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Episode 432: Betsy Golden Kellem, Scholar of the Unusual, Closet Historian, Atavist Writer
515 Plays2 months ago
Betsy Golden Kellem (@bgkellem on IG) is a lawyer and historian whose "City on Fire" appears in The Atavist Magazine and chronicles a conspiracy in 1864 by northern Confederate sympathizers to burn Manhattan to the ground.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
Is there anything worth mentioning right at the top of the show? Sayward, what say you? You know, one of the big tasks of the revision process was to figure out, okay, when do we take a breath? Or maybe the the featured guest, ah Betsy Golden Callum. When you say you're a circus historian, people either want to talk to you for the rest of the evening, or they're like, excuse me, there's some cheese over there, I have to go find immediately.
00:00:33
Speaker
Okay, if the say-word tip wasn't evidence enough, you know it's that at this time of the month, so we dig into some spoilers for this month's story. Oh hey, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories, be it narrative journalism, essays, personal essays, memoir, documentary film, podcast, narrative podcast.
Highlighting a Chaotic Confederate Plot
00:00:55
Speaker
We do it all. I'm Brendan O'Mara, prepare to die.
00:00:59
Speaker
I love a good historical narrative, and this month's Adivis brings you City on Fire, about a conspiracy among Northern Confederate sympathizers looking to carry out a plot to burn New York City to the ground in 1864, the night Violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan. It's great stuff. Go to magazine.adivis.com to read it and consider subscribing for just 25 bucks a year. Listen, I don't get kickbacks or commissions, so you know my recommendation is true. Show notes to this episode and more. Or at brendanomera.com. Hey, hey, you'll also see blog posts. Wow, what are those? My internet garden is I like to call my website.
00:01:42
Speaker
You can also subscribe to The Monthly Rage against the Algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, cool links, good vibes. First of the month, no spam, so far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Also, go to your favorite podcast app and smash. That subscribe button costs you nothing. Maybe even have it auto-download so you can take the show on
Cultural Relevance and Challenges in Historical Narratives
00:02:02
Speaker
the go. What a world.
00:02:04
Speaker
Because Atavus pods run a little long, let's just get right into it. So let's hear from lead editor Saeward Darby about her side of the table and why the story from 160 years ago has cultural relevance today. Riff.
00:02:32
Speaker
And with Betsy's piece, when this came across the transom, how did this piece light you up and how did it make you feel when you got the pitch and then started working on the on the story itself? Yeah, I mean, look, out of this is one of the last places that runs these kinds of historical stories, I think, um where, you know, it's something really strictly a narrative story that's really strictly in the past, in this case, over 150 years ago. Well, two two things were striking to me when she sent this pitch over.
00:02:59
Speaker
One was that she was so obviously excited about the material and writing historical narratives isn't art and not everybody is well suited for it. you know You're not talking to people, you're dealing entirely with text. In some cases, you know very like archaic language. She clearly had a sense of like how to make that lively, which is really, really crucial when we're assigning a historical story because otherwise it can feel like a textbook, you know. And then the other piece of it was just the resonance with today. But my very first thought was, oh, we have to run this close to the election because there was so much in it that reminded me of January 6.
Crafting Engaging Historical Stories
00:03:39
Speaker
There was so much in it that just reminded me about, you know, the device, the divisive like quality of our, of our politics today and how quickly people are content to look away from those things rather than really grappling with them. And then, I mean, I will also say that just as a longtime resident of New York, um, I've lived here now for 11 years, I guess I am also a sucker for like history. I don't know about in, in the city. And this was something I didn't know at all. I'd never heard of this.
00:04:09
Speaker
I told Betsy, actually, I have this vague memory from when I was a kid of a young adult novel I read about the the draft riots in New York. I cannot for the life of me. I can't find it. I don't know what it's called. But I remember reading it when I was a kid and really liking it. And so her pitch kind of reminded me of that. And I was like, but this is a whole chapter of that era that I don't know anything about. And so that was just exciting to me.
00:04:38
Speaker
ah A moment ago you brought up the the challenge of historical narratives is making it lively. So writers who are trafficking in this kind of nonfiction, what is key to making a story like this come to life, make it lively?
00:04:52
Speaker
I mean, first of all, it's going to sound so basic, but really just drawing from like every source you can possibly find um because, you know, and not just the general history of something, but, you know, can you get access to memoirs? Can you get access to diaries? Can you get access to, I mean, newspapers can be a great resource. And and certainly in this case, you know, going back and reading the Times and the Herald and whatnot from the 1860s, I think was really fruitful.
00:05:19
Speaker
And I think sometimes if you read a couple of different accounts of the same thing, I mean, first of all, you can notice you know discrepancies and where there's some you know issues you might need to deal with factually. But I think that also helps you like enrich your own understanding and settle on the most colorful way to describe something.
00:05:38
Speaker
If you go back to episode 251 with Glenn Stout and where he talks about the Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, he talks a lot about that of of taking the sources from different newspapers because one might just say the getaway car and the next one might say the getaway car was you know this color or this model and there you go and now you're starting to layer some stuff. Speaking from experience with the Prefontaine book,
00:06:02
Speaker
ah at the end of one race in a post-race interview, you know he just you know he's just merely talking, but then another one noted that his lips curled into a smile, and I was able to kind of say his lips curled you know kind of like the Grinch. And so just those little details that you get from triangulating from dozens of different sources of covering the same exact event is how you start to really get a rich tapestry or a really in-depth painting instead of something that feels flat? ah Because I guess what I'm trying to say is like, you know, one source might not have every detail. One one source might have one detail that actually, you know, kind of makes something feel grander than than it otherwise might. So, you know, really just immersing yourself in
00:06:54
Speaker
available documentation. But then I also think, you know, it's just it really is a line by line writing style where rather than saying here is what happened, can you put that in the point of view of a character? Can you, um you know, paint a scene? um And I think, you know, especially at the beginning, like that opening section that that Betsy draws, you know, showing the way that the city starts to panic because these fires are happening and then it ends with this, like,
00:07:28
Speaker
confrontation amongst the Booth brothers, which I was like, not at all expecting, like John Wilkes Booth to play like a bit part in this story. It just feels, it's like, you're telling me something that happened a long time ago, but you're making this place come alive. You're making these people come alive.
Balancing Levity and Seriousness in History
00:07:45
Speaker
And it's really in the quality of showing, not telling, I think. And and I think the other thing is,
00:07:51
Speaker
and This isn't always the case, obviously. But I think Betsy especially, and I've worked with other writers who who are good at this too, I think there's a tendency among some people when they're writing about history to kind of go strictly serious, right? Like, let me tell you the facts of history.
00:08:09
Speaker
And there's a levity that Betsy and some other historical writers I've worked with bring to their writing that I think really helps the narrative. And i don't I don't necessarily mean levity in the sense of like humor, although there is certainly some humor in this story, but just a sense of like being light on one's feet almost. You know, I'm like, let's be nimble in this story because it's so easy to get bogged down in fact facts, facts, facts. And, you know, just really keeping that sense of energy at the forefront of your writing is maybe with historical stories more important than anything else. And and I really think, too, focusing on characters. I mean, that's always the case for out-of-a-stories, whether historical or not. But if you can really anchor a historical piece through sort of the lens, perspectives, stories of real people, that that so hugely helps a story feel alive.
00:09:02
Speaker
And I always love getting a sense of what are the challenges on your side of the table be it structurally notes you're providing the writer Betsy in this case of of putting the puzzle together. So what did this piece introduce to you in terms of those sort of edit editor challenges.
00:09:20
Speaker
Oh gosh, I'm going to have to go back and remember exactly. I will say that this was one of the smoothest editing processes I've ever had at Theatomist, which was awesome. I mean, Betsy was a great writer, but also it was one of these things where the piece came in. I saw what I wanted to do with it. I sent her notes, a memo basically, and she just executed really well on those directions.
00:09:42
Speaker
And I think initially, it didn't originally open with this kind of cascade of fire bells across the
Perfecting Story Openings and Narrative Flow
00:09:51
Speaker
city. It originally opened with the Booth Brothers, and this ah they were they were doing like a ah sort of, not charity event, but a I don't know, some sort of special theatrical one-night-only event. And the the booths were performing Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theater. I will also side note another reason I think I was probably attracted to this story. um I'm a theater nerd. um I saw my very first Broadway show at the Winter Garden, which was, of course, Cats. I was five. And I think there was also some piece of me that was like, they came for the theaters. And I was very sort of captivated by that. But anyway.
00:10:28
Speaker
um so ah So yeah, it opens with the booths and they realize this fire is happening. They calm the audience. Anyway, point being, the whole first section kind of...
00:10:40
Speaker
felt like I expected the booths to then play a bigger part in the story, if that makes sense. And they really don't. It's more sort of this like, not ironic exactly, but crazy that this thing happened and John Wilkes Booth was present for it. He was not involved with it, but he was present for it. Just a few months shy of him killing Abraham Lincoln. So it's an interesting piece of the puzzle, but the way that they were forefronted initially made me, and i speaking from like a reader's standpoint. like I knew where the story was going as an editor, but as a reader, I would worry. like But wait, I thought this story somehow had to do with the Booth brothers and it really doesn't. It has to do with this wider conspiracy of which they're not even a part. So we talked about kind of
00:11:24
Speaker
incorporating the booths into the first section, but not making them the forefront, um and rather kind of showing the panic that started to spread across the city, um the unanswered questions, and sort of this almost like kind of um air of chaos um that we wanted to let kind of rain in the first section.
00:11:45
Speaker
And then you know with historical pieces, one of the challenges is always context. you know How much do you provide? How much do you really need? And I wanted to make sure that the second section did a lot of that legwork without getting too bogged down. And so we ended up condensing um a lot of information about sort of what New York was like at the time. um And Betsy does a nice job of showing how for the uninitiated, for people who don't know a ton about New York history, one might think that, you know, this was a place where union sympathy was uniform. And that was not the case um at all. There was actually like a very huge community sympathetic to the Confederate cause. And so using that section to kind of give you the the building block you need to understand, okay, like here's where we are. Here's what's going on.
00:12:36
Speaker
And then that section builds up to introducing the conspirators. And again, which does not involve the booths, but essentially, I guess another way of saying this is kind of like open with the chaos, make the reader feel like this is what it was like to be in the city that night, explain the wider context, and then start to clarify, right? Start to kind of hone in on what actually happened, what led to this, who was responsible for it. um And so then we get this really awesome like view of the conspiracy through the lens of the the people who actually committed it. And so we work back up to the to the fires that you've already seen a little bit of at the beginning. um And then the third act of everything is the manhunt to find them. ah So this is a a long way of saying, you know I think
00:13:24
Speaker
It was figuring out how to open to feel like we were framing the story in the right way and not give giving readers the wrong impression that this is you know a story about John Wilkes Booth you've never heard. like That's not what the story is. And then on top of that, um there were not a lot of like sections. It was a, it was a pretty like just straight, straight story. Um, and so we talked a lot or not talked a lot, but you know, one of the big tasks of the revision process was to figure out, okay, when do we take a breath? When narratively do we take a breath? When do we need to take a breath? Cause we need some context, you know, and figuring out when, when, and how to break up sections was
00:14:02
Speaker
I shouldn't say it was not a difficult task at all. like It was pretty clear to me where to do that. But that was definitely part of the revision process, um was figuring all of that out. And then I think we talked a bit too just about you know the conspirators are There are several conspirators. There's really only one who comes to the fore. i And it's because, well, I don't want to give
Maintaining Clarity with Central Figures
00:14:26
Speaker
give things away. But there's a reason he's the the main one that comes to the fore. And we talked, too, about making sure that once he'd been introduced, which happened, again, kind of the end of like the second sort of establishing context connect ah section, um that we never lost him for too long. Um, because if I remember correctly in the original draft, it was like, wait, where did Robert Kennedy go? Like, I thought he was important and we kind of lost him for awhile. And so making sure that once we had introduced him and his arc became really central to the story, um, that we were touching it periodically, you know? So yeah, those are the things that I remember being sort of crucial from a revision standpoint.
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's when you have your central figures mapped out, it's like you you got to keep them like first on the call sheet, second on the call sheet, you know, in making sure that we're never straying too far from them once they are established.
00:15:20
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think you there's a world in which we could have opened the story with the conspirators. But I actually think like there's an atmosphere that the story needs to establish first, if that makes sense. um And so kind of leaving the reader wondering you know who who did this like why and you know how um whereas if you had kind of introduced the conspirators right away you you already know that answer so kind of leaving that a little bit of a mystery um but not for too long because then the conspirators story of how they planned it
00:15:55
Speaker
um you know who they were in league with who was looking the other way um from positions of power so that they could you know do what they were doing um you know becomes really really crucial so then they become very much first on the call sheet yeah i love what what the opening vignette establishes is as you've alluded to is that there are these pockets of confederate sympathies and what you think our union strongholds and it really echoes today where you know what they talk about like
Historical Narratives and Modern Parallels
00:16:22
Speaker
the the silent majority and they're just kind of like lurking and you like and they're just waiting for their chance to really yeah spring from the shadows and you you get a real sense of that from something that's 150 years old that feels very prescient in today. It really does. And you know i i'm not a I'm not terribly optimistic of the state or future of America. But but I do think like you know what this points to is things are not divided cleanly along geographical lines. you know No place is, even if it is a you know relative bastion of democracy, freedom, whatever, that does not mean that it is not vulnerable to you know anti-democratic anti anti-government forces.
00:17:05
Speaker
And I think, too, there's a quality to which, I don't know, you can you can read this story and think, well, ultimately, they were not as organized, like if they had been more organized. And I think people think of that a bit about January 6, too. And it's like, but hold on, hold on. They were organized, like maybe did not go precisely according to plan. But this was way more. This was not some spontaneous act.
00:17:31
Speaker
This was planned, considered, um you know the roots of it ideologically run deep, and people in positions of power and also members of the public like look away at their own risk from the possibility that people might actually act on these ideas.
00:17:46
Speaker
And i mean that's certainly what we saw with January 6. I fear it might be, but you know depending on what happens with the election, you know what what we could see again. um So yeah, it definitely felt prescient. I was trying to describe it to someone. I was like, this is somehow both like a very serious piece, and it's also kind of rollicking.
00:18:04
Speaker
You know? yeah and And it's a really, like, nicely calibrated story, and that's all credit to Betsy. um That it's not not glib about what happened, but it also, like, recognizes, like, what a good just straight yarn it is. And it's it's about spies and spy craft and, you know, conspiracy. And it's, you know, these things are sort of, like, fun to a certain extent.
Betsy Golden Kellum: Historian's Journey
00:18:29
Speaker
um But she balances that really nicely with uh you know the seriousness of it the resonance of it yeah i just think it's a great story oh it definitely is well it'll say it always always a pleasure getting your side of the table and we'll kick it over to betsy now for the remainder of this podcast so just thanks for the time and thanks for your insights of course always
00:18:57
Speaker
Okay, so Betsy Golden Kellum, she is a scholar of the unusual by night and intellectual property attorney by day. She blogs at her website drinkswithdeadpeople.com. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's how she cultivated her voice, which is something we riff on in this conversation. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, the Atlantic, Smithsonian, and many others. Like, ah i I don't know, the activist.
00:19:25
Speaker
She's super into the circus, which is kind of sort of how she landed on this story. Isn't that cool? So let's hear how she became a scholar of the unusual. Sure. I um am actually a media and advertising attorney by day. And my secret superhero identity is that I am a historian and I just love it. I love working on many of the same things I do in my professional life simply from a different angle where I'm looking at mass media and how and why it has such a thrall over us and particularly issues of truth and belief and joy and entertainment and I just I love digging into that. As to the scholar of the unusual bit, um I spend a lot of my history life focusing as I said on entertainment um and especially the circus.
00:20:17
Speaker
um which that's a fun one to drag out at cocktail parties when you say you're a circus historian. People either want to talk to you for the rest of the evening or they're like, excuse me, there's some cheese over there I have to go find immediately. oh um But so I live in Southern Connecticut, as did PT Barnum. When I got back into researching and writing history, maybe 10 or so years ago at this point, really seriously, um I dug into Barnum.
00:20:47
Speaker
um He became fascinating to me and I'm lucky that here in Southern Connecticut we have the Barnum Museum which is his last and only surviving building and I got involved with them and I started researching these stories of Barnum and circus of history more. And ah that's kind of how I got into really digging into particularly 19th century America um which I think is fascinating because it was a time where for the first time you had mass media and mass culture.
00:21:17
Speaker
And people were not only experiencing new entertainments, but finding ways to experience them together. That's kind of how I got into this era and this type of historical story. Given given that your you know your your day job as ah as an attorney, how did you just get into ah writing about history and writing historical narratives?
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, so at the time I picked up
Creativity, Parenting, and Writing
00:21:41
Speaker
history. Now my my degree, my undergrad degree is in history. I've loved history since I was a teeny tiny person. I've also loved circus since I was a teeny tiny person. I taught myself to juggle one Thanksgiving when I was a kid, just because I was bored. um So it was probably destiny that these themes would kind of come back and punch me in the face. But I was in my early to mid 30s, and I had a newborn baby.
00:22:05
Speaker
and was staying home from work for a couple of years. Unexpectedly, there were some corporate transactions going on and I hadn't expected to be a stay-at-home parent, but I was. And experiencing that, i I kind of went, you know what, I'd really like something to engage my brain. And so I got into history research and blogging, um which I thought was a great way to reacquaint myself with this passion of mine and to develop my writing voice.
00:22:29
Speaker
And I've also been wonderfully lucky, a shameless point here, I have joined a writing group with Penparentis, which is a wonderful nonprofit that supports parent writers specifically, because it's a unique set of circumstances and pressures and perspectives. But it's, I think, important to let parents know that they can still be creative people. And that has been very important for me, even after I've gone back to work.
00:22:56
Speaker
Right. Yeah. A lot of people will shelve that part of them and, you know, and let the let the parenting, you know, rightfully so. And in some cases, it kind of it kind of takes over their life. And then they and don't they lose the muscle at atrophies and then they have a hard time reclaiming it. Yeah. I mean, and also there's kind of this cultural myth of, you know, the undistracted artist where you have to have the perfect circumstances and and everything else to write and create. And it's nice to have a practice that that urges otherwise. and Is that how you conjured the drinks with dead people? that part of your blog Yeah, absolutely. yeah and i mean It was also a structure that helped me stay accountable.
00:23:42
Speaker
where I was trying to do a post every month and I would have to do some research. And as I you know it it i had enough latitude where I could go on research trips, or if I was already going somewhere, you know as it an early stage parent, my daughter came along with me on some really interesting field trips.
Passion for Archival Research
00:24:00
Speaker
I took her once to the Army Medical Museum in Silver Spring, Maryland, because I was working on an article um not for my blog and for publication, about Daniel Sickles, who was a Civil War era general and ended up being very important in the development of temporary insanity law. And one of the many loopy stories about him was that um he lost his leg at the Battle of Gettysburg and decided that he wanted it saved. So he boxed it up in a neat wooden box and sent it to the Army Medical Museum and would visit it every year.
00:24:40
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. and yeah just ah Kind of a stunned silence is the only possible response to that, but they still have his leg. And it's a nice little museum. You can go. They have all kinds of, you know, medical and historical curiosities. They have um the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln, but they have Daniel Sickles leg. um which is obviously bones now in a case. And I brought my probably three year old daughter for the remainder of the trip told everybody that we went to see Daniel Sickles shot leg. But I do love, you know, as a parent and as a writer, I like the idea of engaging with history in that more kind of realistic hands on direct way.
00:25:22
Speaker
Well, I think history and going into the archives, too, especially for someone who might be really pressed for time, ah parent to a young toddler, history is kind of it's there waiting for you to to mine it. You know, it's not necessarily topical. You're not making an appointment with the source in your crunch for time and interviews and cold calls and this, that and the other. It's like the stuff is there for you when you're ready for it.
00:25:48
Speaker
Absolutely. um Absolutely. that and That said, as my professional life and parenting life have both grown and changed over more than 10 years, you know I've been able to find time to go into archives. and That is one of my one of my greatest joys, um is going into an archive and engaging with primary sources. It's still exciting to me and sometimes a little bit surprising that you sit down and somebody hands you a folder and you go, you're going to let me me touch this? Really?
00:26:16
Speaker
But it is, it's such a sense of connection with a time period or with sources. And for me, focusing a lot on entertainment in the 19th century, it's such an interesting process of interrogating your sources because you can't always take them at face value right away.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, and what's wild about getting your hands on, especially letters and stuff like that, like that really elevates historical research, biography, whatever it is, it's but when you've got something right in front of you that is literally from the hand of someone who has most likely passed, and it's their voice, it's their thoughts, it's their penmanship, it's them scratching out something, and you know, because they ah they wrote a typo, and they got it right over, it's just so, so vibrant.
00:27:03
Speaker
of these documents that are and decades or sometimes centuries old. Yeah, absolutely. And and as you said, it's that personal connection. um And, you know, I like to it sounds hokey, but I like to think of history in many ways as kind of an instruction manual for life on Earth, because none of us have done this before. But when you read you know a book, a diary, a letter,
00:27:28
Speaker
a promotional packet, whatever it is, you're connecting with the voice of somebody who did this before. And maybe there's a common feeling or a common circumstance or something that you can connect with that makes you realize that people maybe aren't all that different.
Developing a Distinct Writing Voice
00:27:43
Speaker
And a moment ago, you talked about blogging as kind of a means to find your voice as or as a writer. And that's something that's always really affirmative to talk about on on the podcast, because it's such a nebulous thing of finding the voice, something that makes you distinct on the page. So just for you, how have you thought about voice, and how did you cultivate yours over the years? Yeah, and great question. I mean, and it's also the kind of question, I think, to some degree, you can only answer in retrospect. yeah um But some of it was just acknowledging that writing is one of those arts that, you know, there are, there are things you can get better at in secret and then debut, but like writing, you just have to do it. You just have to do it over and over and over again. And may not realize that your, your voice or your skill is moving forward, but it is. um For me personally, I kind of, I wanted to approach history
00:28:39
Speaker
with a lightness. you know i I admire authors like Sarah Vowell who managed to do really sophisticated history, really thoughtful history, but don't sacrifice their sense of humor. So that's something that I've always focused on. And that's hard because if you want to be a little bit funny or a little bit amusing, that's great, but I don't want to treat the subject matter in so flip away that people dismiss it. So that's kind of something I've always worked on.
00:29:09
Speaker
you know, I don't think but my voice is such a you know, I love Alexandra Petrie or Sarah Val. Like I said, I don't know that I will ever be like one of them where the humor is just so beautifully braided through there. But that's one consideration. The other is a way to talk about history. um i've I've with my voice thought about trying to talk about history in a way where it doesn't seem inaccessible. um Where it's not hiding behind jargon, where if there are commonalities,
00:29:39
Speaker
um in an event or a trend or um a person that those can really be seen for what they are. And that is a challenge, you know, because so much of what's popular in publishing, I think, not just right now, but I would say, at least the past decade, you've got kind of the really narrative driven, like Eric Larson style history books where people want to learn something about history, but they want to read it as though it were a novel. And I think that's a really interesting needle to thread. And yeah you really have to think about being responsible to the primary sources and not embellishing.
00:30:17
Speaker
Right. Yeah. David Gran is a master of that. you know Yes. Yeah. he And a any he when I've spoken with him, you know it what's so incredible about what he's capable of is he, and he always reminds himself, he's like, yeah those guys in that moment on that island or on the boat, they didn't know how it was going to end. So he's constantly making sure that we are with them in that moment, not knowing knowing that they don't know the outcome. As a result, the suspense is is baked into it. is ah it's It's so simple on its surface, but it's very hard to execute. No, that's great. Yeah, but I do feel a sense of responsibility there where, you know, you don't want to be editorializing on something yeah or or kind of just relying too much on your own inference when this historical record may or may not be complete on any given aspect.
00:31:08
Speaker
No, that can be frustrating. Like one of my my major book project right now is about circus women in the 19th century. And when you're talking about women or, you know, people of color or other marginalized communities in history, sometimes those primary sources just aren't there. You know, it's tempting to take a shred of information and try and build as much as you can on it, but that's not the best route to take.
00:31:32
Speaker
And sometimes, sometimes in that in that way, nonfiction writing means describing and acknowledging the limitations of that record.
Discovering the Confederate Arsonists Story
00:31:39
Speaker
So with your activist story, yeah how did you arrive at it and discover it? It was through my circus work. It was P.T. Barnum. I was doing some work on 19th century entertainment and In the middle 19th century, as anybody who's watched and sung along to The Greatest Showman knows, he had a museum in New York City. Barnum's American Museum opened in the early 1840s and for, you know, until the 1860s, this was where you went if you were in New York City and you wanted to have a day off and go do something fun. It was a combination, you know, natural history museum, fine art gallery,
00:32:20
Speaker
there was a 3,000-seat theater. um He had a whale in the basement with water pumped in from the East River. um There was a rooftop deck where you could go sit and have a lemonade. I mean, it was kind of everything under one roof. And like, if you gave me a time machine right now and asked me where I wanted to go, I think that would be it. But anyway, so I was digging into the American Museum and all these many performers. And I came across this account that said in the fall of 1864, someone had tried to set the museum on fire, and that it had been firebombed as part of a larger plot
00:32:56
Speaker
um among Confederate arsonists to burn New York City. And that obviously caught my attention. So I always like talking about the the pitch and at the query letter that you draw up also, so they, you know, sent into the adivus that you figure was a good fit for the story. So what was the the nature of the pitch? How did that look? and And, you know, how were you able to land it with them?
00:33:21
Speaker
Well, and obviously I spent a fair amount of time. I had kind of been coming back to this idea of the arson plot off and on for a few years. It was one of those things that I put a flag in and went, God, I want to dig into this. yeah And every so often I'd have some time and kind of do a little research and take some notes, find some more sources. um And it just hit a kind of critical mass with the materials I had. And then in combination with the the topic just seemed to seem more and more politically relevant.
00:33:49
Speaker
as time went on to everything that's going on in our modern political discourse. So I reached out to Atavist and summarized this genuinely terrifying arson plan undertaken by Confederate spies, essentially, and pitched it to Atavist, both as an an impressive story and on its own But as a parallel, a signal that these, you know, a lot of people look at what's going on in our current very partisan political moment and think that this is new. And it was a way for me to go back into history and go, it's not. It's it's just not. And there are there are long threads and currents um that talk about partisanship, political violence, racism,
00:34:34
Speaker
public-experienced domestic terrorism. All of these things are evident in this story, and they're still worth talking about. You elect to start the story with this anecdote ah that that features John Wilkes Booth, and it's about these discontents that are hiding you know kind of ah you know in the in the North that there were Confederate sympathizers. and you you know you you Booth doesn't factor into the rest of the story, but he does symbolize something. so yeah it was a oh yeah so let' take Take us to the decision to start start with Booth in this regard. Yeah, and again, that was some of that was my own my own leanings as a historian, where as I said, I loved looking at entertainment and popular culture, um in part because it's easy to
00:35:20
Speaker
dismissed that as frivolous. But I think if you want to know what's going on in a society um where people are choosing to spend their pocket money in their free time is actually very incisive. And as I was looking at this arson plot and how it unfolded, you know, it was in the hotel and theater district. So there were because there were people there. And there was this great performance with the Bruth brothers going on, which itself was fascinating. um And, you know, I remember When I was in junior high school, I went on a school field trip to a local theater and there was a play about the Booth family. And it was the first time that I learned certainly that there were other notable members of the family besides John Wilkes and you know his brothers, his father were notable Shakespearean actors. so
00:36:07
Speaker
at the beginning of the story, I thought this was such an interesting way to kind of offer a little window into the evening, to the chaos that happened, to the politics, because everyone was just so excited that they were going to get to go see this, you know, celebrity Broadway play, basically, to fund a statue um of William Shakespeare to be placed in Central Park. But then you get the added value from our modern perspective is we know what happened with John Wilkes Booth. So there's this little kind of sinister detail lurking in that introductory narrative.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah, and then following that, you know, you you have this, ah not digression, but like context in a sense that it's like, but were you right, it's easy to think of Civil War politics dividing neatly along the Mason-Dixon line and to assume that New York City, Jewel of the North, was a Union stronghold, immune even to the suggestion of Confederate education.
Civil War Politics and Intrigues
00:36:58
Speaker
This was not the case.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I love and that that to me was just like, oh, wow, this is a story from one hundred fifty so plus years ago and it feels very current. Yes. ah Yeah. And that, you know, I think that was an important thing for me to to dig into. And I learned a lot in in researching this story and going into the archives about just how complicated northern politics were, because, you know, as I wrote there and as you said,
00:37:29
Speaker
yeah There's a kind of a history textbook temptation to say there was the Civil War and there was the North and there was the South. and But it was really complicated. And there were a lot of people who were very upset with union policy for many different reasons. Some people, there was a ah whole thread of what were called peace Democrats at the time, where the idea was, can we just make peace with the South, let them have slavery? where The war is personally and socially and economically bad, let's just give them what they want because we're we're over being at war. You know, it was really kind of an appeasement sort of movement. And then there were people that were more engaged with the racial politics. And in New York City especially, there were issues of how working class and immigrant Americans were engaging with each other and where their political sympathies were going. um So it was a very complicated political scene, which is something that
00:38:26
Speaker
you know over my historical life was really interesting to learn. And as you're gathering your information, how does the the structure of this story start to reveal itself to you? um It changed a lot during the process of writing. And I think I'm sure you and any of the other writers you've talked to probably feel the same way. There's what you think the story is going to be, and then there's what it becomes. um And especially in ah in a historical narrative,
00:38:53
Speaker
there's the process of research and finding sources that might change a detail of how you wanna approach something or what you wanna make prominent. It was, for me, i I started by kind of digging into the basics and the timeline of this plot and the fire in that evening in November, 1864.
Exploring Confederate Motives and Plans
00:39:13
Speaker
And from there, I kind of moved outward to ask, okay, who are these people? um The arsonists, where did they come from? What were the motivations?
00:39:22
Speaker
both personally and on the behalf of what was essentially a Confederate secret service that was semi-lurking in Canada. And then there was the question of the aftermath and tracing how law enforcement wanted to go after these people or how it was handled in the media. What did everyday New Yorkers think? And I knew, again,
00:39:44
Speaker
having come to this through Barnum and circus and dye museums. and Barnum's was a kind semi-casual target of the arson plot. One of the conspirators basically got drunk on the evening that they were setting their fires and thought it would be fun to smash a vial of the flammable compound they were using on the stairway. It was very quickly put out. But Barnum's museum actually burned to the ground the next year. And when it did, there were a lot of rumors in the press that Confederate sympathizers had burned the museum down. And that's, you know, there's there's reportage right now that's certainly not right now, at the time that said it was, you know, it was a boiling room issue. But those rumors were going around. So this was very much kind of a culture, a topic, a feeling that was like bubbling below the surface at all times in New York for these couple years.
00:40:35
Speaker
And maybe you can take us to some of the the central figures of the story and why they felt that this this plot to basically firebomb every ah several sites in in New York City of all cities was a forefront of their mind. Well, like I said, there were there were kind of different. Northern reasons for people having Confederate sympathies and a lot of Confederate um officers and um soldiers and es escapees as we'll find one of the main characters in the story was settled in Canada because Canada was officially neutral during the Civil War and set up basically a a little kind of secret spy service. And the idea was that there would be different military and espionage efforts to try and leverage or destabilize northern communities and infrastructure. And
00:41:35
Speaker
basically turn the Civil War into a multi-front war um to even go so far as to try and establish a northern wing of the Confederacy among ah sympathizers. um The St. Albans raid in Vermont was was kind of one of the textbook examples that people are taught where there was a raid across the Canadian border into Vermont to try and um rob a bank to get additional funds essentially.
00:42:02
Speaker
So in this case with the arson plot, the thought was um and in concert New York efforts were originally going to be made alongside efforts in Boston and Chicago as well. And the idea is that small groups of Confederate operatives would go into major cities, create discord, seize federal buildings and infrastructure. And at that point, all of these supposed sympathizers and copperheads, as I talked about in the article, was one of the major kind of terms for anti-Lincoln elements in the North, that these people would then rise up and support them and that there would be an opportunity to really create Northern territories in sympathy with the Confederacy. And what was the significance of the attacks happening not only ah shortly after Lincoln is reelected and it being, I guess, the first anniversary of what we now know is American Thanksgiving?
00:43:02
Speaker
Yeah. i mean so And that's where it's there's a little bit of cool a little bit of them operating on the fly. Originally, the plan, as I said, in these multiple cities was to send groups and to specifically cause discord around the election. um The idea being that that was that was kind of a ah booster at a time when lots of people would be out and would be ready to vote, and that if they could even destabilize the election itself, you you know all the better, um but that on election day, these major cities would see different kind of arson slash takeover plots.
00:43:42
Speaker
The union government, through various tips, kind of found out about a lot of this ahead of time. Operatives in Chicago and the were were captured and the Boston plot never came together. And in fact, the New Yorkers, so what the what the New York crew had done is they'd come to the city early enough to get the lay of the land.
00:44:02
Speaker
And there's some really great primary source materials where they talk about the fact where, you know, they had downtime and they were in New York City and this was great. So they walked around and went to shows and kind of generally had a good time in the city, ah which is kind of interesting when you think about this again as a bunch of very politically active young white men.
00:44:21
Speaker
um who are very dedicated to their cause, but at the same time, they're young men in a big city and they want to have a little fun and blow off some steam. But they got the halt order from their supervisors, essentially. um But they were very eager to carry out the plot nonetheless, particularly after military, um Union military forces came to New York to secure the election to ensure that everything was safe and that there was no voter intimidation um or no, no violence. They were still eager to carry out the plot. And some of that was ideology. And some of that was a real sense of wanting to retaliate against the North because of, you know, Sherman and other generals causing such damage in the South, particularly in Georgia.
00:45:08
Speaker
And the idea was, you know what, we need to correspondingly cause some destruction in the North so Northerners know what's going on. um And so at that point, there was a ah little bit of a ah switch in this little cell of Confederate operatives where their their so their superiors were telling them call it, we're done here, and they just wanted to they wanted to carry out the plot. So they decided, you know what, let's just go for it. ah The fact that it kind of lined up with the new Thanksgiving holiday was a little bit of a coincidence. And to carry out the plot, they had what was Greek fire. So what was Greek fire?
00:45:48
Speaker
This was fascinating. and And it's always interesting going through like but going back to kind of more of a craft aspect of working on this piece. It's always interesting for me going through an editorial process. And I have rarely encountered one that doesn't make my work better. And the folks at Atavist were fabulous. um But talking with their staff and with the fact check, we spent so much time talking about the Greek fire.
00:46:11
Speaker
And that fascinates me because we were that's an example where the historical record only gives you so much to work with. So they basically rented hotel rooms, checked in a little bit early so that they knew they you know they had their keys, um set it set up a you know bag so it looked like somebody was worth living, um staying in the room for a bit. And on the night where they were to set the fires, they came back and piled all of the bedding and furniture on the bed um and broke these vials of Greek fire.
00:46:41
Speaker
um to start the fires. And at the time in the 19th century Greek fire was this kind of umbrella term for almost any kind of extremely flammable compound. The most common that you see is some kind of phosphorus and there were sources um There's a 19th century article in Scientific American in the early 1860s where they talked about both sides, the Union and the Confederacy, doing experimental research with liquid incendiaries where um you know they would liquid or solid, they'd put it in shells um or
00:47:21
Speaker
to conduct tests um to see how long and how quickly they could get fires to burn. so But yeah, there was a lot of back and forth in the editorial process on what we understood about the compound they were using because Greek fire itself didn't provide the chemical precision that we would love to know. you know Certain phosphorus compounds burn at certain temperatures. So there was a lot of back and forth where we were trying to kind of see what we could tease out to know what exactly they were using.
00:47:50
Speaker
ah We know that it was a liquid, looked like water, it was in tiny glass vials and that basically they kind of, they knew a guy um who had this stuff made in a basement and handed it over in a leather bag.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah. And what the arsonists were ah didn't grasp was that you needed adequate ventilation to ah to really kick up the the flames and they did not open the window. So New York was spared the this little detail of i call it ineptness or ignorance. But because they didn't open the windows, ah New York was probably spared massive destruction.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. um And that was, you know, during the evening when they were hoping to create this massive, um you know, discord in Lower Manhattan, they kind of noticed like, there was a pattern from one hotel to the the other where somebody would realize, you know hey, it looks like there's smoke coming out from that door down the hall, or somebody would call a a desk clerk. They'd go up to the room, open the door, kind of go, Holy cow, the room's on fire.
00:48:59
Speaker
So it was damaging and it was a lot of panic, but not on the level that obviously the arsonists had expected and everything was put out rather quickly. And in some cases, things just kind of simmered at a low level. So it was not the kind of massive spontaneous ignition that they were hoping for.
Organizing Research Materials
00:49:21
Speaker
And when you're doing historical narratives of this nature, you you know, you're dealing with a lot of documents and newspaper articles, et cetera. ah So how do you ah yeah how do you organize your materials? um Great question. um Some of it and like and I have semi recently, um more so than I probably should have done this a long time ago. um There are different citation management programs you can use. So there's a little bit of that.
00:49:47
Speaker
um Some of it's just old school file management where I keep my PDFs according to kind of date and subject matter. um And I use Evernote a lot for um notes and references, which is great because not only is it accessible from anywhere, I know I can search it, um which tends to be very helpful. I did a lot of research for this piece at the National Archives in Washington, which was tons of fun. um They have really, really robust um military collections that include courtroom records, which is what I was looking for here. There were trials of Robert Cobb Kennedy, who was the one arsonist who was captured and really took the fall for the whole group. um And then there was a man whose last name was Beale, where there are some relevant records there. um But there was this kind of just huge fat file where I sat and read through um for a couple days. And it was great because it had
00:50:45
Speaker
all kinds of contemporary letters. um It had court transcripts, which that was the reading the transcripts was a wonderful research detail that gave me a sense of the trial that you might not think of or otherwise get where the stenographers who were taking notes would change at different points. And so you can kind of see where either there was a break in the proceedings or You know, somebody's shift was over and the handwriting would change. And just thinking about the idea of somebody sitting in a courtroom trying to hand write keeping up with everything that's going on. And that was just such an everyday but intimate detail of somebody's participation in this. Also, it means that some of them were very hard to read.
00:51:31
Speaker
And you know you've got you know your materials you know ready with you, accessible and in whatever manner that jives with you. And what do you like to have in place as you're, say you're sitting down on a Sunday morning, Saturday morning, or whatever free morning or free evening ah to sit down to write? What what is ah the atmosphere you'd like to have around you so you can maximize it as best as possible?
00:51:57
Speaker
Sometimes that depends where I am in the process. um and it's much and When I'm in my research phase, I'm much better at stealing little bits of time to get ahead on something because that's when I can go, you know what do I have 20 or 30 minutes? I can search and download some newspaper articles and file those, or I can take some notes. and um you know that doesn't If I have a short amount of time or if there are other distractions going on,
00:52:25
Speaker
That's okay. When I start to kind of take those, and like I said, I do a lot of note taking in Evernote and I will sometimes annotate that as I go with thoughts about, you know what, this will be great to use here or flag this for further research. If I'm getting into a more writing, and like for lack of a better term, writing stage, that is when I tend to need
Overcoming Doubts in Editorial Process
00:52:47
Speaker
longer chunks of time and I need to think more um At different points in my writing life, um I have kind of been more freeform with my writing. I've kind of realized now, especially with historical stories, having some kind of outline ahead of time is really helpful. um not only Not only just for ease of writing, but for helping me interrogate whether I'm placing things in the right order or
00:53:12
Speaker
if structurally things make sense or if I'm asking the right questions. um I will also say, every so often, more when i've I've been working on my book every so often, I will take a local hotel staycation for an overnight just to be uninterrupted for a chunk of time.
00:53:32
Speaker
And when you're when you're writing or in in the rewrites or getting notes, ah sometimes that can take a i can take its toll on confidence and just in your capacity to like stick the landing on things. You're like, damn, like are my instincts really that bad? it's just I'm speaking from personal experience. ah But if – so how do you kind of maybe wrestle with that degree of doubt as a project you know escalates and gets closer and closer to publication? Yeah, I mean you're you are in my head right now, yes. um ah But like I said, I try to remind myself that –
00:54:11
Speaker
<unk> I've rarely if ever been through an editorial process that hasn't worked out for the better in the end. yeah And that if somebody is bringing up a question when they're reading something that, you know what, maybe that isn't clear to the reader. The nervousness on my part comes from, you know, I know I've done all this research and I was like, did I, you know, did I get something? Did I miss something? Did I get something wrong? Did like, there's always that that moment of kind of Is there a source I didn't find or did i did i yeah did I miss something? Yeah, there's a point, especially in that kind of dip late stage of edits where also you're so close to your own material that it... I feel like there's a point where you go, I don't know what words mean anymore. Yeah. Well, you don't even know if it's good anymore either. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, is this crap? Yeah.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, is it is it crap? Is it boring only because I've read it a dozen times or ah or is it actually good? Because I have lost touch with if this is any good anymore. And that's a horrible place to be particularly. Yeah, I particularly always know that in the later stages of working on something, I always find it challenging to have those moments of analysis or even of conclusion um where it's like, look, I love telling historical stories.
00:55:30
Speaker
and you know going into archives, coming up with these sources and bringing them to life. i'm so I'm usually very confident in my ability to do that. But then when there's the point of like, okay, but what's your point? And that's when I usually go, oh. And it's so much harder to articulate that analysis succinctly and well.
00:55:50
Speaker
But yeah, Betsy, this was awesome. It was so great to get to hear about how you go about the work and how you brought this story to light. And it was really illuminating and and just an incredibly wonderful
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:55:59
Speaker
story. So just thanks for coming on the show and talking a little shop. I'm so glad to be invited. Thank you.
00:56:07
Speaker
All right, yes, awesome. Nice, thanks for Sayward. Thanks for Sayward? Well, yeah, I guess. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Darby for Sayward, but thank you too, Sayward, for coming on the show as well as Betsy. Had a great conversation. Listen, no parting shot this week since we're running a bit long, what with having two guests. Gotta keep these pods under 60 minutes. Gotta do it, man. I'm not TikTok-ifying the podcast, but these things gotta stay under an hour.
00:56:35
Speaker
And we're pushing it. So stay wild, C&Evers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.