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Hinge Points Episode 3: Reconstructing Reconstruction (Patreon)

Published:
2021-11-19 22:01:00
Edited:
2021-11-20 17:27:36
Imported:
2026-06

Downloads

Content

Matt and Danny Bessner, from the American Prestige podcast, explore one of history's most important hinge points: the American Civil War, when the United States decided to fully embrace the northern form of industrial capitalism, setting the stage for hemispheric and eventually global expansion. Matt and Danny discuss a multitude of issues, from the various crises of the pre-Civil War era to the war's diplomacy to one of the great "What If" questions: namely, what if Benjamin Butler, not Andrew Johnson, had been Lincoln's Vice President, and how might this have informed Reconstruction's direction?

EDIT: Aware there was something fucked up with original file. Sorry, played fine everywhere on my end, sometimes these things slip through. New file uploaded, should be working now. Sorry for the inconvenience and let me know if any issues persist. -cw

Files

Comments

Mack Gallagher

"blithely believing you're the predestined winner" and "reflecting on the ways you got lucky" are very different kinds of "optimism"

Kyle Petty

This is extremely lazy on my part, But do you think Chris could put all the hinge points into a collection, like he's done with hell presidents and some other series?

sulkyboy

*2 years later voice* pls chris

etienne

I am begging of you to send Matt on Radio War Nerd to participate in their American Civil War series

Isaac Jones

I have come to get my hinge points, which I will exchange for a dope ass NFT of Punk Andrew Johnsons

Karl Childers

ooohhh that could be cool as shit

Geoff Taylor

Hell yeah gimme more hinge points plz

etienne

you haven't reached cryptenlightenment til you sold your own body and labour on the blockchain as a NFT, like I did.

Brody Knaak

Is the podcast not loading for anyone else?

etienne

John says he's down, someone just needs to like take the first step i guess.

Isaac Jones

Pod not loading. Guess I'll just fucking kill myself

T

I can't stream it either, but I downloaded it (by clicking the cloud icon) and it worked.

T

Downloading it (by clicking the cloud icon) works. Can't stream it right now though.

MK

Literally unplayable. I demand my treats sir

Matt James Rich

I am listening to it on a computer but on my phone it did not work.

Craig Burley

for the love of god fix the theme music

Smalls

Phenomenal stuff

J P 3

Hinge point 2008, the Democratic Primary edition. Hillary Clinton wins, becomes president. Achieves a public option in the health care law. Starts WWIII.

K H

Thanks Tommy

Graham Mitchell

Literally Trinity college is the most conservative college at U of T, full of the kids of the richest Canadians....

kmd

Great timing, literally at this point in Hell of Presidents, Benjamin Butler turning down the Veep. It's depressing as fuck lol

Trevor Marsden

Is this where we propose Hinge Points? I got one that's always fascinated me, maybe save it for S.2: the Battle of Teutoberg Forest. Just off the top of my head, it implicates German unification and the development of very concept of The Frontier. Like, what does the world look like if there's a linguistically, physically united Germany from 100AD onward? Perhaps too many butterfly wings, but it has always fascinated me.

BJ

Why can't I get it to play

zach miller

I don't know what cut Patreon takes but it's too much for how broken this app is.

etienne

I am begging you to use RSS

cwen

Love the theme music so much that I cut it out and set it to repeat and now it's my walking around music

S.E. Nyarady

It wasn't streaming for me but I downloaded it and that played fine

Bobby Volcano

Excellent hinge point, and timely. At the very least it's hard to imagine a proper reconstruction leads to teenagers in 2020 wandering the streets at night hunting people down with rifles.

triplevalaska

I am to dumb to be able to download it and play it, cuz it's not streaming I have tried but I am to computer illitrate if I can't be googled or brought up on the search bar I'm out of tricks. Good thing I break rocks on the back of a brontosaurus for a living. Love the podcast I hope I can listen to it soon

Scott

Monroe doctrine > civil war

Roy Cowan

I couldn't get it to load through iTunes or Patreon and when I did download it I couldn't get it to play - each time I tried it would lock up File Explorer instead. I ended up having to reboot to even delete it successfully. Not sure why since I had no problem with previous episodes. Looking forward to listening once it gets sorted out!

chris dray

I disagree on the int'l law front, mostly because of the european colonization of africa and SEA. with those structures of empire remaining in place for so long, i find it unlikely that there is much more of a global push towards human rights outside of the narrow, token abhorrence of legal slavery that we got in our world anyway.

chris dray

otherwise, very good episode. this and the end of WW2 are the most interesting hinge points in history to me, so this was a lot of fun

Simon

the fact that it was expected that slavery would become unprofitable as a part of the natural course of things, and then it didn't happen, is exactly why we shouldn't listen to anyone who says that the market will make fossil fuels unprofitable. Maybe it will happen (great!) and maybe it won't

IHaveHemorrhoids

The hinge point of us not listening to this episode If you're on wifi or have unlimited data I suggest opening it in the browser. Seems to be a patreon mobile app issue specific to this episode

JJ Demon

I woke up today and hit play on the episode and an episode of the flop house started playing. But it’s labeled as this episode and even when I removed the download and refreshed the app, hitting play inside the Chapo premium page on Apple podcasts, it plays today’s episode of the flop house. Idk anything about this stuff but that’s certainly weird.

Ian

Also having trouble playing this ep, no other recent episodes have the same problem

Mister Orca

Not working for me either

Do Golems Dream of Ceramic Sheep

New conspiracy theory: we had been on the Butler/Wallace timeline, but when we Operation Paperclipped Werner Von Braun (or, maybe call it Heisenberg, just for kicks), the Dulles brothers have him build a time machine to flip us onto this one. ... Which kinda sounds like the Butlace world version of Command and Conquer.

DJ B.

Won't play 👍

Torbjørn Thorsen

I'm having problems playing the file on my intended device and software. I'm unable to pinpoint exactly what is wrong, as the file plays in some software, but not all. AntennaPod: Doesn't work VLC: Doesn't work Audacity: Works Google Chrome: Works

Kael Fischer

File is too big for some apps/OS's

etienne

based on what we know of Matt's music taste this might just be his favourite tune of all times

Billy Billy

Love the talk, but goddamn the theme makes me feel as if I'm about to be assaulted by a clown

Ian

Follow up: It works now, thank you!

SoldierBlue

This counterfactual happened in post-war Japan when MacArther broke up the land holdings of the ruling class and distributed land packages to the indentured labor who had worked the same land.

Jon Lyons

we should all be so lucky

JD

The theme can only be improved if you had Danny and Matt yelling “hinge points!” to the tune of BBV’s “Poison”

Luke F

Yeah man

Collin

Wasn't working for a day or so but seems to be fixed now... I'd like my $1.83 back based on the hours it wasn't available 🤑

James

First off I wanna say, what a fantastic show this is shaping up to be. Hinge point recommendation: GLADIO fails to rig the 1948 Italian election in favor of the Christian Democrats and an independent communist republic is established in (northern) Italy.

etienne

Pokemon Go! To the shores of Taipei to give your life to Democracy

etienne

pizza fails to become a commonplace fast food item in the US because it's smeared as a communistic affectation during McCarthyism

Mark Schneider

Well, your 2nd assertion would've come about. But a snowball's chance in Hell the 2008 or 16 HRC would've "allowed" the peons a public option. Wholly owned by Big Insurance and Pharma as much as Obama.

orc

Don't like the theme either

Cameron Young

Yes, would like to see a reconstruction episode with the radio war team and HP

Isaac Suárez

Great episode. I never knew Butler was nearly made Lincoln’s VP. A truly fascinating what if (he definitely would have been viewed with suspicion by the Republicans and what better way to allay suspicion then to lean into persecuting the secessionists everyone in the North despises.) Definitely would’ve brought a bloodier, more navy handed reconstruction but one which had a better chance of breaking the back of the “Redeemer” movement.

Ryan Lazarus

I like the show but I also gotta say that I skip the theme every time :(

CT

Wrong

Jay

I'm curious if this series will discuss hinge points where the resulting trajectory could have been much much worse. Like what hinge points in history can we reflect on kind of "lucking out with"? I'm sure these counterfactuals are kind of harder to imagine that potential good timeliness. Otherwise I'm just imagining a much better "America" all day and getting all pissed lol

Alec Whitmore

Yeah, agreed that this one ranks pretty low in the chapo expanded universe's lexicon of themes.

CT

Wrong x2

CT

Ryan, u cry 1st

Ryan Lazarus

it's okay, not every theme has to be good. Content is still exactly what i've come to appreciate from the Mad Prophet Matt Christmas

etienne

I think the answer to that is it's already well covered by the overly optimistic mainstream narrative of history.

JD

I want that theme on a 24-hour youtube loop because I like self-harm

Causman

Love this new spin off. But "In any meaningful way" is way overused.

greg n simmons

I don't think that's true in any meaningful way.

drunk cig

Ok content, great song tho

Kevin Tong

Almost everything i can attest to being historically accurate, which made the narrative given a compelling one. Theres a few things i need to look into myself but from what i've read around the civil war this appeared very historically accurate. Its around the 40 minute mark I have to argue against the ending conclusion that under a different VP america would've taken a less racist trajectory. The animosity towards black people, even from the north, was due to the body count of the civil war. You see this in the rhetoric of future progressives like Oliver Wendel Holmes who was a key player in the Progressive Eugenics movement. They hated the cost of the civil war, how often it was the best men who died in conflicts and how little there was to show for it afterwards, given the industrial revolution (which you stated was european dominated but by the end of the civil war (around 1863) america had surpassed great britain's economy, and even before that america was flooding europe with produce from factory farms and killing the independent farming economy that Marx felt enabled his academic lifestyle) America became flooded with European immigrants fleeing the failing preindustrial economies of Europe for factory work. So Americans coming out of the civil war, having lost more people per capita than WWI and WWII combined, and now fighting for work with the largest flood of immigration in US history, and due to America being heavily reason based (no longer believing in the supernatural) started to look for Darwinistic rhetoric to put everyone who didnt suffer through the civil war as second class citizens. There's a much greater argument to be made about whether the civil war was even worth it than if it could've been salvaged at the end. Im also surprised you didnt mention the Confederates were the first to implement war-time socialism. They had to produce gunpowder (Augusta Powderworks). Or that Lincoln nationalized the railroads and telegraph lines to build more miles of both per capita than any other country in the world, which had a massive effect on the economic growth for years after and why standard oil became so huge. Once the war was over and lincoln reprivatized the railways, Standard Oil captured 98% of oil in the US by making backroom deals with railroad companies to only carry their oil. To the question you asked about "did the south have a chance od winning?" the answer is "no fucking way" Because the north had ALL the factories and the confederacy was staunchly against building factories, trying to maintain their agrarian quality of life without the degradation and misery that was associated with factories during that period. Remember that the factories started with hamilton and george washington who felt like they would lose another encounter with the british due to their lack of supplies if they didnt have factories. Americans finally got to use all their manufacturing might, just on american citizens. By the end of the civil war the north was fighting with repeating rifles and way more trains to mobilize troops, while the south still largely had front loading rifles. It wasnt even close. Books to read would be "Land of promise" by Michael Lind, "Imbeciles" by Adam Cohen, and a few around the civil war on audible but i dont recall the titles.

Mchiggin

Whenever you mention “free land” and and the diffusion of social tension through westward expansion and “land acquisition”, please STOP overlooking and glossing over the intensifying Native American genocide and enslavement in order to “free” that land. The state of California during this time, along with the other Western States were waging genocidal campaigns of total extermination, targeting Indian men, women, children, and infants in so-called “wars of extinction”. Funding private death squads. The amount of intensifying destruction and brutality our people were facing WAS NOT AN IRRELEVANT FOOTNOTE!

Mchiggin

The Indian extermination campaigns started in California following the Gold Rush. In which failed miners formed private military companies to attack, murder, and steal from the local natives, many of whom were employed by ranchos. So the miner death squads specifically attacked and massacred Indian villages after pay day. Captured Indians were sold into slavery, which was totally legalized in labor-hungry CA for Indian slaves. As this continued native slaves taken were primarily women and girls sold into sexual slavery and brothels. The death squads were officialized, reimbursed, and funded by the state, and this evolved into the federal governments treatment of Indians. In the 1860’s gangs of confederates and union partisan took to gang warfare and banditry out in the “western frontier” and in California (which was essentially a semi-autonomous country). During this time, both the state and federal governments refused to allow any food going into the tiny reservation death camps they established causing mass starvation. The US federal was a eager pioneer in the industrialization of genocide. Actively Inoculating “tamed” reservation tribes with small pox and malaria. They pioneered eugenics by forcibly sterilizing and castrating Indian men and women. Syphilis, and all manner of venereal disease skyrocketed while birth rates plummeted to “extinction levels” As a result of the normalized mass rape of Indian women and girls. The scope and brutality of Indian massacres skyrocketed during and after the Years of the Civil War as the industrialized federal army turned its attention to the “Indian Wars” [which were not actually“wars”, but genocidal massacre campaigns by white settlers against American Indians]. They pursued a policy of total extermination. They Federal government acted both bystanders to and participants in genocide. Many American Indian tribes, especially in the southeast, were radicalized by the increasing brutality of the federal government in its Indian affairs, and actually allied with the confederacy to fight back. (Not that the CSA particularly cared about th Indians either though) And as a result of this, the federal government sought to “punish the Indians for their seditious nature” Tribes who’d never even heard of the Confederacy were targeted for punishment and extermination. When Talking about the racial reaction to the Civil War, PLEASE do not forget or overlook the role of the Frontier and the genocide against American Indians!

Ligma

Genocide is bad? Why would you say something so controversial and yet so brave? What would be the point of them taking time out to say how bad it was every time they mention it?

BL

Because despite the fact that you might take it for granted as a fact, this country has never officially recognized the genocide of the native people. Matt says a lot of things over and over and over again (Yeoman), he could spare a thought for the continent of people this country systematically exterminated.

Robert Connor

Honestly I think he probably doesn't talk about it because it's not in his area of expertise - it might be valuable for him to host an expert on the NA experience to put it into context but when you're doing a series about the flow of power in history, you will just end up only talking about the powerfu parties.