A Dollop Crossover | Ben Naddaff-Hafrey on Staten Island and the Revolutionary War

After Ben's Staten Island summer, he sat down with The Dollop https://apple.co/3V0mK8b hosts, comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, to examine Staten Island during the Revolutionary War. Ben, Dave, and Gareth dive into an extremely niche topic in history. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:39Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:14Speaker 02

  Pushkin.

• 2:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  Hey, hey, it's Malcolm Gladwell. Before we get into this episode, I wanted to let you know about my new book, The American Way of Killing. Stay tuned at the end of the episode to hear a preview and get The American Way of Killing at pushkin.fm/audio-books or wherever audiobooks are sold.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Hey, Revisionist History listeners. This is Ben Naddaff-Hafrey. A little while ago, as part of my Staten Island summer, I went on a history show called The Dollop. It's hosted by the comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, who, it turns out, have both done sets on Staten Island that turned out poorly. This episode was a comeback special about an extremely niche topic. When I was reporting the Staten Island problem, I spent a day on the island with a Revolutionary War historian named Phil Pappas, learning about how Staten Islanders really did not want the American Revolution to happen. Sadly, that got cut from the show. But the guys at The Dollop did a deep, deep dive on the topic and came up with an even

• 3:20Speaker 02

  crazier story. And that's the episode you're about to hear today. You can listen to more from The Dollop over on their show page. And here's our episode. My father's dead. You killed him. They think that I'm shiny. I am a pie man. I'm Pete Rose, and I only go to Gold's Gym, this one specifically. Rumor is that his penis is broken. And show up where the taco bar was.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  His brain just fucking exploded. River of cheese. You been drinking any gnome juice? No, officer. My dad had a fart chair. Hey, cover me.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  You're listening to The Dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is an American history podcast where each week I, Dave Anthony, read a story from American history to a guy who grabbed a drink at the wrong time.

• 4:07Speaker 04

  That's spilling. Gareth Reynolds has no idea what the topic is gonna be about. Good lord. But, but before we jump into The Dollop, which we're also calling the Revisionist History Dollop, because we have a guest, we're doing a crossover, like when Batman and Robin used to do with Scooby Doo. Everyone remembers that?

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Wait, who's Scooby Doo?

• 4:32Speaker 04

  We're definitely Scooby Doo. 100%, 100% without questions. We have Ben Naddaff-Hafrey joining us. And thank you. Thank you for joining us, Ben. This has been like in the works for a minute. I'm honestly surprised this happened.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I'm shocked. I'm shocked that. I'm not only shocked that this happened, but I was shocked in the first place that you guys immediately gravitated towards this story, because it is, it is a deep cut.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  Well.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  It is a deep, but I like deep cuts.

• 5:00Speaker 04

  And it's also, our buddy did it. And, and then Dave was like, this is crazy. So Dave's been working on it in, in some capacity as well. But this is because you did a series on Staten Island.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:14Speaker 04

  And then this was kind of one that we, there was just kind of the leftover stuff. And we were like, well, let's do it together. So what is the, what is the Staten Island series called and where can people listen to it?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  So it's called The Staten Island Problem. And you can listen to it on the Revisionist History Podcast.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  That's what Colin Jost and Pete Davidson suffered from.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, when their, when their ferry boat is, you know, they bought that Staten Island ferry and they've, for like a decade, tried to figure out what to do with it.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  And just like a month ago, a state official was like, I've got a great idea. You should sink it and we can make an artificial coral reef.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  That's, I think there's, it's obviously been a terrible investment, but there's gotta be something about being like officially sinking. It must be a tough one. But anyway, so The Staten Island Problem and.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  It's, it's about Staten Island's attempt to secede from New York City. For those who, who don't know, Staten Island is one of the five boroughs in New York. And the reason you, you may not know that, you know, it's Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, is Staten Island calls itself the forgotten borough, as in like the like unloved, unloved borough, the one that like no one ever pays attention to.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  It's true.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  It's totally true. That's like why I did this story. I was like, they're kind of right. I just want to leave.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  They're being pouty, though, right?

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Oh, that's, the chip on the shoulder is like core to the identity. That's just like, you gotta.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Should they secede?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  When I, yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. When I lived in New York, I went there to do standup once, and it was like going to another country. And they hated you.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  I would arguably say the craziest, like, when I was first starting, the craziest set I'd ever gone through was in Staten Island, where everyone just yelled at you during your set. And every comedian went through it. So you were kind of like, it's not me. But you would just be up there just fighting. It was, I was like, what is this?

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Was it a grandpa's?

• 7:16Speaker 04

  I don't remember if it was a grandpa's.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a comedy club called Grandpa's.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  It wasn't a comedy club.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  You're like, notionally, I'm in New York, but this is not.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. I was like, the train came here, but that's, it's different. Didn't work. Like, the train got me half the way.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  You can't, you gotta take a ship the rest of the way, like a half hour out to sea.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  But yeah, which is just never good.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  No, but I think that's where, the reason this story that you guys have actually done, and I know very little about ultimately, but it's about how, what, what, why I gravitate towards this story is because it's, it shows that Staten Island is like eternally not part of New York City. Like, they're just, they are always on the other side. So that's, I'm happy that you guys are doing this.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  When I was going through this, I was like, oh, it's exactly the same. It's 200 years later and it's exactly the same. 250 years later.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  I don't understand what it, 200. I will not allow that last celebration for the 250 to be real. I want to redo. I want to do a 255, once we maybe get through some of this, which we won't. Anyway, well, welcome to the listeners from yours. And we encourage our listeners to go check out The Staten Island Problem and weigh in. And now let's do whatever the hell this is.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  1738.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  Dave yells the day on their show.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've, I've heard enough that I know that.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Okay. I don't like the way you put that to be on. I've heard enough.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I've heard enough.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  That's how a lot of people describe our show. I've heard enough.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've heard enough.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  I saw one comment on the one I listened to that was like, when they get, when, it's like usually in a Dollop episode, someone, when they're 25 minutes in, and like you have the main character who's like four years old and he's lived in three brothels. Like, that's par for the course. But when you're like 25 minutes in and he's like middle aged, you know, some crazy stuff is coming.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is very true.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, the quicker they age, the more you know it's a crazy story.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. Like, not a lot known about his boyhood. You're like, this is gonna be bad.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Christopher Billip. He has two Ps on the end of his name, which really throws me off. I want to go Billip.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  It's like Verazano with the N's.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  That's right. Was born on Staten Island, New York. He would be the oldest of eight alive kids born to Thomas and Sarah Farmer Billip. Now, we always say alive kids because they had a lot more. Like, if you had, if you had eight alives, there were some that didn't make it.

• 9:43Speaker 04

  We don't count the dead ones here. I don't know about you, Ben, on yours, but we.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  I don't know. Yeah, the formal.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  It's the pre-vaccine world.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  There's so many that passed, you know what I mean?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Eight, there were eight living descendants in this family?

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Eight living.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, he had eight.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  That's remarkable.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  He had seven brothers and sisters.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  That's more affordable on Staten Island.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  Eight, that is numbers, too. That really has to be.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  You're batting above average.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  You gotta be putting out 20 to get eight.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  There's like, there's also a robust mosquito population on Staten Island in that era. You know, a lot of disease for mosquitoes. They're really crushing it.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Mosquitoes have really hung in there with their disease. They've really.

• 10:24Speaker 03

  They don't like them. I was driving here and there's one in my car. I'm like, what's happening right now?

• 10:29Speaker 04

  I'm leaving town.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Keep going.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Keep going. Let's go to D1.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Get me out of here.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Get me to Staten Island. I gotta go back.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  You live for half a day.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Okay, so Christopher's dad, Major Thomas Billip, was one, was the son of Anne Billip, who married Colonel. And Anne was the daughter of a Royal Navy officer, another Christopher Billip, who was awarded 932 acres of land on the southern tip of Staten Island. And he builds a big stone manor, house. The, the land is named Bentley Manor. So they got, they're, they're loving it. It's pretty sweet.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  It's a lot of land.

• 11:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, 930 acres on Staten Island is two on regular.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  One two-bedroom apartment. It's deeper one.

• 11:18Speaker 04

  It's a studio with a stove.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  So young Chris is destined to be in the military.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  He's from a military family and eventually he, he does, and he becomes a Colonel. Um, which is what everyone on Staten Island eventually starts to call him. So by the 1770s, he's known as Colonel.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  By the powers of deduction, you would say there were not a lot of Colonels, uh, from Staten Island. Otherwise.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Remember we're the Scooby Doo part. So I just want to be very clear. We're the Scooby, we're the Scooby half.

• 11:52Speaker 02

  Does that mean I have to like growl Batman voiceless?

• 11:56Speaker 04

  I know, you know, you could be, you could be what Dave, uh, what Dave's kid called the wacky Batman.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll be wacky Batman. I'll be 1960s like Kapow Bazinga Batman.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Uh, so Bentley Manor had been built up over the years and now, uh, this Christopher Billups owns it. So there's the stone house on the water, there's Grand Far Bill, there's four more houses that he would rent out. Um, and a neighbor remembers him as he's a very tall, slim man.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Uh, Staten Island at this point, mostly farms.

• 12:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  If you can believe that.

• 12:30Speaker 04

  I can't.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Everything, uh, else is agriculture, there's wheat and orchards.

• 12:34Speaker 04

  What is a Staten?

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Uh, oh, well.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  It's a Dutch term.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  Is it for what?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I think so. I don't know.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Wow. Look at you asking questions that can't be answered.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  What is the Staten? There's, there's a place called the Staten on Staten Island that's very famous.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Staten.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  It was probably at the, it was probably at the time called, um, like it's Richmond for a while too.

• 13:01Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  There's Richmond town in this. Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  A weird change. Okay.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Staten Island by Dutch explorers.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Staten.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Name honored the Staten General, which was the Parliament of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  I thought it was, I had, I thought it had something to do with the seven United.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  You should have known that. Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  That's especially.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  Break you, break you Ben.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Okay. So there's wheat orchards, cattle, uh, salt hay off the marshes, oysters and clams.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Big player back then.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Out of the shallows, they sell those and sell everything in New York city mostly, but they also, um, would sell it to the British.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Um, if you ever, have you ever read about the oysters in New York, Ben? The whole oyster situation.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  I knew, I knew about the oysters on Staten Island, but I didn't know about the, the rest of the, of New York.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  There's an amazing book, which I wish I knew the title of right now about oysters in New York. Uh, it's incredible.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Oh, you also wanted to mention the book that you based a lot of your stuff on quickly, but. Who's that?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Well, so yeah, this, this, all of, everything we know about Staten Island in the American revolution comes from, uh, this historian named Phil Pappas, who is himself a Staten Islander, born and bred, and wrote this amazing book called That Ever-Loyal Island.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  And he.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Condescending.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's, well, you'll see why when you get further into, into the story. But it's like, it's a fantastic book.

• 14:28Speaker 04

  The oysters in the Hudson were insane, right?

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, the, uh, we, we, we, Americans just lived on oysters for a long time and ended up just decimating that oyster.

• 14:40Speaker 04

  It's like everything else that we get where you're like, if you just did it a little slower, it could be forever. And we're like, no, we will eat it all and then no one will have anything.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  But I'm hungry now.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  I'm hungry to eat all the oysters now and make money.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was really.

• 14:57Speaker 04

  My only complaint, no indigenous people have died on this venture.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  We did two episodes on it. It's really crazy. Um, okay. So they're selling to New York city. Um, and then the, in the years leading up to the revolution, a lot of what they're, uh, producing is sold to the Royal Navy. A warship, uh, anchoring there. That means hundreds of men who need bread and beef and fresh water. And the Navy pays in silver, so it's a good deal.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  And when a king's ship needs water, it fills its casks at a spring on the island's northeast shore. A spot that is called the watering place.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  Very good title.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  You know what you're getting into.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. I thought this was a brothel.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  It's very much as like a surfer, any, any surf spot is named after what they, uh, restaurants.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  Big rock. Like it's all, it's all what you see from the surfboard.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Colonel Billups, uh, has been in charge of the island's militia now for about three years, which is called Billups Corps of Staten Island Militia.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Once again, we're just naming things extremely aptly.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Well, it's also how book titles were, you know, when it would just be like, he actually wrote a book about it called The Endless Forests in the area where I lived for five years and eventually left because my wife had tuberculosis.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't need to read the book now.

• 16:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  Uh, so that's a peacetime appointment. Obviously there's no war when he gets appointed. Now on the island, there's five churches. The biggest is St. Andrews, which is the Angelican Church at Richmond Town.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what we're just talking about.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. You don't need to yell about it.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  I'm gonna. Out of the, uh, out of New Dorp.

• 16:47Speaker 04

  Oh, come on.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a place called New Dorp.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  I don't want to even know where Dorp came from. Dorp? Could not sound more of like the Carlos Mencia sound he made when he was calling Dorp.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  You stub your toe.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  Dorp. It was the alt to Homer's doe. It's either doe or dorp.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Let's wait here. What's that? There's like, what is the alternate universe Simpsons thing? This just like triggered some deep Simpsons knowledge. It's like the Shelbyville Simpsons or something, right?

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Oh, right. Yeah.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no. When he, when he's like replaced by like Russians, there's like a, there, there's like a film version of the Simpsons that they're trying to pass off as the real Simpsons family.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I kind of remember that. That just takes me to the, when the Flanders have a family reunion.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 04

  But yeah, I, I, I can't remember.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  Uh, there's like the fake Homer goes duh, oh, or something like that.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  I know the English Flanders goes, eh, great googly.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  So out of New Dorp, there is a, uh, Moravian Church and the minister lives beside it with his family. His name is Hector Gambold and Gambold writes a lot of letters. And so that's, uh, a lot of those survived. And that's a lot of what we know.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  Okay. That's helpful.

• 18:13Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. So write letters, people.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. Didn't help Comey, but.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  Comey was like, but my journal, they were like, yeah, get out of here.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  My diary.

• 18:25Speaker 03

  Definitely diary. Unless your name's Fauci, then don't diary. Don't, don't, don't keep.

• 18:29Speaker 04

  I'm at Barbra Streisand.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Uh, on the island, there's five, oh, I already did that. Um, so the trouble, the trouble starts, right? Over taxes, the colonies are paying to the crown.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Right? Uh, there's a big shopping boycott, as we'll call it. The British Parliament closed the port of Boston because of the Boston Tea Party. Continental Congress answers by agreeing, agreeing that no colony will buy British goods until Parliament backs down.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Uh, and so of course Richmond County on Staten Island wants nothing to do with this. They want, they're not going to change anything.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  They're like, but can't we still buy just maybe just a little like, we're so nice to sell to the British.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  That's what happens. That's the problem. Pete Davidson, Colin Jost are like, now's our time. Anyone want to buy this?

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Uh, so Staten Island refuses to join this, um, and the, the Colonel does that personally. He sits in the New York assembly and votes down every measure that, that, uh, favors the Congress. And when the assembly refused.

• 19:31Speaker 04

  You gotta love it.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, no, no, no.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  No.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  That one.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:43Speaker 04

  Oh, that's it. No.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  When the assembly refuses to send delegates to Philadelphia, somebody proposes going around it and putting the question straight to the people of Richmond County. But the Colonel goes to that meeting and beats it there too, by a large majority. So it's clear Staten Island wants nothing to do with any of this.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Business. They just want to be able to sell their stuff.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Yep. They're happy.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  And they're happy with the British.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  They're like, this is not so bad.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's pretty good.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  I'm making money over here.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  You guys keep doing that. That's helping.

• 20:19Speaker 03

  Then in April of 1775, the shooting starts outside Boston at Lexington. And the first thing the Colonel does after Lexington is to write to the British Army and ask them not to come.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  And he signs a letter to General Gage, who is the British Army's commander, requesting that no troops be sent into New York. And his explanation given nine years later said he was, quote, hoping the flame would blow over.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Let's just ride this one out.

• 20:53Speaker 04

  So good.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Look, there's some, some guys got shot, some other guys got shot.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  I don't see this lasting very long.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  It's gonna blow over.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  I don't think this is gonna go on for too much longer.

• 21:04Speaker 04

  If you could give us a week, that would be really helpful.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  So he spent a year, in his words, quote, "Keeping the inhabitants of the island quiet till the arrival of British troops."

• 21:18Speaker 03

  Meanwhile, Staten Island will not stop selling to the British Navy.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Oh, God.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  The king's ships, right? And as far as Staten Island is concerned, this is the king's island.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  The king would request more oysters. He's called Peckish again.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  They just leave all these oysters in the water?

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  Secret oyster handoffs.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  There's also like, don't they, somewhere in here, they're also like, can't, they propose like a truce. They're like, can't we just like make friends with the British again? It might be just a way to work this out.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  We made a side truce with the British. We are an island. I want to remind everyone of that.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  So, of course, the colonies are now pissed that Staten Island won't join the boycott. So they start another boycott. New Jersey stops buying Staten Island's produce until the island appoints an enforcement committee.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  So the island appoints an enforcement committee, but then just ignores it.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  This, this, this committee, when I, when I went around the island with Phil, the, the guy who wrote the, the book that was all this, he took me on like a tour of all these sites. It was amazing. Like every single one of them is like next to like a no-fault divorce, like lawsuit clinic.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  But there's, so we went to the place where this.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  It's final form.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  We, we went to the place where this committee met, which is still preserved. And I was like, what did they do here? And he's like, you know, just kinda, he just kinda like threw a ball against the wall, sort of like, just like, it was just kinda like, like met to meet. They were just sort of like, yeah, we're not gonna look into that report of disloyalty.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  So just pure, yeah, just purely just like, yeah, we're working on it.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Most of our LA government committees.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  I was, I was gonna say, it, it reminds you very much of like the parliamentarian role or something like that, where you're like, here's what I think. And I was like, cool, go fuck yourself. Here's the plan.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  It's just like letting it die in committee. It's like.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  Oh, that's very interesting.

• 23:21Speaker 03

  Is this the first let it die in committee?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  I love that this is just like all under the framework of let it blow over.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Just let this cool down.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Two, three weeks. Two, two, two, probably two, maybe three. It's called an excursion.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Right. So they're ignoring it. They're just trading with the crown still. And in February 1776, the Continental Congress, Congress writes the county into its minutes for, quote, "Amity and opposition to the system and measures adopted for preserving the liberties of America." That's not good. You don't want to be written in for that.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  No, that's pretty targeted, obviously.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Hey, traders.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  So they, uh, they put us in the minutes.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Always bad news.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  Never great. We're, um, but we are, we are officially in the minutes.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  All right. I can still sell oysters though, right?

• 24:17Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, but we, we're on notice. I mean, we're in the minutes and that's never good.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  So we gotta get these oysters going quick.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  It's not, I think you're taking.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Get them out the door.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  It's not, again, I'm sort of saying we're, we're in a dark spot. But yeah, let's sell them.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, get the oysters out there. At this point, uh, the rebels, as we'll call the us, the Americans.

• 24:37Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  The.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Mainlanders.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  The rebels hold New York City. So that April, Continental soldiers take up posts at the watering place, standing with rifles between the Royal Navy and the island's drinking water.

• 24:52Speaker 04

  That's kind of, I mean, you don't want to parch, you know, the Royal Navy. You don't want them parched. You don't want the king thirsty.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  You can't even get to the no-fault divorce place anymore.

• 25:01Speaker 04

  No.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Well, we're gonna have to be header.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  But what the islander, islanders do is just row out to the warships to do business with them anyway.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  When you watch that, you're like, when you're just like, what are they, what the hell are they doing?

• 25:18Speaker 02

  It's just like a tiny sailboat inching on the horizon.

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Loaded up with a cartoon level of oysters.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  They're gonna go bad.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Like they're fucking eating the oysters. Are they shucking?

• 25:34Speaker 03

  By June, Washington, that's George. Washington is demanding an investigation into reports that his own riflemen are taking bribes to row the islanders out.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  I just.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  This is actually the first ferry.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not a bad idea. I, I've often, I would say, Ben, the thing I've learned on this show more than anything, which is why we say that it, history repeats itself, or at least rhymes. I, I can never get over that it always has existed, that it's just like.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  It's just always been thus.

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Ribs find a way, you know, no matter what.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  It's just so funny.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Guys are like, you're gonna give me 10 bucks? Okay, I'll row you out there.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have no principles.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Let me take off a uniform.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Sounds nice, but I mean, really.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  But also, my country sounds really good, too. That'd be great.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  So Washington is pissed. Uh, and he's just across the water in New York, and he writes that the people of Staten Island, quote, "After the fairest professions have shown themselves our inveterate enemies."

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Now, this is, yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  That's bad.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  In the minutes again.

• 26:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, is that bad what George Washington calls your island an enemy?

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Rowing out oysters.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Man, we've really put our chips down now, now, guys.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Look, are we in or are we out, guys? I don't know. How, how far do we want to take this shit?

• 27:09Speaker 03

  I am amazed that Staten Island ever became part of New York City.

• 27:12Speaker 04

  It is crazy.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  It is geologically a part of New Jersey. It's like spiritually and geologically, it is New Jersey.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  It's much closer.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  It's way closer to New Jersey.

• 27:22Speaker 04

  I understand fighting that, though. I understand fighting that.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  There's an annexation movement.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Oh, to join New Jersey?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  In 2025, I think it's still a foot, maybe. The Republicans in New Jersey are like, it would be helpful to have that island here.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I bet it would.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  This is so.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  At some point, they'll blow up the Verazano Bridge.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  That was floated during the secession movement. They were like, when this happens, we'll blow up the Verazano.

• 27:49Speaker 04

  It's kind of awesome. It's just, in 2025, to be like, uh, we would, we're, we would like it.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Let's blow it up.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  Is that crazy?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  On July 3rd, 9,000 British soldiers begin landing on Staten Island.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Led by General William Howe, commander of the British Army in America. On July 4th, 1776, now that's a big day.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 28:15Speaker 03

  You know what happened then?

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Oh, that was when the, who wrote the, the song that I gotta stand for.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress declared the colonies independent. And on July 6th, 1776, in Richmentown, Staten Island, 500 men gather in the road. Richmentown is right in the middle of the island. There's a courthouse, two churches, tavern, a few dozen houses, so not a big place.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  A divorce.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Dorse, divorce hut.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  That was at fault, at fault divorce.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Governor William Tryon watches them. Tryon is the royal governor of New York, and he has been running the king's government off the deck of a ship in the harbor for a better part of a year because the rebels hold the city.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's trying his best.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, he is. Yeah, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  And next to him, there's General Howe. Uh, in front of them, the 500 Staten Island farmers are sworn into the service of the king. They are from, uh, Billups, uh, Island Militia.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  This feels traitorous.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Very much so.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Go ahead, go ahead.

• 29:21Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, but like, there are still a lot of loyalists around, so, so, but this is just.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  There always are.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  A giant group of them in one place, but there's a ton of loyalists hoping to bring it.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  In, in New York at large, but like Staten Island is, is like remarkably so.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Remarkably.

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Honey, I think we're Brit in the game. I'm not sure. This seems, I, they're taking some kind of oath out there.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Wait, my, my favorite thing that, that Phil told me is that this, the islanders burned the patriot leaders in effigy after word of the Declaration of Independence comes out. And also that there's like all of these letters from the British soldiers when they arrived there, where they're writing home and they're like, this island is amazing. And they're, they're greeting us as like saviors from the rebel mob. And like, it's like, they can't get over.

• 30:10Speaker 04

  They're shocked.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  How, how happy they are that we're here. They're like, this is awesome.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  Effigies of their government. This is a real vibe. This is awesome.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  They really like us.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Really going good. Babe, I'm famous here.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  So out of the 500 men are out of a total population of 2,847. And that includes children and slaves.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Well, who I so if memory serves are not considered people.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Correct. So that's, that's a, that's a pretty big chunk of the population.

• 30:46Speaker 04

  It's a good hunk.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  For the Colonel and his men, a job very easy at first. They watch 15 miles of shoreline facing New Jersey.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  You gotta keep an eye on New Jersey.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  It's a.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Still the same.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  It's a, yeah.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Still the same.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  They arm and assemble every time an alarm goes up with the Colonel at the front. They dig dirt walls into the hills for the British to put cannons behind.

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Really?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  They got the, yeah, they got the good job.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  They are like, is it, is it an island or a pirate ship now? It's taking on that vibe.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Column A, column B.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. If you're watching that, be like, Christ, they're putting cannons in the dirt.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  There's the skull and crossbones flag.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Look at that. They got parents. They got parents.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  They round up several hundred of their neighbors to drive wagons and haul artillery.

• 31:40Speaker 04

  Moving with this. There's a sail moving the goddamn island.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  It's getting farther from New Jersey.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  I think they're going to Britain.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  They haul artillery, artillery for the British Army and the horses and wagons go with them. They find the army. It's, it's forage and it's firewood. So they're doing everything. They're the suppliers of the British Army.

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  So the Colonel's mansion sits at the southern tip of the island, right on the water, facing.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  That says a lot.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Facing Perth Amboy.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  The, the, the Colonel's mansion really just sort of justify a lot of this if you think about it.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Back then, all Colonels had mansions.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  So they're right across this narrow channel from New Jersey. You can row across in a few minutes.

• 32:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  And New Jersey is rebel ground. So the Colonel's house is visible from New Jersey. As is the Colonel when he just stands outside, like you can see him.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  It's like how Sarah Palin describes Russia.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I can see Russia from my house. I can see New Jersey from my house.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  Like, what is he doing? He's in a robe. He's having some hot beverage. He's really stretching.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Oh, he's waving.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  He's enjoying himself.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  Years from now, we'll call it yoga.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  He's counting gold again.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Across the water in New Jersey is a rebel named Nathaniel Fitz Randolph. Everyone calls him Captain. I'm going to call him Fitz.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  He's about 30 years old. He spends the war rowing over to Staten Island in the dark. And he does it often enough that papers on both sides are writing about how, you know, he's famous to the rebels and infamous to the loyalists. So.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  We really.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Everyone knows who this guy is.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  We have like a rowing Batman?

• 33:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  It was a slow news period. There wasn't, nothing big was happening in, in, you know, world historic events.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  Who is Roman?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  But even the people who hated him conceded that he was decent to the many captured and did not let his people rob houses.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Sorry, who's he capturing?

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  He is. So he is rebel American, going over and grabbing whatever a soldier or whatever, or an important person from Staten Island.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Okay. So he's, he's anti Staten Island, obviously. So he's.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  He's anti-British and therefore anti-Staten Island.

• 34:00Speaker 04

  Because Staten Island's part of Britain.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  He rows over, he does a comedy set.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  He comes back. They boo him.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  That did not go well.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  So he's rowing over there and he's grabbing like someone of note. And then he's bringing them back to the mainland and people are like, oh, it's good.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  And then like, what the hell are you doing? He's like, it's a vibe. Staten Island, it's popping.

• 34:25Speaker 03

  This is how bad comedy is in Staten Island. David Tell went before me and he got off stage and was like, oh God, get me out of here.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  If David Tell is not doing well in New York. I want to hear more about these Staten Island sets you guys did. I didn't even realize there was a comedy circuit that, that, that went through there.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  I one time did, I think I did stand up on the ferry to Staten Island. And it was.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  A death sentence.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  They're just slamming on the accelerator. It was the first trip that took 10 minutes.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  That's a lot of smoke. You're really cooking.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  That was, oh God, that was, I know who books that gig.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Or did.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  The guy who booked it for me was a guy named Pudge, I believe.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. That's different.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it was, it was horrible. I bombed and then I bombed and then could hear people talking about how I bombed. I, I literally at one point said to someone, I go, I can hear you. She was like, oh, sorry. I was like, yeah, it's okay. But keep your voice down.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. So grandpa's was in New Dorp, grandpa's comedy club. And grandpa was Al Lewis from The Munsters. That's who owned it. That's why it was called grandpa's.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Dave's 80.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Dave, Dave fought for the British.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  I did. A little bit. I still am. We're good. This is gonna happen.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Took an oath after his set.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Should we reconsider? You know, 250 years, it's been long enough.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  The rogue guy grabs him. Oh, come on.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  You're going back to the mainland.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  So the Colonel puts a hundred pound bounty on Fitz's head.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  So then Fitz, in response, put a hundred pound bounty on the Colonel's head.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  He's not allowed to do that.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  And he one-ups it and said he was gonna have to go get the Colonel himself.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  So I guess he gets his own bounty.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Do you pay yourself for taxes?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Self-dealing. That doesn't happen until 250 years later in American history. You gotta be president to do that kind of thing.

• 36:29Speaker 04

  Insider rowing.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  He then gets a tip that the Colonel will be attending a ball on Staten Island. Several.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Who's the tip from? This guy keeps looking over there and he can see everything.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  With bald eyes, he could just, how do I know? Cause you, there's actually a ball going on right now. The Colonel's at it.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  So it's several miles inland from his estate. So Fitz heads to Staten Island. And he goes to the house where the ball is happening.

• 36:59Speaker 04

  This guy's wife, by the way, definitely was like, he's cheating.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  He's 100%. Oh, you're going to Staten Island again? Okay. What's her name?

• 37:06Speaker 04

  I'm going to Staten Island again to try to get the key.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And he, so he goes to the ball. He peeks inside so he can get a look at the Colonel and see what he's wearing, worried that he might grab the wrong guy in the dark. So he wants to see.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Poorly wet ball.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  What a setup. I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to go by feels.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Should we immediately option this to be a movie?

• 37:37Speaker 04

  Like a Marvel plot, Roman.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  So.

• 37:44Speaker 03

  So Fitz, Fitz, Fitz ran, Fitz ran off. He, he's a wanted rebel. He has a price on his head, 100, 100 bucks or pounds. And he goes into a ball of a room full of loyalists on an island held by the British Army.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Is he in disguise?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  I don't know how he pulled it off, but some people did recognize him, but acquaintances, but they didn't say anything.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  He just, but he must have, he must have been playing the part a little bit.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't imagine he's just winking at a lot of people.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  How good are the British, huh? Look at all these oysters. This is awesome.

• 38:20Speaker 02

  This is living.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  This is great, huh? I hope the mainland rower never comes this way.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  Colonel, nice outfit.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  But how do we know that some people recognized him? It's like after the fact, if you're like, oh yeah, I saw that guy. I knew who that was. You don't get invited back.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  It's gotta be in the letters. Yeah. I don't know how else you know.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  That's all we got. That is a weird thing to put in your letter, though. Some people knew him. Others didn't.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Definitely people wrote about it years later. So maybe that's why.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  The next morning, the Colonel is riding home from the ball. He's tired. He's half asleep.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  All nighter at the ball?

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Probably hungover.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  He did an all-nighter at the ball?

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And when Fitz steps into the road, right in front of him and seizes him.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  And the details have been lost to history, but for some reason, by July 27th, he's back on Staten Island, resuming his duties. Yeah. They caught him. They, he caught him, which is what he tried to do for a while. And then all of a sudden he's free and we don't know why.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  What is the time difference between when he caught him to when he was back on the island on the 27th?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  The Colonel never wrote like a extremely self-aggrandizing book about all this.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  He just.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  He tweeted a bit.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  He assumed history would.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  No, he didn't.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  He assumed the history books would be like.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  He never anticipated this.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  No, he never was like, this won't work?

• 39:41Speaker 03

  He was probably exchanged because he, he was kidnapped for the sole purpose of trading in a prisoner exchange.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  So he's probably traded.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  But this is not.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  I would hold on to that one.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  This is not close to over. In February of 1779, a raiding party from Staten Island comes for Fitz in Jersey.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:03Speaker 03

  At three o'clock in the morning, a party of loyalist troops cross from the island. They land, they walk into town. Nobody sees them because it's 3am. Nobody's up. And they go straight to the house where Fitz lives.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  This is gonna be very validating for the cheating thing though, for him. He'll be like, see? I've been running, they're coming to get me.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Unbeknownst to the raiding party, a rebel scout from a nearby post has stopped to spend the night at the house.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  So there are 12 rebel soldiers inside with Fitz.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Tough.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  That is, that is brutal.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  It's not what it looks like.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  No, no, yeah, he's like Jason boarding the room and he's like, there's only candles.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  So the sentry does not see the loyalists until they have nearly surrounded the building.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  And then he fires a musket once and runs away.

• 40:58Speaker 04

  Wait, who does Fitz?

• 40:59Speaker 03

  No, the sentry.

• 40:59Speaker 04

  Oh, the, okay. Oh, that guy. I love that guy.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  That's me. That's what I'm doing. I'm shooting it once and I'm taking off.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Well, to be fair, I mean, he's like, it's gonna take 20 to reload.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  Words out. I'm gonna get a coffee.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  So when the gun goes off, the loyalists storm the house and they just take Fitz and the other 12 guys easily with that incident. They're just like, ah, they're probably all laying on the floor, asleep.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  On the way out, they steal the buckles of the shoes of the women in the house.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  Smart.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Tough.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  You gotta get your stuff.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  That's, that's just economics, obviously.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  I'm like, kind of, I'm like, how is everyone arranged? There's like one room with like 12 guys on the floor and then there's like bedrooms with the women of the house?

• 41:41Speaker 04

  When I picture these times, I always just imagine the Three Stooges.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Sleeping caps, one of them's like.

• 41:49Speaker 03

  Oh, there's definitely a couple. If there's a bed, there's definitely three or four soldiers.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to, they do the 69 sleep.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  When up until, I don't know when, the fire departments in the late 1800s, it was just always two dudes in a bed. It's just the way it was.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Which is what I say we should do.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Moving in fast version.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  So the, he's put in a provost prison in New York and then the British put him in irons.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Oh, dear.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Now, the rebels keep coming for the Colonel and in March, the New York Gazette reports that two or three different parties have lately been at his house, quote, "in order to captivate him once more with a view to get him for an exchange." So they're trying to get him to swap with, for Fitz.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  They just think he's valuable. They're not like, this guy is quarterbacking the whole thing. They don't think he's like the linchpin of the British effort. They just think they'll do anything to get him back.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Why don't they take him? Why don't they?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  The Colonel?

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  They can't. They just can't been, haven't been able to steal him.

• 42:56Speaker 04

  Seems like it couldn't be that.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  It's hard to grab a guy.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  What is it?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  You can see him from New Jersey.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I, it's hard to grab him. Was rope invented?

• 43:04Speaker 03

  He's right there in front of his house.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  I could go get him.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  How can we not just get this guy? He's doing yoga every morning at 9:00 AM.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  We can see him.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  So they do, they do a couple of raids, but both fail. But then, a third on June 23rd, 1779, does not. As previously mentioned, the Colonel's house can be seen across the water, so the rebels station men in the steeple of the town church and give them orders to watch for the Colonel to come home.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Is this a Trojan church?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  They literally like, you guys, I got a great plan. Hear me out.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  How did this take years?

• 43:46Speaker 03

  We watch his house.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  All right. So someone on the mainland invented hiding. And this is gonna be, this is a huge tech. This is a huge technology, a huge breakthrough. What this is, is not revealing where you are right away.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  It works better in summer when there are leaves.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  You guys remember surprise parties? It's that but for kidnapping, okay?

• 44:09Speaker 03

  This is gonna change all war.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  This is big. Peter Thiel has the copyright.

• 44:16Speaker 03

  So he comes home, the rebels head across. So they wait for him. It's not like they're waiting in Staten Island hiding. They're, they're still across in Jersey, just watching the house. The rebels.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  And how did nobody, how was nobody like, we could do this over there?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Also, like, to be visible from New Jersey, you have to be at like the most extreme, like outer edge of Staten Island. Like, he must have been the farthest south point of New York.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  He, I believe it is. I believe it's right there.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  He is taunting at this point. You, you really, I mean, obviously, if there's only like a little bit you can see and you're like, I choose to live there.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  He, you would think he would just be going out, dropping his pants and slapping his butt cheeks.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  He's spreading. He's doing the spread thing again. He's spreading.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  So they head across in a boat in silence, muffling the sound of the oars, as you do.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  They land.

• 45:10Speaker 04

  I don't think you, it's probably quite ineffective, but you maybe just have to lay it flat.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:16Speaker 04

  It's really, it's really taking a long time to get there.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  They land, they walk up to the house in a single.

• 45:21Speaker 04

  We're back on the mainland.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  In a single file, they walk up to the house. They give the countersign and go inside without anybody raising the alarm and, and, and the Colonel's in bed.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  He's sleeping.

• 45:33Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  So they just grab him. And when they're, when they're taking him out of the home, he asks for time to grab his hat.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, look.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  It was really different back then.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  There are, there are rules of engagement and there are war crimes and obviously you've gotta let the guy get his hat.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  We, we do, there's a lot of hat stuff on the.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Hat fetching.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, we've, well, we've gone through a lot of the hat respect.

• 46:00Speaker 03

  There's, like, if someone is in disarray, the, the papers are always like, he was without a hat. Like, that's to describe how messed up things were.

• 46:08Speaker 04

  Taking your hat off for the National Anthem is a pain in the ass. You have no idea how lucky you are.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  They don't allow him to grab his hat.

• 46:18Speaker 04

  What the actual fuck?

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Oh, man, things have changed.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Well, that's not good.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that is just, I mean, that is not gentlemanly.

• 46:27Speaker 04

  Death.

• 46:29Speaker 03

  His own guard is posted a short distance away but never noticed a thing.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Tough.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  One.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  They got comfy.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  One rebel goes into the stable and takes the Colonel's horse, beautiful animal, and takes it down to the water. But the horse, because he's a jerk, will not get in the boat. So the man shoots the horse.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  I don't know why. I don't think we need that detail.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  What, what else are you gonna do with the horse?

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I, I mean, look.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  What, if it's not gonna get in the boat, you got, what other options are there?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  So I just killed it.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  What?

• 46:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Just let the thing go. It's a beaut, nice horse.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I should have. I should have.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  What are you doing?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  It's all happening so fast.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're moving, there's so many moving pieces.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  It's not happening fast. This is the slowest thing ever.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Hiding, hiding had kind of turned my mind around.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  And I did, I did stomach, so it's a slow one. Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Why would you shoot him in the stomach?

• 47:17Speaker 04

  I just completely, no, we didn't, we walked through a lot of versions of this. We never talked about that horse.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Well, you're not supposed to take a horse.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  What is with a horse not getting on a boat? Doesn't it understand?

• 47:25Speaker 03

  Who thinks a horse will get on a rowboat?

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Completely agree. Completely agree.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Can you do stealth mode rowing when you have a horse passenger?

• 47:36Speaker 04

  Trying to get a horse.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  The horses are quiet, but the neighing is very loud.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  Trying to get a horse on a rowboat. It's making it harder to row.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Horse was definitely behaving rationally. It's like, A, you don't need me. B, absolutely not.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna go.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  No.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  No. So the gunshot alerts the British that something's going on, but by the time.

• 47:59Speaker 04

  The idea that you could have just left the horse, not only for ethical reasons, but to sneak off better. Yeah. Well, I shot the horse. The British know. I, guys, I, I buckled.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  He looked mean. He looked real mean.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  You're gonna be weird. What am I gonna do?

• 48:16Speaker 04

  I buckled like a lady's shoe out there. I shot the horse twice.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  But, but it's too late. Jersey's so close that by the time the British organizing get down there.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  All right, we're ready. They're back on the mainland.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're in Jersey already. So Colonel's now a prisoner, but it's not so bad. Basically, he promises the Continental Army he will not escape and will not take up arms. In exchange, they let him do his thing in New Jersey. So he's basically just cruising around in Jersey now and he promises not to do anything bad. That's, that's the prisoner situation.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  I don't understand.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  That's how it works with officers. It's, it's a gentlemanly agreement.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  But then why not let him take his hat? I mean.

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Exactly where I was going.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Well, here we go.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  He's gonna hold a grudge, isn't he?

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Just watching around all that time.

• 49:06Speaker 04

  From where he's being, you can see it from where he's, it's right there.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  Right there on the hat rack.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  It's right there. I can, I can grab it.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Right next to the yoga mat.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  So as long as he keeps his word, he stays out of a cell, right? So for four months, that is Colonel Christopher Billups' sentence.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Exile in New Jersey.

• 49:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  May I go into jail now?

• 49:36Speaker 03

  But then in October, New York State blows that agreement up. The legislature convicts him of loyalty to the king.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  We knew this.

• 49:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  We all knew this.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  We knew, what are we doing? We knew that.

• 49:51Speaker 04

  The four months is the issue.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  He's in the legislature being like, we should all.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:58Speaker 03

  And you are sentenced to no hat. Well, guys.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  Guys.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  So the Colonel is banished and everything he owns is taken by the state.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  You're going to Staten Island.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  So they take his 1,078 acres. The stone house his grandfather built, the dead horse they take, they take everything. The hat.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  In New York, the British are holding.

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Put it on in front of him. No.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  In New York, the British are holding two American prisoners in irons. One is Nathaniel Fitz Randolph. So New Jersey decides to answer that by doing the same thing to a loyalist. And that's, and that's Colonel Billups.

• 50:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 50:42Speaker 03

  So the governor of New Jersey wrote a letter saying the state had no personal resentment against the Colonel. Quote, "It is his particular misfortune to be in our possession at this melancholy juncture."

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Hate to do it.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  We gotta put this guy in prison.

• 50:58Speaker 04

  The amount of things that were emotionally written back then and the amount of things that weren't, and this is one where he's like, it's melancholy.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  We're down.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  I'm really sad I gotta put this guy in a prison.

• 51:09Speaker 04

  It's tough.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  And what, he was just like bopping around New Jersey and then they were like, things have changed.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Events are such that now you must be in manacles.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  That was tough, but it is where he wrote, "Bored to run."

• 51:26Speaker 03

  So on November 6th, the Colonel is actually sent to prison. There are two letters that are sent with him. The first is for the jailer, quote, "You are hereby commanded to receive and ear custody the body of Colonel Christopher Billups, prisoner of war, herewith delivered to you, and having put irons on his hands and feet, you are to chain him down to the floor in a close room in the said jail, and there, so detain him, giving him bread and water only for food."

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Comma, with melancholy.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  That feels very standard as far as.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Doesn't it?

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's like, they're like, okay, yes, so he's a prisoner, got it.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  It's like the hiding thing. They're like, we gotta really spell this one out.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  Yeah. Don't get him wet, don't feed him after midnight.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Comma, New Jersey, comma, earth.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  The second letter is for the Colonel.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  By the way, bread and water.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  You give me that for three days, I'm not upset.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Really?

• 52:28Speaker 04

  That sounds pretty good.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  I think this is longer than three days.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, eventually I'd be like, can I get some butter? But for the first few days, they're like, I'm carbon and loving it.

• 52:37Speaker 03

  So he, the other letters to the Colonel, the official who signed the first one says he is sorry. He writes, quote, "To be under the disagreeable necessity of treating him this way, but retaliation is directed, and the Colonel can end it anytime he likes by writing to New York and arranging better treatment for the two American prisoners." So they're saying.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  So that's.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  They just want him, they just want Fitz and the other guy out of irons.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Right. And he, he can do that.

• 53:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's like, you, yeah, how about you get involved?

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Wow, what a.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  We can unmanacle the right hand or the left if you're a lefty.

• 53:12Speaker 04

  That is such a strange situation to be in.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  So he is chained to a jail floor, eating bread and water

• 53:22Speaker 03

  in order to improve the living conditions of the guy who kidnapped him in the first place. So weeks go by and a message comes to the Colonel from George Washington. George tells him to resign his command of the militia and he can go home. Nobody will touch you or your property during the war or after it. So that's a pretty good deal.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  That is the perfect deal. Take it.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, he says no.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  What the?

• 53:46Speaker 03

  He likes being in charge of the militia.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  Dudes are. Men have never been sane.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  He's like the king.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Rather than go to therapy.

• 53:57Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. This is just like, dude, look, just say you miss your dad. No, no.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  Chain me tighter.

• 54:07Speaker 03

  He says no.

• 54:09Speaker 04

  Psychotic.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  But regardless, in December, the two sides work out of trade and the Colonel gets to go home on the 26th. 19 days later, the water freezes. Now, the winter of 1779 into 1780 was the hardest of the century. Water rays around New York froze solid enough to carry infantry, artillery, and cavalry across, cavalry across the.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  Roman was like, this is tough.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  Just on foot.

• 54:34Speaker 04

  My, I've been made redundant.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. So on the night of January 14th, 1780, Washington.

• 54:42Speaker 04

  They thought everyone was Jesus. Another Jesus.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  So on the night of January 14th, 1780, Washington sent 2,500 men across the ice into Staten Island on 300 sleds borrowed from New Jersey farmers.

• 54:57Speaker 04

  Wee.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Wee.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  This is fun.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  The whole British force on the island was 1,800 men, so not enough to.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  So Washington's done fucking around.

• 55:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So the British Army asked the Colonel to call out his militia. In town, the militia is mostly, up until now, they've been mostly just doing the grunt work, right?

• 55:18Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Building stuff and bringing the supplies.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Digging.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 04

  Mainly digging.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Lot of holes.

• 55:25Speaker 04

  What are we digging for? Not sure, keep going.

• 55:29Speaker 03

  So combat like this is something new. So the Colonel goes to his militia and he asks them to come into the fort at Richmond and then he begs them.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  He tells them that the, what the Americans will do to this island if they take it, which is.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  The Americans.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  Hang some of them, right?

• 55:47Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 55:48Speaker 03

  And, and ruin the rest.

• 55:49Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Hang some, do a set, burn some, another set.

• 55:56Speaker 04

  May I be hanged?

• 55:59Speaker 03

  And then he walks into the garrison like, let's go. And then nobody, nobody follows. Not one man would join the garrison. They then go to the public houses and said, instead to drink and hear the news, or they just went home to see about their cattle or their land. And these are not secret rebels. They were men the American government had marked, many of them refugees out of New Jersey, some who had every reason.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  That is just remarkable.

• 56:33Speaker 04

  New Jersey refugees.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  That's what they call them in New York City.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  We've been through so much. Aren't you just doing this to make money on oysters? Yeah. Our home is gone. It's there.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  So some, some of them have every reason to expect to be hanged if, if the Americans win and lose everything they had, right? But they're still not gonna step up and fight.

• 56:56Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  The truth is, the British had overstayed their welcome and then abused the island and its people badly.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  So a man named Blake, interviewed years later, said, quote, "The soldiers in general behaved at first very well, paying for everything that they took, but when they came back from Jersey, they stole everything they could lay their hands on."

• 57:20Speaker 03

  They started with fences.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Wait, they started with stealing fences?

• 57:26Speaker 03

  That's right. What are you gonna take?

• 57:28Speaker 04

  They fenced fences? Wow.

• 57:31Speaker 03

  You guys are being too literal.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  All right. Now this is how you fence, right? No.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  If we put this up on the battlefield, they'll never get us.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  Look at all these posts, idiots.

• 57:44Speaker 03

  Fences are very important for a farm community like Staten Island. They keep the livestock from eating the crops, but the British soldiers needed firewood, so they just used the fences.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  So wait, so the British just.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  My cow's over there.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  It's chaos.

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Oh my God. So, uh, yeah, we got all this wood for our fences and we're quite cold.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  Is that possible?

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Local Isaac Simonsen, quote, "The fences were all destroyed, not a rail being left in three months."

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  At that time, things were very cheap. After the British came, prices more than doubled.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  Can I say, like, in the, in the eternal Staten Island-ness of this story, this is like 18th century NIMBY-ism. They're like, literally not in my backyard, like you took away the, what demarcated my backyard. That was, the taxes also.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  You think NIMBY's bad now? Yeah.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  I mean, the British were so, the thing my mind always goes back to is when they took Philadelphia, you know, they just took over houses and instead of using an outhouse, they would just, they just cut holes in the floor.

• 58:57Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 58:57Speaker 03

  And would just use that as their toilets.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  Oh my.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  So they're not great, like.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Knock your guests.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  That's tough. There's an outhouse. There's also an in-house.

• 59:10Speaker 03

  And that's how bathrooms are invented.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  We call it the loo.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. That, by the way, they weren't, the pitch was good. The pitch eventually.

• 59:19Speaker 03

  Directionally, yes.

• 59:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, eventually.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  A pipe and maybe.

• 59:24Speaker 04

  There's nothing worse than the long hike. Well, dad's pooping. He's taking that long walk of shame.

• 59:33Speaker 03

  The first time the Army went to New Jersey, a proclamation went out.

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Or if there was no toilet paper in the outhouse, that weird walk back to the main house.

• 59:41Speaker 03

  That is a rough one.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Daddy, were you shot? No. We had a TP.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  They just use their jacket and throw it away behind.

• 59:51Speaker 04

  It's tough.

• 59:51Speaker 03

  It's good conversation, though. The first time the Army went to New Jersey, a proclamation went out telling everyone to put their fences back up.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  We found the issue that really gets them going.

• 1:00:05Speaker 04

  It's just like how we get an amber alert. I've got it. It's a fence alert.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Then the army came home and destroyed the fences again.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Damn it.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  What did the British use for firewood once they used up all the fences, you ask? Well, the churches, of course.

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Tough.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  They're like, literally the stuff that's most important are like, let's do that first.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  What about the trees? Is there a church here?

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  There was a Dutch, there was a reformed Dutch church at Richmentown, a framed building finished right about when the war started. A minister named Van Pelt, quote, "The British used it gradually up for firewoods." They just used up the whole church.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Wow. Well, now take the priest.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  A Presbyterian meeting house became a hospital and was then destroyed.

• 1:00:52Speaker 04

  This might be how they started burning people at the stake.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  Seriously, we got, we need more firewood.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  No, they needed a steak.

• 1:01:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  Can't use a good steak for that.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. All right. Not the steak. We'll burn them on her. The two women, tape them together. Dolores, stand as long as you can. Do you understand?

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  You've had tape this whole time?

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. You guys don't have tape?

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  And yoga?

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. You guys don't do, you don't have tape and yoga?

• 1:01:21Speaker 03

  The Dutch church at Port Richmond had a balcony, a steeple with a bell on it and shingles from the ground up.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  Those are gone.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Soldiers.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Good night.

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  Soldiers live in it, lived in it until eventually it blew over in a storm. No one is inside, but it blew over. At New Dorp, which is a name I'll never get over and no one should.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  And when it blew over, they all said, Dorp. A chorus of voices rose up.

• 1:01:48Speaker 04

  Oh, Dorp.

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  Soldiers set fire to Gamble's Moravian Church, then came into the parsonage one evening, frightening his family, destroying their furniture and carried off the congregation's records, probably to burn. Gamble wrote that a complaint by civilians to British officers commonly makes bad worse. One islander said he obeyed the two officers quartered in his house without ever objecting because there was no use in it. Quote, "If I'd done so, we should have been requited with a curse and a blow of their swords."

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  It's just amazing that they're treating the people that they're helping, that are helping them like this.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, right. And that the people are taking it like, well, okay.

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  So civil, civil government is.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  There's an outhouse, guys. No.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  No. Civil government has stopped existing at this point. The courts were closed. The courthouse was burned.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Can we get that gavel?

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, these are their allies. So by this point, the militia members aren't really feeling particularly inclined to lay down their lives for the crown.

• 1:02:55Speaker 04

  You guys don't seem to have that. You're not excited anymore. Am I crazy? What's going on?

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  So when the American rebels arrive, nobody is there to stop them. But the garrison held, the British spies had warned the Americans were coming and they were ready. And the soldiers stood on a frozen island in a blizzard for a day and a half and went home without incident. But after the army came, hundreds of American civilians with sleds. They were dead set on looting the hell out of Staten Island. This is how it happens.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Stop saying we.

• 1:03:30Speaker 03

  Not a, not an invading army, but people like.

• 1:03:33Speaker 04

  Way better.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  Getting stuff.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  They emptied a man's store while he stood in it and burned another man's two sloops.

• 1:03:43Speaker 04

  His two sloops?

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Sloops. Sloops ships.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  Ship, some kind of ship.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Small ships.

• 1:03:47Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  They took cattle, horses, carriages, bedding and furniture. They took people. Long after the war, a man named Pompey Prowl remembered that night. He said, "Ice was so strong that, quote, "The Americans come over and steal colored people and sell them for slaves."

• 1:04:03Speaker 04

  Oh, sweet God. Never, never good.

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  Gotta make a buck, right?

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Never good.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  At all costs.

• 1:04:10Speaker 02

  Wait, the first part of that is ice, ice was so strong?

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. What? So they could just run across.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Their funding was in the Homeland Security bill.

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  You're thinking, yeah, I get, I get the, in today's environment, I get the mix up.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  I was just trying to parse what was being claimed about the climate.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  This is, imagine a time when Tom Homan had teeth. That's what was happening in this area.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  No such time. The Colonel's house was looted too, of course. Quote, "The severe frost at last gave the rebels an ea- easy access to his farm on the ice "when they carried off a, a black man, his cattle, horses, carriages, bedding and other furniture."

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  Not the bedding.

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Not the bedding. Yeah.

• 1:04:53Speaker 03

  Magistrates valued the lot at nine hundred and forty-four pounds. It also, he said, compelled them to move his family out of so exposed a situation. So he's like, I gotta go.

• 1:05:05Speaker 04

  He's lost it all. I think that's the.

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  I gotta get out of here.

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  This is full repossession.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  I also, yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  Go, go ahead.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  This, this house, I believe in, I think it is Billups' house where the attempt at a truce conference in the beginning of the revolution is held. Like after, after the, like the British launched the big battle in New York City from Staten Island on September 11th, I think 1776. They're like, all right, now you've seen what we can do. Do you want to make nice? And they invite, I think it's Ben Franklin and, and maybe Adams over to Billups' house on Staten Island. And they're like, we can make this all disappear. You just like agree that nothing happens and you love the king.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  And it can all go back to as it was. And that's like, that's the moment when we all, we could have just remained part of Great Britain and we chose not to.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:06Speaker 04

  That's so great. They were probably like, this is the most important thing that'll ever happen on nine 11.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  This is huge. History will remember this. They will never forget what happened in here today.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Phil Pappas remembers this.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  So the Colonel moves, after he comes back from prison, he stops sleeping in his house. Every night he walked up from Bentley to his father-in-law's to sleep. And every night somebody sat up to watch over him while he slept because the Colonel was a very hard snorer. And he was worried he would sleep through another kidnapping attempt.

• 1:06:43Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Come on. That's REM I've never experienced.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  That's amazing. You're stressed enough that you're worried that you're going to be kidnapped at any point, but you're still sleeping deeply enough that you need someone to watch you. It's like, I would be up all night.

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  I, I get 12 hours. Yeah, all night.

• 1:07:00Speaker 03

  I mean, once I'm out, I'm out.

• 1:07:04Speaker 04

  Snoring.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Also, the like, logic of that makes no sense. It's like he's snoring deep loudly enough that he can't hear the.

• 1:07:12Speaker 03

  He, that's probably what he thinks. Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 04

  This is, this is a different time.

• 1:07:19Speaker 03

  They didn't know a lot of sleep apnea back then.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  He's still got a Casper mattress.

• 1:07:24Speaker 04

  Actually, that's, it's, uh, we're, Helix is actually the mattress he probably had. Not to jump on your sponsors. Even back then, if you want a mattress, you could be kidnapped off of.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  If he's sleeping that deeply, it's probably a Helix.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  California duck slugs, which is quite a bit. The Staten Island duck slugs use promo code Staten Island or promo code Billups. Thank you.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  It's filled with wooden fences.

• 1:07:48Speaker 03

  Yes. Nice and comfy.

• 1:07:51Speaker 04

  The new Helix horse meat mattress. Filled with a whole horse.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  It's one of a kind.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  Listen, why did we shoot it? We don't know, but we stuffed it in some felt. Now you're gonna felt a good night's sleep.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  So Staten Islanders are now refusing to serve in the loyalist militia and they go further.

• 1:08:11Speaker 04

  What's their problem?

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Some are passing the Americans' information about the strength and condition of British troops. A private complained that the residents were spying for the enemy, ambushing patrols and taking every opportunity to shoot at the soldiers of the garrison.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  So.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  You're not on the same side anymore.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  It's pretty clear.

• 1:08:33Speaker 04

  It, it feels like it's turned.

• 1:08:34Speaker 03

  It feels like when they're actually shooting at you.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  I'm starting to understand how Staten Island became a part of New York.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  Uh, the British had had enough and they evacuated Staten Island on December 3rd, 1783.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  We've all done it.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  Residents came down to the shore to watch the fleet go. One wrote, quote, "We are very boisterous in our demonstrations of joy. We clapped our hands, we waved our hats, we sprang into the air, and some few who had brought muskets with them fired a feu de joy." Feu de joy?

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  I had no idea.

• 1:09:10Speaker 03

  Uh, a few others, in the exuberance of their gladness, indulged in gestures which, though very expressive, were neither polite nor judicious.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  The old finger.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  One guy from Philly ate horse poop to celebrate and everyone felt pretty weird about it. Uh, that is so funny to listen to how they, uh, wrote about euphoria.

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  Boisterous, demonstrations of boisterous joy.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  There were demonstrations of boisterous joy. We were waving our hats. A few gentlemen shot muskets. Hey, hey, remember, we have nothing.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Some people left some sleds on the islands, but other than that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  Some people didn't realize it was the spring and tried to sled to the island. This was great, I shot a horse. Why? What do we have? Woo!

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  Nobody knows how many loyalists left with the fleet, but the island came out of the war with more people than when it started.

• 1:10:07Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Two hundred, 2084-7, and it was now 3,835. So they gained a thousand people.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, and Colonel Christopher Billip left, and in September 1783, he filed his claim in London.

• 1:10:24Speaker 04

  His claim?

• 1:10:26Speaker 03

  For losses, uh, from incursions.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  One hat. Three good night sleeps.

• 1:10:34Speaker 04

  My mommy gave me that hat. One yoga mat and blocks. Wow.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  Horse, obviously.

• 1:10:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  That was a tough one.

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  Unnecessarily.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  That hurt.

• 1:10:48Speaker 03

  Okay, so losses from the incursions of the enemy, 1,500 pounds, losses.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Wait, I thought they would say it was valued at 944 pounds, didn't you say? Where is that inflation?

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  That losses, losses of the ice, uh, of losses of the ice in one night, 944 pounds. So that's when all the people came after.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, when all the people just ran over and stole everything.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  On sleds.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, on sleds.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  Losses to the British military, 1,441 pounds, for living away from his family for seven years.

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  This is so funny.

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  1,500 pounds.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  And that was very tough. You could have just stopped. No, no, it was a tough time.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  For the forced sale of his land, 4,752 pounds. Uh, he, he bring, to prove it all, he brings deeds going all the way back to 1687. He's got orders from three generals about him having to stay there. And an American newspaper reporting on his spirited conduct in the only battle he was in. So he brings, that's his record.

• 1:11:52Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Two generals swear for him, um, his claim for loss of property entered in the commissioner's ledger is 5,171 pounds and 10 shillings.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  And that's like the rest of your life, right? Like you're, you're set.

• 1:12:07Speaker 04

  That's a nice chunk.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  Well, then they just give him 400 pounds.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  And, and they offer him 80 pounds a year, uh, I guess in a pension or whatever.

• 1:12:19Speaker 02

  They, the British are not looking good in this.

• 1:12:23Speaker 04

  No, they're not.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Maybe the revolution was a good idea.

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  For the first time ever, the British are coming out a little scared. That is crazy. All that, they're like, uh, we'll give you 490 a year. How's that sound?

• 1:12:38Speaker 02

  He all.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  Terrible.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  It's a bad deal. The entire thing.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  I gave my life up for what you were doing. Yeah, anyway, get out.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  One sentence was added to the decision, quote, "At the time, we think it is necessary to say that on his going to Nova Scotia, we mean the said allowance shall cease." So he goes to Nova Scotia, the 80, 80 pounds is over because they know his plan is to move to Nova Scotia, and when he does, he gets no more money.

• 1:13:09Speaker 04

  Does, he does move?

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. He isn't moving anyway.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  I mean, it was, it's a lot of crisscrossing. It's like, why go, why go to London from Staten Island just to ping pong right back again?

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  Right? Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 04

  That's how you don't make small talk with the decision makers. Yeah, I was thinking, Nova Scotia's pretty nice.

• 1:13:24Speaker 02

  And they're like, got it.

• 1:13:26Speaker 04

  Newtage.

• 1:13:27Speaker 03

  I mean, I, I hate flying to the East Coast, I can't imagine.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  Oh, it's your life.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  My life's been pretty much three boat rides. That's been pretty much it. Uh, or he was sleeping there.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  And a couple of months in New Jersey.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  Uh, Billip does very well in Nova Scotia. He sat in the first New Brunswick Assembly and then on the province's council by appointment of the king, and he died at St. John in 1827, aged 90, worth at least $75,000. That's a lot of money.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  That's a real.

• 1:14:03Speaker 04

  92.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  Are those Canadian dollars?

• 1:14:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, oh yeah, it's, there is a difference.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Nevermind, so it's seven dollars.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  He was a pumper.

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  Living to 90 with all that.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  That's really impressive. 90 and those, that's like, that's crazy.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Those are solid stats.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  His headstone says that his uncompromising loyalty.

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  His headstone at the end says, "Turn over for more."

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Second, second episode to follow.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  His headstone says that his uncompromising loyalty during the American Rebellion obliged him at the termination of that contest to abandon without compensation his heredity, hereditary property on Staten Island.

• 1:14:42Speaker 04

  That's what we were saying about book titles.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  The headstone is still just like bitter.

• 1:14:46Speaker 04

  And the headstone, also just like, you're like, wait, what? It's like, uh, he was a traitor.

• 1:14:50Speaker 03

  Um, Staten Island was under occupation for seven years and five months, longer than any community in America during the revolution.

• 1:14:58Speaker 04

  Wow, that is crazy.

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but at what point do they start calling it an occupation?

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Cause at first it's like. Yeah, like three years in. All right, wait, fuck this.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  No, no, no, you know what? This is bad for me.

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  All right, wait a minute. Wow, that is so, I, I, you know, that's what's so funny about this sort of stuff, at least for me, is I never think about these little wrinkles of how difficult this was to actually get done. Like, I feel like it's just like, yeah, one day it was done, and then it's, that's like, no, no, no, no. Staten Island was a traitorous island.

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  Well, and they had, like, obviously it was the right position. They were just like, we have access to the British Empire. The rocking the boat is gonna mean there's gonna be guys on sleds coming over and kidnapping, like, let's just.

• 1:15:48Speaker 04

  I mean, it's like a mini Hormuz.

• 1:15:49Speaker 03

  Well, it's almost like, uh, like, almost like medieval or, or before, like, you just think of all of a sudden the river's frozen and then all these people just running across the gravel.

• 1:16:02Speaker 04

  Sleding. Sleding.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  It was actually the invention of the ice luge.

• 1:16:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a Bob sledders.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  Um, sources, Philip Pappas, "That Ever Loyal Island, Staten Island in the American Revolution." Charles Anthan, uh, Anthan, who, who dropped, pulled a Y off there.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  Dave Anthony, so he's obviously taking issue with.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  It's personal now.

• 1:16:27Speaker 04

  Completely personal. The Y is the whole thing.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Interview notebook, Staten Island, History of Richmond County, uh, Richard Bales, History of Richmond County, uh, J.J. Klute, Annals of Staten Island, and William Davis, The Conference or Billip House, Staten Island, New York. Uh, yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  That was great.

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  That's wild.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  Now, you didn't really know any of that, which also surprises me considering.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  I did not, I didn't know anything about the Billip story. I knew about Staten Island's, uh, preferences during the American Revolution, but, but Billip is really an amazing, he's a, he's a, as they say in story terms, he's a great donkey.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, he really is.

• 1:17:12Speaker 04

  He really is.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  He really is.

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  Um, well, uh, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, this was great.

• 1:17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was a blast. Thank you, guys.

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  So, so just remind, remind everyone again where they can go, if, if, if we've wet the palate of Staten Island.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  What I need is more Staten Island stories. If you wanna hear this happen in 1989 to 1993, and, and, uh, think about it as a parable for what's going on in the country now, then you should come listen to the Staten Island Problem on Revisionist History.

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  I mean, all I was thinking reading this is like, oh, so you, you supported a king, like, sort of thing, and then, uh, then you cut shit all over?

• 1:17:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Speaker 03

  And now you're mad?

• 1:17:56Speaker 04

  And how does it?

• 1:17:57Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  How did that go over time?

• 1:17:59Speaker 03

  Interesting, yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 04

  How'd that go in the log run? Yeah, yeah. Uh, well, thank you, Ben, and, uh, and yeah, enjoy what Ben does, and you, Ben listeners, enjoy what we do.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was great. Thank you, guys. This was, this was really, really fun.

• 1:18:15Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:18:16Speaker 03

  Part one, Dishonest Conversations.

• 1:18:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  Chapter One, A Shooting Lesson. Forty minutes outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, deep in the piney woods, there is an outdoor shooting range. Nothing fancy, a winding gravel driveway, a little shed where you sign in, a series of long shooting alleys hollowed out of the side of a hill. A man named Greg Wallace drove me there one day in his SUV, a big bag of guns and equipment in the back. Wallace is a law professor and a competitive shooter, gray-haired, thoughtful, friendly. We set up cardboard targets in the shape of a man's head and torso and put on ear protection.

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  All right, we're going to start off with this one right here. This is a, it's a custom-built AR-15. It has the adjustable stock. It has a 14 and 1/2 inch barrel, but with this right here.

• 1:19:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  He handed me the gun. It was much smaller than I thought it would be and much heavier, a solid block of metal.

• 1:19:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. All right. You want to shoot it?

• 1:19:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  Okay, all right. I will, let's get you comfortable on this here. So, see if that works. Now, what you need to do is to hold it up here, okay?

• 1:19:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  He adjusted the rifle so it fit snugly against my shoulder.

• 1:19:57Speaker 05

  All right. And then you need to lean your head over a little bit where you can see with your, you keep looking with your right eye, you want to see that, you want to find the red dot in there.

• 1:20:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, I see the red dot.

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

  You see it?

• 1:20:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yep.

• 1:20:11Speaker 05

  Now, I want you to bring your left foot forward, get in that kind of boxing stance. There you go, there you go. All right, bend forward just a little bit, all right? Now, we're going, I'm going to take it off of safety. Now, once you touch that trigger, once the safety goes off, it will fire, okay?

• 1:20:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  I fired, once and then twice. I missed the target badly. Wallace stepped in and made some adjustments. My feet were in the wrong place. I had taken my eye off the target. I hadn't been prepared for the way the rifle moved after I pulled the trigger. Then I fired again, much better. Wallace gestured towards the cardboard cutout of a human torso at the end of the range, now with a neat bullet hole to the chest. He seemed pleased with my progress. He told me, "Would have put him down." Guns are the great distinctive feature of American life. No other country has such a wide variety of firearms owned by such an enormous share of its population.

• 1:21:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  For generations, Americans have struggled to make sense of this fact. If you've ever seen a bumper sticker on a gun enthusiast's car saying something like, "Guns don't kill people, people do," you'll have a sense of what the argument is about. Are guns the cause of America's ills or the symptom? In this book, we will come to a consideration of those questions in due course. But in this, the first section of The American Way of Killing, I want to focus on how dishonest this argument has become. By dishonest, I don't mean that one or both sides in the fight over guns are deliberately lying. Dishonesty comes in many more subtle flavors than that.

• 1:21:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  A conversation that starts with the best of intentions can become dishonest for any number of reasons. When either side pretends that something is consequential, when it is not. When either side avoids the right conclusion because it is too difficult. Or when either side blinds itself to the truth through laziness or indifference. The American conversation about guns is rife with these kinds of dishonesties.

• 1:22:26Speaker 00

  Michael Lewis here to tell you about my new book, Blockers, which gives you an inside look at the Trump administration and the public servants who stood in its way. These were people who were securing our most sensitive data, keeping the public safe from all sorts of threats, and engaged in life-saving scientific research, until they were told they no longer belonged. And the question to me is, if they can't survive in our government, then what does it say about us? Get Blockers only at blockers.fm.