Second Decade

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25: The Man in the Buffalo Fur Suit Nov 05, 2017

Show notes

You’ve probably heard of Daniel Boone and “Grizzly” Adams, the quintessential frontier mountain men who helped forge America’s frontier identity in the 19th century. But you’ve probably never heard of Estwick Evans. An eccentric New Hampshire lawyer, something compelled to Evans put on a skin-tight suit made of buffalo fur, hoist a 6-foot rifle across his shoulders and take off into the snowy wilderness of New England on a frigid day in February 1818. Evans’s epic journey covered over 4,000 miles, overland across the Great Lakes to Detroit and then down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, out into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans, and then by ship around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard back to Boston. On the journey—which he chronicled in an unusual book—Evans observed much of what America was in the Second Decade, and correctly predicted at least some of what it was to become.

Historian Sean Munger takes you along on Evans’s journey, often quoting Evans’s own words and descriptions of the landscapes he saw and the people he met along the way. On this journey you’ll get frostbitten ears in the Green Mountains of Vermont, encounter backwoods witches in upstate New York, join an Indian pow-wow, and float down the Mississippi on a river barge, while all the way experiencing Evans’s self-assured and perhaps narcissistic ruminations on war, peace, gender relations, zoology, slavery and morality. This is a priceless snapshot of what America was like just before the industrial 19th century would change it forever.

Additional Materials About This Episode

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24: New England's Cold Friday Oct 21, 2017

Show notes

Church steeples, horse-drawn sleighs, picket fences, snow-covered fields...is this what you think of when you picture an old-time winter in New England? The cultural and historical roots of these images go back to Colonial times, but the historical reality isn’t always so idyllic. On January 19, 1810, a strange and sudden cold snap, accompanied by violent winds, plunged the region into a sudden deep freeze that nearly everyone who lived through it remembered vividly for the rest of their lives. As the wind tore apart roofs, shook down barns and snapped the masts of sailing ships like toothpicks, New Englanders braced for a punishing assault from the weather. When it was over, the memory of the “Cold Friday” gave them a new benchmark for measuring extreme weather, and the story of one particular family’s tragedy, printed in a single newspaper, somehow became one of the most often-told tales in all of New England’s 19th century folklore.

In this revealing episode, the first in the second season of Second Decade, historian Sean Munger dusts off tales of New England’s Cold Friday that never made it into the history books, but which form part of the fabric of the region’s popular past. Here you’ll watch in astonishment as early “weather watchers” document the extreme nature of the event; you’ll learn how a previous event, the “Dark Day” of 1780, set the mold for remembrance of Cold Friday; and you’ll see how the personal tragedy of the Ellsworth family of Sanbornton, New Hampshire ultimately became the 19th century equivalent of “clickbait.” You may want to turn the heater up for this one—it’s quite a chilling tale!

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23: Murder in Charleston Jul 09, 2017

Show notes

You may not have heard of David Ramsay, but if you lived in Charleston, South Carolina in the second decade, you would probably know him—if you were part of the city’s rich white elite, that is. Ramsay, born in Pennsylvania, Princeton-educated, served in the South Carolina State Legislature and the Confederation Congress, was a protegé of revolutionary doctor Benjamin Rush—a signer of the Declaration of Independence—and tried to rid Charleston’s steamy streets of yellow fever by predicting the weather. His life was tragically ended by a deranged assassin, convinced Ramsay (and everybody else) was out to get him, who blew away the good doctor with a “horseman’s pistol” in broad daylight on one of Charleston’s busiest streets in full view of hordes of witnesses. This odd story from the 1810s shines a fascinating light on Ramsay’s life and personality, and also on the precarious world of Charleston in which he lived, which was built on the backs and the labor of the city’s enslaved African-American population.

Dr. Sean Munger presents the fascinating life of Dr. Ramsay, and his unusual death, in a colorful manner that illuminates various broader themes of the Second Decade era. In this episode you’ll rub shoulders with Charleston’s elite, and perhaps share their thinly-veiled discomfort at the monstrous injustice upon which it depended. This is a picture of a city—and a country—split down the middle, foreshadowing the terrible divisions that gave rise to the Civil War.

This is the last episode in Season 1 of Second Decade. The show will return in fall 2017 with brand-new episodes.

Additional materials on this episode available at the website!

Dr. Munger is offering online classes to the general public. The next one (July 23) is "A Brief History of Climate Change." You can sign up here!

(Some background music for this episode licensed CC3.0 by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston).

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22: Old Ironsides May 14, 2017

Show notes

The early months of the War of 1812 served up a relentless drumbeat of bad news for the United States: our untrained and ill-equipped forces, fighting a war they were unprepared for in the first place, suffered reverse after reverse on the battlefield. But on the high seas, the exploits of one remarkable ship, the USS Constitution, provided the only bright spot in the gloom and demonstrated that the new republic could, when circumstances called for it, compete militarily even with the greatest naval power on Earth. Sent to patrol the Atlantic coast, the Constitution and her captain quickly found themselves tangling with the overconfident British commander James Dacres, who went so far as to capture an American vessel and write a literal taunt into her log daring an American frigate to come out and fight him. The result was a thrilling real-life adventure involving a desperate chase, booming cannons, crackling muskets and every cliché you’ve ever seen in a nautical adventure film from the Age of Sail—except in this case it really happened.

Sean Munger takes you into the thick of naval warfare in the War of 1812 with the story of the USS Constitution, her commanders, officers and the Royal Navy captains who found themselves surprisingly shaken at staring down her 44 guns. In this episode you’ll understand exactly why the Constitution was created in the first place, you’ll learn what “kedging” is, you’ll understand how the Constitution got her nickname “Old Ironsides,” and you’ll gain a glimpse as to why the British were so surprised at the naval prowess of the upstart Americans. This episode is pure adventure—all the stuff of a Patrick O’Brian novel, with the added benefit of being true.

Additional materials and photos available at the website for this episode.

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21: Frankenstein May 08, 2017

Show notes

The image and concept of Frankenstein’s monster—most notably personified by Boris Karloff in the 1931 Universal horror film—are indelible in literature, cinema and popular culture. Far more than just an 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein is a philosophical journey as well as a cultural phenomenon. But how did it come about? The idea for the novel was famously hatched at a lakeside chateau in Switzerland, the Villa Diodati, in the late spring and early summer of 1816 by Mary Shelley (then Mary Godwin), her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron (who was then having an affair with Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont), and his doctor John Polidori, who went on to write The Vampyr. A nightmare summer of inclement climate-changed weather, haunting visions of dead children and monstrous women, endless cycles of personal and sexual jealousy, and the toxic personality of Lord Byron all contributed to Mary’s flash of genius. The story of Frankenstein’s origin is wrapped up in the broader story of the 1810s as a whole, and is intimately connected to the environmental disaster of that decade.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger presents the complicated and fascinating personal stories of Mary Shelley and the literary circle that gathered in Geneva that summer, as well as their tragic ends in the years following. You’ll learn why Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” why the neighbors of the Villa Diodati set up a telescope on the lawn to spy on the scandalous goings-on, and you’ll meet the horrifying midnight vision that frightened Percy Shelley so much Polidori had to give him ether. This extravaganza of Gothic terror sounds like a bad horror film (and has provided the basis for more than one), but it’s real, actual history—like you’ve never heard it before.

Visit the website for this episode for show notes, pictures of the people discussed, and a trailer for the 1931 Frankenstein film!

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20: Second Decade on Film Apr 23, 2017

Show notes

Since the beginning of film as a narrative and artistic medium, historical events and eras have been popular subjects for filmmakers. The decade of the 1810s, however, has not tended to show up in movies or on TV as frequently or consistently as other eras—but there are still plenty of examples of the second decade on film. Beginning in the 1920s with French filmmaker Abel Gance, depictions of the 1810s, many involving Napoleon or adaptations of popular and classic novels, have woven their way through the history of visual media with varying results. From Miriam Hopkins’s Technicolor turn as Becky Sharp in 1935 to Paul Dano as Pierre Bezhukov in the 2016 miniseries War and Peace, the analysis of the second decade in film covers a lot of fun and interesting ground.

In this episode, a slight departure from the usual emphasis on factual events, historian Sean Munger takes you on a brief tour of the 1810s as they appear on the screen. Films and shows discussed include Ridley Scott’s The Duellists, the 2002 European-made Napoleon miniseries, the classic 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, as well as lesser-known (and less historically serious) efforts like Woody Allen’s Love and Death or the whimsical sendup Lost in Austen. If you’re a fan of the period and you’d like to see it on screen, this episode may give you some new items to add to your Netflix list!

At the website for this episode, you can view YouTube videos for trailers and/or scenes from all the films and shows discussed here.

Correction: in the episode, actress Jennifer Ehle is incorrectly identified as “Elizabeth Ehle.” My apologies to Ms. Ehle.

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19: Curious King George Apr 09, 2017

Show notes

Despite being one of the longest-reigning British monarchs as well as wildly popular among his own people, King George III gets a bad rap as the “mad king who lost America.” In truth the story of George’s life is touching and sad. After dealing with not one but two world wars that occurred on his watch, as well as two world-shaking revolutions in America and France, George was ultimately felled by a mysterious illness that affected his body as well as his mind. Signs of his recurring malady appeared as early as 1765, but in 1810, the beginning of the second decade, the King was finally unable to discharge his royal duties. Supplanted by his son (the future King George IV) as regent, George’s illness ended an entire era of British history, the Georgian Era, and began another, the Regency. But this is more than a story of politics and power. It’s a story of a family, struggling to deal with the far-reaching effects of a difficult and ultimately tragic illness whose nature and origin is still debated more than 200 years later.

Historian Sean Munger shines a light on the personal and family stories of King George and the British royals during the 1810s, including eyewitness accounts of the King’s condition and his often curious behavior. In this episode you’ll be thrust into the midst of several acrimonious royal family disputes, you’ll learn to fear the King’s doctors and their straitjackets, and you’ll find out why a blue-stained chamber pot is such a contentious historical artifact. At the end of it you may even have a bit of sympathy for old George and his long-suffering family. Far from being “the mad king,” George III emerges as a historical personality who must be judged on his own terms.

For additional materials about this episode, visit the website!

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18: Let China Sleep Mar 26, 2017

Show notes

Despite seeming to the West as if it was “sleeping,” China in the 1810s was in fact experiencing the crucial transition of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty from its cultural and political zenith under the Qianlong Emperor to the ruin and chaos that would ramp up in the later 19th century. Ruled at this time by Aisin Gioro Yongyan, also known as the Jiaqing Emperor, China rebuffed not one but two British diplomatic missions and continued its policy of isolation and indifference to the West. But at the same time dangerous and dramatic events were brewing, including a rebellion in 1813 that almost toppled the dynasty, and a nefarious plan by British merchants to introduce addictive drugs into Chinese society. Overshadowed by his illustrious father, Yongyan was unable to arrest the cancers that were just beginning to eat away at the foundations of his country—but the evidence indicates he was fully aware of them. China, in fact, was not “sleeping” at all.

In this episode, historian Sean Munger takes you into one of the most mysterious places on the planet in the 1810s, right into the gilded halls and Alice in Wonderland surrealism of the Forbidden City where the “Lord of 10,000 Years” and a tiny elite ruled over nearly a third of the world’s population. You’ll meet some members of the mysterious “White Lotus Society,” rub shoulders with China’s most notorious embezzler, and learn how a British diplomat’s refusal to get down on his knees may have doomed millions of Chinese to a vicious cycle of drug addiction. You may not know much about the history of China, but after hearing this episode you may well come to understand some of the powerful forces that would eventually transform the world’s most populous nation into what it has become in modern times.

Go to the website for this episode for additional materials, including pictures!

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17: The War of 1812, Part III Mar 19, 2017

Show notes

The year 1814 was one of the bleakest in American history. It opened with the country embroiled in war, with most of its coast blockaded by the British Navy, the economy collapsing, the frontiers aflame with violence, and the government teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. And now that Britain’s war with Napoleon was effectively over, things were bound to get even worse for the United States. American troops scored a few victories in the field, some of them surprising, but the capture and burning of Washington, D.C. by British forces in August vividly demonstrated America’s disadvantages. Yet throughout this dark period the seeds of a more or less honorable peace had already been planted, with negotiations going on in Europe and a growing desire on both sides to simply end the conflict. Of all the participants, the Native Americans paid the steepest price in the War of 1812.

Historian Sean Munger completes this three-part series on America’s most obscure war, although there are still many more stories from this conflict to tell. In this episode you’ll drop in on battles at distant frontier forts and the swamps surrounding New Orleans; you’ll learn what a Baratarian is, how West Point cadets got their funky uniforms and why Presidents don’t make very good field commanders. This is definitely stuff you did not get in history class!

Go to the website page on this episode for additional materials, including pictures!

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16: The War of 1812, Part II Mar 12, 2017

Show notes

Having declared war at a time it was woefully unprepared to face the world’s most powerful country on the battlefield, the United States spent the first phase of the War of 1812—at least on land—lurching from disaster to disaster, with most efforts aimed at the theoretically achievable goal of conquering Canada. Unable at first even to feed or supply its troops competently, and with serious doubts about the objects of the war still lingering in the public mind and the halls of Congress, the administration of James Madison muddled through as best it could, buoyed slightly by a string of surprising naval victories. But in 1813, with a politically and physically weakened Madison reeling from an unexpectedly difficult re-election and a serious illness that almost killed him, two developments, one on the Native American frontier and the other in Europe, forever ended the chances of the U.S. taking Canada and would soon open a new and darker phase of the conflict.

Historian Sean Munger presents the mysterious War of 1812 from both a bird’s-eye and a ground-level view, trying to break through the imagery and mythology that’s grown up around the war to appreciate what it really meant at the time. In this episode you’ll meet a blundering general (William Hull) and an unexpectedly brilliant naval officer (Oliver Hazard Perry), you’ll learn why it was dangerous to drink a glass of water at the White House, and you’ll learn what a “Red Stick” is. Several colorful characters, from the cleverly duplicitous British General Isaac Brock to the gun-toting, Indian-hating, profusely bleeding Andrew Jackson, drift, blunder, sail or shoot our way into our story. This is the second of a three-part series on the war.

Note: in the episode I identify Oliver Hazard Perry as an admiral. He was actually a commodore.

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