The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History

by Adam Selzer

  Zachary P. Taylor with his pants pulled allll the way up, like a big boy.

  During the election, his party’s motto was “We Polked You in 1844, We’ll Pierce You in 1852!”28 Ew. We here at the Smart Aleck’s Guide think that’s probably the worst slogan ever. It must have worked, though, because Pierce won twenty-seven of the thirty-one states that were in the union at the time. By most accounts, Pierce was a decent guy once you got to know him, but that doesn’t always translate to being a decent president.

  Voters were hypnotized by Pierce’s amber waves of hair.

  At the time Pierce took office, things were fairly calm, slavery-wise; various compromises were keeping people from making too much noise about the issue. But with Pierce came the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the fights started anew. His support for the act didn’t make Pierce as popular as he’d hoped in the end, as the country was thrown headlong into new disagreements over slavery. Eventually, he became so unpopular that his own party decided not to nominate him for a second term, no matter how handsome he was.

  Pierce’s opponent in 1852, Winfield Scott, is possibly the only guy in history who looks even sadder than lonely ol’ Charles Carroll in photos. He was nicknamed Old Fuss and Feathers.

  Next in office was James Buchanan, who is at least moderately memorable for his cowardly (albeit politically shrewd) refusal to take a stance on slavery. He is also remembered for being the only president never to marry, and, partly because of speculation as to why he never married, most articles about him today seem to focus not on his presidency (which is generally thought to be one of the two or three worst yet) but on the theory that he may have been gay. Certainly he was rumored to be at the time: he referred to his live-in companion, William Rufus King (Pierce’s vice president), as his better half, and at least a couple of people referred to King as Mrs. Buchanan.

  As disappointed as historians are with Buchanan, he appears to have been just as disappointed in himself, judging by this dour portrait.

  People will never agree on whether or not Buchanan was gay, of course, but they do generally agree that he was one of the worst presidents, largely because he chose to ignore slavery at a time when arguments about the issue were getting more and more violent. But from another point of view, Buchanan’s main job in office was the same as that of the last few presidents who had come before him: delaying the Civil War. He did a halfway decent job of it; states didn’t begin to secede until the last months of his term, after his successor, Abe Lincoln, had been elected. That Buchanan couldn’t talk these states out of leaving during his last months in office is probably his biggest failure.

  SOME OF THE STUFF WE MISSED

  James Madison (above): The principal author of the Constitution, later a forgettable president in the relatively slow era between Jefferson and Jackson.

  Bleeding Kansas: A warm-up for the Civil War in which pro-and anti-slavery forces fought to make Kansas a slave state.

  The Creek War: A war with the Creek Nation (a Native American tribe) that was started in part over the symbolic significance of an earthquake.

  Nat Turner: A slave who led a rebellion somewhat more successful than John Brown’s.

  Alexis de Tocqueville: A French traveler who wrote a book about Americans and their habits. His verdict: they stank.

  The Great Triumvirate: Three senators (Henry Clay, James Calhoun, and Daniel Webster) who dominated the Senate in the 1830s and 1840s.

  Fries’s Rebellion: A revolt against taxes that involved farmers attacking tax collectors with hot water. John Fries was sentenced to hang for treason but was pardoned by John Adams.

  The Era of Good Feelings: The period from 1815 to 1824, when the major political parties didn’t fight much and when foreign affairs could be pretty well ignored since there were no wars.

  The Monroe Doctrine: An 1823 doctrine that stated that Europe shouldn’t colonize or interfere with newly independent nations in the Western Hemisphere and that the United States would put up a fight if they tried.

  The Tariff of 1828: Raised the price of goods imported from Europe to help keep American products more affordable, and set off decades of boring tariff disputes.

  END-OF-CHAPTER QUESTIONS

  MULTIPLE CHOICE

  1. Who was better-looking, Lewis or Clark?

  Lewis.

  Clark.

  Your mom.

  (ANSWER: C.)

  2. Who would you have voted for in 1800?

  Adams.

  Jefferson.

  Burr.

  William Henry Harrison.

  (ANSWER: IF YOU SAID A, YOU’RE A FEDERALIST. YOU BELIEVE IN GOVERNMENT BY THE RICH (YA BIG JERK). IF YOU SAID B OR C, YOU’RE A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICAN—YOU EXIST MAINLY TO OPPOSE THE FEDERALISTS. IF YOU SAID D, YOU DIDN’T READ THIS CHAPTER VERY CAREFULLY. EITHER THAT OR YOU LIKE YOUR POLITICIANS LIKE YOU LIKE YOUR GOLDFISH: DEAD AFTER ABOUT A MONTH.)

  3. What was “54-40 or Fight”?

  A slogan popular with people who wanted to absorb Oregon into the United States.

  A football play developed by Knute Rockne.

  A popular tavern song about whoring and fighting.

  Plan B for getting that stupid locker open.

  (ANSWER: A. BUT WE DIDN’T COVER THAT. HAVE YOU BEEN READING OTHER HISTORY BOOKS BEHIND OUR BACK? ‘CAUSE WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!)

  4. Which of the following presidents had the most impact on the future of America?

  Harrison.

  Tyler.

  Fillmore.

  Polk.

  (ANSWER: OH, LET’S SAY … A. HIS WISDOM IS REFLECTED EVERY TIME SOMEONE SAYS, “PUT ON A COAT, OR YOU’LL CATCH YOUR DEATH!” ACTUALLY, THAT’S NOT HIS WISDOM, IT’S JUST WHAT WE LEARNED FROM HIS STUPIDITY.)

  5. What was the cause of the War of 1812?

  Boredom.

  A need for a new catchy tune.

  A pickle tariff.

  That’s no pickle tariff, that’s my wife!

  (ANSWER: A, FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES. PEOPLE WERE JUST KINDA SNIFFING AROUND FOR A GOOD FIGHT WITH THE BRITISH. WE DID GET A CATCHY TUNE OUT OF IT, THOUGH—“THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS,” WHICH WON JOHNNY HORTON, THE SINGIN’ HISTORY TEACHER, A GRAMMY IN 1959. WE ALSO GOT “THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER,” OF COURSE, BUT WE HERE AT THE SMART ALECK’S GUIDE DON’T CONSIDER THAT VERY CATCHY.)

  ESSAY

  Today, there are people called isolationists who believe that America should leave the rest of the world alone, mind our own business, and not let anyone new into the country. Many of them favor building a wall to keep Mexicans out. But given that the Mexican-American War was about the least isolationist thing we’ve ever done, shouldn’t they instead favor giving Texas back to Mexico? Why or why not? Note: “Because it’s inconvenient” is not a very good answer.

  MNEMONICS!

  Need a way to remember that the post—Van Buren presidents were Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan?

  Just remember: H.T.P.T.F.P.B. To make it easier, you can come up with a sentence using words that start with those letters. A couple of examples:

  HAVE THIS PICKLE,

  THEN FIVE PICKLES, BUDDY!

  OR

  HAVE TO PUNCH THAT FANCY-PANTS BUTLER!

  (Note: As far as remembering that Tyler comes before Taylor, or Polk before Pierce, you’re on your own, suckers.)

  ASSIGNMENT ALERT!

  Write a song about mouldering. We may post a few of them on www.smartalecksguide.com!

  22 Except in hockey, of course. And curling. Those Canadians are fierce at curling.

  23 Well, this is one theory as to where the Uncle Sam thing started. There are many more.

  24 Lots of guys who didn’t quite make it to 50 percent of the popular vote have won elections. Lincoln won with only 40 percent in 1860. Hayes got 48 percent in 1876—his opponent actually got 51 percent and still lost! Grover Cleveland got 46 percent in 1892. Wilson got 42 percent in 1912 and 49 percent in 1916. Truman got 49 percent in 1948. Richard Ni
xon won with 43 percent in 1968, Bill Clinton got 43 percent in 1992 (and 49 percent in 1996), and George W. Bush got 48 percent in 2000. See The Smart Aleck’s Guide to How Badly Andrew Jackson and Samuel Tilden Got Screwed.

  25 Some say this was just what he wished he’d said. The story that he said it that night wasn’t written down for thirty years, but he certainly said it over and over in the following months.

  26 And many only think they recognize it. They’re thinking of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, a 1974 Disney featurette.

  27 This is one of the more common theories, anyway, though the term existed before then. The exact origin of the word “OK” is sort of a holy grail for linguists.

  28 Everyone loves to complain about how campaigns rely on focus groups to pick their slogans these days, but at least they keep us from having to hear slogans this bad. See The Smart Aleck’s Guide to Sloganeering.

  “When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares it is his duty.”

  —George Bernard Shaw

  “Duty is the sublimest word in the English language.”

  —Robert E. Lee

  “The Civil War was like America’s puberty. The country was growing rapidly, things were getting hairy down South, and blood was starting to flow down there.”29

  —Brian Eddlebeck, a real historian

  INTRODUCTION

  You might not want to listen to anything your teacher—or anyone else—says about the Civil War. Historians don’t agree on anything about it, and many of them get really upset if you don’t agree with their take on the whole thing. In fact, you’re about as likely to get in a fight talking about the Civil War as you would have been fighting in it. When we say the fundamental cause was slavery, some people are going to shout and call us revisionists, which is how historians insult each other. On the other hand, if we said it wasn’t about slavery, historians who say it was would call us revisionists. See how this works?

  History is usually written by the winners, but in the case of the Civil War, a lot of it has been written by the losers. These days, you hear people say that Robert E. Lee was the best general, or even the best human, who ever lived (he wasn’t), and that Grant, the most famous Northern general, was a drunken jerk and a fan of slavery (he wasn’t, though he didn’t turn out to be much of a president). You might even hear that slavery was only a minor reason for the war, if it was a cause at all. In fact, it was absolutely the primary cause of the conflict.

  However, there were many factors that combined to cause the Civil War. No war is caused by just one thing, and the North began fighting in the war to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. The South was worried that it no longer mattered in the country—the election of Lincoln showed that a person could become president without a single vote from the South, which had Southerners understandably worried about what would happen to the Southern states in the future.

  All of this was made more complicated by the fact that many of the soldiers probably didn’t know exactly what they were fighting for in the first place. Many, if not most, just joined whichever army was forming closest to their house. Different soldiers fought for different reasons—there were “good guys” and “bad guys” on both sides.

  And the reasons for fighting continued to change over the course of the war. The Union didn’t start out fighting to end slavery (at least not specifically), but it soon became an official goal of the war. And by the end of the whole thing, the Confederacy might have been willing to give up on slavery if it meant that they could be recognized as an independent country by England and France. It’s hard to imagine now, but in those days the South was really desperate for approval from the French.

  We can at least safely say that whatever reasons each soldier had for fighting, the result of the war was that slavery was abolished. After years and years during which presidents had to avoid the issue, lest they lose all support from Southern voters, all the tension between the two regions finally boiled over into a war that lasted four years, pitted brother against brother, and cost six hundred thousand lives. If the war hadn’t happened, slavery would probably have stayed legal for decades; most of the presidents who came right after Lincoln were as forgettable as the ones who came right before him. It’s doubtful that any of them would have had the stones to take on slavery.

  Can you figure out which Confederate soldier was fighting for slavery, and which was fighting for independence or states’ rights? Before you answer, get ready to duck. No matter what you say, some historian is probably going to throw a folding chair at you.

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Born to two uneducated farmers in a one-room log cabin, Abraham Lincoln grew up to be on the five-dollar bill and the penny. While some of the things he said about race would sound pretty backward and racist today, in his own day they were considered dangerously liberal.

  “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

  STUPID HATS OF HISTORY:

  THE STOVEPIPE

  Stovepipe hats, more refined, right-angled versions of the capotain, were useful if you needed to disguise yourself as a chimney, and doubled as a convenient place to hide stuff!

  Entering politics at the age of twenty-three, he served several terms in the Illinois state legislature. In the 1840s, he served in the House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party, but his vocal opposition to the Mexican-American War (which was thought of as a really keen war by many people at the time) ruined his career. Then as now, speaking against any war could get you accused of being “unpatriotic.” He ran for the Senate in 1858 against Stephen Douglas and lost, but the reputation he built in the process led him to win the Republican Party nomination and the presidency in 1860.

  While he claimed to have no plans to end slavery (not because he liked it but because he didn’t think he had the power to do so; it’s not like the president could just snap his fingers and make slavery disappear), his personal antislavery sentiments were well known. This made him so hated in the South that he wasn’t even on the ballot in most Southern states in the election, and won only two out of 996 counties in the Southern states in which he was on the ballot. Overall, he won only 40 percent of the popular vote—but he got a lot more votes than anyone else who ran that year.

  Even before he was inaugurated, there were assassination attempts against Lincoln. The threats were so serious that he had to sneak into his own inauguration.

  INTERESTING FACT

  Not all Southerners favored secession; in fact, some historians hold that most Southern citizens didn’t want their states to leave the Union or go to war. It was the politicians who made the decisions, and they never put it to a vote among the electorate.

  THE STATES BEGIN TO SECEDE

  Before all the westward expansion, there had been a decent balance between slave states and nonslave states. But as more nonslave states were admitted to the Union, slave states were worried about the future.

  Furthermore, the arguments between pro-and antislavery forces had been getting more and more violent. In addition to the John Brown and Charles Sumner fiascos, when Kansas was admitted to the Union, proslavery militias stormed in to establish Kansas as a slave state in battles that became sort of a warm-up for the war. People in the South were fearful that another guy like John Brown might have better luck in starting slave revolts, and state militias began forming to protect slaveholders from their slaves.

  THE CONFEDERATE CONSTITUTION

  In early 1861, the Confederate government quickly drew up their own constitution. For the most part, they just used the same one as the Union, with only a few major changes. Funnily enough, given all the fuss you hear about states’ rights, they didn’t actually give the states more rights. Arguably, the states were even less powerful than they had been when they were in the United States.

  They did include two things the writers of the U.S. Constitution didn’
t: they mentioned God (perhaps hoping to get on the big guy’s good side) and included the following: “Article I, Section 9:4: No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”

  The Confederate cabinet: they didn’t last long as a country, but they knew a thing or two about lookin’ good. There are plenty of stereotypes about hillbilly plantation owners, but most Southern landowners were actually refined and highly educated. After all, their light workload around the plantation left them plenty of time for studying.

  The election of Lincoln, who said the nation could not remain “half slave and half free,” made the future seem even bleaker to the slave states. Lincoln didn’t say he was going to end slavery, but his election made it look like abolition could be waiting around the corner and there wasn’t much they could do to stop it. South Carolina announced that they were seceding from the Union only days after Lincoln was elected. Others followed close behind.

  Supposedly, on his way out the door, President Buchanan shook hands with the newly inaugurated President Lincoln and said, “My dear sir, if you are as happy on entering the White House as I shall feel [on leaving it], you are a happy man indeed.” But Lincoln wasn’t a happy man, and the fact that several states responded to his election by dropping out of the country can’t have been good for the poor guy’s self-esteem.