Giuseppe Garibaldi turned down a Union command from Abraham Lincoln because the war was not yet being fought explicitly to abolish slavery. This episode traces the Hero of Two Worlds from his birth in Nice and his recruitment into Mazzini’s Young Italy to a death sentence that drove him into a 14-year exile in South America. There he developed his guerrilla tactics, fought alongside his wife Anita, and adopted red shirts that were originally made for slaughterhouse workers.

We follow his defense of the Roman Republic in 1849, the tragic retreat in which Anita died, his time making candles on Staten Island, and his difficult decision to fight for King Victor Emmanuel II. We break down the Expedition of the Thousand, the uphill charge at Calatafimi, and the handshake at Teano where he gave away the south of Italy, along with his later internationalism and his defense of the new French Republic in 1870.

• How exile in Brazil and Uruguay turned a sailor into a master of asymmetric warfare
• The supply-chain accident behind the iconic red shirts
• Why the doomed defense of Rome became a powerful myth that helped unify Italy
• Using agricultural terraces at Calatafimi and the conquest of Sicily and Naples with roughly a thousand volunteers
• Giving up republican purity for unification, and what Garibaldi’s compromise says about ideals and pragmatism