Episodi
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You know, we had an assassination last episode, too, didn’t we? Well, this one is going to cause a lot more difficulty for the world, especially for Europe. Things are about to get really crazy. The first 45 years of the 1900’s were just an amazing, crazy time to be alive. Someone born in 1900 would have been alive for two world wars, the Great Depression, the invention of nuclear weapons, the cold war, and if they had lived to be 70 years old, they would have seen the first moon landing. What an amazing time to be alive. If you survived.
But before we can get to all that, we have to talk about a couple of other things first, including the tensions that are about to cause several huge wars. We need to talk about the crazy web of alliances that crisscrossed Europe that are going to lead to the first world war. But even before that, we have to talk about one of the most important inventions in all of human history. No, I’m not talking about the invention of podcasting, not yet anyway. I’m talking about - the Wright Brothers, human flight, and the invention of the airplane.
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Well, welcome to the 20th Century! I’m sure a fair number of those of you who are listening to this were born in the 20th Century, as I was, and the rest of you were born in the 21st century. I know I’ve usually tried to refer to the centuries by their actual numbers, like the ‘1900’s,’ but now that we are entering the century that we’ve all lived in, I think it also makes sense to use the common designations that we often hear in the media today. So right now, we are in the 21st century, but many of us also have lived in the 20th century.
Website: shortwalkthroughhistory.com
email: [email protected]
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Episodi mancanti?
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And here we are! Episode 100!!! It’s only taken us 100 episodes to cover the first 12,000 or so years of human history. I have a tentative plan to get us all the way to, well, today. It’s going to take about 40 or so more episodes.
Since this is our 100th episode, I thought I’d make this a sort of special episode, and instead of covering new ground, we could take a quick look back at everything that has happened so far. Well, not really everything, but kind of the big highlights. And maybe a quick peek at what we’re going to cover from here.
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Wow, episode 99. I like the symmetry of having episode 99 be a summary of the world in 1899. Last episode, we looked at the changes in technology, science, and worldview that occurred in the 1800’s, and like I said, there was an enormous amount of change from 1800 to 1899. This episode, I want to summarize all the big stuff that happened in the 1800’s, and give us a kind of starting point for the world as it goes into the 20th century. Or, as I prefer to call it, the 1900’s. I want to sort of set the stage for all the things that are about to happen in the early 1900’s.
But first, let’s do some summarizing of what happened in the 1800’s. I’m going to go kind of regionally, by continent, starting with North America.
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Well, look at that. We’re finally coming to the end of the 1800’s! Only two more episodes, then we’ll be in the 1900’s. It only took us 30 episodes to cover that 100 year period. I honestly have no idea how long it will take to cover the 1900’s, as I haven’t mapped that out yet. Guess I ought to get started on that, huh.
Next episode, I’ll review some of the history of the 1800’s, and take an overall look at how the events of the 1800’s shaped our modern world, but I felt like I needed to have a special episode just on the massive change in worldview that happened, particularly over the last half of the 1800’s. That change in worldview was the result of the western world moving from what could be called a mostly Christian worldview to the world embracing what we now call Modernism.
I’ll get into a bit of a definition of that in a minute, but first, I want to make the point that this change of worldview is huge. It’s a seismic shift of worldviews, perhaps the biggest shift in all of human history. The only other comparable shifts were the shift of the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity, or maybe also the Middle Eastern and African shift from paganism to Islam. Those were big shifts, though they both took longer, and the process was perhaps a bit slower than the shift to modernism. And part of the story of modernism is exactly that - the pace of change. Things change over time, but in the modern era, things change much more quickly. It’s harder for any individual person to adapt, because things are changing so much faster.
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Last episode we talked about the robber barons, and the changes in technology and manufacturing that they exploited to become phenomenally rich.
Part of that growth of riches was due to the expansion of the US as an exporter of stuff to the world. And as part of that expansion, the United States began to see itself as a legitimate world power, and began to seek to enforce its will on other countries.
This had started back in Episode 73, with the Monroe Doctrine, as President James Monroe, the 5th President of the United States, said, in 1816, that the US would protect South and Central America from the interference of European powers. Now, in the late 1800’s, the United States had begun to build its own battleships and other steam-powered naval vessels, and for the first time, the United States really began to project force upon other countries in the western hemisphere.
Website: shortwalkthroughhistory.com
email: [email protected]
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Last episode, we looked at the very last chance the south had to win the war outright. After Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the south’s only chance was the election of 1864, and the hope that maybe the north would elect a new, anti-war government that would just let the confederate states go.
But the federal government in Washington knew that risk too, and they needed to make sure that it looked like the north was clearly close to winning the war, so that Lincoln and the republicans would be re-elected.
Vicksburg and Gettysburg had ended in early July of 1863. In November of 1863, Grant and Sherman won an important battle in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which gave the Union control of almost all of Tennessee, and opened up a pathway into Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama.
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email: [email protected]
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The dystopian surveillance state we live in today has been called by some people ‘Late-stage capitalism,’ and is perhaps the inevitable result of the capitalist system. When the very rich gain so much money that they can control all the media, all the politicians, and have zero accountability for their actions, everyone else in the world suffers the loss of liberty, privacy, and the loss of their voice in the political arena of their cities, states, and country. We’re in that stage now, but guess what? This isn’t the first time capitalism has gone down this path.
Website: shortwalkthroughhistory.com
email: [email protected]
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Well, we talked last episode about the expansion of the British Empire during the 1800’s, but there were a lot of other countries that were trying to build their empires as well. No one is going to be as good at it as the British, but a lot of other countries did try to get in on the imperialism action.
So I should maybe take a moment to explain what imperialism is, first. Most countries have something like natural borders. Or there are sort of geographic limits to where people from one language or ethnic group live. For example, most of the Germans live in Germany. If you go west a bit from where the Germans live, you get to a whole other group of people, the Dutch. Or southwest, you get the French. Different languages, different tribal backgrounds, different cultures.
Imperialism is the idea that the people in one ethnic or language group should basically attack and conquer some other group in another area, and take over that area and make it their own, part of their empire. So when you think about Napoleon, who called himself an emperor - it was his goal to take over most of Europe and make it all kind of French. Or at least, controlled by the French. That would mean that the German people would be controlled by the French, and the Polish people would be controlled by the French, and the Russian people, - well, we know how that turned out. It didn’t end well for Napoleon.
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When we last looked at the British Empire, 15 !! Episodes ago, Queen Victoria was on the throne. And she still is. I mean, not today, today it’s King Charles and his weird red official portrait, but I mean Victoria is still queen at this point in our timeline. We did kind of spend a lot of episodes focusing on the American Civil War, but we really didn’t cover much time. I mean, it’s only 1877 or so. This brings up an important topic - who did the British support during the Civil War? Well, technically, neither side. They had their own Empire to look out for.
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When Lincoln died, Andrew Johnson became the President. Johnson was from the south, having been born in North Carolina. When he was 17, his family moved to Tennessee, which is where he grew up. He joined the Democratic Party, being a believer in states’ rights, and served as a US Congressman, then the Governor of Tennessee, then a US Senator. He was the US Senator from Tennessee when Tennessee seceded from the Union, but he opposed secession, and he alone of all the southern senators stayed at his post in the US Senate.
Once Tennessee was completely under Union control, Lincoln appointed him the military governor of the state. So as a sort of southern democrat, he was an odd choice for VP, in some ways, but Lincoln thought that it would help carry the northern democrats who were in favor of continuing the war. Luckily for Lincoln and Johnson, Sherman had captured Atlanta in September, just before the November elections, and so public support for Lincoln and the pro-war Republicans was strong. Adding Johnson ended up being helpful as well, as he took away votes from McClellan who had run as a Democrat.
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Well, the Civil War is over. Mostly. The big battles are over, and though there are going to be a few more battles, everyone knows that the south has lost. The question on everyone’s mind is, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ Is this going to be a smooth transition, or a rough one. Turns out, it’s going to be kind of rough.
And one of the reasons that it’s going to be rough is what we are covering in this episode - Lincoln’s assassination. What’s also going to be rough is keeping this episode short, because besides history, my other favorite topic is conspiracy theories, and Lincoln’s assassination is full of them. In fact, if I ever finish this podcast - this short walk - my next podcast will be on conspiracy theories, and I’ll probably start right here, with the assassination of Lincoln. For the sake of brevity here, I’ll stay to stick to the generally accepted story, which, oddly enough, includes a conspiracy as part of the story.
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At the same time that Sherman was burning his way through Georgia, but avoiding major battles, Grant was up in Virginia, trying to provoke major battles. In March of 1864, Lincoln had put Grant in charge of all the Union armies. General Meade was still the commander of the Army of the Potomac, so Grant took Meade and together they headed into Virginia to try to defeat Robert E Lee. Grant’s goal was to draw Lee into a huge battle, and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia.
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The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, well, the draw at Antietam that forced the South to stop their invasion of the north, was seen as a huge victory in the north, even though the actual battle that day was a draw. Both armies basically left the field shattered, but since McClellan didn’t follow up and crush what was left of Lee’s army, the Confederates were able to get back to Virginia, and reorganize. And guess what? They will be back. Lee’s going to invade, again, soon, and that’s going to take us to a battle that was even bigger and bloodier than Antietam.
But first we need to head west, to the Mississippi, and back to our one Union general with a winning record, Ulysses S Grant.
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The war has been going pretty well for the south at the mid point of 1862, but the south has less men, less guns, less cannons, less of almost everything. Less manufacturing capacity, for sure. But time is sort of on the South’s side. The longer that the Confederacy exists as its own country, the more people are likely to just accept it that way. And the longer the war drags on, especially if the North keeps losing, the more likely the Northern public is to stop supporting the war. Again, kind of like it was in the Revolutionary war, the South doesn’t have to win, necessarily, it just needs to not lose, or at least not lose catastrophically, and it will keep existing. The North, on the other hand, needs to win decisively.
And they haven’t done that yet, they haven’t really beaten and destroyed a Southern army, even though they won a few battles. The South is still fielding competent armies, and still continuing to exist. The North really needs a big win, to change the momentum of the war, and to change public opinion.
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At this point, in late 1861, the war is not going well for the Union. The early battles of the Civil War were mostly Union defeats, or at least draws where the Rebel army got away. There were not any definitive victories, that’s for sure. And because of that, the Confederacy still existed. It was sort of like the American strategy during the Revolutionary war - as long as General Washington and the Continental Army still existed, the British hadn’t won. Similarly, as long as the Confederacy still existed, the Union had not won. And this gave hope to the Confederates, and frustrated the people of the Union.
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Last episode, we talked about the revolutions in Europe in 1848. The United States is about to have a revolution, I mean, another one, at least from a certain point of view. From another point of view, it’s a rebellion. But we aren’t quite there yet.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of driving out demons using the power of Satan. And Jesus, in a masterful double entendre, replies, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.’ A house that is internally divided, he’s saying, will not stand, it will collapse. Jesus’ point was that if he was driving out demons by the power of Satan, well, that satanic house would be divided, and it would collapse. But he’s also making the point that the house of Judaism, the house of the Pharisees, is also divided, as many people in Judea had begun to follow Jesus, but the Pharisees had not. The house was divided.
And much later, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, running for the US Senate, said, quoting Jesus, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
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Well, here we are, at war. Sort of. Shots were fired at Fort Sumter, but no one was actually killed in the battle. But now the battle lines are being drawn. Lincoln has asked for more volunteers, and the border states of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and most importantly, Virginia, have chosen to leave the Union, rather than provide troops that would be used to attack the south.
So both sides begin putting together armies. A lot of men volunteered initially, in part because they thought that this wasn’t going to take long. Lincoln’s request for new volunteers, for example, was only for a 90 day enlistment. People in both the North and the South felt like this war would be over in only a few months. Both sides overestimated their own battle prowess, and felt like they would be able to ‘whip’ the other side pretty easily. But even more than that, both sides seriously underestimated the other side’s resolve to fight.
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Well, here we are, right at the brink of disaster. Things are about to get really busy. The United States is about to begin a unique, and very bloody, war. It’s unique in that it was kind of the transitional war from old colonial warfare weapons and strategies, to new modern weapons and strategies. It’s a bit of both, but it will start off, much more in the old colonial style. But it’s going to end with ironclad ships, machine guns, revolvers, aerial reconnaissance, and total war. We’ll get to all that as we go.
Last episode, I mentioned that even before Lincoln was inaugurated as President, there were places in the South where there were forts that were controlled by troops that were federal, or Union troops. The US army had forts in several key places in the south. In some of those places, the commanders and troops were actually northerners, so their allegiance was to the federal government, rather than to the locals. We are going to get to the really well-known example of this, Fort Sumter, in a moment, but there were others as well.
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Well, here we are, about to watch a house divide against itself. It’s not going to be pretty.
I have to say, as I start this episode, that I really feel like we’re getting somewhere in this podcast. We’re at the brink of war! I mean, we’ve been building up to the Civil War for a while now, and here we are, about to see the United States fall apart. The actual fighting is going to begin next episode, and I then think we are going to linger on the Civil War topic for a few episodes. I mean, we lingered on Rome for like 12 episodes, so there is a precedent. But don’t worry, it won’t be that long.
Last episode, I talked about Kansas, John Brown, and the Dred Scott case, and now we are going to get to the events that really ended up dividing the country. And so we get to talk about John Brown. Again.
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