[01] Episode I
♪ ♪ March 15, 1846 Mob in Nashville. Libel was said to be the case. Mr. Porterfield gets shot above the eye. In his third eye, perhaps. Ned Buntline, a man known for embellishing a story or two, being married to three or four women at a time, and oftentimes wrestling with the spirits of alcohol, had a way with a pen that was unrivaled by many at the time. He also was not scared to use his talent to gather like-minded people in the streets to start a war.
Since 1844, with his first attempt at a successful media outlet, Ned Bontline's Magazine, he was spreading his message of nativism, anti-abolishment, and lawful American rights through his often fictional stories, many times based on his experiences fighting in the Florida War where he served in the Navy.
Over the years, gathering a following and a name for himself until he finally strikes it big in New York City with this fictional tale, The Mysteries and Miseries of New York in 1847. This enabled him to launch a new media outlet called Ned Buntline's Own, where he would find himself on the front lines of what I like to refer to as the final years of America and the beginning of the United States.
What did you boys fight for then? Here's what. Red minute people do not know. As a young man that way I couldn't understand it fully, but I look back now and see See you, mate. Hot in it. And so what we struggled for, and that was For states rights. All states rights.
But before our friend Mr. Buntline does any of that, he must first escape from the aforementioned mob in Nashville. I'm not silly enough to believe there are any quote-unquote good guys in this story, but I will choose to remain naive and believe this man forever. As obviously flawed as he was, a true American patriot, not unlike myself. In his defense, before he shot Mr. Porterfield in his third eye, Ned pleaded with the man, slowly backing his boots down a dirt road as Porterfield took three shots at him.
Buntline, in his truly spaghetti western style he was known for, draws his pistol and relieves Mr. Porterfield of his existence on this plane via a hunk of metal through the cranium. Then everyone freaks the fuck out. The mob picks up Buntline and takes him to the courthouse for the purposes of having him in the town square, where Porterfield's brother, would come to a vengeance assembly via morph-outs through morph cramers.
Surely chaos ensues as the shots were fired. Our anti-hero and constructor of everything we know Wild West was able to break free from the mob and took refuge in the city hotel. With the entire town still pursuing the dirty rotten scoundrel, he makes his way all the way to the top of the third story of the building, no doubt looking for a place to hide, but once again finding himself cornered. I suppose feeling lucky after dodging anywhere from 12 to 22 bullets as he fleed from the mob, in his own words, quote, "Out of 23 shots, all within 10 steps, the pistols several times touched my body." He decided to jump over 40 feet out the back door of the hotel.
Early reports would state he broke his leg and he was bleeding after the fall, but he would later address this in his rebuttal to the events. I fell 47 feet, three inches, measured, on hard rocky ground, and not a bone clicked. He was, however, knocked silly by the fall and finally thrown into jail cell, hoping he would be dead by morning. Around 10:00 p.m. the next evening, it was discovered Buntline was still alive, and the mob was not done with him yet.
Being dedicated to finish the job, they broke him out of jail and drug him to the town square for the purposes of hanging a second time. Seemingly a man of honor, he did not request to live after these events had transpired, rather to be killed in a more humane way and requested to be shot in the same manner as Mr. Porterfield. He also requested a priest for his last rites, but was denied by the godless heathens on both requests, ready to hang Ned in their bloodthirsty rage.
Maybe this is the reason our Wild West cowboy was able to get away with his shenanigans in this case and many others. Denying a man God is certainly a dangerous game. The town folks were finally able to get him to the town square where they threw a rope over an awning post and strung Mr. Buntline up to die once again. But God had other plans for this man. As they started to pull the rope tight, it breaks and his body falls to the ground once again, and he is immediately picked up and thrown back into the jail cell to await his fate.
He later claims in his rebuttal that the entire mob was made up of men he used to quote unquote score in his papers. He also claimed that a friend cut the rope. pleaded for Mr. Porterfield's wife's innocence, and no proof was ever brought forward that he ever touched the woman. As a little cherry on top, he also claimed there was an antagonizer in the mob to keep stoking the fire of hate for Mr. Buntline.
You think of any event in recent history where agents were placed in a crowd to direct sheep to do sheepish things. We need to go into the Capitol. Yeah. Me either. Divine intervention or just dumb luck. It didn't really matter. E.Z.C. Judson was never charged with a crime for these events. And we will surely never know the entire truth of the situation. Later in the week, he was released from police custody and told to leave Nashville.
He finds his way to Philadelphia to lick his wounds and apparently visit his father, whom the newspapers found it necessary to point out the contrast between father and son. Ned never was one to waste time though, quickly moving back to his native-born state of New York, but more specifically this time, New York City.
Where it's all happened. Where it's all happened. Where it's all happened.
His hit book, Mysteries and Miseries, was a fictional tale with strong immigration themes, which if you know anything about Ned Buntline, you know he was not a fan of. Believing most of our country's problems could be blamed on Irish Catholic immigration. And this was a sentiment shared by many people, especially native born Americans at the time. So much so that in the 1850s an entire political party was formed around the ideas of abolishing naturalization laws being passed at the time for the purpose of cheap trick votes.
from people aligned with the lizard in the white gown and pointy hat. They were commonly referred to as the Know Nothing Party for secretive and successful political campaigns they would run, but we'll talk plenty more about them in later episodes. It seems pretty clear to me Ned Bontline and the Know Nothings were the last front line of true American patriots left over from the original revolution in 1776, before Britain once again took over via the Irish potato famine and the Civil War.
Two topics we will extensively cover in All Aboard. along with all the other strangeness that was the 1800s. A truly wild, fascinating, and mysterious time. A time we've also never been told accurate information about. A time when people were free to explore the earth, whatever shape it may be. A time when people fought for what they believed in. A time when people still valued freedom. even if it included a little hard work.
A time when gold was still money, A time when silver still meant something. A time when Britain decided once again freedom was something they simply couldn't tolerate. A time Ned Buntline felt his pen and pistol of equal money. Making a name for himself with mysteries and miseries helped him gain the capital he needed to launch his weekly magazine, Ned Buntline's Own, which was in direct competition with another newspaper you may have heard of, The New York Herald.
Founded by a Paul Bunyan type figure of the time, James Gordon Bennett. Fucking great. Well, he was actually born in Scotland. That didn't much matter to Buntline as Bennett shared many more British values than he did American. If there was one thing Buntline hated more than an Irish Catholic immigrant, It was a fucking break. or anyone living on American soil with any loyalty to the Pope or the Crown.
I happen to share these values.
A lot of New York City at the time had a problem with the British aristocracy. Much like today, America, but especially New York City in the 1840s and 1850s, was much a tale of the rich versus the poor. With the British, the embodiment of everything sophisticated, Noble. Pure. And both Irish Catholic immigrants and native-born Americans, the representation of everything wretched, vile Inexpendable.
Another unique thing about the time is that there were always more than two political parties running in any given election. There were many, many political parties that sprung up from the time of the Revolution to the Civil War. Some lasting mere months and some like the know nothing actually gaining traction and making a difference from the grassroots. But before there were only two political parties, rich people still needed effective methods of convincing one half of the poor people to kill the other half of the poor people.
This was often time done through the theater, whether it be theater played out on the very streets of New York City or in the more formal settings of the Bowery and Astor Place theaters, which is exactly where Mr. Buntline's path is about to take us. As he was finding success in New York City, the office of Ned Buntline's own was located at 2 Astor Place, where Ned would have probably been able to see the Astor Place Opera House out of his windows.
The Opera House was a place set up, in their own words, as a, quote, attraction which the ill-mannered would not have likely been too frequent. and around the highest class might gather." Or in other words, a place they might hope to keep the immigrants and native-born Americans away from. A plan that proved unsuccessful on all fronts as the tensions between Brits and natives comes to a head with the Astor Place Riot on May 10th, 1849.
A big event with a lot of murky history around it. That was no doubt fueled directly by the feud between EZC Judson and James Gordon Bennett. whom will be the subject of our next episode. Please join me for episode two as we begin to explore the British paper invasion, which established a lot of how our mainstream media is run today. Pioneered in New York City by our Scottish Paul Bunyan. The man who started out stranded and starving on the streets of Boston until one day he looked down wondering where he might pull his next meal from and he found a York shilling on the ground.
Just enough money to fill his belly and change his life. We'll be right back.