John Quincy Adams and Closing

Virginia, they'll be like, Oh, you dissolve our burgesses . Exactly. Well, can we discuss this? Not in Boston? No, you're so right. The vibe was so different. Sam Adams, of course, he's out of all this and sure. You know, he's just brewing beer and they're drinking it and they're getting pissed off and you know, they're ready to go. Yeah, they're riled up This is an IHART podcast guaranteed human . Day or night V,erbo Care is here twenty four seven to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home, we're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support . And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either. Fresh summer mornings start at the sink . That's where hello comes in, with toothpaste that brightens your routine, bringing a little yay to your everyday. Say goodbye to Tartar, and brush away plaque with Hello's anti plaque and whitening toothpaste or say hello to a brighter smile powered by vitamin C with Vitamin C Whitening Toothpaste. Hello products are thoughtfully designed with no SLS, dyes or artificial flavors, making them the one thing your summer routine can't live without. Shop Hello Toothpaste online or at a store near you . I like things my way, my coffee, my schedule, and my treatment. So I talked to my doctor about self injecting with the Vivgard Hydrulo prefilled syringe, which contains FGA Tigamid alpha and hyaluronidase QBFC. It's injected under your skin subcutaneously. It means I can inject in my space, on my time. It's my treatment, Myway. Visit vivartmyway. com That's VYVGARTMYWAY. com and talk to your doctor about Vivgart Hydrulo, brought to you by Argenics . Welcome to Snapfu , your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups, or more precisely a show about what our failures and foibles say about humanity as a whole. And spoiler alert , it's mostly not very good. I'm your host Ed Helms, and my guest today is the definition of a multi hyphenate. He is the basist and a founding member of one of my all time favorite bands, the Avat brothers. He also is an historian. I love this. He hosts American History Hotline for IH podcasts and The Road to Now on SiriusXM , and now his first book is coming out . It's called America's Founding Son, John Quincy Adams, from President to Political Maverick . I'm super excited to have him on Snafu this week. Welcome Bob Crawford . Thank you, Ed. It's a joy to be here. Heck yeah. I mean, I have to say I don't even remember when we met long, long time ago, but I have only very recently learned of your history nerdiness, and this might be my new favorite thing about you. It's one of the better things about me, so yes, pick that one and go with it . Yeah, and it kind of comes out of the band. You know, we've been together for twenty five years, maybe going on twenty six . And all those years driving around in a fifteen passenger van for eight hours a day , read , read, read. You know, it was the perfect time to read. And I got really curious about American history in the around time of the Iraq war . How did we get here? Sure. From seventeen seventy six to Abu Garab, if you remember. Okay, yeah. Iraqi . That's a prison. That's a crooked line. That's a crook it is a crooked line. And I want and so I started with the David McCullough books. This is two thousand four, two thousand five. Great. The John Adams seventeen seventy six led me to Sean Willent's The Rise of American Democracy from Jefferson to Lincoln. Highly recommend it. And that I was kind of on and on from there. Very cool. Now are you Are you like a heavy paper book guy? Are you a Kindle guy? Audiobooks? Like what's your game? What's your book game? I am my book game is all and everything . It is seriously because like, you know, for Road to our American History Hotline, you're trying to absorb someone's book sometimes in two weeks so I'll be reading the book and listening if it's on the audio I do that too. You know, I wrote this book on the road. Much of it I wrote on the road because again , you know, you've got sound check at two , stage at eight, sometimes later. So a lot of hours to write a book . Wow . And then, you know, a lot of this research, we can you can read the Congressional Record going back to the first Congress. It's all online. So cool. Yeah. Oh man, you are a giant nerd. I love this. That's the biggest yeah. Now I can't help but connect these dots because I know it's true for me. I don't know exactly how , but I know that my interest in history is connected to of more traditional music forms . So like I'm very into folk music and obviously I'm a banjo player for bluegrass music. And to me I feel like those music forms have been like a vessel or a connection to history in a way almost in a sub conscious way. I love the music like very sort of on a superficial level, it just makes me feel good . But there's also something about it that feels connected to an earlier time and to a deeper sort of historical meaning. And I wonder if that's true for you because the Avat brothers sound is so rooted in so many of these great old music traditions. Right. Well, for the Avats, it's Charlie Poole it's, you know, the songs that Doc Watson popularized in the sixties that really are turn of the century if not before. And the short answer is yes, and I'm always trying to I'm always amazed by some American songs and how far they go back. Wow. Yes, music connects us to the past, and sometimes it connects us more directly than we previously imagined. Amen . Well said , this is a cool episode today. You obviously have a deep knowledge of sort of colonial and post independence America. You're going to have some room to flex today we're dipping into a great snafu right in the pre American Revolution pressure cooker. We're heading to British Run, Virginia, where a Scottish aristocrat with elite Nepo baby energy , John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, AKA Lord Dunmo , was serving as the crown appointed governor while the whispers of rebellion were slowly building into a roar. And in true snafu fashion, our Lord Dunmore managed to take a tense situation and just absolutely dow sit with kerosene with a spectacularly ill timed proclamation that fully supercharged revolutionary war fervor up and down the colonies . Bob, are you ready to snapu? I am ready to snap food . All right, now does Lord Dunmore set off any alarm bells for you? Well, it rained so I'm thinking Williamsburg, Virginia ? Yes. Lord Dunmore is the is the crown appointed governor of the colony of Virginia. What year are we in? Right in the pre revolutionary war period, the seventeen seventies, like early seventeen seventy. five But we're going to start by going back a bit further. Okay, so here's a little backstory on our main man Dunmore. Born in Tamouth, Scotland in seventeen thirty, his father, the third earl of Dunmore, was actually fought against King George II as a member of the Jacobite Army in seventeen forty six. His father was imprisoned but was eventually freed in seventeen fifty that very same year John perhaps motivated by his father 's failures , joined the British Army, cementing his allegiance to the crown forevermore. We have a portrait of Lord Dunmore. Here it is . Oh yes. Yeah, very sharp. Oh yes. He's leaning hard. I mean, there's a there's I count at least three different plaids going on in this portrait . The socks, the kilt , very fast and forward. Yeah. Would he be a dandy? This painting does give dandy vibes, but I think we'll learn that he's actually a pretty tough cookie. Okay . All right, so he served the king very well. And in seventeen seventy he was rewarded with a new appointment as the Royal Governor of New York. He left his wife Charlotte and their children back in Britain . Now leaving your family is always tough, but maybe with eight kids it's like get me the hell out of here maybe I don't know . We both travel a lot, right? Shoots and I go on shoots, you go on tour and whatever chaos is on the calendar. What's your road dad playbook? Oh man, I have two kids. I have fourteen year old Samuel who's fourteen year old. Like that 's everything that comes with that. Yeah. Then I have a sixteen year old special needs daughter named Halle , who is a three time brain tumor survivor and a Saint Jude kid wow. She is amazing , but you can imagine how complicated our home life is. Sure . So that just and then my wife is incredible. And so she's dealing, I'm gone and we crafted our over the quarter century of Ava Brothers touring , we have finally crafted it to where we don't go for more than two weeks . We often don't go for more than ten days. Amazing. But I always come home and mess up everything. My wife has everything running just smooth and great and then I come home and I just everything just goes to hell As we like to say, there's friction on reentry. There is. Well, no matter how he felt about leaving his family behind, Lord Dunmore eventually grew to enjoy his gig in the states , despite being known as and, I quote , a gamster and a drunkard, he somehow thrived in New York. By seventeen seventy one, the British government decided to relocate him further south as governor of Virginia. Now this was supposedly a promotion going to Virginia. The crown considered Virginia to be sort of the shining jewel of the colonies , you know, massive tobacco exports and surprised , Dunmore hated it. He truly despised Virginia, especially the weather and the quote little or no society . You know, he was a bit of a backwater at this point. Yeah, it is. You're right. V muchery. Unlike New York City , which is a pretty serious little metropolis. It's it's not hing obviously like it is now, but at least there's there's some society, there's culture and he didn't think there was any of that in Virginia. So I grew up in the south. You grew up in where I grew up in South Jersey. South Jersey. I grew up in the south. I grew up amazing. About three miles from Atlantic City. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah, yeah. And there was society. It was kind of rough, sure. At times in some places, but yeah, yeah, there was we had Philly forty five minutes in New York City two hours, you know, so I feel like in modern terms , like you can find so much culture anywhere now. Absolutely here. Yeah. There's so much going on everywhere. But at that at this time, I have to think maybe maybe he's right they probably Virginia at the time the colony of Virginia may not have had the artistic community that New York had and everybody spread out there you know like you have a right station and then you got twenty miles of another plantation. And like I said, they thought this was a promotion. I think he I think he was doing okay by the crown's estimation . But once he settled into Williamsburg, which was Virgin ia's capital at the time, Richmond would come later seventeen eighty. Lord Dunmore wasted no time stirring the bot. He allegedly had an affair with a woman who was in court battling her estranged husband , which might sound like just some regular old spicy colonial gossip, except for one tiny detail Dunmore was actually the chief justice presiding over this case . So real statesman energy here. Right. Well, these days, these days he would. Yeah, you're right. He would fit right in, right? You can get Joe's work. You can bring who can bring accountability. Yeah, exactly. I'm being ironic, but the irony is lost on today's society . Yeah, we've given that up. Yeah, it sounds less like he was governing a colony and more like he was workshopping a reality show. Which is what Williamsburg became reality show. Yeah, for real. Yeah. Colonial Williamsburg, indeed. So fast forward to seventeen seventy four, a banner year for Lord Dunmore, and not in a fun way. This is when his storyline shifts from colonial gossip column to hold my powdered wig . The entire colonial world is already vibrating with tension. Britain and the colonies are locked in that passive aggressive relationship phase where everyone says their fine, but someone's about to flip the table. The patriots are furious over parliament's power grabs, especially the whole taxation without representation thing. And this tension sparked events like the Boston Massacre in seventeen seventy, and of course the fam,ous Boston Tea Party in seventeen seventy three. So people were mad. Tea was soggy. Right. This is the moment of critical mass. Yeah, muskets are getting dusted off here. Open warfare has not officially started, but the vibe is revolutionary . Let's put it that way. We're about to dive more specifically into Dunmore. Any other any more color on this sort of time period you want to share just from your insight. What do you love about it? Well, yeah, right. This is when everything's about to hit the fan. And so we think of the revolutionary war as a revolutionary war, but as Ken Burns recently pointed out with his massive series that came out about the American Revolution , the Revolutionary War was actually a civil war . And the civil war was a revolution . And so if you think about that , you probably at this point in Virginia in the tide water . You had probably had one plantation where they were ready to , you know, cast off the crown seeking independence because people who lived the colonies for many years they were left alone and they wanted to be left alone. So they were happy with the king as long as he wasn't taxing the paper or the tea or all of that kind of stuff. But then you had those people, probably neighbors who were die hard crown, like they were ride or die crown. So this is probably where we are where the tensions are building and it's a which side are you on moment? It's a real mixed bag. You're exactly right. There are plenty of people. Most people are kind of in a more libertarian camp of just kind of hey, leave me alone . Let me make my money and we're about to see how Dunmore just kind of totally steps in it in this whole situation . How did he become central to this growing crisis? Well, he was first and foremost a representative of the British crown, obviously . Appointed by London, his duty was to enforce imperial policy in Virginia. So by seventeen seventy four, he was operating within Virginia's established political framework. This was the House of Burgesses, founded in sixteen nineteen. The Burgesses was the colony's elected assembly, largely made up of influential landowners and planters, they met with the Royal Governor and his council to manage colonial affairs. Now, as tensions between Britain and the colonies intensified that working relationship would steadily unravel . Fun fact , the House of Burgesses was actually kind of like the farm team for the American Revolution. This is where guys like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and of course Richard, Henry Lee they all, sharpened their political teeth. So there was let's just say there are a lot of fumes in the tank and all it needs is a spark. That's right . Yeah Yeah, these are some of the most by the way, if you're listening to this, you can go see the Capitol Building where Dunmore, the Royal whatever they go. Governor's Palace. Dunmore's palace. It's all there. Yeah. Wow. I have never been busy world for this conversation. Oh, perfect. Listeners, get out there . Yeah I am yet to get to Colonial Williamsburg and I can't wait when I do get there. I'm just gonna geek out. I'm going to drive all the employees crazy like, hey, wait, what was this? Where did you get this? I make a confession. I go yearly. I really, truly enjoy it. And yes, it is complete geek fest. I love it. But by the way, the music is great. I believe it. This brings us to may twenty sixth, seventeen seventy four, when Dunmore had breakfast with George Washington . This seemed to go well. These guys had a lot in common. They had similar sort of societal tastes and aspirations . According to Washington, this was a good meeting . And who knows, and maybe in another life, they could have been besties, but later that very day , Dunmore received orders from the crown to stop the troublesome House of Burgesses from making such a stink over British policies. Dunmore's solution dissolves the House of Burgesses . Just break it up, get everyone out of there. This is a really fascinating detail. This sort of straw that broke the camel's back with the House of Burgesses was that they wanted to commemorate the Boston Tea Party with a day of fasting or something like that. And this was a decree that only the crown would normally be have the power to decree. And so this was seen as a sort of subtle affront to the crown. It doesn't seem like there's anything subtle about it. Well, the subtlety is that it's such a gentle thing , right? To have a day of fasting and prayer in commemoration of something, but to sort of take that mantle themselves was just a tiny little fuck you to the crown . And so that's why they kind of forced Dunmore's hand. He had to be like, God, you can't do that. You got it. You're broken up. So yeah, every last member, including Washington, the very guy he shared breakfast with just hours earlier, was basically sent home. What message does this send to the to the people , to the to the colonists when an unelected governor can just unilaterally dissolve an elected body . And then how long can people just stop asking politely to be ruled . So this moment in seventeen seventy four is when people realize we're subjects. That's all we are. We're just subjects. He can dissolve whatever the hell he wants to dissolve. If he wants to send an army here and kill us all , he can do that unless , unless we say no more , that's it . No. No, we're going to take matters into our own hands. Oh, very cool. I like the way that you framed that. Despite all this political tension, Dunmore was actually strengthening his standing with many wealthy Virginians by supporting western expansion. So tensions between colonial settlers and the Shawn had the Native American tribes in Appalachia there had escalated into what became known as Dunmore's war in seventeen seventy four. So after a series of battles , including the Battle of Point Pleasant, the Shawnee agreed to cede claims south of Ohio River, effectively opening up what is now present day Kentucky to colonial settlement. So for many land hungry Virginians, this was a great victory and something that they appreciated in Lord Dunmore and earned him a lot of goodwill. Unfortunately, this good will would not last. Things are about to go real bad for Dunmore. If you're from the Bay and grew up on the JV show, then you know Wild Defer nine runs deep in your DNA. Yeah, Wild Denny for nine has been the Bay's number one hit music station for years . And every morning we're bringing you the biggest hits, laughs. We've got the biggest giveaways, the day's top headlines, and everything trending in the day to start your day. It's all on the JV show weekday Mornings on Wild ninety nine. four And if you're busy in the morning , you can catch the JV show podcast any time, anywhere, just save Wild ninety four nine and the JV Show podcast as your top iHeart radio presets. Let's broaden out a little bit just for some additional context. We're going to go up to Massachusetts. Royal authorities are suddenly dealing with a situation so chaotic and earned its own dramatic title The powder alarm of seventeen seventy four. So after the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the deeply unpopular coercive acts dubbed the intolerable acts by colonists. And one of these acts barred Boston colonists from choosing who represented them in the council, the Massachusetts government's upper house. Naturally , they weren't too thrilled about this, and they prepared for possible conflict by moving munitions and gunpowder from their usual storage locations to more secretive storehouses. Right. In Boston, it was like it's Boston, right? It's Boston in twenty twenty six and you know how Boston is in twenty twenty six? It was Boston in seventeen seventy four and they're not taking any share from anybody. No, they were they were riled up. No, Virginia, they'll be like, oh, you dissolved Marburges . Exactly. Well, can we discuss this? Is this another way, sir? My good, sir . No, no, not in Boston. No, you're so right. The vibe was so terrific. Frerank drinin'king, they are just , you know, Sam Adams, of course, he's part of all this and sure. You know, he's just brewing beer and they're drinking it and they're getting pissed off and you know, they're ready to go. Yeah, they're riled up. So they hide a bunch of these munitions and gunp owder and the British clocked it and they were like, ooh, that's not cool guys. They reacted swiftly. On september first, seventeen seventy four, General Thomas Gage ordered British troops to seize the weapons and gunpowder from a Charlestown storehouse. Now news spread and suddenly more than four thousand Patriot militien mobilized to protest. This shocked the Brits. They were like, whoa , we had no idea colonists were not only so mad, but also alarmingly good at organizing on short notice . You know, they had set up these networks already. I mean, what did British official s think was going to happen when they stripped people of representation and just started confiscating their guns? It's like a thank you note? I don't know. Basically, Britain at this point had been in charge for so long Yeah, and had been said they were they had the greatest army in the world at this point . So they're getting they don't like it, they they'll shut it down and they must have thought that people did not have the the fortitude and the perseverance sure to engage who I mean, who would mess with these guys, they've got a couple muskets like we've got cannons , you know, it's why would they challenge Great Britain? Yeah, they just massively underestimated the moxie of these of these New Englanders. This as I mentioned, became known as the powder alarm, and it turned out to be a huge game changer. It sparked the creation of the Massachusetts provincial Congress. It sped up the rise of the Minute Men militia, and even kicked off secret intelligence networks, keeping a watchful eye on the Brits movements all around Boston. But General Gage was not done. After British spies located colonial munitions in conquered Massachusetts, he sent troops to destroy them on April eighteenth, seventeen seventy five. That little operation would of course lead to the famous shot herd round the world , officially lighting the fuse on the revolutionary war. Lexington and Concord. Now that I have been there and that is very, very cool . That feels like a very visceral connection to history there. It's so interesting. How often in history does authority escalate a situation in the name of trying to suppress it, right? Like they like they're trying to exert control, but they really only just manifest their worst fears . It's pretty common, right? Yeah , like nothing is inevitable in history, right? But it does feel like Americans when they were colonists, they didn't like being told what to do or what not to do, where to assemble where not to assemble . Like they didn't want to be pushed around as colonists. And I'm getting the sense and I'm not I'm not talking about violence here or like civil war revolution. I'm not talking about any of that in this moment, but I am sensing from people that the people will have the final say And we were kind of seeing it already that people , the collective , they're pushing back , and even if it's bad poll numbers, it's registering disapproval in a state special election or by answering up sters questions . Those pieces of honesty and fortitude and standing your ground , they are showing that there can be some pushback and it can have an impact . Yeah , absolutely. All right, back to Dunmore, because of course, he wouldn't be left out of the colonial chaos. He got a mandate very similar to General Gages up in Massachuset ts to suppress the unrest down in Virginia. And being a loyal red coat as he was, he dove right in. In april seventeen seventy five, he grabbed the gunpowder from the public magazine in Williamsburg and sent it on a ship offshore , you know, just to keep it safe from those pesky colonists. Of course, Patriot forces quickly learned of this and mobilized an outrage because shocker, people get a little grumpy when you move their explosives without asking . People don't like that. They don't like it. Dunmore, ever the spin doctor claimed he was acting in the colonists' best interest. He said he was simply preventing a slave revolt. None of this went over very well . So news spread quickly and local militia began mobilizing, faced with rising tensions and threats to the governor's palace. As you mentioned there in Williamsburg, Dunmore withdrew his family and by June took refuge aboard the HMS Faui in the York River . From there, he attempted to govern Virginia from the relative safety of a warship , which is rarely a sign that things are going smoothly. Yeah, in exile, a leader in exile doesn't govern very well . We have an artistic rendering of Lord Dunmore's flight to the warship Faui and is . There it is. Is that who's got his fist up? Is that Dunmore with his fist up? I think he's like he's just saying like ahoy, we're coming aboard . I'm really impressed by this staircase that comes down off the side of a battleship . So the French had a big navy at this time. Did they have stairs? This is a good question Yeah, it was a huge point of contention between the two navies. Like we've got stas . We have what we call an elevator. Yeah, an escalator. Exactly . It's so interesting the things artists choose to render Dunmore's flight to the Fauy. Why did this particular thing? I mean, if you're Leonardo da Vinci, painting the last supper feels like, yeah, that's a cool thing. You want to capture that. I don't know about this moment where he just happens to be getting on a boat. Like, oh, okay. Anyway, Dunmore used the twenty four cannon HMS Fowey as his base for two to three months, though it was reported that he moved from ship to ship in the Chesapeake Bay as he commanded small raids on patriot affiliated towns and plantations . He and his loyalist forces eventually settled on Gwin's Island about thirtyth miles noreast of Williamsburg. By november seventeen seventy five, however, even a private island couldn't solve all his problems . Dunmore needed reinforcements, so he turned to the very people his opponents had been trying to control all along . And this drum roll please is Dunmore's sna with massive historical repercussions . Dunmore issued a royal proclamation offering freedom to any indentured servants or enslaved people willing and able to fight for the king . Oh , the irony. The same guy who'd earlier moved the colony's gunpowder to prevent a supposed slave uprising was now dangling liberty like it was candy at Halloween . About three hundred former enslaved men joined what became known as Dunmore's Royal Ethiopian regiment. This proclamation spread through newspapers across the colonies and the regiment eventually swelled to around eight hundred men, it also inspired thousands more to consider seeking freedom by siding with the British or just to escape amid the chaos. This is such a wild moment . And because it's so close to the just full on outbreak of war , the revolutionary war , this particular moment doesn't get as much historical attention as I think it deserves. It's really striking . It really, it really is. And this will become when we get into the eighteen twenties and eighteen thirties in the South , this is what they fear the most . Exactly. And by the way, that fear the fear of slave uprising goes way back, of course. I mean, if you're going to enslave a population, there's part of you that knows this is horrible . This is so horrible what we're doing. Karmas might be swinging back at us any minute. Man, you are sitting on a powder keg of humanity. Exactly. It is a not Here's what happened when one journalist reported on DEI programs . I decided to just focus on the University of Michigan. I obtained internal documents that showed that the school had spent about a quarter of a billion dollars on DI programs. I spent two weeks in Ann Arbor talking to everybody I could find. The unintended consequences of these programs, they sort of left everybody dissatisfied. And this expensive machinery the school had built just imploded . If you're a journalist, you are not on anyone's team. All you're trying to do is figure out as many of the facts as you can gather. The facts are going to guide you to where the story lands. You're not taking sides. I'm Nick Compassory. I'm an investigations reporter for the New York Times. Journalists like Nick follow the facts wherever they lead. They go where news breaks, get answers firsthand , and publish what they find. That's fact based reporting. Seek it out if you don't already . Abercrombie's active brand Your Personal Best is built to keep up with your summer in motion. The latest YPB drop has active tees and tanks made with a performance cotton blend that's soft, breathable, and moisture wicking . The perfect choice for warm weather workouts. And for leg day or long runs, and motion text shorts have you covered. This summer, add YPB by Abercrombie into your workout rotation. Shop in the app, online, and in stores. So he's offering freedom , but primarily as a military strategy aiming to weaken the rebel economy and labor force. He's using liberty as a tactical weapon. It's very cynical and yet there's something obviously noble in freeing slaves . Whatever his motives, it marked a pivotal moment in the history of slavery in America. It is remarkable how often major turning points emerge less from moral intention than from unintended consequences. Wasn't it Washington didn't want to arm enslaved people? Correct. He refused to arm slavery even when the British were doing it. And he had then some people were saying, We need to do this. Yeah, he didn't want to do that because what happens once they defeat the British , they will turn on us, right? That's like the paranoia . I believe this was a turning point for the revolutionary forces as well. That's when they started to enlist former slaves or slaves into the ranks because they saw that it was that Dunmore was doing this and they were like, We need to do this too. Well, it turns out this decision of Dunmore's to invite the rebellion of slaves to his own benefit was the ultimate backfire. His proclamation meant to bolster loyalist forces did the exact opposite. It unexpectedly united Virginians and supercharged the Patriot cause. Even folks who were kind of like on the fence , undecided or even quietly rooting for the king , they were outraged . And the Virginian economy was so based entirely on slavery that everyone was , regardless of their loyalty before this was just pissed off at Lord Dunmore and they threw themselves into the rebellion moving forward. So losing enslaved laborers, it wasn't just an inconvenience, it threatened their social status, their whole economic system. One historian even noted no other document, not even Thomas Pain's common sense or the Declaration of Independence than Dunmore's proclamation to convert white residents of Britain's most popular colony to the cause of independence. You and I love history. You know, we're just fascinated by it. And the deeper you get into American history , like you need to learn to embrace somehow what united these guys to fight the British was the threat of being attacked by former slaves, their slaves . And so it's it's like there are some people that don't want to teach certain parts of American history, but you know, I say it's like you need to accept it all. I like to say the good bad and the ugly. You gotta you got to be able to like take it all in and hold it all in together the good, the bad and the ugly. You know, George Washington , amazing. No one else ever liked him. The man gave away power. The man had absolute power, served two terms as president and said, You know what I'm going home. I'm going to go sand my floors. I'm going to go grow hemp. I'm going to, you know, whatever. But also, when he when he was president, he had an enslaved woman named Ona Judge escape and he obstructed justice to try to get her back. He never got her back, but he tried to obstruct the fugitive slave law that he signed into law that he signed, you know , so it's like we got to the good bad and the ugly. We got to hold both we got to hold both yeah. Amen. Amen. We're in a very weird moment where a lot of forces are trying to kind of only cling to the good and say that's our history. That's all of it. That's in it. But no, we contain multitudes. We're a mess and there's beauty. We contain multitudes. Alexis Co says you are not you're not guilty of anything unless you deny it . All we can do is be the best people we can today to each other. Yeah, and we need the most amount of data to do that. You know, right ? We need the most the most honest accounting of the world and history and science and whatever else. We need the most and best data to be the best versions of ourselves. With this action of Dunmore's, Virginian rebels reached a breaking point, and Washington even called them out for this treacherous behavior a. letter In written on december fifteenth, seventeen seventy five to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reid, Washington wrote If Virginians are wise , that arch traitor to the rights of humanity, Lord Dunmore should be instantly crushed . You pissed off George Washington . I don't think this is going to go well for you moving forward, Dunmore. All right, so now it's December of seventeen seventy five. Lord Dunmore launch ed one last major offensive. He fled to Norfolk to rally his troops, including the Ethiopian regiment. Norfolk was a key economic and military hub and the main entry point Bridge was quickly fortified with a stockade called Fort Murray. During the battle of Great Bridge, however, the Patriot militia easily overran the British forces . Only one Patriot was wounded, while the British suffered about a hundred casualties. By seventeen seventy six, the revolution was in full swing, and Dunmore's attempts at reinforcements had spectacularly failed , helping the very people he was supposed to be fighting. No matter how hard he tried, regaining control of Virginia was off the table. He packed it up, left the colonies, back to Great Britain , joined parliament , and threw himself into supporting the loyalist cause for the rest of the war , but now from across the pond. You would think leaving the colonies and getting all the way back to England would be the end of Dunmore's drama. Well, not quite. In the seventeen nineties, scandal found him again this time through his daughter Augusta, who secretly married Prince Augustus Frederick, was actually the king's son , so the King of England's son . In defiance of the Royal Marriage Act of seventeen seventy two. This marriage was declared void, but the couple stayed together for years anyway, even off the colonial stage, the Dunmores just kept things messy. Dunmore himself died in eighteen oh nine at the ripe old age of seventy nine , leaving behind a legacy that is as chaotic as it is fascinating. He freed slaves long before Lincoln, but let's be real, mostly for strategic reasons and inadvertently sparked revolution in Virginia. All in all, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, was the kind of historical figure you'd love to watch on reality TV, dramatic scheming and always one step away from disaster. As we're the next season of traitors . Yeah, right or survivors or something . Final, interesting note, many of the black men and women who joined Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment were later transferred north with the seventeen eighty three British evacuation of New York , fearing re enslavement, they escaped to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone , forming enduring communities whose descendants remain today . That's our story. Can you wrap up today's snafu in three words, Bob Crawford? Don't mess up . I think that works. Yeah. I mean, that could apply to a lot of things, but yeah, it certainly applies to today. Don't F up . Yeah, perfect . Well, I'm wondering any final thoughts on this story . You know, most people, when we think of the emancipation of slaves, we think of the Civil War , I think a lot of historians actually point to this moment as even if Dunmore's motives were not sort of like morally based. They point to this moment as a kind of turning point in the perception of the value of freedom for the enslaved population and the sort of consideration of freedom for the enslaved population in the colonies and what became the United States and, that this was in many ways a precursor to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Right. The freedom was only for those enslaved in the states that were in rebellion. Yeah. The emancipation proclamation. It wasn't this amazing everybody's free . Yeah. Like if you and I were average Americans in that period eighteen twenty to eighteen fifty, we couldn't really conceive of a way or a time that slavery would not exist. You talk about big tech , big slavery . Like that was an industry that benefited the South and the North. If you lived in Boston , there would be mob and you were at an abolitionist meeting , a mob may surround the building and throw rocks through the building because the abolition was messing with the status quo . Yeah , at the time . So I would be interested to go back and look at this moment that we talked about today and see what did the abolitionists think of this you know , twenty, thirty, forty years after it happened. And how did it play into thinking about what freedom could be obtained and how freedom could be obtained? Absolutely. There's a very interesting governmental strategic consideration here. Bad leadership doesn't just fail at leadership. It can often mobilize the opposition , right? Yeah. So Dunmore, he didn't just make these unpopular decisions. He actively radicalized his opponents. Yeah, he manifested his downfall. Right. He radicalized people who might have otherwise just been neutral . So like his dissolving of the House of Burgesses, the seizure of gunpowder, his emancipation proclamation , they weren't just tactical blunders . They were excelerants against his s , the blowback can just be so much more consequential than simply the failure to advance your cause. Absolutely. It happens in history time and again. Yeah, they're just stepping on rakes. The rake, the handle flies up and just breaks your nose. That's right. Come on. This was really fun. Bob Crawford, thank you so much for coming on board Snapfood. I want to know about your book, Bob. And I want to know a couple things. First of all , you have a very broad interest in history, but what is it about this particular subject that pulled you in? And then I want to know a little bit about your process of how you brought this book to life. Well, the process is being a touring musician and having hours of downtime. And you know, traditionally musicians , they use lonely hours off the stage to self destruct, right? To do things that destroy them. I think we're living in a different time and everybody I know they got projects going on, they got a lot going on, but it did offer me about WiFi now. We have WiFi. Right. And so we can read the Congressional Globe from eighteen thirty six. And we have the time to do that and the ability so we can do that. I've always been fascinated fascinated with John Quincy Adams as a president and really as his post presidency . And you know, I've got a complicated family life. I did work on the book a lot at home, but man being on the road really it's just it's like you can write books and be a bass player of all things. So cool. What makes this book a special insight into the story of John Quincy Adams. So it is tells the story of Adams between eighteen twenty and eighteen forty eight . And this is he was a failed one term president who went into Congress and served in Congress for seventeen years after his presidency. He's the only one, the only president who's done that . And when he was president , he was the establishment, right? Like so, he lost reelect ion to Andrew Jackson, who was the populist . Think back to twenty sixteen, right ? Hillary Clinton on paper , man, first lady