The Civil War Revealed How to Pick Winning Real Estate Sponsors | Ep 134

James
I just finished a book on the Civil War from the book was called Battle Cry of Freedom. And I think I'm still gonna maintain that George Washington was the best president, but I get it. Lincoln's pretty high up there in terms of impressiveness for the most part. And um I don't want to talk about that because I think there's so many lessons to learn about the the Civil War On the Furlo Capital Real Estate Podcast, where we dive into the intricacies of passive real estate investing. And our mission is to equip people to invest wisely, no matter what side of the battle line they're on. No, I think it's to invest wisely because there have been battles fought on our behalves that we are greatly benefiting from. And so our mission is to equip people. Did I ever say that? To invest wisely? in both property and people so that together we can build wealth in this nation, this United States, and improve housing. I'm James and this is my wife Jessi.

Jessi
Yeah, I don't know. War is kind of sad.

James
Oh, it is kind of sad.

Jessi
I don't but I don't know if I'm gonna like this episode.

James
I mean it's a part of history, so it's Definitely a part of history. And I am going to look at it from a hey, what are these things that we can learn from it in terms of From an investing standpoint, obviously we're two sides. One side won, one side did not. Why did the North, the Union, win? Whereas why did the Confederates not win? And in some cases, man, they totally should've. What happened? Sure. And it was super interesting Yes, a hundred percent there is this political slavery component to it, but man, there was this really interesting economic component to it as well that I was not fully aware of when I started reading it. And so it was really good. It's A super long book. I listened to it and um and it was really good. Felt like it was down the middle.

Jessi
And just give you a clear perspective from both. Angles?

James
Yes. That's how I felt it was very fair in that regard. Um I have I just finished this one and I have now started a new book. And it is not nearly as much down the middle. And I don't know how much how I'll I'm gonna make it.

Jessi
You have like whipped lash a little bit.

James
Well, it's just The guy's clearly coming from a bias. And I was just like, hmm, okay. Um which is really interesting because it just doesn't sound like a bias you're agreeing with. Well that which which is part of the problem. Yeah. And uh so like for example in this book, just I Small example. All the words that people wrote back in the day, they repeated, including words that I will not say on this podcast because I will instantly get canceled and YouTube will kick me off and all of the stuff. Yeah. And so, but like in the book, it's like, no, this is this is what they wrote. This is what they said. Here it is. And they presented it. Which honestly, I kind of appreciate the, hey, we're gonna respect your maturity and that you can handle.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
hearing this. Um this new book I'm reading, they do not. They and it's super weird actually. They bleep it out. It's like a weird so they include it, but they bleep it. Apparently. Strange. It's weird. I don't It's yeah. Anyways. Which I'm part of me is like this is a signaling thing as opposed to hey we just like just do a change of word.

Jessi
It's okay. Yeah.

James
But they don't want to do that. They want to let you know we've changed this. Which Anyways, yeah. I'm gonna go down the wrong track here. That's not a big a deal. So the Civil War happened uh let's see, it was eight late 1800s, like um eighteen sixty-ish, I believe, maybe early fifties. I don't remember the exact exact dates. That is the downside of listening to things. Um but I think it was early eighteen sixties. is primarily what it did. So anyways, um yeah I want to talk about what I learned from it. Really interesting book. So the first one is about um decision density And I'm going to talk about Grant versus McClellan. I'm going to throw a whole bunch of names at you. I know.

Jessi
I'm not going to keep track. I think Grant was south.

James
Nope.

Jessi
Dang, Grant was north. McClellan was south.

James
Uh both were actually North.

Jessi
For goodness sakes, Northern. I'm just not gonna guess anymore.

James
I'll help you out. No, Grant, like he was eventually a president.

Jessi
Yeah, yeah, okay.

James
That guy.

Jessi
Ulysses S. Grant.

James
Yes.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
That guy. That Grant. But he was not the first commander of the overall army. And uh we're gonna talk about that whole mess. Um but yeah so action here's here's the here's the here's the lesson is that action creates clarity um and uh waiting can just create anxiety Yes. Okay. So and this is where um decision density, which is something that we talk a lot about in real estate, is it's not like you're making one big decision, especially in property management. It's like a whole bunch of little decisions all stacked on top of each other. It's really important. So the more reps you can get, the faster the learning curve and the less guessing. So Grant, um from February 1862, he hits Fort Henry, which is down in the south, and then he hits Fort Donaldson days apart from each other. And he's going against the Confederate General Buckner. And it was interesting. Uh Buckner, he goes, Hey, let's talk about surrender and Grant's like, Yeah, unconditional and immediate surrender to which he was just like Oh, like that's not what I meant. I was looking for the like the the middle ground. Um and he becomes like He won the very first like major union battle. Um, again, still wasn't in charge of everything at the time. Um, and he became a household name overnight. But the thing is Grant was we're gonna go, we're gonna go, we're gonna go. And I'm trying to remember now I think I share the story Later on, maybe not. But let's compare this to um McClellan, who was like the first guy in charge of everything. He was great because um he commanded a massive well-drilled army of the Potomac. So he was on the East Coast Um going into Virginia. He was great in the sense that like his the guys loved him and they were all well drilled. He did a fantastic job with that.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Um But then he uh it was uh super frustrating. He would get intel about the the Confederate army and he was regularly like Just over guessing. They would like, yeah, we see like I don't know fifty thousand people in fact. Okay, so I'm gonna guess that there's a hundred thousand there. And so he was constantly being like, I need more men. We're not ready yet. We're not ready. Which The entire time he had more people than who he was going up against, but he was constantly like analysis, paralysis, never wanted to move forward, never did anything. And Lincoln was like Pulling his hair out like, dude, just do something attack. Like, we'll figure out how many people they have when we see them. And he just refused to do it. refused to move. And that was and any time a battle occurred, it was the Confederates coming to him, doing their thing, and then backing off. And he would never pursue, never go after him. Because he would even win wars. And he'd be like Like he might, for example, have a battle technically win it and then be like, well, we don't want to pursue because I think they have a whole bunch of people in reserves, then we're gonna be too tired to go after it. Oh It was like, are you kidding me? So frustrating. He just wouldn't go forward. Despite he had all the positions. Well, because I I know, right? General.

Jessi
Like you usually it's someone who takes initiative and makes decisions and moves forward.

James
Yeah, I guess that's true. That's one of the reasons why he was up at the top. And that was one of the things that Lincoln struggled with. Oh, there's also political reasons, uh at least that's probably still true today. I just don't have insights in insights to it. But Uh he was good at training this guy, which is the other frustrated like, dude.

Jessi
They were well trained.

James
They were trained. Just wouldn't use them. Wow. Oh. So Yeah. Whereas that was um when Grant finally got control over everything. It was super funny. They talk about the first battle that they had. with him in charge and it was like it was intense fighting and and he goes okay we're gonna start backing off because it was like end of the day things have happened and the soldier's like all right here we go again we're gonna back off and instead he went yeah We're headed over to the right and we're gonna end run around them. And and they were like, oh this is different. This is new. Okay, okay. And then it was, I think it was like seven nonstop days of just like boom, boom. And he just kept hammering, hammering, hammering, hammering to the point where his guys like couldn't walk anymore. Wow. And he was like, okay, all right, all right. We gotta take a break. We gotta recover. Like we're good. And that was Robert D. Lee was like, oh, this is different. Okay, all right, all right. And so um That's one of the reasons why we like Grant he took action and through that learned a ton of stuff. Learned stuff about the enemy, learned stuff about himself about his own guys. Yeah. Is super, super important.

Jessi
Definitely shows you where your limits are.

James
Yes. Also true. Yeah. And I just think there's a lot of high net worth individuals where it's like, yeah, man. It's okay. Waiting. Spend 50 grand, learn something about an investment. You have the money. You have the ability to do it. And once you do that, yeah, you can actually throw a few million dollars at it. But man, you gotta just start. You can't wait for that perfect investment. Go, oh, I need more information. I need more. I need more capital. No, you don't. You're good to go. Okay, pillar number two. Uh it's the uh the ownership versus operator gap. And this is also talking about uh Lee's genius versus the union's system. Okay. So a genius without a system. Is a point of failure. And um, so let's talk about Lee for a little bit. Robert E. Lee. Uh the dude's brilliant. Like what Also crazy. He was he was actually he was the one who Lincoln initially wanted to put in charge of the army, but he was born and raised in Virginia. And he goes, I gotta I gotta side with my homeboys. I can't like Yeah. Get it. And everyone was kind of like, oh, that's a bummer. I've got to imagine like with all the World Cup going on, there's like there's certain players who are dual citizens. Yeah. They're like, I'm gonna go play for them. And people are like Cool. That's uh okay. Yeah. And so like there was a bit of that. And you're like, no, I get it, like That's how that works and um and he was great. Uh for example in uh in Chancellorville in 1863 he figured out a way he he splits up his army to about half the size of the enemies. But because he was able to do that, he was able to outflank and then route Union forces that were again twice as big as his. And he did like he did bold tactical stuff like that all the time. As a general rule, you're like, no, you don't want to split up. You want to stay concentrated. And he was like, nah no no, we're just gonna We're gonna surprise them and confuse them. And he regularly was guessing what others would do and totally guessed right on so many occasions. Which is difficult to do like you're talking about when it's terribly hard when he was up against McClellan. Ah, he was right. Super frustrating. Yep. And um, but yeah, no, he was he was great at um figuring out. Now we're gonna contrast this to the I mean I I was In the middle of reading this book at one point I made the statement I was like, I don't know how the Union won this war. Like it was so frustrating and incompetence. But Let's talk about the Union systems. Um the Union, so okay, so the Confederacy, they have I'm trying to remember my notes here. They had this uh this ironworks um like it was a foundry to make all of their weapons. Yeah. And it was great, it was big. The union had

Jessi
Dozens of them.

James
Yeah. So they could also create uh like lots of weapons. They had a deep rail network. Like it was huge and um what was the other one? Oh, and um as a result they also had dedicated rail repair um cores.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
People who go on it like the Confederacy didn't have any of those types of resources. The um the uh the Confederate raiders at one point in time they burned the Potomac Creek Rail Bridge and Union engineers came in and they Rebuilt, it was 400 feet long, 80 feet tall, in nine days.

Jessi
Oh my word.

James
Um it was actually Lincoln actually joked about it when he saw it because he happened to go there in person. He was like, Oh, it's held up by bean poles and corn stalks. Um, which was true But so Lee he kept winning battles like over and over and over again, but he could not outproduce or outsupply the union And they eventually like they ran into a problem where these guys like they were just starving. They were out of ammunition, resupply. Fascinatingly, for uh like the union. They were just wealthier in general. And so um one of the things that led up to the war was uh Again, slavery was a thing. But one of the other problems was that in the South they grew cotton. And they're like, yeah, we got all this cotton. It's awesome. But what happened is they took the raw cotton and they shipped it up to the North, who then manufactured and processed it. And it was that manufacturing process that actually generated most of the profit and then they sold that around to the world.

Jessi
Okay.

James
And and that was part of the South was like, what the heck, man? They're getting all the money. We're the ones who were growing it and were using all this labor.

Jessi
They got paid for the raw resource.

James
But it turns out once it became a fabric, that was a lot more valuable. Yes. And and that just kind of so wild. Yeah. And that was part of the South's like, we want to get out from under this thumb. Like we want to sell the cotton directly to, say, London and have them pay us and whatever. And Um obviously didn't work out that way. Um that was actually one of their initial um hypotheses was we'll just stop sending cotton to everyone and we'll totally jam up the world economy. The North was like, no, we'll stop you for you. We'll create um blockades and stuff and just won't let you do it and we'll all be okay. And uh yeah, it was um so anyways, but that was one of those so the South, despite having all of this free labor, which that was the other one, is they for the until the very end, they're like, we're not handing our slaves guns That doesn't seem wise. So they had all these people who they couldn't enlist. Whereas the North was like, dude, like eventually they created black armies and or regiments and groups and could recruit on them and they're like, yeah, they'll fight for us. And And then if people escaped from the south and came up, they're like, yeah, hand that guy a a gun. Let's go.

Jessi
Oh my word.

James
And um so they had so at one point in time, uh, it was near the end of the war. Uh Lincoln remarked where he goes, we're actually doing better economically now than before when the war started because we've generated all this wealth because we're building guns and machineries and rail, like it's all the supporting work to help out the wars actually helped us out. And and we got people coming in. And recruiting kids, he's like, we have even more people now that we can recruit to join the war than when we started. And they already had more people to begin with. Wow. Like it was this Lincoln was like, we can do this indefinitely.

Jessi
Yeah, it was like strangely beneficial for the North.

James
It was. Whereas the South and uh how the all the fighting was in the South as well. It was the North going down to reconquer.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Um and so that was just kind of like Yeah, it became it was even though Lee was amazing, at the end of the day, it would be the equivalent of him playing with like a seven-man squad in football against an 11-man squad team with subs. And him going, I don't have any subs And it was like he was an amazing play caller. And it was great. And he was doing the quick passes and whatever and like getting around the lineman. And it was like, wow, this is amazing. But eventually he got tired. And eventually like, we're just going to start blitzing and we're just going to tackle him every single time And eventually he'll he'll stop throwing.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Like, and that was what happened. Wow. Um, so uh what that means as a takeaway as an investor is like what kind of network does does your sponsor have? What kind of network do you have? You know, if something happens to them Even if they're gonna keep going. Yeah.

Jessi
That is kind of interesting.

James
Mm-hmm. Um, I thought this was really interesting. This is what um it was union bonds versus confederate currency. So again, war starts up again. How are you gonna raise the money? And how like to pay for this thing? And so how you raise it, it decides a whole lot um about it. So the union the Treasury Secretary Chase, um he tapped a financer J. Cook to sell war bonds. I think um if you've ever seen um Was it Captain America where he's selling war bonds? Yep. Kind of like that. Just minus the Captain America part. And um so he marketed bonds directly just to everyday citizens, not just the big banks. And and um and so He he had a very broad but small investor base, which meant it was steady financing that was very durable throughout the war because he wasn't just hitting up the top ten banks.

Jessi
Okay. Yeah.

James
Yeah, yeah. Uh the s uh the North also did a lot of um They very quickly like now we're gonna start taxing stuff. Like this is how we're gonna do it. And and so by doing that, they Inflation happened, but by taking money out of the economy to pay for like they were just transferring funds around is what they were doing. Sure.

Jessi
Whereas like spread the load a little bit more.

James
Whereas in contrast, the Confederacy, they This should make sense. Uh they were having struggling with like the centralized power. They're like all these states want to be independent and do their own thing. Shocker. They didn't want to be taxed. So instead what they did was they said, Oh, we'll just start printing paper. to pay for stuff. And and they were like, and we'll just do cotton backed loans, that kind of stuff. And um and then the union obviously blockaded the the cotton like we were talking about. And the backing behind that money just evaporated. So it was I'm trying to remember the exact percentages, but I mean it was something ridiculous, like 200% inflation. Oh my god. But like year after year after year. It's just their value of the dollar just dropped. And the second that happens, you're just like, oh, this isn't like People aren't paying for stuff. It's just oh just is miserable. And part of it was the union had the money. People were willing to play ball. And so they were just transferring it whereas the the Confederate currency was just oh just bad.

Jessi
It's so strange that it can be like the exact same country and yet states are are operating independently and it creates a wildly different outcome. Yeah. I mean, that's the nature of a civil war. Like it is the same country, but It's two different groups.

James
Yeah, that's actually a little side note there that was really interesting. Um, one of Lincoln's thing is he actually refused to acknowledge that they were a separate country.

Jessi
Oh.

James
You call them rebels.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Um still part of the US.

Jessi
They are part of this nation.

James
Yes.

Jessi
A unified nation and yet.

James
Yeah. And there were other weird things where it was like They oh what was it? They wanted to send him a document or have him acknowledge something. And and he would be like, no, by me acknowledging like they were like we should have peace talks. He was like, No, by us having peace talks, it's me tacitly acknowledging that you are a separate entity. Because peace talks happens between countries.

Jessi
And that's not us. Yeah.

James
We are one country. Yeah, yeah. And he was he regularly, that was one of his, he did a great job of of keeping that frame of mind in everything. Because there were a couple times where I was like, oh, this would be pretty expedient to do. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is ultimately a trap. I get it, but we're not going to acknowledge this. Never, not a thing. Wow. Also sign up, which I thought was really interesting, is when they tracked his uh the words used in his speech. Uh when Before the Civil War, the United States was plural. So it would say the United States are going to do such and such a thing. Because it was it was It was the states. After the Civil War, it became singular. The United States is going to compete in the World Cup, the Olympics, whatever. And so it's a good thing. And then he also used to talk about um the y it was union and it was the overall union and that language slowly he's he used the word union less and less and less unless to talk about disunion Which is his referring to the South, and he started to use the word nation and then fully adopted it after the Civil War. We were no longer a union of states, we were one nation. Yeah, super interesting. They also passed a whole bunch of of laws and rules that gave the federal government significant more power and control over things and stripped the rights from states. Um and it was just this idea of trying to unify. Yeah. We're one. We're not how many? I don't know. Twenty states at the time. It's like no no no we're not twenty groups. We're not an affiliation. We're not an alliance.

Jessi
No.

James
We're all one.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Yeah. So that was definitely a mind shift. And that was that was a big thing that he contributed.

Jessi
Did did the book talk about how n like was that intentional in the way that

James
And was that just I could say everything he did was intentional.

Jessi
Was that just his brilliance and like who he was as a person or did he have like this team of writers or Speech writers or people who were Sam.

James
He just he had he had a really good clarity for what the United States needed and wanted. Interesting for him too, again, just kind of interesting side note. Uh he wasn't, he was against slavery from the beginning, but the whole emancipation proclamation thing was not something that he wanted to do at the beginning. They actually talked about it was really interesting, had it not been McClellan, but say Grant who had been in charge at the beginning, because the union had like The Confederacy were like, let's get 200,000. And the Union was like, let's get 850,000. Like it was, and what Lincoln wanted to do was like, do 200 here. 200 here, 200 here, 200 here, and let's just let's just all go at once. Let's overwhelm them. They won't know what to do, and we'll just take over.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
That's what he wanted to do. And McClellan was like, nah, I need to make sure I have enough people over here. We're not gonna do it. We're not gonna attack. Super frustrating. Yeah. But they noted that and there were a couple where it's like the Confederacy would come against him and they would just be like, we have four times as many people as you, so whatever. But then he wouldn't pursue and go after it. And they're like Had he gone after him, it would have been this war would have been over super quick. He goes, and slavery would have persisted because that wasn't on the table at the time. But as it went on, the one of the it was really interesting is like England wasn't getting involved. But part of the reason why is they were like, well, see, the South's into slavery and we're not, so I don't know if we can support that. But it wasn't the North wasn't really like saying, We're totally against slavery either. They're just like, eh, it's not for us. And so London was like, uh, we're just gonna hold out. We've got plenty of cotton reserves from other places like Egypt and India. So let's kind of see where this goes. And and part of what Lincoln did is he eventually realized, man, we gotta get people on our side and we have to be fighting for something, not just, hey, we wanna come back together. We need to turn this into a moral battle as well. And that was where he came out with the Emancipation Proclamation, which fascinatingly didn't apply to the North, it was just to the South, which people are like, you don't have control over this. But again, his mindset Lenolo, you're still part of you're still part of us, so I can make rules that impact you. Yeah. Which is really fascinating. And um And so he uh so that was part of what he did was he passed that rule and it was to bring in that moral. But like it was a few years in to Yeah, I always thought that that was one of the like

Jessi
the the instigating causes of the war.

James
Yeah, no.

Jessi
But it's actually a result correct of how how the war played out.

James
Yeah. So he um yeah, very smart, tactical, purposeful guy. And that was one they talked about. He actually wrote it A while ago, and then he waited until there was a union victory before releasing it because he wanted to do it from a place of power. Yeah. And a win and was super frustrated because like we leak we. The union wasn't winning. The Yankees weren't winning Um, I just think about the Yankees differently now because that was often what they refer to them as. So anyways, you want to be someone who you just pay attention to where capital's coming from and the capital stack it itself and and what's forming it. That's important in the staying power for it. Uh okay, uh let's talk about um asymmetry and survivability over optimization. Okay, so winners aren't who avoid losses, winners are who can absorb them. So you win if it's it's not just about hey I never have a bad deal. When I have a bad deal, it's okay. Can I still survive and still go on? That's that's the kind of people you're looking at. So rant Um in 1864, he went on this overland campaign where he they were going over wilderness. Um Yeah, Sportsylvania, Cold Harbor, and there were brutal, brutal union casualties. And it got to the point where the press started calling Grant the butcher, but he was like, I don't care. Uh because unlike his predecessors, he didn't retreat. He just kept pushing and kept pushing. And part of it is he goes, we can reinforce. They can't. So I would I'm okay with going one for one as we will win the war of attrition, which is bad. Yeah. Um as opposed to um Sherman. Uh he was a guy in late six eighteen sixty-four, he cut his army loose to go um from its own supply lines. So that was part of the thing, like they would go down and part of the issue you'd run into is like you would be building roads and railroads and whatever. And so they would have to leave people to to protect it. So the further south you went, the less people you would have. And then Sherman came along and was like Ah, forget this. Like, we're just going for it. Oh. We're just gonna live off the land. We're gonna make it work.

Jessi
Wow.

James
And so his whole goal was to march to the sea and uh through Georgia. And the the he was actually able to do it, but the reason why is because the union had reserves and just strengthened other places. Um but it was definitely it was a gamble on his part. It was like, I think we can I think we can do this. But had it failed, like, oh, like there was no backup at all. Um So stop asking the question, hey, can we avoid every single loss? Can we avoid rising interest rates or higher vacancy rates? The question is can we survive if those things are coming? And to what extent can we? Does the deal still make sense if interest rates are half a point higher in five years. Uh if vacancy rates double or what if if rents stay flat to decline. Like those are the kind of questions that you wanna you want to stress test the deal um for. All right. Let's talk about Lincoln. It took him three years to find Grant.

Jessi
Which again like from the beginning of the war.

James
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh why? And the issue was he wasn't a fast collar of bad generals. He was slow. And given with what he had to work with, it was almost forgivable. But man, there were multiple times you're like, dude, what are you doing?

Jessi
Just fire that guy.

James
Yeah. Someone else. Which part of the problem is he wasn't out on the field. He couldn't see it. He was getting reports and it was just like telewired, yeah, tele telegraph um things. And so they were delayed and there were political things and it just it was super hard. Yeah. McDowell was the first general. He loses the first bull run in July of 1861. And that one actually was pretty quick and easy to recall because it didn't do well. McClellan takes over. Now's the guy he built the army and he earned trust within the organization. Just not any results. Right. And then it was in Pennsylvania campaign in 1862 that again that was where he he goes to the gates of Richmond, which was the southern capital at the time but pulls back.

Jessi
You're just like, come on.

James
Um and then you had um Pope who was another general and um he got routed at the second bull run in August of eighteen sixty two and as a result with no better option, McClellan was back within back within charge. Oh my word. Oh yeah. Um and Anton I I can't say this. I can't pronounce it. Antietum. Antietum. Yeah, this was September of eighteen sixty-two.

Jessi
Mm-hmm.

James
He stops Lee. And then lets him and his battered army escape uncontested. And that's where Lincoln, he still waited two more months before removing him for good in November of 1862. Just frustrate because he didn't like he's just all of this is slow.

Jessi
And and even when he finally have a backup Like you're saying. Yeah. Someone to replace him with.

James
Yeah, he tried to and was like, uh, who was brilliant? Yes. Grant at the time was over on the west side. Um doing his thing. And he wanted to move forward, but he had to ask permission from McClellan. Well you gotta make sure you have another guys and it's gotta be perfect. And he's like, what the heck? Uh let's see, then there was uh Burnside took over, and he had a Fredericksburg disaster in December of 1862, and so he was gone within weeks, which was a pretty fast correction. Then a guy named Hooker showed up, and that was the Chancellorfield defeat, despite two to one numbers.

Jessi
Oh my word.

James
And so in May 1863, um he was gone Days before Gettysburg happened. And so then Gettysburg, Meade, takes over and he wins Gettysburg in July of 1863. They actually talked about how it was July 4th, and it was like, yeah, awesome. Um and then um he lets Lee's trapped army escape um back over the Potomac, back into Virginia, and Lincoln's like, dude, you had him. And um and that was where Lincoln actually drafted a letter where he talked about your golden opportunity is gone and I am distressed immeasurably. And he ultimately decided not to send it. There were a few of those where he would just be like What the heck, man?

Jessi
Yeah.

James
And just he would just sit on it, which again I appreciate the maturity there. Like, nah, this won't actually help him.

Jessi
Yeah, this is not going to move things forward.

James
So Meade, he keeps his command. And because there's no good replacement. And um and again, just firing someone who just won the Gettysburg doesn't look great. Yeah.

Jessi
Even though you're like, come on, man, you were so close.

James
And then finally, March 1864, Grant got command of the entire Union Army, nearly three years after So again, he was really slow, frustratingly slow, um, because he was getting everything second hand. Again, the telegrams, the dispatches, the newspapers and politics. Um he never once saw again, similar idea if he didn't see it himself. Though I did notice in the book it talked he started visiting more often. Um a few like that all the time. Yeah, battlegrounds, visiting the armies, stuff like that. Um because they talked about when they finally took over Richmond. Uh like the next day like Lincoln was there. Oh he was actually only a few miles up the road because he was checking in on Grant and how are things going? So that was that was something he changed. I didn't really like, it was a subtle thing they talked about in the book. But I was like, yeah, I think that played into it. He was like, I can't do like a I can't even think about it.

Jessi
Yeah, it was almost like it was almost like he realized like I yeah, I need first hand information.

James
Yep. And unfortunately, what he did cost extra lives. I mean a lot of people lost their lives because we had some incompetent leaders. Um again, I'm gonna say we because Ultimately one. So you want to make sure that you have more visibility than Lincoln did. You want to be able to look at track records, audit reserves, references. You just you don't want to take years to act. And I think that's that's an important lesson there. That was just really hard for him.

Jessi
And it also sounds like the source of your information is important.

James
Uh yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Well, because yeah, when you go to McClellan, like, are you ready to attack? No. They have way more. Yeah. It was kind of crazy. So um so that's the book, right? I think that the Confederacy, you could say that they had better individual talent. Um, Robert Ali specifically, even the guys who were fighting had a really good reason to fight. But ultimately and we and we've seen this in the past, right? Like that was back in the C uh uh not the Civil War. Um In the independence. Man, London was awesome. You know, like they had the best military in the world and could squash us. And they just didn't have the drive. Where it's like, no, we do. We're here to fight. And that was part of the logic is like, man, if we don't die on the battlefield, they're gonna kill us anyways. So Might as well keep going.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
But at the end of the day, we weren't crossing the Atlantic Ocean and uh the Union just had a better army, had better infrastructure, better financing. And ultimately Lincoln was a better leader than I can't remember the president's name for the Confederate. Uh Lincoln just, yeah, he was better. And so Union ended up winning. I thought it was really interesting the way the book ended, and then it had an epilogue, but the the the big part of the book It ended with him giving a speech after having one, taking it over, starting the Reconstruction process and and him talking about uh slavery and blacks and their rights and And a bunch of the Southwishers like, Oh my gosh, you you know, he's he loves black people Which like, okay. Um And people were distraught over it and they went, Yeah, and one of those guys who was super distraught over Lincoln's message and him believing like, Oh my gosh, blacks are gonna get the vote here sooner rather than later was um Wilkes Booth and end of the book. Like it's coming. And then it had an epilogue where it it didn't go into the details of it, but it talked about how like, yeah, he was assassinated and things were crazy. afterwards for a bit, just like but you know, constant news happening. Yeah. And um there are definitely similarities to things we see and hear today, politically speaking. But uh It reminds me very much of our last presidential election where there was remember there's like a two-month time period in there where things were nuts. Yeah, it was like every day. It kind of the the sense I got from the book is it had that kind of feel to it. We're like, whoa, all right Yeah. Uh but yeah. This is happening. Yeah, pretty crazy. Um it would be interesting to see what the world would be like had the Confederate won, but slavery would still be a thing.

Jessi
What yeah. Crazy. Like I'm trying to like have this distinction in my brain of like it was almost The original dissension or or conflict was like the working class and the elites. And it was like this this working class going like, hey, wait, you're Like we feel like we're doing all the work down here, but we're not getting the shared profit over all of it.

James
I don't know about elites. Like that was the other thing. It's like the manufacturing well part of it was the manufacturers they didn't have free labor And they had to pay people.

Jessi
So they had to charge more.

James
Which was interesting. And they also had to work because they were like, I'm gonna get fired otherwise and I won't get paid. Whereas in the South they're like, I just gotta do enough not to get beat Like that was the bar. Super wild. And and so as a result, yes, the manufacturers did charge more and then they spread the wealth out. And so all these laborers now had money to go do things and to buy things and to it just kind of And help sell s like it was it was very different. And and then it was this philosophical debate of like who's better. And the North was obviously like, look, we get better output because we pay our people voluntary. Yeah Whereas like down the south, it's not. And it again it's it's an economic argument. Yeah. It wasn't a human's rights argument. Yeah, it didn't start as a human rights argument. Yeah. Yeah. Though obviously people use things like the Bible to defend both sides. Yeah. And um, which was interesting. Another topic. Yeah. But again, I think there's a lot of like just really good lessons to take from it from an investing standpoint. Um if you're going to war, which in a lot of times investing, you know, that's there's a reason why battles are often used as um you'll hear battle terms, especially in business. Yeah. Where um yeah, it's just whatever you adopt battle plans or battle language lingo when you're doing stuff. So Um I get it because there's there's a lot of things to go on. Uh great book I love is extreme ownership. They actually like each chapter is broken into two parts. The first part is here's this battle we had in Ramada. And then here's the lesson to learn in business. Like yeah, so they they overlap really well. So it was a good book. It was good book. It was interesting. I'm now I'm reading another book. It's about the civil war, but it is more like the political side of things, which is it's all right. Um and then uh and then I'm moving into to the next phase of things. I think I got the Bright brothers on the on the horizon. That's a different era.

Jessi
Yeah.

James
Yeah, right?

Jessi
Wow.

James
That's yeah, civil war's over, but we're not hitting World War One yet.

Jessi
Super interesting too, like if you if you think about our current context, it's like, okay, I could definitely see the the underlyings of like civil dissension or not w full out war, but like there's there's like at least two parties that you know war against each other and have uh different different feelings, different viewpoints, all of that kind of stuff. So it's like, eh. One question is, could we ever get to civil war? But then you have this other overlying like Oh my gosh, there's technology advancing and like where is that gonna end up?

James
And there's huge progress forward.

Jessi
So having those those two things and looking at the history of it too is like, wow. It's fascinating.

James
It is.

Jessi
Could repeat itself. Let's hope we don't have civil war though.

James
No, we don't. That would be that'd be bad. I I just don't know how it actually happened if you did it like physically. How would you make that happen?

Jessi
Because I don't know. It just seems like it would be chaos.

James
I yeah.

Jessi
You know, with all the we have like the right to bear arms and everything, like I don't know how you would manage that or own it.

James
But it was like there was a unity there. That was very geographical. Sure. I don't think we have that same thing.

Jessi
Yeah, we don't.

James
So that makes it harder, I think. Oh no. Okay. A few weeks ago we talked a little bit more about that. If you haven't listened to that one, we're talking about the 4th of July. We'll go a little bit deeper into it. You should check that out. And if you would like to check out what it would look like to invest with us You can do that same thing at Furlo.com and you can repeat some of our past successes with us. It'd be great. So with that, thanks for listening. Have a great day.