RPTM Podcast Episode Fifty-Three: Ten Percent plan, Race Riots, Sand Creek, and the Freedmen’s Bureau

The Sea Beast is a 2022 computer-animated adventure film directed by Chris Williams. If you haven't seen it, don't fret. You most likely do not have young children. The film regales the viewers will a fictional society stuck in perpetual war with the beasts of the sea—and the freelance Hunters of the sea are the saints upon which the mythology of the empire is constructed. The flagship and crew are soon to be superseded by a governmental operation. If the hunters bring the massive red sea monster (i.e., Moby Dick) to the monarchs before the new agency, they will keep their governmental backing. The crew must face off and defeat the corrupt government in this mission. In the third act, it is revealed that the war is a farce that perpetuates the ruling class status quo: the beasts aren't varmints, and humans and sea monsters can co-exist with humans.
 
The main character is a stowaway orphan girl obsessed with the heroes of these hunter's vessels. She is fixated on the propaganda created by the empire to maintain and eternalize the myth of the forever war. Her fixation derives from a history book that celebrates the hunters of the past. After being isolated from the crew, the girl discovers the peaceful nature of these leviathans—but she can't seem to forgive that the book lied to her. She gives an elegant speech to the monarchs and citizens at the film's climax. 

 "Question the history books" is a critical ethical lesson. But "Which books" is a question we should ask ourselves. The protagonist announces: "Our books, our history is a lie... it was just a story. A story told by them." We need to ask ourselves who "them" is. A more common idiom is "to the victor goes the spoils," usually implying that whatever side wins a war ends up with the financial resources and riches from their conquered enemies. But as historians, we need to remember that part of the victory is laying claim to the history book. We are writing the wrongs as a means to an end.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The Ten-Percent Plan, specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters swore an Oath Of Allegiance to the Union. 
• The Detroit race riot of 1863 began due to turmoil among the working class related to bigotry and the military draft and intensified after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. 
• The Wade–Davis Bill of 1864 was a bill to guarantee to certain States whose governments had been usurped or overthrown a republican form of government, suggested for the Reconstruction of the South. The bill made re-admittance to the Union for former Confederate states contingent on a majority in each ex-Confederate state to take the Ironclad Oath to the effect they had never in the past helped the Confederacy. 
• The Sand Creek massacre was a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the US Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when the Third Colorado Cavalry attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating Native American people. 
• The Freedmen's Bureau was established in 1865 by Congress to help millions of formerly enslaved Black people and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. The Freedmen's Bureau provided food, housing, and medical aid, established schools, and offered legal assistance. ​

​CHAPTERS
0:37 Introduction
3:03 Ten Percent Plan
 6:13  Detroit Race Riot
13:03 Wade Davis Bill
18:04 Sand Creek Massacre
22:54 Chinese Workers
26:01 Freedman's Bureau
31:18 Outro

RESOURCES
Ten percent plan
The Battle Over Reconstruction
Detroit race riot of 1863
Wade–Davis Bill
Sand Creek massacre
Sand Creek Massacre 150th Remembrance
Building the Transcontinental Railroad: How 20,000 Chinese Immigrants Made It Happen
Freedmen’s Bureau