Martin Witherspoon Gary with Vanessa Williamson

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Guy Sucked

Episode: Martin Witherspoon Gary with Vanessa Williamson
Host: Dr. Claire Aubin
Guest: Vanessa Williamson (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Author, The Price of Democracy)
Date: November 13, 2025

---

Overview:

This episode of This Guy Sucked investigates the legacy of Martin Witherspoon Gary, a former Confederate general and architect of post-Civil War racist politics in South Carolina. Host Dr. Claire Aubin and guest Dr. Vanessa Williamson discuss how myths around taxes, “taxpayer” rhetoric, and white supremacist politics intersected during Reconstruction. The conversation draws a direct line from post-Civil War Southern politics to present-day anti-tax arguments, showing how the language of fiscal conservatism often masked (and still masks) efforts to disenfranchise marginalized groups.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights:

1. Why Study the History of Taxes? (02:03–06:40)

• Dr. Williamson shares that her fascination with taxation began during the Tea Party movement’s rise. At a Tea Party rally, she observed a Gold Star mother equating her sacrifice for the nation to paying taxes, revealing a deep, almost moral anger at tax obligations.
• Quote:

  “[T]here's something that happens when you actually just hate taxes... what you're really saying is you hate the government and in particular you're saying you hate the government that responds to the needs of other people.” (04:21 – Vanessa Williamson)

• Taxes provide a unique moral and cultural touchstone in American political discourse—revealing anxiety about government legitimacy, citizenship, and who deserves to belong.

---

2. Retconning the Boston Tea Party & American Tax Myths (06:40–10:28)

• The popular understanding of the Boston Tea Party as an anti-tax protest is a myth. It was in fact a reaction to a tax cut for the East India Company, fueling fears of monopoly, not high taxes.
• Quote:

  “The original Tea Party... it was not about high taxes. It was about a tax cut... it would allow [the East India Company] to become a monopoly. Sam Adams talks about this Tea Act... as introductive of monopolies that were a danger to public liberty.” (07:30 – Vanessa Williamson)

• This misconception feeds a broader (false) narrative that Americans have always been fervently anti-tax.

---

3. Birth of the “Taxpayer” Identity and its Racial Politics (10:28–13:03)

• The concept of the “taxpayer” as an identity emerged post-Civil War, primarily as a rhetorical tool for white elites seeking to delegitimize multiracial Reconstruction governments in the South.
• Quote:

  “The development of the idea of a taxpayer... is very wrapped up in a new kind of argument... to discredit the multiracial democracies of the American South.” (10:28 – Vanessa Williamson)

• Former Confederates reframed themselves as “taxpayers” to regain political power after losing military and political authority.

---

4. Who Was Martin Witherspoon Gary? (13:03–15:13)

• Gary, born to a wealthy South Carolina planter family, was a Confederate general who refused to surrender at Appomattox, later dedicating his life to restoring pre-war white supremacy.
• Quote:

  “He refused, famously, to surrender at Appomattox... Gary rides away... goes and finds Jefferson Davis and resigns his commission to the Confederate former Confederate president.” (13:42 – Vanessa Williamson)

---

5. Reconstruction’s Challenges and Rise of Taxpayer Rhetoric (18:15–23:46)

• The devastation of the South required investment—public schools, infrastructure—but former elites never accepted the legitimacy or taxation of Reconstruction governments.
• “Taxpayer” rhetoric allowed elites to:
  1. Recast themselves as patriots, not traitors
  2. Unify rich planters and poor whites
  3. Appear respectable and nonpartisan to the North
• This language disguised racial motives and reframed anti-democratic campaigns as fights for fiscal responsibility.

---

6. The South Carolina Taxpayers Convention & the Edgefield Plan (27:19–35:44)

• Gary chaired the Taxpayers Convention, which, despite ostensible focus on corruption and electoral reform, was a cover for organizing violent efforts to overthrow Reconstruction governments.
• Quote:

  “...Gary and his buddies set up this thing called the South Carolina Taxpayers Convention... nominally nonpartisan... they hold these conventions in 1871 and 1874... and they managed to get a couple Republicans to come who, frankly... should have known better.” (27:19 – Vanessa Williamson)

• The “Edgefield Plan,” masterminded by Gary, explicitly orchestrated voter intimidation, violence, and murder to suppress black political participation and reinstall white supremacy.
• Quote:

  "Democratic military clubs are to be armed with rifles and pistols. Every Democrat feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one negro by intimidation purchase keeping him away or as each individual may determine…” (51:45 – Vanessa Williamson, reading Gary’s plan) “Never threaten a man individually if he deserves to be threatened. The necessities of the time require that he should die.” (52:48 – Gary, via Vanessa Williamson)

---

7. Redemption and the End of Reconstruction (35:44–42:12)

• The violence and fraud of Redemption, culminating with the 1876 election, signaled the overthrow of black political power in the South.
• The federal government (Rutherford B. Hayes administration) chose capitulation over protecting black citizens or multiracial democracy.
• Quote:

  “Hampton said, every Republican tax collector in the state will be hungry by morning... the President of the United States would think, you are threatening members of my party... But…it was capitulation time.” (39:13–39:46)

---

8. Rhetorical Legacies and Enduring Racist Strategies (42:03–50:00)

• The alliance of white elites and poor whites was forged by the mythos of shared “taxpayer” status, masking the real project: restoring elite dominance and disenfranchising black citizens.
• This language and strategy echoes in contemporary anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric.
• Historians (and the hosts) argue for a more honest retelling, rejecting the “failure” framing of Reconstruction in favor of acknowledging its overthrow by force.

---

9. Corruption of the Taxpayer Crusaders (53:18–56:55)

• The “taxpayer” conventions proved rife with self-dealing; leaders like Gary and Butler personally profited from state bonds under the guise of “fighting corruption.”
• Redeemer governments that replaced Reconstruction were notoriously corrupt, with treasurers embezzling entire state revenues.

---

10. Tools of Disenfranchisement (60:20–65:20)

• Discussion of the origin of the “grandfather clause”—created to allow illiterate or poor whites to vote while disenfranchising black voters.
• Quote:

  “Grandfather clauses... were discriminatory voting laws... that exempt people whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote before the war…so it’s like…everything we say and do in America is based in these horrible, horrible things.” (60:20 – Claire Aubin)

• Poll taxes and “policy innovations” became techniques for mass disenfranchisement during and after the Redemption period.

---

11. Black Political Agency and the Hope of Reconstruction (65:20–70:15)

• Vanessa shares the story of Texas State Senator Matthew Gaines, a formerly enslaved man, who advocated for the right to pay taxes as the foundation of political participation.
• Quote:

  “Before, I didn’t pay taxes because my enslaver paid my taxes for me. And now I pay taxes... I would rather pay something and have it be a burden on me... than be in the position I was in before where someone was paying taxes for me... but that I was not free.” (65:20 – paraphrased by Claire Aubin, originally from Matthew Gaines)

• Black Americans saw taxes—and the ability to pay them—as fundamental to their new, hard-won citizenship and democracy.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “When you've come to the point that you just hate taxes, conceptually, in any form, you hate them, what you're really saying is you hate the government—and in particular, you're saying you hate the government that responds to the needs of other people.” (04:21 – Vanessa Williamson)
• "[The Boston Tea Party]... was not about high taxes. It was about a tax cut..." (07:30 – Vanessa Williamson)
• “He refused, famously, to surrender at Appomattox... this guy Gary rides away. He's not going to be there to surrender.” (13:42 – Vanessa Williamson)
• “Never threaten a man individually if he deserves to be threatened. The necessities of the time require that he should die.” (52:48 – M.W. Gary via Vanessa Williamson)
• “They were using this like convention that was nominally about being anti corruption to in fact enrich themselves through corruption.” (54:24 – Vanessa Williamson)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–02:03 — Introduction; why talk about taxes?
• 06:40–10:28 — Myths about the Boston Tea Party and taxes
• 10:28–13:03 — Emergence of "taxpayer" identity after Civil War
• 13:03–15:13 — Martin Witherspoon Gary’s biography & refusal to surrender
• 18:15–23:46 — Reconstruction, taxation, and elite resistance
• 27:19–35:44 — Taxpayers Conventions and the Edgefield Plan
• 35:44–42:12 — Redemption, violence, and the end of Reconstruction
• 51:45–52:59 — Reading from Gary's 1876 plan (“Never threaten a man individually if he deserves to be threatened…”)
• 53:18–56:55 — Corruption among “taxpayer” elites and aftermath
• 60:20–65:20 — The origin and impact of the “grandfather clause”
• 65:20–70:15 — Senator Matthew Gaines’s advocacy for taxation as freedom
• 71:55–74:03 — Contemporary legacy of anti-tax rhetoric; concluding thoughts

---

Takeaways

• The myth of America’s inherent anti-tax stance was constructed for political purposes after the Civil War, specifically to destroy Black political power.
• Martin Witherspoon Gary was a primary architect of violent Redemption and the anti-tax "respectability" veneer that enabled it.
• Many anti-tax arguments, “taxpayer” rhetoric, and policy choices of today have direct continuity with white supremacist strategies of the late 19th century.
• The language we use ("taxpayer," "grandfather clause," etc.) carries powerful, often disturbing historical legacies.
• The fight over the meaning and distribution of taxes is fundamentally a fight over democracy, inclusion, and justice in America.

---

Transcript

[A]

A list of sensitive themes and topics included in this episode can be found in the episode description. Welcome to this Guy Sucked, the show where we prove that it's never too late to have haters and you can't libel the dead. I'm your host, Claire Aubin, and I'm a historian, writer, and most importantly, certified hater. On this show, we talk about people from throughout history with legacies that need a little updating. Whether it's because of their politics, their behavior, or their impact on society and culture, these guys actually kind of sucked. And we bring in a new scholar every week to tell us why. With me today is Vanessa Williamson, who is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution as well as a senior fellow at the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation and democracy in America and has a brand spanking new book out, which I have been lucky enough to read and have it here on my desk with me called the Price of Democracy. Welcome to the show and congratulations on the book.

[B]

Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here.

[A]

Yeah. And I was saying this before we started recording, but I did not expect to feel as passionately as I do about the history of taxes, like, as I do now after reading the book.

[B]

This is. It's everything I could ask for that you would say. I'm like, please be passionate about taxes. It's my dream. Yeah.

[A]

I feel strongly, like, I obviously felt strongly about them before the way that everyone kind of feels strongly, which is part of the argument of the book. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I don't think I really understood how thoroughly all of American history is intertwined with and affected by taxes, like truly every single aspect of American culture, which I think is really an incredible thing that you've managed to like get across in the book. For someone like me who is like, look, taxes aren't my.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

What made you interested in studying taxation, like, in the first place? Like years ago, when you first started thinking about this as an academic research interest, what was the driver of your initial interest in it?

[B]

So I was actually this dates me. But in the early years of the Obama administration, there was this. The Tea Party movement.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And so I was at. That was the first book I co authored was about that. And I was at a Tea Party rally in Boston. And I just remember so vividly there was this woman there who was a gold star mother, which is a woman who has lost her son in war or something along those lines. And she was talking about the sacrifices she'd made for her country and how angry she was. And for several minutes I thought she was talking about losing her son, which is this incredibly painful thing. And then it transpires that she's talking about taxes. Oh, she's complaining about her taxes.

[A]

Uh huh.

[B]

And I was like, but I mean, now it's many years later, I have two sons of my own. And I gotta tell you, paying taxes is. It's a really minor matter, like what is going on. I thought to myself, I was like, your anger is about not that you lost your son in Iraq, but that you're paying just regular taxes for roads and schools and stuff. And so I thought to myself, I need to understand, you know, what's going on with people. I need to understand what this is about. Because to me, one of these things is like going to the grocery store and one of them is the worst thing that could ever happen.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I can't understand. So that was what got me started thinking about why taxes play this sort of unique role in American politics. Yeah. And I've been interested ever since.

[A]

I mean, I think that's also such an interesting thing because she could also have made the argument, but didn't. Right. She could have made the argument, I don't want my tax money paying for more people to lose their children. Right. Like that could have been the in for the tax part of this. Right. Like, I don't want my taxes used for this. Not for. I don't want them fixing potholes, you know, like I don't want them feeding other children. It's so, it's interesting that even with that, that still is not the crux of her issue, is not that. So especially if you're framing yourself as a gold star mother. And that's why you're here.

[B]

Right. And so it just, it got me thinking about why taxes have this kind of moral aspect to them.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

That I never really thought that much about. And I mean, instead of, you know, many years later, all this work later, and it's completely normal to be like irritated by your taxes.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Fine. Like the process is annoying. Maybe you want taxes to work differently. I certainly do. But there's something that happens when you actually just hate taxes. Full stop. And to me, like, this is one of the three lines in the book, and I think it's a lot of our politics today, like when you've come to the point that you just hate taxes, conceptually, in any form, you hate them, what you're really saying is you hate the government and in particular you're Saying you hate the government that responds to the needs of other people. Right. And in American history, that's almost always wrapped up in a story about, you know, who is deserving of citizenship. Right. And whenever our polity is expanded, whenever more people are allowed to participate, suddenly the people who were in power before are suddenly angry about taxes because it's not them in charge anymore. And so the government is no longer legitimate to them. And so that's, you know, that is the through line. I finally, you know, sort of seen through the history. But what brought me into it was just genuine confusion.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

I just couldn't understand how you could see these two experiences as in some way equivalent.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It is interesting how many historians, myself included, or even if you're not historians working on some aspect of history, find themselves in that field because they're genuinely like, how the hell is this thing happening? Like, what is possible? Right. Like, I started. I work on Nazis, right? And it started with being interested in Holocaust perpetrators and being like, well, why would someone do that? Like, why would someone participate in the Holocaust? Like, what are the motivations there? And then it turned into being like, well, then how do they move to the US and why would they move to the US and why would people react to these certain ways in response to that? And so many things are just. I feel like so many areas of academic inquiry or scholarly inquiry are. They begin with being baffled a little bit by something, if that makes sense. Like that is that, for me, the easiest and most logical buy in is to just be like, well, what do you mean? Someone cares more. Not cares more, but frames their public grievances as being more about taxes than about the loss of their child. Like, what do you mean?

[B]

Right. Like, I need to understand.

[A]

Yeah, I want to know what's happening.

[B]

That was. I need to understand. Exactly. And that was what brought me to it, I guess, partly because I, like, taxes are fine. What would have been my attitude beforehand? You know, now I'm. I'm an ID law, of course. But, you know, at the time I was like, oh, that's. This is very strange. So. Yeah, exactly. I think it's the drive to understand.

[A]

And I also wanna talk about. So you started looking at the Tea Party, which is interesting, and you start the book off with an anecdote that for me, like, blew my mind. Like, was really like a. Like, I had this moment of being like, oh, my God, everything I know about American history is wrong, basically. So every should get the book and read it. But it is about the original Tea Party. Right. The original Boston Tea Party. And the relationship that has to taxes is in fact, not the relationship people believe it has to taxes. And starting the book way for me was like, oh, I am about to learn a lot of things as I go through this.

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, this is like a crazy thing, and it's amazing that this is not better understood. So the original Tea Party. Right. I mean, everyone knows, I guess, the basic story that some people in Boston threw tea into the harbor. Right, sure. Everyone knows that happened.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's become a touchstone on the. Right. Because it's imagined as a story about people being angry about high taxes. The thing is, it was not about high taxes. It was about a tax cut. Right. So the East India Company was deeply embedded with Parliament, and they were struggling in India. They were not looting fast enough, apparently. And so they needed a bailout, like a corporate bailout. And so part of that bailout was just straight money from Parliament to this company. But part of it was a special deal on sending their tea to the Americas, to North America. And colonists hated this because it basically would allow this company, because they had this special tax rate, it would allow them to become a monopoly. Right. And so Sam Adams talks about this Tea act, which was a tax cut, as introductive of monopolies that were a danger to public liberty. Right. And it was not, by the way, beloved at the time. Right. Benjamin Franklin thought it was a bad move. It was called the Destruction of the Tea. It wasn't called the Tea Party until many years later, which is sort of a cute name, like.

[A]

Oh, sure.

[B]

The whole thing that happened. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was the destruction of the tea. And it was seen as excessive, you know, I mean, because it was direct action, it was property destruction, and it was going up against the strongest empire that had ever been. Yeah. So a lot of leaders, I mean, John Adams actually really loved it, but almost all of the sort of leadership of the time was appalled that private property was endangered in this way. So it's much more like people fighting against, you know, oil pipelines or something like that, or the French farmers and their McDonald's is, you know, those sorts of stories. That's much more what it. The resonance of it at the time. And it's only like in the 1830s, when the very last of the people who participated and the Tea Party were like that, the end of the revolutionary generation, that it sort of gets this nostalgic vibe to it and becomes this sort of cute story about, you Know, turning Boston harbor into a teapot or something.

[A]

Yeah. And this is also part of all of the sort of foundational mythology of the U.S. right. Like, there are so many things that we consider to be foundational values in the US that are not really based in reality, which I think is going to be a perfect segue into the person that we're talking about here, where a lot of beliefs that people have around American values and cultural values, specifically, where we say things like, well, Americans think this about this problem or Americans feel this way about this issue. A lot of those things are like, retconned and are not based in, like, historical reality. A good way to move towards talking about who we're talking about in the episode is to start with the idea that Americans don't like taxes is just fundamentally untrue. One and two, and you make a great argument about this in the book. But two, the idea that Americans have always been for low taxes and have viewed themselves as taxpayers, like part of being a citizen in America is being a taxpayer and having strong opinions on not paying taxes is not real. Like, that's historically not the case until the person we're talking about kind of shows up on the scene. Would you say that's an accurate depiction? Am I getting this right?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, the development of the idea of a taxpayer. Right. Is something that is very wrapped up in a new kind of argument that was being made. Well, I guess I don't know how much of a reveal there needs to.

[A]

Be here, but there doesn't need to be. You can go right ahead.

[B]

Yeah. So the idea of being a taxpayer is not something that is, you know, comes from the very origins of the United States, as the Boston Tea Party example would tell you. Right. But the sort of the way that that phrase is used today is developed in the post Civil War period is part of a new rhetoric that was being used to discredit the multiracial democracies of the American South. Right. And because obviously black Americans in the south had until recently had all their wealth stripped from them because they were enslaved, they weren't paying a ton of taxes, and all of that wealth had occurred to the planter class. And they. They paid some property taxes as a result, incredibly low before the war. But in the aftermath of the war, once Congress, you know, lays down the lines like, actually you're going to reconstruct, you're not just going to. You recreate slavery by another name. Once we have radical reconstruction happening, then the Southern states need tax money. Right. They want to Build up school system, you know, and for the first time, you're seeing black men elected. The legislature in South Carolina was majority black. So they're trying to build schools, they're trying to rebuild. Obviously, the state's infrastructure had been destroyed by the war. They're trying to, you know, basically refound these states on terms of political equality between the races. And to do that, it actually turns out you need a lot of money.

[A]

Well, sure, yeah.

[B]

There were no. Well, there's no Marshall Plan or anything like that the way we would do a rebuild of a country today. Right. But there had been no public school system for white kids in most of these states, and not a really functioning one. And so they were building this public schools for the first time. Right. And so they needed tax money. And the former Confederates, who had absolutely not accepted the end of the war, realized that this was the issue where they could start to take back power.

[A]

It makes sense. Not in the sense of like. Well, yeah, definitely. But like, you can see this being a space in which one could claw back all these things that you feel that you've lost by reframing who you are in relation to power. Right. By saying, well, actually, if we don't have the level of political power that we would like to have, what do we have? And the answer is economic power. And what do we do with economic power? We leverage that in order to regain the political power that we've had. And they do a lot of other things, which is what the episode is about. But, yeah. So who do you want to talk to me about today? That's the reveal. That could be the reveal.

[B]

So Martin Witherspoon Gary FORMER CONFEDERATE GENERAL There are a lot of people you could put on this show for that class of people, but he is my personal least favorite. He is sort of unique among even South Carolinians. Indian Confederate generalist, which is really the cream of the crop or something.

[A]

The bottom of what?

[B]

The bottom of the barrel. The bottom of the barrel. That's the expression you really want? Yeah. So even among South Carolina's Confederates, he is really kind of the worst of the worst. He refused, famously, to surrender at Appomattox. Right. Appomattox being the battle where, of course, Grant defeats Lee, thereby saving the Union. Well, he rides away.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

This guy Gary rides away. He's not going to be there to surrender. You know, I mean, Lee's surrendering, but this guy, no, he rides away with some of his men and goes and finds Jefferson Davis and resigns his commission to the Confederate former Confederate president.

[A]

Rather than surrendering directly, rather than admitting he lost.

[B]

Boo. Yeah. What? Yeah. So the great thing about him doing that is it really let you know what he was going to do next, which is spend the rest of his life trying to rebuild the antebellum south along the old lines. And he had far more success than I think any decent person would hope.

[A]

Yeah. Just to go over some of the backstory on his life so you can kind of see where he gets to all of this. He's born in the 1830s, which is funny because this is also the moment that the whole Tea Party thing starts changing. So there's a little bit of continuity here. He's born in 1831 in Cokesbury, South Carolina. He's from a very prominent white planter family. So that tells you where he's at economically and politically in terms of class. Before this. They're part the Gary's classic. Gary were part of the South Carolina South Carolinian pre war elite. He's educated classically at Cokesbury Academy. Then he's enrolled at South Carolina College in 1850. He leaves in 1852 because he participates in something called the biscuit rebellion. I don't know that much about this, but he leaves after a little bit because he's Rebellion. I think there's something to do with the dining halls and like, biscuit rations or something.

[B]

It's completely bizarre. I mean, I think what you learn from this incident, first of all, is that for the elite, going to college was just a amusement that you did.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You know, this was not a serious sort of education, but. Yeah, no, I mean, you get the idea that this is not a man who's going to go along to get along when he's like, getting thrown out of school over biscuits. But. Yes.

[A]

Yeah. They refuse to eat in the cafeteria. I'm Googling. I've just googled biscuit rebellion. This is. Yeah. Okay. There's a picture of him is emerging from quite young. Hi, it's Claire. I'm here to quickly say that this episode is free for everybody, but the next one won't be. That's because we switch off between free weeks and Patreon weeks. So if you're a fan of public history made by actual experts, consider supporting our Patreon. It's only one tier, which means everyone who subscribes gets access to the same perks across the board. Because we're not trying to get rich. We're just trying to make good history that is engaging and accessible at the same time. For the Price of a fancy muffin. You'll get access to a new episode every week instead of just the biweekly free ones. And they'll all be ad free for you. You'll also get access to the full episode archive, bonus content, early access to merch, and lots of other fun Patreon exclusives to sweeten the deal, just head over to patreon.com thisguysucked and join the honorary haters club after this. He goes to Harvard.

[B]

Yes, Indeed.

[A]

Graduates in 1854. Also another classic situation where someone from the south who's like, I hate the north, everyone's bad. Goes to the north for college and then returns. We see this over and over and over again in American history. He is admitted to the bar, begins practicing as a lawyer in Edgefield, South Carolina. This will be the end of my knowledge here shortly. He practices in Edgefield, South Carolina, which is important for several reasons and will become more important later because it's a center of political power. South Carolina and many of the state's most influential figures are based out of Edgefield, which is where he is based out of and allows you to kind of understand the milieu and the people that are around him and the level of power that is around him. And this is all before he joins the Confederacy or joins the Confederate Army, I should say.

[B]

So, yeah, Edgefield becomes this very significant point later in his life. But yeah, so first of all, he goes off, he fights in the Civil War, obviously on the Southern side and in a portion of the South Carolina military that was engaged in many, many, many battles. And this is a point that becomes important later in the story because when we're talking about the military overthrow of the Reconstruction governments, you have to remember that every white man basically in the entirety of the south had spent years fighting wars. And so you just had a generation of people who were far more capable of violence, far more trained in committing violence than would have been true in other contexts. But yeah, so the. When we start to talk about, you know, Reconstruction and the various massacres occur, you have to understand that, like, these are extremely baby Parton troops. They're not just some guys coming off their farm to, you know, go hassle their neighbors anyway.

[A]

Yeah, no, I think that's very worth talking about actually for a second. Just because sometimes people struggle to understand sort of what's fomenting in the south after the war. And understanding it's because all of these capable, any capable man has basically been to war, that shifts our understanding of why violence is so widespread. So prolific. And when we talk about violence, we're not just talking about like low level rioting or whatever. We're talking about like mass murders. Like, this is like really, really serious violence that's happening. And it's because the people who are engaging in it have spent years killing people essentially, and then been shunted back into society where they're supposed to act normal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that doesn't mean that, like, it's fine, but it does mean that, like, you have to understand this propensity for violence comes out of having spent years engaging in violence and being taught how to engage in violence. That then what do you do with that?

[B]

Yeah. And they're also. They're used to the organization of it. Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, let's move forward in the story. So. Wow. Wow. They lost the Civil War and they can't accept it. Boo hoo. I'm so sad. So then, you know, he goes back to Edgefield. The south is in ruins. The South Carolina is now actually holding elections that involve the majority, is a majority black state at this time elects a majority black legislature. And they start moving forward on all kinds of priorities that had to happen now everything from, you know, we need railroads because you got to get stuff from one place to another. And all those railroads are gone. Well done, Sherman. And you know, we need to build schools, we need to rebuild roads. Like the entire economy has to be restarted because this, you know, the place is really in ruins. And so the new government comes in and tries to do that. And they're also trying to deal with like a fundamental underlying problem that the federal government did not do. Land reform. Right. We had a moment to sort of break this down a little bit. All these people who had. Had all their labor stolen from them are now free, but they don't have anything, they don't have land. And so this is obviously Sherman's famous decree on this is the idea that what we would do is we would give 40 acres. And actually Lincoln had proposed that some years earlier, before he was assassinated, that we would give land in small plots, 40 acres to families that had been enslaved so that they could have their own livelihood. Right. And there was an effort to do this, a couple of efforts to do this, but doesn't end up coming together. And so what you've got is a state that's deeply, deeply impoverished trying to rebuild. So this is a fundamental challenge for any government at all. And it is a more fundamental challenge when the rich white people of the state under no circumstance were going to accept the Legitimacy of this government, except by force.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so that's the situation we find ourselves in. So the Southern states across the board, South Carolina, Carolina in particular for this story, have to raise some tax money. Right. Because you got to pay for all this stuff. And this is a crazy side note, but the thing that was taxed before the war tended to be slaves, that is to say, slave owners. Right. The taxes were incredibly low, but it was almost all the revenue they raised or like a lot of revenue they raised in the Southern states was, you know, per head taxes. Yeah. On enslaved people. So taxes in the south before the war had been very progressive, but it didn't actually matter because it was so little money. It's like if you had a tax where like bill gates pays $1 and no one else pays anything. Super progressive except totally irrelevant.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you can't. It's not enough money to do anything. That was the kind of tax system they had. Yeah. So now you can't. All of that sort of so called property is actually people and they're all free now. Right. So the tax base of the state has disappeared.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So now they have to tax land. And this is where we get into trouble because there are a lot of poor white people in the south with tiny little plots of land. And so figuring out how you're going to tax land in a way that doesn't harm the poor white Southerners but gets at the slave owners, the former slave owners. That was a really hard calculus. And so as they're trying to figure out how to do that, people like Gary and his peers figure out that they can now. Oh, we're not. We're not just like sore loser Confederates. No, no, no, no. Totally not that. We've completely accepted the end of this war. Don't worry. Feel free to send your troops home from the North. We don't need them here. We're doing fine. We completely accept the words of finality. That was the word they tended to use because they weren't going to say it was a good thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Call it a finality. We're not these, like, sore loser Confederates. No, no, we're taxpayers. We're taxpayers. And these taxes that these new governments are, you know, putting in place across the South, South Carolina in particular, they are egregious, unfair taxes that are crippling our state. And so this was a. An amazing rhetorical advance for the Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because it does a ton of things at once. One, it turns people who everyone know should recognize are traitors into something else. That's, you know, very patriotic. Savvy. Tax 2. It allows the rich people of Edgefield, right, with their massive plantations where they've never done a lick of work in their damn lives, to suddenly be on the same team as the hardscrabble farmer with like, a tiny plot in Appalachia. You know, so we're all on the same team now, right? Across the south, we're taxpayers with property. Right. Even if one guy's property is this tiny amount of land and the other guy's property is, you know, hundreds of people working on it, and you have this beautiful plantation, whatever, suddenly we're in the same category. And so it helps try to paper over the class divide in the south because we're all taxpayers now. And it helps build, interestingly, an alliance that they had tried to build just on race. Like at first, when they're trying to overthrow these reconstruction governments, they're like, we're white and you're white. This is great. We're on the same team. Let's overthrow this government run by black people. And it didn't work as well as they wanted.

[A]

And this is in part, right, because all of a sudden, poor white people are able to go to public school, for example.

[B]

Yeah. They're trying to set up schools.

[A]

Poor white people are benefiting from Reconstruction era reforms. So they need to find a different way to create this allegiance that says, actually, no, you're not benefiting from this. That we actually don't want this to happen.

[B]

And it was too. This is, again, one of the ways that the failure to do land reform was a problem. Right. Because one of the things that your small white farmers were really excited about was confiscation of the planters. Well, yeah, they thought that sounded amazing.

[A]

Yeah. And I think part of what I saw in this that I think is really interesting as someone who's not a scholar of this time period. Right. Is it allows for avail of equity, like not just amongst white people of all classes, but they can also say, well, any black landowners are taxpayers too. Any black landowners, they can join our taxpayer big tent, whatever. Right. But the number of black landowners is still so small as to be is like vanishingly small. Right. It's to be basically meaningless. But they can say, actually, well, they would be included if they wanted to.

[B]

Right. This is not about race. This is not about party. Right. This is the kinds of things they can say. And this language may sound kind of familiar, right. Because they use it all the time.

[A]

Yeah. It sounds modern, right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So they would talk about this. It's not a matter of color. They wouldn't have said, sure, it's not a matter of color. And they would say it's not a matter of party. Right. The other thing that they didn't want to be perceived as is as being the Democratic Party. The Democratic party is the party of the south this time, the party that, you know, Republicans are the party of Lincoln and the party of freedom. So, yeah, they didn't want to be seen as partisan. They wanted to be seen as nonpartisan, and they didn't want to be seen as straightforwardly racist. I mean, of course, everyone was racist at this time, but they didn't want to be seen as motivated exclusively by questions of color. Because that looked to watching Northerners like failure to accept the end of the war.

[A]

Well, sure. And because it was.

[B]

Yeah, that's what they were doing. Right. So they had to hide those things. Right. They had to hide the things that they thought might look like treason to watching northerners. And of course, what happens over time after the Civil War is that the northerners stop watching and they stop caring. And then you see ever increasingly more explicit racist standards for things. Right. So we end up getting to mass disenfranchisement of black people. Just sort of straightforward on its face, and they're not even bothering to disguise it. But in this earlier phase, there's enough northerners who are pretty concerned that the end of the war should mean something. Right. That they have to be more careful with their language. They adopt this taxpayer language. Right. So it helps them build alliances with poor whites who were not very much on their side and who'd done a lot of fighting and dying for a cause that they knew full well was not in their own interest. The defense of slavery helps them build an alliance with poor whites. It helps them look respectable to watching northerners, especially northern industrialists, who are plenty unhappy about their own taxes and looking at their own workers and thinking kind of similar thoughts to the Southerners at this point. It does both of those things. Things. But it also does one more thing. If the argument is that only taxpayers should be allowed to participate in government, which is what Gary starts to argue, and I'll talk about that in a second. If the argument is that only taxpayers should participate in government, suddenly the exclusion of black people is not just. Not a matter of not accepting the end of the war, but it makes any involvement of poor people in democratic government corrupt.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because now the standard is about who pays taxes. Right. And the argument is that, oh, taxpayers are not Going to be profligate. Right. Because it's, quote, their money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So anyway, so Gary and his buddies sets up this thing called the South Carolina Taxpayers Convention, Right? And the people involved in this, like. And again, we're sort of reliving this in a lot of ways, but I think a few years ago, it would have been surprising.

[A]

I was gonna say, how do you not freak out all the time? Being like. It's the same thing. They're saying the same thing.

[B]

Yeah, pretty much. So these guys, like, you really think you would know that what they were trying to do was overthrow the government. It's Gary who had literally not accepted the end of the war. It's James Chestnut, another. You know, I mean, they're all Confederate generals because these are, like, rich plantation owners from South Carolina. Every single one of them was a Confederate general. It was a man, you know, he had. I'm sorry, he had ordered the firing on Fort Sumter. So, like, not just like any old random Confederate. Like, these are like the big league ones. Right? And so anyway, so they. They organize this taxpayers convention, and they hold these conventions in 1871 and then 1874. And these conventions are nominally nonpartisan, and they managed to get a couple Republicans to come who, frankly, I mean, they so clearly should have known better. They so clearly should have known. But the thing is, what, by attending now, they're providing cover. Look at his nonpartisan.

[A]

Yeah, we reach across the aisle level of, like, the same thing.

[B]

Yes, they reached across the aisle. Right. And like, the sort of, you know, convenient idiots who went along with this.

[A]

And you're like, oh, well, the. The other side of the aisle does not need to reach back. Just by the way. Like, you actually did not need to do this.

[B]

You didn't need to. You didn't need to give them this kind of COVID Right. You should have known. But anyway, so they hold this taxpayers convention, and it's all about how the poor taxpayers of South Carolina. Carolina. Are really being abused by this terribly corrupt government. And to be clear, there was a lot of corruption in South Carolina. Would continue to be a lot of corruption in the government that followed that was all white, right? Like, this is. We're getting into the Gilded Age. There's a lot of corruption. There's also just, you know, I mean, the state was in shambles, Right? But they're like, oh, but the diagnosis is what's important. Right? And also, of course, there's a lot of corruption in the north of this period. Like, this. It is not. It is not a Real shining moment for governance in the United States. Between the Civil War and the Progressive Era, that's not a great time for governance. But the diagnosis is what matters, right? Because the diagnosis wasn't, oh, you know, we should have civil service reform or like, we should participate in the government. All these people are highly educated folks. They could have participated in the government and improved it. Right? No, the diagnosis was that the problem is that the taxpayers weren't in charge. So the taxpayers convention happens, and Gary is in charge of the Committee on Elections. And as you can imagine, he was really committed to elections. The validity of elections. Yeah. No, so he. So what they propose at the first convention is something called cumulative voting, right? And this was. I mean, it's basically a somewhat proportional system, which in principle is fine. And Gary himself talks about it. So they proposed this thing, and what it would have meant is that because white people were a minority, they lost. They didn't have much power. And this would have meant that they had a number of seats that was approximately equivalent to the percentage of the population they were, which in principle is a perfectly fine way to run a government. The former governor of South Carolina complains when they propose this cumulative voting system. He's like, but we should have all the power. What are you talking about? This is crazy. Like, what are we. And Gary is like, you're completely right. Like, yes, we are proposing cumulative voting, but the reality is what we're. This is half a loaf. Okay?

[A]

He's like, actually, thank you. We'll get there.

[B]

Yeah. He's like, then it's completely explicit in the documents they themselves release this convention. They release the documents. They're like, yes, we are accepting proportional voting on our way to regaining power. That is the plan. This is only a half measure. And no one thinks this is the way to go. Right. But the crazy thing is that the South Carolina taxpayers get. Convention gets treated as this very respectable body that's not trying to overthrow the government. And let me tell you about five more reasons why they should have known, right? For example, Butler. Another one.

[A]

One of these guys.

[B]

One of these guys, Matthew C. Butler, who ends up becoming a senator from South Carolina after the overthrow of the government. Sure. He had literally directed a massacre of black troops, the Hamburg Massacre. Black elected officials had testified to Congress, would. Would go on to testify to Congress that he had threatened to kill them. Right. With his armed men. Gary, while he's also doing this taxpayer stuff where he's like, oh, the poor taxpayers and oh, we should have cumulative voting, he's also Developing what's called the Edgefield plan. Oh, I should say the other thing he does for the taxpayers in 1874, he comes up with an immigration plan to bring in white people. Well, of course, bring more white people into the state because we got to have more white people. Yeah. And he submits a report on this and there's like this part in the taxpayers release the minutes nominally of their thing and there's this part in there where it says a discussion ensued and the text of his. Of Gary's recommendations are returned to him to remove any semblance of partisanship because apparently he'd been a little too clear in why he wanted to bring in a bunch of people to the state was to. Anyway he had overdone it. But anyway, so they pull that out. So in addition to doing these things that look respectable. Ish. Right. Though they're taxpayers. Oh, we're going to. We're worried about corruption. Oh, we're going to think of a new system of voting that gives more proportionate representation. Meanwhile, he's also developing what becomes called the Edgefield plan. And this gets back to that thing you were saying about Edgefield, which is this very rich, fancy part of South Carolina. And the Edgefield plan is an explicit plan to overthrow the government.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It involves the Democratic rifle clubs, as they were called. It involves the red shirts, which was another one of these sort of clan esque bands. Of course the taxpayers are invited to Congress to explain about what is this violence we're hearing about, this Klan violence that we've been told about this occurring. And they're like, oh, there isn't any. No, that's not happening. And they're treated seriously.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because they're respectable. Because they're the taxpayers. Right. So they're like going to Congress talking about how they're. No, they haven't seen any examples of violence. It's. They're occasionally they're angry taxpayers who are upset about the corruption option. But it's not a campaign of political violence. Meanwhile, they're literally organizing the campaign of political violence in their state.

[A]

Yeah. I want to pause for a second and talk about this period because a lot of people who have listened. We did the episode on Birth of a Nation with Kelly Carter Jackson earlier. So we talked about Reconstruction quite a lot in that episode. If people want to go back and hear me talk about Reconstruction. But this period is known as the redemption period, which is something that a lot of people are not familiar with. They might know about Reconstruction, but they don't really understand A lot of the backlash, and the backlash is, is what leads to the politics that we have today. Like this is where a lot of these things start to foment, basically, like because of all these enormous strides for racial and income equality in the south, like I said before, the opening of public schools that anybody can attend, the election of people other than white landowners to public office, all these things that you and I have talked about, what inevitably happens, because this is America and everybody's an asshole all the time here, is that there's this huge backlash. This resentment grows and grows, particularly among ex Confederate officers, planters and merchants, which are groups that have a lot of overlap in the sort of Venn diagram of Southern racists. And this political violence comes out of what they start to call redemption, which is 1873 to the 1890s.ish. They want to redeem their states from the corruption of what they see as black, or what they see, say is the corruption of black political agency and enfranchisement. So this is like, like you've said, it's a counter revolution, essentially the systematic attempt to overthrow and successful overthrow of Reconstruction governments via violence, intimidation, political manipulation. And to tie together what we were saying before, like when we're saying violence, we are talking about assassinations and a lot of like really serious, serious violence. And by 1876, which we haven't quite gotten to, but we'll get to via the edgefield plan, by 1876, almost all Southern states are fully under redeemer control. So this is an incredibly successful tactic that they take. And they use things like being a taxpayer and the taxpayers convention as the veneer that legitimizes what they're doing. Right. They say actually all these things are just done in favor of protecting taxpayers, protecting real citizens, real politically motivated and engaged people, non corrupt people. We're actually just murdering for good. And we're not murdering at all, actually, but if we were, it would be for a good reason, you know. And the federal government basically just rolls over.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they abandon enforcement of Reconstruction era reforms and by 1877 it's all gone.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But let's talk about the specifics of the Edgefield plan, which Gary masterminds.

[B]

Yeah. So remember South Carolina, majority black state. Yes. So the states where you see Reconstruction last longest are the states where there were more black people because then it is simply harder to subvert the elections. Right, sure. And so Chamberlain, who I always think is called Neville Chamberlain, but he's Daniel Chamberlain.

[A]

Different Chamberlain.

[B]

Different Chamberlain, but similar.

[A]

Well, yeah.

[B]

So Chamberlain this guy, he was a Northerner, he was an abolitionist. He had led black troops in battle. He had fought as a Union officer. And he comes, like many other Northerners after the war to help rebuild and probably to make his fortune, whatever. And so he's one of these guys, he's one of the Republicans who gets pointed at as attending the taxpayers convention. He found it very uncomfortable. He found it in many ways trying is how he described his time with the taxpayers convention. But he ends up running for governor. And he clearly hasn't learned his lesson from interacting with these folks at the conventions. Because when he runs for governor, what he does is he runs on a campaign to appeal to whites. And specifically he's going to roll back a bunch of the education stuff. He's going to cut spending on public schools. He's going to turn the public college that was the state college that was basically only attended by black people into what he called a good high school. So he was going to tighten belts and he was going to do austerity and all this stuff to try and appeal to the Witherspoon Gary's of the world. And so Daniel Chamberlain, who had participated in these taxpayer conventions and had tried to convince them to look into Klan violence, of course they released a report saying there isn't any. He runs for governor and he wins, and he puts in place this austerity campaign. But he is also representing, you know, he's a Republican. He has black members of his cabinet, including Cardozo, his Treasury secretary, who's fighting corruption, fighting the good fight to, to make this government work. He's serving as governor. He's moved dramatically to the right in an attempt to appeal to these sort of taxpayer types. What happens, of course, is that the taxpayers, on the one hand, while presenting themselves as merely concerned about corruption, are simultaneously writing the Edgefield plan. Right. And the Edgefield plan is an explicit plan to overthrow the government by having armed vigilante bands in the style of the Klan. Not always exactly the Klan, they were also the red shirt. There were also various other groups, but, you know, sort of paramilitary forces threaten. And if threatening didn't work, murdering black voters and office holders. And it succeeded. Right. So in 1876, Chamberlain's running for re election and he's running as Wade Hampton, who's a. Another Confederate general who had spent a lot of time talking about how the government was run by people who didn't pay taxes. And in Edgefield, this campaign of violence is so successful that there are 2,000 more votes for Hampton than the total number of white voters in the state. So they had either falsified ballots. Well, probably a combination. Had falsified ballots, had intimidated black voters into voting the other ticket. And the election was so close that this differential meant that there was a contested result. And so there's Chamberlain, the elected Republican. And on the other side, we've got the Democrats and their campaign organized by Gary the Edgefield plane. And they go to Washington to try and convince the federal government to keep troops there, because otherwise the government's going to be overthrown. And famously, this is the very end of Reconstruction and the President won't do it. Rutherford B. Hayes gives up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it was basically a done deal by this point anyway. But when Hayes met with Hampton to say what would happen if he didn't remove the federal troops from South Carolina, thereby allowing the paramilitaries to regain control or academy to have complete control, Hampton said, every Republican tax collector in the state will be hungry by morning. And the President, you might think to yourself, the President of the United States would think, you are threatening members of my party. You are threatening to murder Americans.

[A]

Yeah. You're probably not supposed to do that. And also, that's a reason I would not remove my troops, rather than one that I would remove my troops.

[B]

Yeah. But it wasn't that time anymore. It was capitulation time. Well, yeah, so it went the other way.

[A]

It's also interesting that the tax thing is throughout all of this. Right. Like, even Dice saying, well, we'll hang all the tax collectors, not just like any member of your party, but these specific. So they can still say that taxes are really at the heart of what's going on, even though it's racism. Right. They're explicitly linking these tax grievances to what they're engaging in, which is basically like racial terrorism.

[B]

Right. But it's not for no reason that it's the tax collectors, because the thing the tax collectors did was fund the state.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. They provided the money that made a multiracial democracy work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so attacking tax collection wasn't really a symbolic thing. It was a mechanism to overthrow the government alongside the electoral mechanism. Right, yeah. Because the thing that they found unacceptable, which was really embodied in the tax collector. Right. Because tax collectors during this period were often black because it was a white people refused to participate in the government. So here you are, not without exception, certainly. But there were many black tax collectors, many of them formerly enslaved. And what that meant was they were coming to the plantation where once they had been forced to Work and with the power of the government saying, I'm here to assess your property.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that was a violation of masterhood, which these confederates still absolutely subscribe to.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

A violation of their sort of lord and manor authority over their property. And it was saying, no, actually, you're not above the law. And that was unacceptable because it's a.

[A]

Very, like, visible sign of black enfranchisement and then black empowerment. Right. That like, this person who might previously have been forced to work here can now say, I'm going to count all of your money and tell you how much you owe the state.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's a huge reversal of the power relationship. So you can not understand, as in, like, understandably, they did whatever. But as in, like, you can, you can see how people who are very dedicated to their role as. As being the sole arbiters of power would say, well, we can't have this. Yes, we need to literally overthrow the government in order to ensure that we don't feel discomfort in this way or that we don't feel the screws are not turned on us, basically. Yeah.

[B]

Well, just the idea that I, plantation elder, would be held to the same standard as regular people was absolutely an asthma.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's one of the things that tax collection does. It's like, yeah, you and everyone else, it's. You're all subject to the same laws. And it doesn't matter that you have a lot of money. You know, it doesn't matter that you're the rich white guy who's, you know, made hundreds of people work for him. It doesn't matter. Like, this is a place where we're all equal, we all pay. And that was unacceptable. And also, I mean, and also where the money was going was completely unacceptable. It was going to go to schools. We don't want that.

[A]

Yeah. And. And I think what's interesting is that we still see this. It happens very frequently when we talk about certain parts of American history that I can be like, okay, you can really. You can really draw a line through to what's going on right now in a lot of these things. Right. Like this sort of rhetoric of low taxes and honest government that's used as a veneer for all these other things. You can just see it so clearly there, too, when it's really just like an agenda of white elite control. Like when that's really what people are aiming for. And they're especially. What I found really interesting here is that you want this white elite control, but you also need to get the buy in. Of poor whites. And so you have to find a way to get them to go along with you.

[B]

You.

[A]

And you do that by saying, well, by being part of this, you are actually part of the elite.

[B]

Right.

[A]

When they're not. Like, they are not. They do not have the same access to power. The same access to. When I say power, I'm talking, like, political, economic, social power. Like, they don't have access to any of these things, but they get to feel like they belong in this. Yeah, and you see that now, too, where you see people who are, like, fundamentally being disenfranchised in every way other than voting. Right. Especially, like, working class white people being disenfranchised in all these other ways and being like, yeah, but this party is saying that I am powerful or is giving me power when that's actually not what's happening. I don't know. It's frustrating, but you can see the historic roots of it. I don't know.

[B]

No, I mean, I think there's a really great book, which is not my book.

[A]

There's another great book.

[B]

There's a second one. No, I'm kidding. But it's called. It's genuinely like a classic work, and people should read it. It's Masters of Small Worlds, and it's about small white farmers in the antebellum south and how the rhetoric of mastery was done in such a way as to give them the feeling that they were masters too. Admittedly, masters of their own little families.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But, you know, they were the patriarch, and no one could come onto their land and tell them what to do. And so that kind of rhetoric of, you are still the master, you're still the patriarch, you're still the. I mean, it's very gender, obviously, that rhetoric. Yeah, it absolutely persists to this day, and it's a con, but it's a very effective one.

[A]

So one of the things that really stood out to me, or that I felt while reading through a lot of the Gary stuff, is that, like, the Edgefield plan does not just win an election for them. Right. Like, it doesn't just lead this sort of counterinsurgency coup thing, that then they get elected and they have power and that's fine. Right. Like, by suppressing black political power, and they also suppress, like, the political power of poor people. They just don't want to say that that's what they're doing because they need them to be on their side. It enables the democratic regime. And again, for people listening, there's a flip in ideological alignment in the 20th century. So we're saying Democrat and it's not going to map onto your understanding of Democrat if you, if you haven't read about this before. But by suppressing this political power they enable this democratic regime to basically reduce public schooling, reduce public investment, would benefit not just black citizens, but everybody but black citizens more than others just because of where their starting point is, protects this like elite property and shifts all of these burdens to the more vulnerable which then like persists like in the long term as like creating and widening these gaps in inequality between all of these other groups. So this Edgefield plan has these really, really long term consequences within South Carolina and beyond.

[B]

It. Can I read you a little of it?

[A]

Please do.

[B]

Because I think if you haven't actually heard like what Gary wrote, you're never going to believe that this is like this is the guy who was taken seriously as like a man real concerned about tax paying.

[A]

Yeah, hi everybody, it's Claire here with a quick mid roll shout out to tell you about other multitude shows I think you might be interested in. So this week I want to talk to you about Pale Blue Pod. If you, like me, are overwhelmed by the great and terrible vastness of the universe, but also kind of want to understand and possibly befriend it, or at least be less scared of it, this show is for you. You might know her from her wonderful TGS episode on ancient Greek astronomy freak Ptolemy. But on Paleblue Pod, Dr. Moya McTeer and her best friend Con Star sit down each week to demystify space one topic at a time. They do it with open eyes, open arms and open mouths from so much laughing and jaw dropping, obviously. I recorded an episode of Pale Blue Pod a few months ago where we reviewed the worst Bond film of all time, Moonraker. And I can personally attest to the fact that by the end of every episode, the cosmos feels somewhat less scary and a lot more fun. New episodes of Pale Blue Pod come out every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. So like the app you're currently using, go give it a listen. Hello, it's Claire again. What a surprise. Look, if you're like me, gift giving holidays really sneak up on you. So consider this your reminder to start thinking about the people you love and the things they might love to receive as gifts. Even better. I've got a recommendation for a place you should check out to get your shopping done and actually have fun with it. Uncommon goods makes holiday shopping stress free and joyful with thousands of one of a kind gifts you won't be able to find anywhere else. Uncommon Goods looks for products that are high quality, unique, and often handmade or made in the U.S. many are crafted by independent artists and small businesses, and often in small batches that sell out quickly so you know someone else isn't going to have the same gift as you. I'm a huge fan of DIY Kit gifts because I think it's fun to give someone an item and an activity at the same time. And Uncommon Goods has a ton of of those, like DIY Hot sauce making or build your own mini printing press. I want my loved ones to get gifts that feel fun and exciting and Uncommon Goods has so many options that help me to fulfill that goal. And a bonus, not only does it support small businesses and independent artisans with every purchase you make at Uncommon Goods, they give back $1 to a nonprofit partner of your choice. They've donated more than $3 million today, so it's a company you can feel pretty good supporting. So get your shopping done early this year and have Fun. And get 15% off your next gift by going to UncommonGoods.com TGS that's UncommonGoods.com TGS for 15% off your order. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Shop at Uncommon Goods because we're all out of the ordinary. Hi, this may come as a shock to you, but it's me, Claire. If you've ever listened to a podcast, which I assume you have because here you are, then you've probably heard of HelloFresh. They're the number one meal kit in America and they make home cooking easier with chef crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door. This fall, they've totally revamped their offerings. This isn't the hellofresh you might remember, it's bigger. They've doubled their menu with 100 meal options every week and recipes from around the world. It's healthier with over 15 special high protein meals each week and dishes packed with more vegetables than ever. And it's tastier. Steak and seafood options are delivered for no extra cost and hearty seasonal recipes also include a variety of seasonal produce like leeks and broccolini. Between my book, academia and the pod, I currently work crazy hours. I'm recording this at 7 in the morning, so I'm being very genuine when I say that having hellofresh has made my life a lot easier just because I don't have the time or energy to grocery shop or come up with recipes. Sometimes times I use it and I genuinely recommend it. The best and easiest way to cook just got better. Go to hellofresh.com TGS10FM now to get 10 free meals plus a free breakfast for life. One per box with active subscription. Free meals are applied as a discount on the first box for new subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's hellofresh.com TGS10FM to get 10 free meals plus free breakfast for life hi there, it's Claire again. Do you love History and hate Stress? Does the sound of my voice and the contents of my admittedly stressful shows send you into a panic? Well, firstly, that's understandable. And secondly, I just discovered a history podcast that will educate you and sedate you. It's called Calm History. Each episode is narrated in a calm voice to help you relax or fall asleep. Again, truly the opposite of what my show does. You'll learn about famous explorers, inventions, civilizations and ancient wonders. Episodes even cover the history behind mysteries like Bigfoot, UFOs, hoaxes and the Titanic. Just search your preferred podcast app for Calm History and enjoy your newfound Zen.

[B]

Why Choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed?

[A]

Can I make my site softer? Can I make my site firmer?

[B]

Can we sleep cooler? Sleep number does that cools up to 8 times times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now max out your savings. The more you buy, the more you save on beds, bases and more. Plus get free home delivery on any smart bed with base limited time. Check it out at a Sleep Number store near you [e-mail] today this okay, here's just a quote. This is plan for The Campaign of 1876 is the document. Amazingly this was saved. It's in the man's papers. Democratic military clubs are to be armed with rifles and pistols. Every Democrat feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one negro by intimidation purchase keeping him away or as each individual may determine how he may best accomplishment. So here that's instead of an explicit plan to use violence to keep black people from voting, right? Yeah, some of what he wrote in the first draft that he removed in a later and more circumspect document that was released publicly. But the original plan really gets I think at what Gary was trying to do. And so here's another little component of it. He wrote never threaten a man individually if he deserves to be threatened. The necessities of the time require that he should die.

[A]

Yeah, don't threaten him, just kill him.

[B]

Just kill I mean, there was an explicit plan in 1876 to commit mass murder as needed to overthrow a democratically elected Congress government.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we let it happen. That's what happened. That was allowed to occur.

[A]

And it's funny that there are people like, well, he cared a lot about fiscal policy. You know, like you're like, I don't think that's what's happening here, actually. I think he's saying that he cares about that, but what he really wants is for white people to kill black people. Like that's what he actually wants to happen.

[B]

The thing about there are like these kind of funny elements about the corruption part too, because the taxpayers convention was full of people who were corrupt as all get out. Right?

[A]

Well, of course.

[B]

So like if we think about who was actually had any money to do any bribing, obviously it was the rich white people. Yeah, right. So like the people who were doing the bribing were the taxpayers themselves. Right.

[A]

The people at the convention.

[B]

The people at the convention. And so at one point, you know, there's actually an argument that's recorded in, in their proceedings where, you know, one guy's talking about how we're mad about a lot of the state bonds, but these ones are fine. These ones for this particular railroad are. Okay. And another taxpayer gets up and is like, those the company you represent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like you are so corrupt. And it's Right. Like they're in the proceedings that they released. Right.

[A]

And.

[B]

And Gary himself also with Butler, the guy who also massacred any number of black people, including the Hamburg massacre. Most famously, they themselves used the taxpayers convention itself to engage in some self dealing because they maneuvered it so that the convention would endorse certain state bonds as they were going to get paid. And they had a financial arrangement set up so that they could profit by the rise in the value of those bonds after they were endorsed.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So they were using this like convention that was nominally about being anti corruption to in fact enrich themselves through corruption. It's amazing. And of course then when they're in power, they're incredibly corrupt.

[A]

Every person that we talk about on this show ends up being a grifter. Like it is a calling. Yes. Every single time we talk about someone, I'm like, okay, I've got this guy down pat. I figured out what's going on with him, he's bad, blah, blah, blah. And someone says, and here's how he made money off of it. And every time I'm like, like, how did I miss that? How did I miss that of course they're a charlatan and a grifter at the. At base. Of course that's what's actually happening here.

[B]

And you know, and Gary's kind of a special case in terms of how incredibly bloodthirsty the man was. Yes. But if you look across the south, the redeemer governments. Right. We talked about this. These are the white supremacist governments that came to power after the end of Reconstruction. Six of the state treasurers get done for stealing. Right. They were stealing literally months of state tax revenue. Some of them absconded and got away with it. Some of them were tried. But like 6 of what, 11? Yeah. They literally took the state's money.

[A]

Well, also to be anti tax and then steal all the tax revenue is wild. Like I mean, well of course, I.

[B]

Mean it's one version of anti tax, Right? Well sure, you pay the taxes, I.

[A]

Keep the taxes opposite Robin Hood, basically state.

[B]

Yeah, no, I mean like the, all these bonds are found in the personal bank box of the state treasurer for Louisiana like only a few years after this. Right. I mean they're just, they are personally enriching themselves while selling this line to the north about how they're like anti corruption, you know, good government ideologues really in here to be looking after the taxpayers, the people who really care about who's wasting money. Right. And of course, the minute they get to power these like quote unquote taxpayers, they don't give it. The people who care about the quality of governance under reconstruction were black people, of course. Right. Because they're the ones who wanted the schools. They're the ones who were actually invested in making this work. But they get treated. Right. Because they don't pay enough in taxes. And of course they did pay taxes. It's just like today where they're like, oh, so and so pays taxes and so and doesn't pay taxes. There was a poll tax.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Everyone paid.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And what's so sad is that the Reconstruction governments put the poll tax in some actually worried and you can see it when they're at the constitutional conventions, they're worried about that this poll tax is going to get used to disenfranchise people. But they decide that it's worth it. Right. And they know it falls on low income people. Right. Poll taxes are the most regressive tax. Right. Because they're by head. Everyone pays the same amount. Doesn't matter if you're millionaire, you've got 10 bucks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're paying say a dollar. Right. So everyone knows this is hugely regressive. It's going to be a huge burden on poor whites. It's going to be a huge burden on people only a few years after slavery and they decide to put it in anyway because they're trying desperately to make the government look legitimate, to try and get the former confederates to accept this. And they're like, look, we're paying. We're not just asking for your money. We're chipping in too. And it, at the end of the day, it didn't matter a damn because they were going to lie about it. The confederates were going to lie about it. They're going like, where are the taxpayers? It doesn't actually matter what the fiscal situation looked like. They just made it up.

[A]

What can be really frustrating as a historian when we talk about the Reconstruction period, right. Is there very often is a framing around the failure of Reconstruction, Right. I recently went to a talk with Eric Foner. Wild that I was in the same room as Eric Foner. Insane. He's really nice, by the way. He's a really nice guy. He shook my hand. He's really cool. I've touched him. Cool. Everyone listening. Only historians will think this is cool. But he was talking about this and being like, well, there are so many spaces when we talk about reconstruction where it's not a failure, right? Like the access to political power at all by black people is not a failure, right? But when we talk about the failure of reconstruction, and I'm saying this in scare quotes for people listening, it's not a failure because it's a torpedoing, right? Like it is an active insurgency that torpedoes Reconstruction. It's not like something that naturally falls apart over time. There are people who destroy it intentionally, right? So we need to move away from the idea that it, like, failed because it one, didn't fail and two, was exploded by someone basically, like intentionally and very purposefully and systematically. And they write plans where they say, here's how you kill anyone who, who might have voted for the guy that we don't like. Right? So it's, it's a lot of what I think about when I think about the American past and when I think about the legacies of things like Reconstruction is the rhetorical framing of it, right? And I think what you're talking about here is really important because you talk about the rhetorical framing of taxpayer. Right? And I'm talking about the rhetorical framing of failure and how, like, these obscure the actual meaning and the actual behaviors that are happening at this Point in time such that later we look back and go, like, well, I don't know what happened. It's like, because people really tried hard for you to not know what happened or tried really hard to obscure what they were doing so that it would have a veneer of respectability over it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is infuriating.

[B]

That's exactly right. Right. I mean, so, yeah, there's several ways in which reconstruction absolutely succeeds. Right. And one of which is black literacy. Right, Absolutely. And the redeemers do everything in their power to turn that around. You gotta remember, the point we're starting from is that perhaps 5 or 10% of black people in the south could read. It was illegal in many places. It was dangerous to be able to read. There was horrifying violence that could be inflicted upon you for being able to read. So that's the situation we start from. And they never, ever, despite all their efforts, managed to reverse the upward trajectory of black literacy. And that's an extraordinary achievement. And yeah, you're right. Reconstruction doesn't fail. And one of the reasons you know that it doesn't fail is because they had to overthrow it by force. Force, yes. Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They couldn't just win an election like normal people. They had to overthrow it by force.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the only reason they were able to do that, of course, is because the Northerners lost the will to protect multiracial democracy. So, yeah, no, reconstruction isn't a failure. It was failed. It was failed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It was let down.

[A]

I mentioned before we started this that I wanted to make a quick digression. And actually talking about literacy has allowed me to make the digression that I wanted to make, which is I learned something while doing the research for this book that has totally messed with my head, which is I didn't know where the term grandfather clause came from. And I was talking to Vanessa about this. I'm sorry that you've already heard me talk about this. I wanna talk about the term grandfather clause because I think it's a fascinating thing that has filtered into language both here and abroad. And like so many things that we've inherited in American culture, like this comes out of something incredibly racist. So everyone, please permit me this one minute digression. So the term grandfather clause clause, for those of you who didn't know this, like me and just want to have your mind blown for a second, originated in black disenfranchisement and poor white enfranchisement. Grandfather clauses, like the term grandfather clause and the legal framing grandfather clause, were discriminatory voting laws that were enacted in the south after the Civil War to prevent black Americans from voting while allowing illiterate or poor whites to do so because they were based around literacy tests and rules that would prevent people from voting if they were not literate. However, they create these literacy requirements and property requirements for voting, but they exempt people whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote before the war. This effectively disenfranchises illiterate or non land owning black voters whose grandfathers obviously could not vote before the war, but enfranchises or allows poor or illiterate white people to do this because their grandfathers might have been literate before the war or might have been landowning. And so it's like we all use things like. Like maybe, maybe other people don't. But I use the word like to grandfather in all the time. And I had no idea that this is just like entrenched. What the fuck, man? Sorry you're swearing, but what is that? Why is the everything is like this? I don't know, maybe you don't feel this way, but I'm always just like, everything we say and do in America is based in this, in these horrible, horrible things. So that's my digression. Everyone should now know what grandfather clauses are.

[B]

That is good. I mean, this is what I was saying earlier that like the circumlocutions that were used to avoid saying that what you were trying to do was just disenfranchise black people. Yes, right. This is part of that tradition of sort of. And it was part as it was becoming more explicit. Right. So before we're like, oh, taxpayers. And now we're being like, oh, well, just these particular people for these particular reasons that are not sure. So yeah, but the. I mean, to me, like I would live with things like grandfathering in if we weren't sort of reliving this entire.

[A]

Well, yes, right.

[B]

Like I'd be like, I'd be okay.

[A]

I don't care if people use that anymore. You're not being racist when you use it. It's just, wow. That most people don't even know, myself included, that that's where that term specifically comes from. I thought even the term grandfather clause that they were using then I thought that that must have been a pre existing legal concept. And for people at home, I have a law degree, so I thought this was like a pre existing legal concept that they were doing. No, that was the invention of it. Wild.

[B]

No, there's a lot. A ton of real innovation in figuring out how to disenfranchise, because. To disenfranchise, as opposed to not enfranchise. Right. To disenfranchise people was a new political challenge for the oligarchs. Right. So, yeah, grandfather classes also, they changed the poll tax. Poll taxes are ancient, Right. We use poll taxes in, you know, ancient times and medieval times because it's just a very easy tax. You're like, oh, how many people? Everyone pays the same amount. Now I figured out how much money we got, right? And now it's very easy.

[A]

Fine.

[B]

It was a total innovation in the south was to turn that into a tool of disenfranchisement by making it very hard to pay. They basically untax people because what, you know, you might think, oh, the way the poll tax kept black people from voting is that black people were poor, which was part of it. But the main thing was that they made it almost literally impossible for black people to actually submit a payment. So there are these stories about tax offices that suddenly would close with a huge line of people waiting to pay poll tax because they wanted to vote. Right. And all those people happened to be black. And then one of the cases about this, there was a guy who happened to be white passing, and so he comes to the office to pay his poll tax so he can vote, and he gets shown in the back door and taken around the corner so he can take his $1 poll tax while everyone else was still waiting because they didn't realize he was a black voter. And so, yeah, so there's an extraordinary array of sort of policy innovation that gets created in an effort to roll back the progress of reconstruction because we didn't have a tradition. Our tradition previously had been expanding suffrage. Right? Yeah. And so to destroy that progress took a new law and new ways of thinking about how to use the laws that existed.

[A]

Yeah. It's funny to use the term innovation, but it is like this.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Like, absolutely. Innovation can be motivated by evil. We talked about this a lot on the show, actually, that, like, people invent lots of stuff for terrible reasons.

[B]

One of them. That's right.

[A]

Some of these other things. And. And, you know a quote that stuck with me from your book, that's from a speech. I can't remember who said it, but you might be able to tell me.

[B]

I like this. It's like a quiz.

[A]

So it's a speech, and it is a formerly enslaved man talking about taxes. And he says, before, I didn't pay taxes because my enslaver paid my taxes for me. And now I Pay taxes. And even if taxes are a burden on me or everyone else, I would rather pay something and have it be a burden on me and be taxed than be in the position I was in before where someone was paying taxes for me or on me, but that I was not free. Right. So there's an active moment here where black voters and black taxpayers are arguing for paying taxes, no matter the financial burden, because they understand inherently how important paying taxes is to the price of democracy. Not to say, like the, not to say the book, but it is important to one's engagement in political and economic freedom. Like it's so inherently important to it. And I, I found that like a really important thing that you include in the book. Cause I was like, okay, yeah, you can really see people's investment in this and feeling toward it and why people like Gary work so hard against it then and use that as the cudgel that they're wielding.

[B]

That's right. So that's State Senator Matthew Gaines from Texas.

[A]

You did know the person.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, honestly, if you ask me, I'd like people to know the true story of the Boston Tea Party. But if there were a character in my book, I would like people to know, it's Matthew Gaines. He's very unusual. He's a black legislator in Texas. He's very unusual in that he was a field hand. He wasn't doing a non menial job. He read in secret. The fact that he could read was not known to his enslavers. And he did absolutely backbreaking work. And within a few years of emancipation, he escaped several times and was always caught again. He received absolutely appalling treatment as a result. But when emancipation came, he became a state senator representing his county in Texas. And the speech that you're talking about was him talking to his constituents who were also poor blackfield hands, about the new taxpayers bill. And the tax bill is going to be used by the redeemers to overthrow reconstruction in Texas. It was easier to overthrow Reconstruction in Texas because it was not a majority black state. And so they just had to convince poor whites to go along with it. And one of the important voting blocks was Germans, German immigrants to Texas. And so they were, who had been pro union and who had been, you know, forced to fight this, you know, had recently arrived in the United States and forced to fight for slavery, which they didn't even support. And so they had been Republican voters. But this tax bill had come in and it was expensive. And so this was going to be the former Confederate's wedding issue to retake power. Gaines is talking to his constituents. So he's standing in front of the courthouse in this rural district and there's a crowd assembled in front of him of field hands, and he's trying to tell them why it's worth it to pay taxes, because they're worried, because there's a poll tax and that's going to be so expensive for them. And so he's talking about he had managed, in the years after emancipation, he had managed to buy a bit of land. And so, yeah, he talks about how proud he is of that and how proud he is to be a taxpayer and how it's his privilege to pay taxes on it. And so he brings copies of the tax plan and he hands them out. He's go home and read it tonight by torchlight, because he knows they're going to be working, they're not going to have time to read it by daylight, they're going to read it by torchlight. Go home and read it and you'll see that they're not half taxes enough.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

And he goes through this whole speech telling them what it's going to get. It's going to get these schools, it's going to let them be able to buy land, they're going to build railroads so that they can go west and have their doors wide open, he says, which to me sort of signifies that it's a place where they'll be safe. Right. Because this is Texas. These are. They're, you know, vigilante violence is common anyway. And of course, vigilante violence against black Americans has always been more even a common thread. So the, you know, the people there, not only are they worried about how they're going to find the money for a poll tax, but they're facing, you know, violence at all times. So he's trying to explain to them, you're going to have schools, we're going to have an integrated police force that will protect you, we're going to have railroads so you can move west, and we're going to do all these things. And to me, it's this incredibly hopeful moment that he's trying to tell them what a democracy can be. And he's, you know, and he totally understands how hard it is for them, you know, because it's his people, so he understands what a commitment they have to make to pay those taxes. And of course, the reason we know about this speech is because it was reprinted over and over again in white supremacist, anti reconstruction newspapers under headlines that are. Are explicitly racist.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Because it was so radical.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

It was so radical. Look at what these horrible people want to do with their schools and railroads.

[A]

Yeah. And they want more taxes.

[B]

And they want more taxes. Right. They want to tax white Americans. And so. Yeah, so that's the reason the speech even still exists. But it's, you know, someday, if you do a show called this Guy Was Fricking awesome, call me back and I'll do. I'll tell you about Matthew Gaines.

[A]

We do sometimes. We actually do have the occasional this Guy rocked episode. So you can come back and talk about him. I would love to.

[B]

He's my favorite.

[A]

Like, because we need to have the occasional balm on the. Over the horror of the other shows. Yeah. And I felt like that was a really poignant, really important thing that was included in this to show, like, how closely held this and how important this was to everybody, but for different reasons. A lot of people talk about Reconstruction and redemption specifically as this real betrayal. And I think that perfectly highlights this, that there is like an active movement to betray these people. And you can understand the, like, ongoing long term fury that people still now feel about this, like, really appalling, horrifying period. Like the Civil War is horrifying. Reconstruction is good and then horrifying for different reasons that are just like, I don't know, just really devastating to think about. Like. Like, I don't know, I don't have, like a good ending for this because it just is this really devastating thing. And with Gary, we're like, still living with the effects of things that he did and he. And the. And the people around him did and the betrayals that they engaged in. And this devastation, this long term political and fiscal devastation is. We're still swimming in that water. And it must be infuriating for you or frustrating for you that you still hear people doing this long term mythologizing around how Americans feel about taxes and how Americans when it's like, no, it was this guy and these people and they did it because they hated black people.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, to me, like, the. The way I try and take it. Yes, obviously every time someone tells me that they know that Americans hate tax, I'm like, yeah, which Americans? Let me tell you about it.

[A]

Which Americans and when and why.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. But to me, like, the way that I try and take it so that it isn't just frustrating is the stories here, like, the true stories here are really powerful. And I know that because they keep trying to destroy the history. Right. And like, I'm confident that this story is a valuable thing for people to know because they would not be rewriting our textbooks with quite as much vigor if they weren't afraid of the truth. Right. Like if they weren't afraid of people actually understanding that anti tax rhetoric you're using is stuff that was invented by the former Confederates who wanted to overthrow multiracial democracy. And it's so funny that they're using the same rhetoric again, you know, once again the sort of excuse for violence and the anti tax stuff, it's all wrapped up again in another round. And like, you know, to me it's worth knowing about them and it's worth knowing about the heroes too. Right, sure. Because if we're going to imagine that there's going to be a better time. Right. That there's going to be a time to come when we are reconstructing, it's worth knowing what they did and what they tried to do before.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that is a more hopeful note. I think you have made a very convincing argument in the sense that I care a lot more about taxes now than I did before reading your book, which is great. And also I think Martin Witherspoon Gary sucks on a long term, historical, national, historical scale. I hate him. And I. Anyone who had read his whole deal would have hated him, but I didn't know who, who he was before this.

[B]

And now I like that brought a new terrible person to light and now.

[A]

I know who he was and I also hate him. Thank you so very much for coming on the show.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

For those at home, Vanessa Williamson can be found on Blue SkynessaWilliamson. You can get yourself a copy of the Price of Democracy at the link in our episode description. Is there anywhere else you would like people to find you or is that, are those the right ones?

[B]

No, that's it. The best version of me is in the book, man. Go read the book.

[A]

Go get the book. I'm so serious. I say this for every episode, but like this one, I have had several rampages since then telling people about taxes and the history of taxes and how they actually don't know anything about the Boston Tea Party and you don't know anything about taxes, which I think speaks to how important it is and how if you don't, and I'm not saying that like you shouldn't, but if you're someone who doesn't feel like taxes are that relevant to your life other than something that comes out of your paycheck every month or whatever, like this will convince you you that they are and that they have shaped your life in ways that you are not aware of already. So thank you very much for that.

[B]

Well, thank you. That was wonderful.

[A]

Thanks for tuning into this episode of this Guy Sucked. A member of the Multitude Podcast collective. This episode was hosted by me, Claire Aubin, featuring special guest Vanessa Williamson, and edited by Julia Sheffini. All of our theme music was written and produced by salad enjoyer Marshall Dean Williams. If you'd like to support the show and get access to all episodes, including two extra episodes per month, and access to our full archive of episodes, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or to our [e-mail] thisguysucked. See you next week. Shopify's point of sale system helps you sell at every stage of your business. Need a fast and secure way to take payments in person? We've got you covered. How about quarter card readers you can rely on anywhere you sell? Thanks. Have a good one. Yep, that too. Want one place to manage all your online and in person sales? That's kind of our thing wherever you sell. Businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month [e-mail] listen shopify.com listen.