OMG! This is such an amusing presentation of the events! I love it! And as a newer TYT member, I just discovered this series… gotta say that I LOVE IT!
Minor correction: Lincoln did not “die laughing”. His last breath was not in that theatre. After being shot, he was carried to a nearby house where Andrew Johnson and several cabinet members were summoned and stood vigil. The surgeon general was also called and he determined that, while not yet dead, the shot was fatal and would eventually kill the president. While he never truly regained consciousness, Lincoln breathed his last at a little after 7am the next morning.
Yes, slavery wasn’t the *only* cause of the Civil War, but it was by far the most salient cause, and was so much so that the other causes that Kempton mentioned had their roots in the issue of slavery. As the war went on, it became a conflict of emancipation and liberation in addition to being one of preserving the Union.
On Reconstruction: The policies of the Radical Republicans actually did a great deal of good and the enforcement of the new amendments did much to move Southern society forward with the enfranchisement of African Americans. The problem was that Andrew Johnson was in many ways a southern sympathizer who was lenient on the South and allowed many of the Radical Republican measures to lapse which resulted in White supremacy and racist domestic terrorism systematically taking hold and extinguishing any and all modicum of justice and equality for African Americans. The effect was that the freedmen and women were systematically re-enslaved and kept in a position of subservience to whites. Keep in mind a lenient Reconstruction towards the former Confederate states meant in reality the return of White supremacy to Southern society which resulted ultimately in the Jim Crow laws that remained in effect for nearly a century afterward. If the racist whites in the South were going to whine and throw tantrums about the fact that their horrifically savage and brutal slave-owning society had been turned on it’s head, then sad day for them -they don’t get one ounce of sympathy from me and they shouldn’t have gotten any from the Union victors.
I know that’s not the kumbaya reconciliation comment some might want on a video like this, but when you’ve heard enough stories about the atrocities of the pre-Civil Rights era and when you’ve heard enough Southern whites spout racist BS in this day and age, you run out of sympathy for mother-f*cking racists. The death of Radical Republican reforms, in turn meant the death of freedom for African Americans in the South for generations. The lasting effects can still be felt in today’s society. One of the worst feelings in the human experience has to be witnessing the freedom you’ve hoped and dreamed so long for being eroded away with the former whip masters once again riding roughshod over you and your family and friends. That’s the history America lives with every day.
Yes, the radical Republicans did do a lot of good and Johnson was a southern apologist and undermined the reconstruction and further good that could have come from their legislation. I think Kempton’s analysis of reconstruction is flawed and would benefit from additional study of history.
It’s also true that Grant owned slaves that were given to his wife by his father-in-law but Grant came to realize the horror of slavery and fought for the rights of slaves and natives.
Loved this episode! Also really enjoyed Kempton’s insights and his take on the events. It’s been awhile since I read up on the topic, so it was a good way to revisit it and re-clarify some of the events in my mind. Well done! You should definitely have him back on, Grace.
By the way I HIGHLY recommend viewing any way you can Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
Deep and moving account with newly uncovered, declassified information. Lots of meaningful investigation into Lincoln’s background, words and decision making. Shelby Foote lives forever on film and in the hearts of We the People thanks to Ken Burns’ masterpiece.
I was breaking up with Grace. It was a horse drawn carriage, how did he not see that coming?! That jaw brace save story shock-n-awed me Kempton. You guys light up my life.
Did you know Anthony Booth, father of former England PM Tony Blair’s wife Cherie, is John Wilkes Booth’s great nephew? I found out years ago watching the British TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, the show that inspired the US version All in the Family. In the British original, the part of Michael was played excellently by Anthony Booth. He has always lived the part he played, a fierce defender of the Labour Movement and rights for people of all colors and creeds, the EXACT opposite of his great uncle in America. He was born in Liverpool ( as was his TV persona) and is now 85.
I also really love have you with your brother. I always like it that you two can find humor in even the smallest of the mundane details in the darkness of history. I know that you cover dark history, but you don’t have to cover all parts in a doom and gloom manner. I love that! I had heard of the conspirators working with John Wilkez Bootb outside of him being a lone gunman and a well known actor, but I had never heard that much detail about the conspirators. Oh, by the way, I was an astitute pupil in school in Texas; we never learned anything in history except the lone gunman by an actor. I didn’t even learn that John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor. That was always treated as an aside so that it always seemed that he could have been some nobody. I learned that he was famous and about the conspirators from watching the History channel. I always enjoyed school, but I always found history class boring until I got into high school UIL social studies and had to read The Devil in the White City about H.H. Holmes and the Guilded Age, in many ways still relevant to today. I then enjoyed history class because just I learned many things that were sanitized in school from the history channel. Reading that book made me realized how much even the History channel gets sanitized. So, I didn’t really start to learn from history class until college.
don’t laugh at the dangers of carriage traffic — Pierre Curie (Marie’s husband) was killed that way. if you were to find yourself in a different period of history, you would have a different appreciation of the terrors of that age. part of our ability to communicate with, say, an alien species (or tribe, to keep it earthly) is the ability to adapt to the mores and standards of the period. great big animals pulling great big vehicles, at speeds greater than humans can generate, can be very intimidating.
i think you and your brother were too much into the yuck-yuck aspects of the assassination plot, and it took away from the actuality of the unraveling of the historical events. and the events that did occur weren’t really that funny, anyway. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the whole story in her book Team of Rivals. and of course, Sarah Vowell interprets the events more whimsically in Assassination Vacation. i forget the word that was used, but Sarah even delved into the etymology of the humorous word the actor uttered, that evoked the shot-muffling laughter. it’s all in the details.
Love this show Grace! You and your brother do a great job presenting the facts. I did learn about the other assassination attempts when I was in my Highschool History class- mostly because my history teacher loved teaching us like he was telling a story, and all of that drama is quite the story!
I’ve been checking every day, so glad to see a new episode! I had no idea that the Lincoln assassination was part of a plan to kill Johnson and Seward too. Did I not pay attention in class? …..or were my teachers just sadly lacking in their exploration of the darker side of history?
Loved the Edmund Kemper episode too, CHILLS
I had tears from laughter during the segment about Seward being hit by a carriage and then being saved because of the jaw brace. Y’all should do more Murder With Friends episodes together. I love y’alls sick sense of humor. Another great and informative show. Thank you.
Comments
OMG! This is such an amusing presentation of the events! I love it! And as a newer TYT member, I just discovered this series… gotta say that I LOVE IT!
It would be so interesting if you could do an episode of the horrific events that took place in Norway with Anders Behring Breivik on July 11th 2011
Wonderfully informative and fun to watch. Really great editing and pictures. Thank you Grace and Bro!
Minor correction: Lincoln did not “die laughing”. His last breath was not in that theatre. After being shot, he was carried to a nearby house where Andrew Johnson and several cabinet members were summoned and stood vigil. The surgeon general was also called and he determined that, while not yet dead, the shot was fatal and would eventually kill the president. While he never truly regained consciousness, Lincoln breathed his last at a little after 7am the next morning.
This episode was so great! It was both fun and informative! Loved it.
Well done. So interesting.
your brother was awesome please have him on again
Yes, slavery wasn’t the *only* cause of the Civil War, but it was by far the most salient cause, and was so much so that the other causes that Kempton mentioned had their roots in the issue of slavery. As the war went on, it became a conflict of emancipation and liberation in addition to being one of preserving the Union.
On Reconstruction: The policies of the Radical Republicans actually did a great deal of good and the enforcement of the new amendments did much to move Southern society forward with the enfranchisement of African Americans. The problem was that Andrew Johnson was in many ways a southern sympathizer who was lenient on the South and allowed many of the Radical Republican measures to lapse which resulted in White supremacy and racist domestic terrorism systematically taking hold and extinguishing any and all modicum of justice and equality for African Americans. The effect was that the freedmen and women were systematically re-enslaved and kept in a position of subservience to whites. Keep in mind a lenient Reconstruction towards the former Confederate states meant in reality the return of White supremacy to Southern society which resulted ultimately in the Jim Crow laws that remained in effect for nearly a century afterward. If the racist whites in the South were going to whine and throw tantrums about the fact that their horrifically savage and brutal slave-owning society had been turned on it’s head, then sad day for them -they don’t get one ounce of sympathy from me and they shouldn’t have gotten any from the Union victors.
I know that’s not the kumbaya reconciliation comment some might want on a video like this, but when you’ve heard enough stories about the atrocities of the pre-Civil Rights era and when you’ve heard enough Southern whites spout racist BS in this day and age, you run out of sympathy for mother-f*cking racists. The death of Radical Republican reforms, in turn meant the death of freedom for African Americans in the South for generations. The lasting effects can still be felt in today’s society. One of the worst feelings in the human experience has to be witnessing the freedom you’ve hoped and dreamed so long for being eroded away with the former whip masters once again riding roughshod over you and your family and friends. That’s the history America lives with every day.
Yes, the radical Republicans did do a lot of good and Johnson was a southern apologist and undermined the reconstruction and further good that could have come from their legislation. I think Kempton’s analysis of reconstruction is flawed and would benefit from additional study of history.
It’s also true that Grant owned slaves that were given to his wife by his father-in-law but Grant came to realize the horror of slavery and fought for the rights of slaves and natives.
Loved this episode! Also really enjoyed Kempton’s insights and his take on the events. It’s been awhile since I read up on the topic, so it was a good way to revisit it and re-clarify some of the events in my mind. Well done! You should definitely have him back on, Grace.
By the way I HIGHLY recommend viewing any way you can Ken Burns’ The Civil War.
Deep and moving account with newly uncovered, declassified information. Lots of meaningful investigation into Lincoln’s background, words and decision making. Shelby Foote lives forever on film and in the hearts of We the People thanks to Ken Burns’ masterpiece.
I was breaking up with Grace. It was a horse drawn carriage, how did he not see that coming?! That jaw brace save story shock-n-awed me Kempton. You guys light up my life.
Did you know Anthony Booth, father of former England PM Tony Blair’s wife Cherie, is John Wilkes Booth’s great nephew? I found out years ago watching the British TV sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, the show that inspired the US version All in the Family. In the British original, the part of Michael was played excellently by Anthony Booth. He has always lived the part he played, a fierce defender of the Labour Movement and rights for people of all colors and creeds, the EXACT opposite of his great uncle in America. He was born in Liverpool ( as was his TV persona) and is now 85.
I also really love have you with your brother. I always like it that you two can find humor in even the smallest of the mundane details in the darkness of history. I know that you cover dark history, but you don’t have to cover all parts in a doom and gloom manner. I love that! I had heard of the conspirators working with John Wilkez Bootb outside of him being a lone gunman and a well known actor, but I had never heard that much detail about the conspirators. Oh, by the way, I was an astitute pupil in school in Texas; we never learned anything in history except the lone gunman by an actor. I didn’t even learn that John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor. That was always treated as an aside so that it always seemed that he could have been some nobody. I learned that he was famous and about the conspirators from watching the History channel. I always enjoyed school, but I always found history class boring until I got into high school UIL social studies and had to read The Devil in the White City about H.H. Holmes and the Guilded Age, in many ways still relevant to today. I then enjoyed history class because just I learned many things that were sanitized in school from the history channel. Reading that book made me realized how much even the History channel gets sanitized. So, I didn’t really start to learn from history class until college.
don’t laugh at the dangers of carriage traffic — Pierre Curie (Marie’s husband) was killed that way. if you were to find yourself in a different period of history, you would have a different appreciation of the terrors of that age. part of our ability to communicate with, say, an alien species (or tribe, to keep it earthly) is the ability to adapt to the mores and standards of the period. great big animals pulling great big vehicles, at speeds greater than humans can generate, can be very intimidating.
i think you and your brother were too much into the yuck-yuck aspects of the assassination plot, and it took away from the actuality of the unraveling of the historical events. and the events that did occur weren’t really that funny, anyway. Doris Kearns Goodwin tells the whole story in her book Team of Rivals. and of course, Sarah Vowell interprets the events more whimsically in Assassination Vacation. i forget the word that was used, but Sarah even delved into the etymology of the humorous word the actor uttered, that evoked the shot-muffling laughter. it’s all in the details.
Love this show Grace! You and your brother do a great job presenting the facts. I did learn about the other assassination attempts when I was in my Highschool History class- mostly because my history teacher loved teaching us like he was telling a story, and all of that drama is quite the story!
I’ve been checking every day, so glad to see a new episode! I had no idea that the Lincoln assassination was part of a plan to kill Johnson and Seward too. Did I not pay attention in class? …..or were my teachers just sadly lacking in their exploration of the darker side of history?
Loved the Edmund Kemper episode too, CHILLS
I had tears from laughter during the segment about Seward being hit by a carriage and then being saved because of the jaw brace. Y’all should do more Murder With Friends episodes together. I love y’alls sick sense of humor. Another great and informative show. Thank you.