The Even Shorter History
We now present: TESH narrated by masked-phantom and Kyrinn
Chapter 8 ~ brought to you by masked-phantom
It was the year 1816, and James Monroe had just been elected into office. What people didn’t know, was that he was actually Buddha in disguise! Because of his awesome Buddha-ness, there were eight years of political tranquility and happiness and good feelings and Zen and whatnot and everyone was holding hands and singing kum-by-ya and making lots of babies.
Except, amids the holding hands, Zen, kum-by-ya singing, and baby making, the North and South were (of course) at each other’s throats. Please observe:
North: TARRIFS ARE GOOD!!! They protect native industries!!!
South: TARRIFS ARE BAD!!! They make export trade expensive!!!
North: Well I think you suck!
South: Well your mom!
North: YOU DID NOT JUST GO THERE!!!
South: WHAT OF IT, YOU PURITAN?!
North: Rawr! Just you wait! Just you wait!
So the second Bank of the United States was created by Congress. And, well, it didn’t really help at all… nope… So in the year 1819 everybody panicked because some chicken had told them that the sky was falling. Then a year later, some people got together and said, “hmm… internal improvements?” but they didn’t actually do anything.
Oh, and slavery! There were slaves. And thus there was more North and South bickering:
North: SLAVERY IS BAD!!! It’s like… uh… immoral! Yeah!!! And it means you get more damn votes!!!
South: SLAVERY IS GOOD!!! We’re, uhm… providing for the slaves… because… they’re, ah… stupid! Exactly! Like pets! And… and and and… we’re Christianizing them… uhhhh…. And it’s good for the economy!!! AND WE GET MORE VOTES!!!
West: Hm… I sympathize with the South.
North: Rawr! Just you wait! Just you wait!
Then one day, John Quincy Adams was walking down the street, and some random dude was like, “WHOA! You look just like your dad!! You should totally become, like, Monroe’s secretary of state and then run for president after that!!!” And JAQ (because John Quincy Adams is too long to type and pronouncing ‘JQA’ is impossible, while ‘JAQ’ would sound like ‘Jack’ which, remember kids, is not his actual name…) took a moment to ponder the random dude’s words, and then, placing his hands on his hips, declared, “Yes! I shall!”
However, unbeknown to everyone, the ‘Little Magician’ Martin Van Buren was plotting an epic scheme of grand proportion!!!! Or you know, a not-so-epic scheme of not-so-grand proportion… And yes, he really was nicknamed the ‘little magician.’ No joke.
And then came along Missouri! Yay! Actually, it was more like ‘********’ but we’ll say ‘yay’ instead because it’s less vulgar. Anyways, the North was like, “no slaves in Missouri!” while the south said, “yes slaves in Missouri!” and they were getting NOWHERE until some important person that I can’t remember came around and proposed a compromise. Some Olympic runners would take giant sharpies and run along the line of 36°30’ north latitude, leaving a permanent line as they went. Below this line there would be slaves, and above this line there would be no slaves… aside from Missouri. Everyone was like, “good enough for now!” except they realized this would take a LOT of sharpies and the runners would probably get high, and then the line would be all squiggly, so they used crayola crayons instead. So Missouri entered as a slave state, and Maine entered as a free state, and all was well. Sort of.
After all this, there was the presidential election of 1824. Jackson, Crawford, Adams (or JAQ), and Clay were the candidates. Jackson got most all of the popular and electoral votes, but he didn’t have a majority in the electoral college. Because of this, the election was decided in the House of Representatives, and Clay, not wanting Jackson to win, suggested that they all have a dance-off. Poor Jackson, he couldn’t dance, so JAQ totally pwned him with his awesome skillz. When JAQ won, he was like, “Clay! You are the awesomeness! You should be my secretary of state!” This pissed Jackson off so he flailed around and screamed “CORRUPT BARGAIN! CORRUPT BARGAIN! CORRUPT BARGAIN! I WANT PIE! CORRUPT BARGAIN!”
JAQ just tilted his head to the side, and in the words of his father, said, “WTF?” and then started his term where he took on a Hamiltonian view with federal programs of internal improvements, national universities, and other cool things. Unfortunately, the guy was politically inept.
Now let’s go back, I dunno, 20, 30 years or so. Samuel Slater had set up the first effective factory, and Eli Whitney designed the cotton gin and manufactured rifles with interchangeable parts, and Oliver Evans improved flour milling with machines, and John Fitch built a steam boat. Cool beans. Now we could successfully pollute the air, make slavery even more popular, shoot people, help machines take over the world, and pollute the air some more while transporting our goods. And all in a time-efficient manner!!! NO WAI! biggrin
How did all this happen? We stole ideas from the British using ninja spies!!! Yay!
Okay, so because cotton was so popular, it was shipped on steamboats, which were time and cost efficient. Or something like that. Because steamboats were popular, the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans became awesome important places of trade. Also, the Erie Canal was built to link the Hudson River to the Great lakes, which cost a lot of money but earned even more. This was finished in 1825 (and woot, our little back-track in time is done!) and New York became the national metropolis. Woot for business!
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