottom. His remains were carried to Andover in charge of a committee of students consisting of one from each class. The deceased was 19 years of age, a fine scholar, and a youth of much promise. Henry's father and uncle would preside over his funeral. And I just have to warn people, fucking swimming can be dangerous. Okay. It's a lot of people feel like they can tame it just by swimming well.
SPEAKER_01No, I've almost done it.
SPEAKER_04I I fucking we we were on that trip. I think it was our our first trip to Italy where we were just like what the fuck was the name of that place? It was the town that we were like, it was like a beach town.
SPEAKER_01Oh shit, I forget.
SPEAKER_04Luke Lucas something. I don't know. It's Portofino. No, no, no, no. We didn't swim at Portofino. Portofino was the place where we took pictures and shit, but we were we were at some other place before that.
SPEAKER_01Right with the sea bathers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Sea bathers eruption that your sister got from fucking laying on the sand. Yeah. A bunch of little bugs that came up and nipped her in the back, which is disgusting. But I was like, oh, there's a buoy out at the end of that dock. I'm gonna swim to the end of that buoy and back. And I started swimming. And my fucking calf started like it just like seized up, and I was like, oh it's just like I was gonna die in Italy. But either way, yeah, no, fucking swimming, it exerts more muscle and strength than you would think. It doesn't feel that way. Definitely drink some water beforehand, not a bunch, then you're just gonna weigh your fucking fat ass down before you fucking drown. But either way, by 1860, it was already becoming clear that America was headed for civil war. President Abraham Lincoln called upon Americans to enlist in the army, and Harriet's son Frederick would enlist that same year. Frederick had been an alcoholic since he was a teenager. Pounded. And his parents had doubts that he could really make it in the army. Turns out though, the army loves a good drunk. Just look at General Grant. So Fred Stowe climbed the ranks all the way to lieutenant, which I'm sure worried his parents even more. On April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began. It would last a total of four years, one month, and two weeks. Now some have gone so far as to say that Uncle Tom's.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry, how long did the last what did it last again?
SPEAKER_04Four years, one month, and two weeks.
SPEAKER_01Went to college longer than the Confederacy was.
SPEAKER_04And what do you have to show for it, bitch? Now, some have gone so far as to say that Uncle Tom's cabin started the war. And that is an oversimplification.
SPEAKER_01That is.
SPEAKER_04But it did definitely escalate the process. People were becoming more and more aware to The horrors being committed in the South as time went on, and the South were steadfast in remaining pro-slavery in the United States. This war was going to happen. But without the popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin, it's hard to say who would have been president when it happened. It could have been during the projected second term of Abra of Abraham Lincoln. Who knows? Maybe a southerner becomes president and fucks things up even more. On November 25th, 1862, about a year and a half after the start of the Civil War, Harriet and her kids would venture to Washington, D.C., where they would meet with none other than President Lincoln. Now we don't know much about their meeting, but Harriet would write to her husband Calvin saying, quote, I had a real funny interview with the president. Stop doing the finger fucking thing. He did not fuck her. And her pre her daughter had and her stop it. And her daughter Hattie said, quote, I will only say now that it was all very funny, and we were ready to explode with laughter all the while. And to explode with cum no. Sounds like it sounds like they probably just bullshitted the whole time, honestly. Like that's what I imagine just. It's funny because it's just like, what do people really expect to have happen? Like, so I met with the president, and what do you guys talk about? He didn't tell me shit because uh everything that I know is not ready to be a state secret. Like he's not ready to spill fucking honest to God. Make sense. One of Harriet's sons wanted the meeting to have a bit more brevity to it, though. So the way he tells it, Lincoln greeted them by saying, quote, So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war. Historians are pretty sure that's bullshit, though. He probably didn't say that.
SPEAKER_01And then everybody clapped. Fuck up, kid.
SPEAKER_04Right. Well, not only that, but his voice was also really high. I don't know if you knew that.
SPEAKER_05So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war. The mouse always gets it too.
SPEAKER_04That's why he got shot at the fucking theater.
SPEAKER_05Copyright. Do it again!
SPEAKER_04A couple months after their meeting with the president on January 10th, 1863, Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher, would die at the age of 87. He'd suffered a stroke seven years prior and had since then lived a near silent life until his death. Just six months later, in July that same year, Gettysburg would begin with Harriet's son, Lieutenant Fred Stowe in attendance. Now he'd managed to get promotions the last couple years simply because he was the son of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was a saint in the eyes of the abolitionists. And of course, the army made sure to keep Fred out of danger. But there's only so much you can do to keep you out of danger. To keep you out of harm's way with something as big as Gettysburg. Is it ice cream over there? No, Fred, no! On the first day of battle, a shell exploded near Fred, launching shrapnel into his fucking face. Fragments dug inside his ear canal, which were never recovered. And although he did survive this, he battled with constant headaches, which were enough of an annoyance that he was forced to resign. The pain in his head and what he figured to be a dishonorable discharge from the military caused his drinking to worsen. In 1865, Harriet released a book called Stories About Her Dogs. I'm only mentioning this here because I didn't have time to read it, and I want to remind myself to do so. I read a little bit online and they had a Newfoundland named Rover that someone fucking poisoned, which sucks.
SPEAKER_05What the fuck?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it sounds nefarious given her reputation, right? But she was just like, nah, people just like poisoning dogs.
SPEAKER_03What the fuck?
SPEAKER_04Another reason to just hate Southerners, maybe, but I guess she was in the North. I don't know. Either way, I have it on my list. So anyway. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, Harriet's son Fred found Florida to be the perfect place to buy cheap land with cheap labor. Remember, this is the guy that got the fucking shrapnel in the land was cheap because most people hadn't bothered to know anything about Florida yet. And the labor was cheap because it was filled with former slaves. So for 10 grand, the Stows bought a cotton plantation in a place called Mandarin and moved there in 1867. Their reasoning had less to do with the possibility of profit and more to do with supporting their son, who seemed not to drink so long as he was farming. The problem is, Fred was no green thumb. He also was not any less of a drunk. He was taking off entire days just to go to Jacksonville and drink like it was a vacation. In the entirety of 1867, the stove farm would produce two entire bales of cotton.
SPEAKER_01Two.
SPEAKER_04Two.
SPEAKER_01Two.
SPEAKER_04That's not a lot.
SPEAKER_01They should have opened up a firewood plantation.
unknownShut up.
SPEAKER_04Did you guys ever have to go pick cotton as a fucking trip?
SPEAKER_05No! We did that shit as a field trip one time.
SPEAKER_01That is a wild. Did you have black classmates? I don't think we did. Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04I remember one named Jeff with a G. Like one of those kinds, one of those kinds of Jeffs. You know? No, not because he was black, but because he was Jeff with a G, and that's a geo-free. He's a G-free. But uh I I don't know if that was that class. And honestly, it's not like they brought up American history in that time. They were just like, hey, we'll have your kids fucking pick a cotton field for free. We got to ride on the back of a truck. It was kind of fun. Like I enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01Child slave labor.
SPEAKER_04Child slave labor isn't fucking child slave labor if they're having fun, okay?
SPEAKER_01That sounds like a m like a tiny southerner artist.
SPEAKER_04No, when you become an adult, if you were to just feed moonshine. No, if you were to feed some moonshine to adult people, they would fucking work your farm for you. Some of them. I like cleaning and shit when I'm drunk. I enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01It's called alcoholism.
SPEAKER_04No, it's not. It's called ambition. And you right now are being an and bitch on. I need you to be an and bitch off.
SPEAKER_01Alright, now, however, you need to get better at tons. The other white people are better at than you. How's this as a proof? Really? I thought I was marrying a top of the line white person to be my white shield against this bullshit system.
SPEAKER_04No, I get fucking pulled over at TSA now. I was not a white shield at all. They're just like, you with her? Yeah. Lift your fucking touch your toes and lift your sack. Like, god damn it. However, buying a nearby orange orchard and switching to that seemed to do a lot better for the stoves. They actually managed to gain a bit of profit at a time when oranges were seen as sort of a rare item in the in in the north. In New York, a single orange would sell for 50 cents about 10 bucks today.
SPEAKER_01What could a banana cost, Michael?
SPEAKER_04$10. Yeah, no, for real though, like fucking $10 for an orange. You know what though? I don't eat oranges now. They're plentiful and I'm fine with it. But if they cost $10, I'd eat them all the stuff.
SPEAKER_01Ew.
SPEAKER_04I'd just be like, oh fuck yeah, man.
SPEAKER_01That's that's fucking that's you know, side note, when we're one of on one of our Japan trips, like buying the pricier fruits in the grocery store.
SPEAKER_04Dude.
SPEAKER_01It was worth it. Okay, the fucking apple, grapes, and strawberries I've ever had. The blueberries, I've nothing will compare.
SPEAKER_04Your sister gave me like, I think it was like a a freeze-dried strawberry covered in dark chocolate or something. Yeah. And I fucking cried when I bit into it.
SPEAKER_01I had the same reaction when she gave me white chocolate and melon.
SPEAKER_05It's just like, why is this?
SPEAKER_01It's so good.
SPEAKER_04So here's the thing though, Japan doesn't really produce their own fruit, right? Don't they usually have to import it? I don't know why it's so expensive, but it's so good. How do they do that?
SPEAKER_01No, I just no, that's the thing. They have I mean, I'm sure they've got their own farmers who specialize in it, but the thing is, it's an island. There's no more land for them to expand to. Well, so they have to use everything well. So yeah, it's either you you know you've seen that video though, right?
SPEAKER_04The guy who sells the like $500 strawberries. Oh god, and I'm just like a lottery. Oh, I know, and there's like actual chefs and shit that go to like pay this dude $500 for a fucking strawberry. Buy him out they like all end up like falling to their knees and crying. And I'm just like, alright, I gotta try one. Like $500 like bucks, that's that's like a good tattoo, you know? We should probably just like fuck it, dude. Like, let's go try it. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01With one of my mother's luxury purses, she could have.
SPEAKER_04She doesn't need to know, she doesn't know that we're selling one of them. We'll sell two of them for fucking a hundred bucks. It'll be fine. Now, all the while, Harriet continued to write. She even wrote a cover story for what was called the Highland Clearances. Now, what these were was essentially thousands of people in Scotland being kicked off their land over the course of like a hundred years so that landlords, i.e., the government, could raise the property and turn it into farming. Meanwhile, the people displaced from the Highland Clearances were forced into cramped accommodations that led to illness and starvation. You know, slave conditions. Well now, Harriet got her perspective on the Highland Clearances, uh, was to interview the Duchess of Argyll, a woman named Elizabeth Campbell, who was married to the man who carried out the clearances once he came into power in 1847. Turns out Harriet and the Duchess were made for each other. They had a grand old fucking time for dunking on the pores. No, they're not cutting stop that. Harriet was fully in support of the Highland clearances. In fact, anytime Harriet was in the UK, she would stay with the Duchess in her mansion.
SPEAKER_01So they're just snooty bitches.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but this is like exactly the type of shit that she's against. And they're just like it sucks though. That's that's so fucking bullshit.
SPEAKER_05Like that's oh, but the Scottish are different.
SPEAKER_04Like, I I don't know. And I mean, at least one Scotsman found humor in this. He wrote a book about the realities of the Highland clearances called Auntie Kate's Cabin. So on her little plantation in Mandarin, Florida, Harriet had no monetary worries whatsoever. Her son Fred was working the orange groves and they had money to spare. This meant that Harriet was able to continue writing for at least a good few hours each day. And as much as her publisher was requesting from Harriet an actual novel, she was instead sending him scraps of travelogues. Her first vacation in Europe, her tour of Italy, and of course her love of Florida, which she regarded as quote, a tropical paradise. Would you foresee Florida as a tropical paradise?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely the fuck not. Muggy as shit. Rain at the drop of the hat. Mosquitoes.
SPEAKER_04You went there for the J.K. Rowling turf exhibition, didn't you, you fucking bitch. That's right.
SPEAKER_01I'm a millennial.
SPEAKER_04You went to the wizard. Hey, I've got a tattoo.
SPEAKER_01It was you didn't just get a tattoo of a Harry Potter thing. You got the fascist Harry Potter tattoo.
SPEAKER_04I just like her tweets. So in 1869, Harriet bought a plot of land with plans to build a church. One that would double as a school for a non-segregated crowd. Men, women, white, black. Anyone was free to learn. And after a year, the church was built. Not long after its completion, however, before the doors would even open, it would burn to the ground. Well, some have speculated that someone in the community was responsible, namely her neighbors, who were known to be a couple of fucking racists. However, the church was rebuilt with their help. So that theory doesn't really add up. It seems that there's more evidence to suggest that some drifters may have actually started the fire. Like they sought shelter when the church wasn't being occupied, and they set up a campfire inside that accidentally got out of control.
SPEAKER_01They took the spare wood, the spare building materials. Look at this firewood, it's free.
SPEAKER_04How much did you get paid for your last job? I got two bundles of firewood.
SPEAKER_01Fuck, I got ripped off. I only got one and a half.
SPEAKER_04Throw it against the throw it against the door. We'll just burn it all. It's fine. That same year, Harriet would co-author a book called The American Woman's Home with her sister Catherine. You see, Harriet and Catherine believed in a world with equal rights for women. Not all women. Married women. And maybe all women, but not like right away. No, you need to show that you were like happily domesticated, and then maybe they could get an education, and then maybe they would be allowed to vote. You know, as a Filipino. Yeah. Someone to fucking put a chip in your shoulder. The next year, in 1870, Harriet would release a book titled Lady Byron Vindicated: A History of the Byron Controversy from its beginning in 1816 to the rest in time.
SPEAKER_01Is it that Byron?
SPEAKER_04Well, this was an interview between the 59-year-old Harriet and the 78-year-old Anne Milbank, better known to you and me, as the Lady Byron. Do you remember? She was the one that was like, Mom, Dad, he's a m he'll he's he's good, don't worry.
SPEAKER_01And then she like fucking Lordy B's wife? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my.
SPEAKER_04She tried to plead that Lord Byron was an honorable Christian man. But yes, he also fucked his half-sister Augusta. As much as it was a well-known rumor before this, the rumor that Lord Byron boned his sister was first written here and immortalized forever afterward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now it was initially just hearsay. Yep. And because of Harriet Beecher's show, oh yeah. She got into basically tabloid writing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, essentially. But like we do have a bunch of letters to back it up where people were just like, he's really weird about Augusta.
SPEAKER_01But this is the first time it's being like published, published by a company.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Instead of just people being like, what did let me let me look at somebody else's correspondence?
SPEAKER_04This would be like, okay, do you remember how Marilyn Manson took out two of his ribs to be able to suck his own dick?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That didn't fucking happen. But imagine if there was then like somebody like a producer who like wrote a tell all book and he's just like, so yeah, I'm here to here's a whole chapter called The Two Ribs of Marilyn Manson. Yeah, dude, and I fucking watched him do it like eight weeks after post op, dude.
SPEAKER_01It was a student hospital.
SPEAKER_04Student hospital. We didn't think that they could do it, but they fucking did it.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's how he watched it. Right?
SPEAKER_04Ralph Milbank, also known as Lord Lovelace, Lord Byron's grandson, whom he never met, wrote a response on Harriet's book, which he called Astarta. A fragment of truth concerning George Gordon Byron, sixth Lord Byron. He said, Quote, You ask my views on this most painful subject. Mrs. Stowe has committed the grave error, whatever her motive, of going to the public with insufficient evidence, arrogantly expecting her name to command universal belief. She has committed a flagrant breach of confidence, and without even the justification of producing a history upon such evidence that no doubt could be fastened upon it. He bitches for over three hundred pages, and all of it is about Harriet Beecher Stowe. Granted, I did not read it, but I flipped.
SPEAKER_01He never met his grandfather.
SPEAKER_04No, dude, I fucking scrolled through like JSTOR and fucking Okay, page 84. There's her name. Page 100. Alright, there she is. The whole book is just about him being a kid.
SPEAKER_01But then the last sentence is my grandfather did not fuck my fuck his sister. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04No, that's what it's all leading up to. It's just like Is it really? Oh shit. And fucking, here's the thing, dude. Like we covered in the Lord Byron episodes itself, but he fucking like was worried that one of his sisters' kids was his. Like that is the only evidence we have from his mouth, but that's enough evidence that we're gonna be able to do it. From his mouth to God's ears. His fucking handwriting. Wild shit. Anyway, the same year as the release of Lady Byron's expose in 1870, Fred Stowe, her son, still an alcoholic, decides to no longer be a burden to his family and fled from his home in Florida. He caught a ship that brought him around South America and all the way up to San Francisco, where he settled into a hotel with some friends.
SPEAKER_01He took the long, long way around?
SPEAKER_04There wasn't a Panama Canal.
SPEAKER_01Well, he just didn't I don't know. I guess there's no railroad, there's no taking of that's a that's a there's no riding actual.
SPEAKER_04That's a good point. I don't know. Honestly, you could have probably walked and gotten there quicker. But once he dropped off his bags into his room, he left to run an errand. And was never came back? Never seen again. He was only 31.
SPEAKER_02Damn.
SPEAKER_04Apparently Harriet would spend the rest of her life hoping to receive a letter from Fred, never believing in the possibility that he was dead. And in 1872, Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher was under some hot water. He was accused of adultery, and although he was probably guilty, Harriet remained a staunch supporter of her brother and touted his innocence. You see, it wasn't the first time that Henry Beecher had been accused of adultery, nor rape, for that matter. Though nothing could be concluded one way or the other. It basically came about that one woman in Henry's church admitted to another woman in the church that they'd banged Henry, and it turns out that that woman banged him too. After that, they just kind of found out that everyone had been fucking Henry. Henry was ultimately exonerated of any wrongdoing the following year. What the fuck? Well, he's a dude.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's you know.
SPEAKER_04Though whether or not he was guilty of his crimes seemed to split the beater siblings down the middle. Harriet, however, was always on her brother's side. Not for the best. I know. Stop with the finger fucking thing, man. She's not fucking her brother. She's in 1870.
SPEAKER_01She was hanging out with the Byrons.
SPEAKER_04A Byron. A noble one. In 1873, Harriet published one of the first travel guides to Florida titled Palmetto Leaves. It was a bestseller. And by Harriet's own estimation, about 14,000 tourists had made their way to Florida within the next year alone. By her estimation. By her estimation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's so weird. Like a billion people came by because I said.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Now the Stowe household was close by the St. John's River, and riverboat captains soon made it a rule to slow down past their home so people could get the chance to see Harriet on the veranda. This became so popular a destination, in fact. That a dock was soon made next to her home, almost like a bus stop, just so that people could get off and bother her and her family. Not so sure that she was made aware of their intentions when they built it, because yes, she was very fucking annoyed by the amount of people that did not understand how weird it is to peek inside of other people's windows. Soon afterward, the Stows returned to their old home in Hartford, Connecticut, though they would still visit their home in Florida during the winter. It was here in Hartford that Harriet would become a founder of the Hartford Art School, which was soon absorbed into the University of Hartford. In 1884, Calvin Stowe's health began to weaken. Just a couple years later, Harriet's husband of 50 years would pass away in 1886 at the age of 84. Since his death, Harriet's health also began to rapidly decline. Two years later, in 1888, it was reported by the Washington Post that the 77-year-old Harriet Beecher Stowe was working on a new novel. She called it Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the novel was word for word the same as her earlier release at the same time.
SPEAKER_01How was the Civil War still going at this point? No, no, no.
SPEAKER_04It ended in like fucking 601860 something. Okay, so she 68, I think. This was like 20 years later. Harriet was battling dementia. Oh. And although she didn't remember having written the book before, she remembered her own story exactly the same. Every day she worked on Uncle Tom's cabin, and every day she remained exhausted by the effort. Also, since she had written numerous essays about nature over the years, she would often be seen wandering town, shouting her knowledge about any flower she came across, to no one in particular.
SPEAKER_01Rhododendrons!
SPEAKER_04Yeah, very fun.
SPEAKER_05I like 'em!
SPEAKER_04It's blue. It's very possible that when one of Harriet's own children, Georgiana May Allen, died at the age of forty-six from septicemia on January 13, 1890, that Harriet's mind had no way to process it. But hey, you know who else lived in Hartford? Mark Twain. They were next door neighbors. Hey. And he actually wrote about Harriet's last years. Quote Yeah, it's not a happy one. Quote. Her mind had decayed. And she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood, the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will. As she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect. So she'd just wander into people's homes and be like. Harriet Beecher Stowe passed away July 1st, 1896, at the age of 85. Oh wow. She was buried alongside her husband Calvin and their son Henry at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. But honestly, Harriet wasn't the only person of note in her family. Her older sister Catherine protested the Indian Removal Bill of 1830. She also became an advocate for women to become teachers, saying they were easier to deal with and they understood children better than men. She founded the American Women's Educational Association in 1852, which would form the acceptance of kindergarten being implemented in America. I have no idea where it was before that. France, maybe? I don't know. Unfortunately, Catherine Beecher was also kind of an anti-suffra suffragate, believing that women could be better off shielded from the evils of politics. She died age 77 on May 12th, 1878.
SPEAKER_01So would she get?
SPEAKER_04I suppose so. Harriet's other sister, Isabella, was luckily a suffragist icon who believed the government could use a mother's touch. She even presented a bill that would allow married women to own their own property. She was by Harriet's side when she passed away and unfortunately wouldn't live to see the 19th Amendment ratified, which would allow women to vote in 1920. Instead, she passed away on January 25th, 1907, at the age of 84. All the men in the Beecher family, all of Harriet's brothers, were preachers of one kind or another. Sorry, I was trying to kick the dog because I see her licking her butthole on the side.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, that's private time for her. Don't look at her.
SPEAKER_04Anyway, her brother Thomas even officiated Mark Twain's wedding. She only had one brother, however, that actually participated in the Civil War rather than just giving soldiers their last rights. James Chaplin Beecher enlisted in the Union infantry and quickly rose in the ranks. The rifles his men carried were nicknamed Beecher's Bibles, since their job was to send Confederate men to God. That's so fucking cool, dude. That's so cool as shit, dude. The only time James quit the war was to attend to his wife's death in 1863, but then he jumped right back in. Commanded the 35th United States Colored Troops until he was forced into retirement at the age of 37. Died August 25th, 1886, at the age of 58 from a self-inflicted rifle round after years of mental fatigue. That no. That's manly as fuck. This dude kicks ass.
SPEAKER_01Like I'm tired night night.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, just fucking. I'm done. I've done God's will. Dude's awesome. Harriet and Calvin's children didn't do much in their lives. Her first children, the twins Hattie and Eliza, died in 1907 and 1912, respectfully. Uh and um Charles died in 1934. Though Charles did write a biography of his mother called The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1889, seven years before her death. Now, while Uncle Tom's Cabin was seen as a revolutionary novel in its time, having been a factor in the Civil War, it has since then become sort of a staple in stereotypes. I mean, it was handing out racist stereotypes like it was candy. Big-hipped mammy at the stove, the eccentric little black girl Topsy, and of course Uncle Tom himself, who was all too happy to do his job for white people so long as everyone was satisfied. With the book being the highest-selling novel in the world at the end of the 19th century, it meant that it had its fair share of stage and film productions as well. These were called Tom Shows. Problem was Oh shit, is this the King and I? The problem was everybody likes a happy ending, and notably Uncle Tom's Cabin doesn't really have one.
SPEAKER_01I mean I guess so.
SPEAKER_04It's bittersweet, with Uncle Tom dying and all but you know, there is an epilogue where you find out everyone else lived happily ever after. Anyway, Harriet Beecher Stowe always looked at Uncle Tom as a Christ-like figure, seeing a sort of beautiful sadness in his death. In Tom's shows, however, they needed a happy ending. Now they'd still have Uncle Tom die, yes, but then they'd always have some sort of ending where all the whites gather around and talk about how sad they are to see Uncle Tom dead and gosh, the error of their ways. Regrettably, all this makes is an ending where the only way whites will understand the problems of the black population is through their demise. That's not a good thing at all. On top of that, these shows had to condense the story. It'd be far too long otherwise. So what we were typically left with were stories that cut out the feminism, cut out the Christianity, and yes, even cut out the pro-abolitionist message. As Tom shows the fuck well for time constraints, you've got another 30 minutes to put on here. Put more black jokes.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, it just seemed like that was those were like the major points. What do you mean they cut it out? Well And they didn't free anyone, and no one escaped, and they were just happy doing free labor for the rest of their lives, and then they died after 500 lashes.
SPEAKER_04Why is that under Harry baby fucking died in the water? You floated up to the top because of how much hair you had, and you fucking drown him anyway. I don't know. As Tom shows grew more popular, the message would become more and more altered. And to a lot of people, hey, watching a state show is Siamese.
SPEAKER_01Watching a Siam Siam.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, watching a state show is a lot easier than reading a book. On top of that, Uncle Tom's image started to warp as well. Tom was no longer seen as this muscular, heroic young man. Instead, Tom's shows often made him portly old and gave him a gray beard. This all but confirmed to anyone who hadn't actually read the story that Uncle Tom was a weak old man with weak ideals. I'm almost certain the old guy in the Song of the South was based on Uncle Tom, and that's what a lot of people think of when they hear that name. I I imagine so. I kind of thought that way myself until we got like an illegal copy of Song of the South. You know? And we watched it. Fucking dumb movie, by the way. There's a hilarious scene where like a kid runs across like, okay, so a little white boy dies by getting run over by a bull, I think. But he ran across the field, and I know that they edited it for a like a bull to run like soon after him, but it was the same shot, it was hilarious. Like a little boy going, no, no, no, and then he goes out of frame and then a bull chases after him. Just mows his ass down. It's fucking hilarious. Anyway. As time went on, the original message in Uncle Tom's Cabin was all but lost. In 1907, there was a play in China called Black Slaves Cry to Heaven. And while it was fairly loyal to the original story, the purpose of the play was to show how unfairly Chinese people were being treated in America. As the writer of the play wrote on the poster, quote, the yellow people in the US are probably treated worse than the blacks, but our country's power is weak, and our convoys are cowardly and afraid of arguing with the Americans. Furthermore, no educated person has recorded what has happened, and I have no way to gain factual knowledge. What the fuck does that mean? So anyway, I might be making this up. I don't know, I haven't read it.
unknownWhat the fuck?
SPEAKER_04As soon as we hit the 20th century, Tom's shows got adapted to film. One of the first full-length films we have, which meant back then that the movie was only like 20 minutes long, was a 1903 silent rendition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was even directed by Edwin S. Porter, the guy who released the classic Western film, The Great American Train Robbery, that same year. That's for my film fellow film students and not Nicole who doesn't know what the Great American Train Robbery is.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it had Denzel Washington in it.
SPEAKER_04That's uh Inside Man. Now, of course, nothing problematic would be the same if Disney didn't get involved. Walt Disney himself voiced Mickey Mouse in the 1933 short film Mickey's Meller Dramer.
SPEAKER_01Oh no.
SPEAKER_04Where he, Minnie, and Goofy stage a Tom Show.
SPEAKER_01Oh no.
SPEAKER_04So if you ever want to hear what Walt Disney sounded like pretending to be a mouse-doing black voice, there you go. Oh no. Perhaps in a bit of a coincidence, the church built by Harriet and Calvin Stowe was destroyed when Hurricane Dora threw an oak tree through the roof in 1964, the same year the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. Unfortunately, this did also destroy a stained glass window that was dedicated to the Stowe family, designed and constructed in 1916 by Lewis Comfort Tiffany, the man who would popularize the company known as Tiffany's. Motherfucker designed the New York Yankees logo. But he was also the guy that introduced the world to Tiffany Lambs, so fuck him, I guess. I'm not a fan. Those are I don't like Tiffany Lambs.
SPEAKER_01You have very strong feelings about Life Lambs.
SPEAKER_04I have very fucking strong feelings about Tiffany Lambs in particular. I don't like them. Even just the design, I don't fucking like it, dude. Just I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Tiffany the heebie jeebies?
SPEAKER_04Well, no, it's like the faux stained glass feel that they they put on. Like anything that's not a quote unquote actual Tiffany lamp. I still call them a Tiffany lamp, but they got that bullshit ass fucking design over them. And yeah, we got like three or four downstairs. I'm aware. Two. I don't three. No. Yeah. We've got the one over the dining room table too. I hate it. I fucking hate it.
SPEAKER_01But the other two have burn. Fuck the fucking just get fucking birds on it.
SPEAKER_04I I don't fucking I I'm I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Back on the back.
SPEAKER_04Now the house where Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin while in Brunswick, Maine, became a museum called the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in 1962. As was the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick, that both became museums in 1970. In 1986, Harriet was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Uncle Tom's cabin has always been problematic, yes, and to a certain degree, so was Harriet Beecher Stowe. And while I hope you understand that the original name for Uncle Tom was no insult, I still can't say that it'd be wise to say out loud. Especially since Republicans keep defending the term as well as the entirety of slavery.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say those northern states, like old like her old residences in the northern states were turned into museums. You didn't say anything about Florida.
SPEAKER_04That's a fair point that you and I have both made.org. The 1848 Capitol Riots An unsuccessful mass escape by enslaved blacks that entangled the nation by the conversation. Milwaukee Independent.com April 13th, 2021. Harriet Beecher Stowe in the Highland Clearances by Glenn McDavid.gmcdavid.org. Astart. A Fragment of Truth Concerning George Gordon Byron Sixth Lord Byron recorded.
SPEAKER_01My grandfather did not fuck his sister.
SPEAKER_04No, that's the next source. Hang on. By his grandson, Ralph Milbank, Earl of Lovelace, new edition, with many additional letters. Edited by Mary Countess of Lovelace, by Ralph Milbank, Earl of Lovelace. London First of First, 1921. Archive.org.
SPEAKER_01Sisters, child, kids.
SPEAKER_04It's fine. Frederick Stowe, uh, Andover Lestwe Forget.com and Jenni.com. So there's Jedi. So that's the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe, somebody who by all means was not completely without fault. But of course. God forbid that she did not fucking. She was she really fucking went for the number one problem in this country and was just like, no, fuck this shit. And then decided that she was gonna back a few others that were just, you know, probably you know, women should probably vote.
SPEAKER_05Scottish people should probably have the same conditions as everyone else. That's okay. But you know.
SPEAKER_04How do you feel?
SPEAKER_01Um I really wanna watch specifically the little play that they do on the king and I.
SPEAKER_04I guess. Alright, well we'll we'll look for it then. Happy fourth.
SPEAKER_02Happy fourth.
SPEAKER_04And fuck you and fuck the government.