The 981 Project Podcast

By: Tamela Rich
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  • Summary

  • Join Tamela Rich for dispatches from all 981 miles of the Ohio River: people, places, history, culture, and more.

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Episodes
  • October '24 Trivia

    October '24 Trivia
    Oct 17 2024
    Last summer, after touring the floodwall murals in Covington, Kentucky, I ate at a pizza joint called The Gruff, situated close to the Roebling Bridge. While the bar filled up with Cincinnati Reds fans, I had my first encounter with bacon-apple pizza at the recommendation of my winsome waitress. As we chatted, I learned she’d just finished high school and was figuring out her next move in life. In time, she asked about my research project, which led me to test a theory about how much Kentuckians remember about their history as a border state. I asked, “Was Kentucky a Union or Confederate state?” I could tell by the way her eyebrows shot up that the question surprised her. “Let me think while I run your credit card,” she said. As I would have done at her age, she got it wrong. Kentucky never seceded from the Union. I just checked the Kentucky Academic Standards and it looks like my waitress would have studied the Civil War in eighth grade, which might explain her leaky memory, but it seems like the kind of thing that would have stuck in the way that you don’t need fingers to remember that 2+2=4. I’m not putting my waitress down or dismissing the quality of her education. In many ways, Kentucky presents itself to the world as a former Confederate state. As an aside, is eighth grade a bit early to study the complexities of the Civil War? Does it do any good to give eighth graders a survey course on something that still divides our country today? I’d love your thoughts.This brings me to the subject of this month’s trivia: Kentucky and the Civil War. The quiz will lean heavily on research and analysis by the scholar Ann E. Marshall in her book, Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State. That’s where I found this 1926 quote from E. Merton Coulter, who observed that Kentuckians “…waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union.” Dr. Marshall reminds us that Kentucky’s white population identified as both Union and Confederate before and after the war, and that African-Americans, who identified with and fought for the Union, were eager to draw upon the Union victory to claim what had been promised to “all men” in the Constitution. That “emancipation narrative” never resonated with the majority of white Kentuckians, no matter their partisan affiliation. In the words of historian Patrick Lewis, Ph.D., “Kentuckians imagined themselves as the last remaining spokespeople with political power for a defeated South.” With that, it’s time for the quiz.Note to my fabulous new subscribers:Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test of intelligence or character. I couldn’t answer these questions without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.QUESTIONSThe first four questions will help ground us in Kentucky’s economics and culture before the Civil War. Then we’ll move to the war years, and finally, the aftermath.* The African slave trade was outlawed by Congress in 1808, consequently raising the price of enslaved workers born into what’s known as the domestic slave trade. With proximity to the Ohio River, Lexington and Louisville became major slave markets. When the cotton gin created a cotton boom in the deep South, the average value of an enslaved worker sold in New Orleans rose from $500-1800 between 1800-1860. At the peak of the cotton boom (1850-60) how many enslaved people did Kentucky sell into the cotton belt?* Over 37,000, making it the fourth highest state in the domestic slave trade.* At least 54,000, making it second only to Virginia.* The Commonwealth of Kentucky taxed enslaved workers as property, eventually assessing owners 22 cents per $100 of value. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, with 250,000 enslaved workers in residence, what percentage of Kentucky’s tax revenue was based in human bondage/trafficking? * 10%* 20%* 35%* During Kentucky’s constitutional convention of 1849-1850, delegates debated the possibility of gradual, compensated emancipation. Proslavery forces in the state quashed all hopes of that. What did they accomplish instead?* Section three in the 1850 constitution bill of rights strengthened owners rights, saying, “The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction; and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave, and its increase, is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.”* They chartered The Kentucky Colonization Society and allocated money to purchase land for freed slaves to settle in Liberia. The colony was called “Kentucky in Africa.” * They repealed Kentucky's Nonimportation Act of 1833 to remove a significant barrier to a profitable domestic slave trade. The goal was increased tax revenue for the state.* In the 1860 national election, Abraham Lincoln took 40 percent of the country’s vote. What percentage of ...
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    39 mins
  • September '24 Trivia!

    September '24 Trivia!
    Sep 27 2024
    Did you know we’re in a bicentennial year? From now until September, 2025, historical sites in the nation’s first 24 states will be commemorating the Marquis de Lafayette’s Farewell Tour. Planned as a three-month tour, Lafayette was celebrated by all as the “Nation’s Guest” for 13 months. Honestly, it amazes me how Lafayette Fever swept the nation in the 1800s, with crowds thronging to catch a glimpse of the French nobleman who aided the American cause against Great Britain. For comparison’s sake, 4000 people greeted The Beatles in NYC but 80,000 turned out for Lafayette there! I’ve come across a few theories to explain this phenomenon, which took place fifty years after the Revolution. One says that Lafayette was the swashbuckling symbol of France’s role in securing independence, and Americans were still deeply grateful. Another holds that Lafayette basked in the American reverence for George Washington as his de facto adopted son. (Lafayette even named his son Georges Louis Gilbert Washington de Motier Marquis de Lafayette). The theory that rings most true for me is that Lafayette’s farewell tour coincided with the vitriolic presidential election of 1824, in which, for the first time, no founding father was running. Perhaps the country was demonstrating a nostalgia and reverence for the past and nervousness about the future, as author Sarah Vowel stated in an interview.If you’re like me, Lafayette’s place in our history is more legendary than factual. The opening paragraph a New Yorker story from 2021 summed up my sketchy understanding:Lafayette, like Betsy Ross and Johnny Appleseed, is so neatly fixed in the American imagination that it is hard to see him as a human being. Betsy sews stars, Johnny plants trees, Lafayette brings French élan to the American Revolution. He is, in the collective imagination, little more than a wooden soldier with a white plume on his cocked hat. In the original production of “Hamilton,” Daveed Diggs portrayed him affectionately, with a comically heavy French accent and an amorous manner—a hero, yes, but of the cartoon kind, a near relation of Pepé le Pew. Allison Epstein wrote a most entertaining sketch of the marquis in her hilarious newsletter, Dirtbags Through the Ages. When Allison can’t criticize someone, take note. I must leave you to dig into Lafayette’s extraordinary international escapades on your own while we focus on his stops along the Ohio River in this month’s trivia. Note to my fabulous new subscribers:Monthly trivia is for sport. It’s not a test. Only the rare person can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t answer them without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.QUESTIONS* When Lafayette visited Old Shawneetown, Illinois, it was simply called Shawneetown. Why do we call it Old Shawneetown today?* Remember Illinois’ salt industry from last month’s trivia? When Congress granted the salines to Illinois, the state ran the operation using the unpaid labor of enslaved workers who lived in what was then-Shawneetown. After the Emancipation Proclamation, these workers fled, making it a ghost town that eventually came to be called Old Shawneetown.* After a 15-foot flood in 1937, only 20 of Shawneetown’s 400 homes were habitable. Most Shawneetown residents moved three miles inland from the Ohio River, and took the name with them. The remaining section of the original settlement was incorporated as Old Shawneetown in 1956. The town operates several historic sites to this day. * As we’ve discussed before, Marietta, Ohio, was named for Queen Marie Antoinette. Did Lafayette personally know her? Choose the BEST answer.* Lafayette’s relationship with the queen was fodder for the French Revolution. The political club known as the Jacobins advocated for the violent overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. There were two factions of Jacobins, and the The Montagnards were the most radical. Their leader, Maximillian Robespierre, published “proof” of a long-running affair between Lafayette and the queen in a series of illustrated pamphlets. * In 1789, revolutionary fever was spreading throughout France. Lafayette was named the commander of the National Guard. On October 5, a hungry Parisian mob descended on the palace of Versailles, demanding bread. As the crowd shouted angrily at the unpopular queen, Lafayette kissed her hand on a balcony. Lafayette's charm may well have saved the king and queen on that day, though they would not, of course, survive the revolution.* Lafayette named his youngest daughter Marie Antoinette Virginie to honor both the French queen and the state of Virginia. He did so at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.* Lafayette’s Farewell Tour included a visit to Marietta on May 8, 1825. Which is true about that visit? More than one may apply.* It was not on his original itinerary.* A...
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    32 mins
  • August '24 Trivia!

    August '24 Trivia!
    Aug 30 2024
    I hope you’ve already read my last newsletter about Illinois’ Little Egypt, because this one builds upon it. We’re going to explore the region’s history with legalized slavery. As a reminder, Illinois and Indiana were once called the Illinois Country when first settled by the French, and it was the French who brought the first enslaved African workers there in 1720. The Illinois Country became part of the Northwest Territory in 1787, which meant it was bound by Article VI of the Northwest Ordinance: There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. But slaveholders in the old Illinois Country (Illinois and Indiana) were exempted from the new law. Grandfathered, if you will.Through the next ten questions, we’ll explore the history of slavery north of the Ohio River in what’s now Illinois and Indiana. Note to my fabulous new subscribers:It’s the rare person who can answer all ten trivia questions without any prep. I couldn’t answer them without a significant amount of research, either! Do your best and enjoy learning something new. Answers in the footnotes.QUESTIONS* The French brought the first enslaved Africans to the Midwest around 1720 to work the mines along the Mississippi. The Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River became part of the Northwest Territory sixty-seven years later. Why didn’t Article VI end the practice of human bondage in the Illinois Country? In other words, on what grounds were the French enslavers granted an exemption from Article VI? More than one may apply. * Slavery was never defined in Article VI. * Article VI didn’t contain an enforcement clause.* Article VI didn’t specify how to unwind slavery in places where it had taken root before the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.* The French enslavers cut a deal with Congress that they would phase out slavery within two generations using a plan modeled after Pennsylvania’s 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.* In 1800, the Indiana Territory (which included Illinois) received its second territorial governor, William Henry Harrison. He had served as secretary of the Northwest Territory and was elected a territorial delegate to Congress, which means he knew that Article VI banned slavery. What action(s) did Harrison take in contradiction of Article VI? More than one may apply.* He brought seven of his enslaved workers with him from Virginia to build his residence and gubernatorial office in Vincennes.* He enslaved Shawnee women to help run his household.* He purchased enslaved workers from French owners who had been in the territory. They built his residence and gubernatorial office in Vincennes.* After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 (which involved land west of the Mississippi River), French slaveholders living in Illinois asked Congress to separate Illinois from the Indiana Territory and attach it to Louisiana, where they would have greater protection for their practice of human bondage. The French did not prevail. That same year, the Indiana Territory invented the loophole for prospective enslavers to bring their human property into the state using a practice known as chattel servitude. Instead of calling their human property “slaves” they called them “indentured workers.” Which of these is true about the “indentured servitude”contracts used in the Indiana Territory? More than one may apply.* Indentured contracts could last for 90 years.* Holders of indenture contracts could sell the service contract, along with the worker, to another holder.* Children of indentured mothers were also considered indentured.* Enslaved workers who didn’t sign an indenture contract would be sold into bondage in slave states. * In 1803, “A Law concerning Servants,” in the Northwest Territory established some minimal requirements of masters toward their servants and formed the basis for regulating all slavery and involuntary servitude in the territory. Territorial Governor Harrison and the other white settlers conveniently assumed that all Black people entering the territory were voluntarily indentured before they arrived. This means they assumed that the states from whence the Black workers came had properly supervised these indenture contracts. Ha. How did Harrison et al justify the institution of slavery when appealing to Congress to override Article VI and allow outright slavery in the Territory? More than one may apply.* Slavery would benefit the territory’s economy by stimulating settlement and increasing land values.* Allowing slavery in the Indiana Territory would keep slaveowners living in the Territory from moving west of the Mississippi River, where slavery was permitted by the French and Spanish. * Spreading the practice of enslaved labor throughout the West would benefit the captives themselves as well as the nation's white population, a belief known as diffusion.* A ...
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    36 mins

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