Drafting the Confederate Constitution (Chapter 4 supplemental article)

In 1861, big shots from the newly formed Confederate States of America met in Montgomery to draft a provisional constitution for their new country. Only sight changes were made between their provisional draft and the final one.

Not many changes were made to the original United States constitution - Jefferson Davis gave a speech saying that the new constitution was what the founding fathers intended, and differed only in that it made their original intention more explicit (in a very good example of the still-common fallacy of thinking that the original founding fathers all agreed on anything).


Of particular note is the addition of a line to the pre-amble which invokes the aid of "Almighty God," a concept left out of the United States constitution altogether. Confederate archives that were captured by the Union in 1865 give an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how this was added.

After some debate about whether to call the new country The Confederate States of America or The Republic of Washington, a motion was made to ad "invoking the aid of Almighty God" into the pre-amble. One man objected and wanted the line removed. Another wanted it changed to "invoking the aid of almighty God, who is the God of the Bible and the rightful source of all power and government." But, since this might imply that Christianity was the official religion, Judah P. Benjamin, the most notable Jewish confederate big shot, objected. The short "almighty God" line was kept; the longer one and more explicit one was left out.

There was also an attempt by either Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, the be-mulleted gent above, or his cousin Thomas Howell Cobb, the guy below who looks like a larger, fresh-from-the-fight clone of Stephan Douglas (sources aren't clear about which Cobb it was), to add a line stating "No man shall be compelled to do civil duty on Sunday."

 It was quickly rejected, so whichever Cobb it was tried to insert a law about at least banning the delivery of mail on Sunday.  A guy from Louisiana said that the people of Louisiana believed that people could worship God any day they wanted, so Louisiana should be exempt from that law. Texas wanted out too, and in the end the whole line was removed.

Interestingly, the provisional authors voted down a rule saying that all new states joining the Confederacy had to allow slavery. However, since the final draft very explicitly protected the right to own slaves, such a rule would have been unnecessary. A non-slave state could have joined, but it would have immediately become a slave state.

For all the talk you hear about "State's Rights" being a major cause, there's precious little of it in the CSA constitution, other than some lip service to the states acting in their "sovereign character." That's the impression one gets from reading accounts of these conventions and meetings - they would talk about state's rights now and then, but there was only one that really loomed large in their mind. Once people got started talking about slavery and their frustration with northern attempts to end it, it was hard to get them to shut up.

Slavery and the Civil War (Chapter 4 supplemental article)

The issue in The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History that generates the most mail is, without question, slavery and the Civil War. There are a LOT of people out there who absolutely insist that it never occurred to anyone that slavery had anything to do with what was going on at the time, and the real fight was about "State's Rights" and that thousand of black soldiers fought for the Confederacy.

Most of this is a myth - but to say that the war was "about" slavery is over simplifying. Let's take a look....

For the whole first half of the 19th century, there was no more divisive issue in America than slavery. And every ten years or so, the south would threaten to secede from the union to preserve it. The whole point of the Mexican American War was to add more "slave" states so that slave states would continue to be able to outvote non-slave states in congress.

By 1860, the growth of the country was robbing the South of its power. Today, no single region holds THAT much power, and for a president to be elected without winning any state in New England or the Southeast is hardly unheard of. But when Lincoln won without even being on the ballot in many Southern counties, people got rather freaked out.

If you read through the articles of secession that a few states issued, the reason they left was very clear: it was to preserve slavery. In fact, they usually mentioned slavery in the first couple of sentences. The new Republican party was thought of as an anti-slavery party (which wasn't totally accurate; it's like when conservatives calls the Democrats the pro-gay marriage party today), and with the country adding new states, we were approaching a situation where all the OTHER states could vote to outlaw slavery, and the south would just have to sit there and take it. This could have affected other issues besides slavery, but if you look at the documents and rhetoric from the time, it's hard to figure out which other issues, if any, were on their minds.

In fact, the CSA's constitution didn't provide many additional states' rights. In fact, by giving the president a line item veto and a six year term, it could be argued that they made their president MORE powerful (they did give him a single term, but it was largely an age of one term presidents).  Really, the CSA constitution was just a minor revision of the USA one, with one particularly glaring change: a section that insured that congress would pass no law restricting slavery (see our article about the drafting of the CSA constitution, including a picture of a guy with a mullet.)

One the fighting began, no one really thought of it as a war to end slavery - they thought of it as a dust-up to get things back to "normal." But once it became clear that this was not going to be a three month conflict, but an actual war, ending slavery seemed like a good move for a variety of reasons. It gave the north a rallying cry, along with a new supply of soldiers in freed slaves. But another issue was that if the war DIDN'T end slavery, but just brought the south back to the union, we would just end up fighting the same war over again sooner or later.

Most of the "it wasn't slavery" brigade sends us the same false information - usually a quote from Grant saying that if he thought it was about slavery, he would have fought for the other side (which, as we state in a sidebar, was just a quote someone made up to make him look bad when he was running for president in 1872), or the common story that thousands of black soldiers fought for the confederacy - they weren't allowed to join at all until the very last weeks of the war, when they were desperate enough to offer freedom for service. None are known to have seen combat. Prior to that, the south was always fearful of a slave revolt, and arming black people was the last thing they wanted to do. They wouldn't even consider black union soldiers to be actual soldiers when negotiating the release of prisoners.

But that's not to say that every soldier in the CSA army was fighting to protect slavery, or that every soldier in the Union was out to end it. Indeed, your average soldier probably didn't care too much one way or the other. The reason they fought was that there was a war going on. From the point of view of a confederate soldier, there was an army marching into their home state, ready to burn down their home and everything around them. Very few of the soldiers actually owned any slaves, but all of them felt that they had SOMETHING to protect. When a ruling came down that men who owned enough slaves were exempt from service, soldiers sneered that this was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." And in the union, when the draft came around and men could get out of it by paying $300 (roughly a year's salary for many working class men at the time), soldiers THERE sneered that it was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight."

Then again, most wars are.

Ask the Smart Aleck Staff: The Boston Tea Party

Here comes some reader mail from Ava, a reader in Nebraska,

In your book, you say that the Boston Tea Party was a protest against the government giving tax breaks to a business. So why do the tea party guys dress up like colonists? And why did the Boston Tea Party people dress up like Native Americans?


Great quest, Ava! First of all, here's a multiple choice question for you:

Which party is most often guilty of making wild claims about how The Founding Fathers would agree with them?
a. Democrats
b. Republicans
c. Libertarians
d. whichever party is not currently in power.

The answer is usually D (and, therefore, C - those guys are never in charge).

Both sides are making ridiculous generalizations to imply that the framers of our country all felt the same way on any given issue (especially issues relating to things they couldn't have imagined in the 18th century).

Exactly who counts as a Founding Father and who doesn't is a bit of an X factor - some count everyone who lived in the 1700s, some just count the people who fought in the wars and/or served in congress, and some just pick and choose at random. But any way you slice it, the Founding Fathers were a rather diverse bunch (for a bunch of rich white guys). They didn't agree on much back then, and they wouldn't agree on much now. When you ask what the founding fathers would think of any given issue, you really have to take it on a founding father by founding father basis.

 And even then, their individual views evolved over time - it's impossible to guess what they'd make of the situation now. Even if we dug them up (you know that we here on the Smart Aleck Staff just LOVE grave robbing) to see if they'd registered their disapproval by rolling over in their graves (as one does), it would take some hardcore forensics to figure out WHEN they'd rolled over (or how many times). Even if they were facing down, they might have rolled over at the Missouri Compromise, then again the Nebraska Kansas Act, and again during Bloody Kansas.

As for the costumes, one thing conservatives and liberals have in common is that their protest rallies tend to be taken as an invitation to put on stupid costumes, say stupid things, and act obnoxious (see also: the Smart Aleck's Guide to Making an Ass Of Yourself) (one that we're definitely qualified to write!). Protest rallies in the 1770s were probably no different.

But we digress (as we do). In the 18th century, the East India Company was  BIG business - it actually controlled parts of India for a time. In the 1770s, the British government gave them a legal monopoly on importing and exporting tea - colonists who wanted to buy tea from anyone who wasn't one of their consignees had to buy tea from smugglers. Smugglers didn't pay taxes, so they were able to keep their prices low. To help the East India Company, the government gave them MASSIVE tax breaks, allowing them to lower their prices and push competitors out of business.

But there was no spending cut attached to the tax break, so the government made up for the loss of revenue by passing The Townsend Acts, which added some taxes for colonists, including one on tea. They were not exactly crippling taxes, but the colonists were rather miffed that they had to pick up the slack to allow for a company to get a tax break.

So they organized boycotts, and started pushing locally-grown tea that didn't need to be imported (but apparently was not very good).  It worked well enough that in 1770 the government repealed most of the taxes in the Townsend Acts - except for the one on tea, which they left in place just to show that they could. For a few years, taxes on both the company and the colonies went up and down. By 1773, the East India Company was basically operating tax free, and were allowed to do their own exporting, cutting out middlemen and helping keep their prices far lower than any competitors.  Some in parliament wanted to do away with the tea tax, since it was just annoying the colonists, but they had set it up so that the revenues it brought in were what paid the wages of local officials, like judges.

With the smaller-time dealers and smugglers out of business, the East India Company now controlled the tea trade - if they didn't name your store as a consignee, you'd be going out of business.  Several people who WERE consignees resigned in protest. In 1773, seven East India Company ships were sent to the colonies, but since their consignees had resigned, six had to be sent back - all except the one bound for Boston, where the governor had talked the consignees out of resigning.

Sam Adams (brother of John) held a meeting at which people passed a resolution urging the ship to turn around and go home. 25 people guarded it against being unloaded. On the last night before the deadline by which they had to either pay the duties and unload the tea or go home, another meeting was held, attended by some 7000 people.

According to legend, when it became apparent that the governor wasn't about to let the ships go home without paying the duties on their cargo, Adams said "this meeting can do nothing further to save the country," which was the coded signal for the tea partiers to take action.  As with most of these legends, it isn't exactly right - the phrase may or may not have been a code, and Adams may have tried to STOP people from leaving because he wasn't done talking yet.

But hundreds DID leave, and one group (from 30 to 130, depending on who you ask) boarded the ship, supposedly dressed as Mohawk Indians (to conceal their identities and guard against being accused of treason, though it's hard to imagine the disguises actually fooling anyone   - we here at the Smart Aleck's Guide think there's just something about a protest that makes people want to get dressed up in pointless costumes). Once on board, they dumped the tea in the water.

What they were there for is probably a mixed bag - some might have been generally anti-tax, but it seems like the issue most were protesting was paying taxes to allow for a company's tax break. We don't know of anyone railing that parliament should have been cutting spending altogether and eliminating the need for taxes.

Others, of course, were probably just there because it sounded like a real party.

 No one at the time really seems to have thought they made much of a point, and even most of the pro-independence colonists seem to have found the whole affair sort of embarrassing - the sort of thing that made them look like they were nuts. The British responded with MORE "intolerable acts."

But the bottom line is that the party was about saying "this sucks, let's change it." This is something both parties can get behind - neither has a monopoly on the Boston Tea Party.   But it's certainly VERY difficult to imagine the modern "tea partiers" having any issue with the government making things easier on the East India Company.  In any case, the common notion that all of the "founding fathers" favored small government, low taxes, and the rest of the Libertarian Party platform goes against the basics of human nature. The "Framers" were arguing about what the part in the Constitution about promoting the general welfare meant before the ink was even dry.

Chapter 1: Early Explorers: Brave, Bold and Rich in Minerals

No one seriously claims that Columbus discovered America anymore - plenty of people (including plenty of white people, not to mention the "Indians.") got there before he did. Before 1776, most people credited the discovery to John Cabot, who bumped into Canada while working for the British. But after 1776, people wanted some national heroes that WEREN'T associated with the Brits, so they started naming everything in sight after Columbus. The Spanish tried (and failed, over and over) at setting up colonies throughout the 1500s. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 and, unlike many who came before them, managed not to get eaten. But between their arrival in 1620 and the 1770s, the only event most people can name is the period in 1690 when people in Salem, Mass started executing suspected witches.

No one knows what Columbus looked like; thisfamous portrait is said to be of him, but is probably just some random jerk from Bologna: It's easy to take shots at Columbus on the grounds that he was a massive jerk who couldn't navigate his way through an outhouse with a map and a compass, but still: he bumped into continent that none of his contemporaries knew was there, which is more than YOU did. John Cabot (which is what the English called Giovanni Caboto) points to the ground as if to say "Okay, guys, who did this?" From the Salem Witch Trials... you'd probably act like this, too, if you were raised by Puritans: Incidentally, a lot of what you hear about the witch trials isn't true. None of them were burned at the stake - most of the "witches" were hanged. And they didn't really dunk suspected witches under water to get them to confess (at least not in Salem - that was more of a European trick). One way they had to root out witches was to make a "witch cake" out of rye and the pee of a suspected witch. They'd feed it to a dog and see how the dog (or the suspected witch) reacted. Just another reason to be glad you're not a puritan. Or a puritan's dog.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Transcripts, maps, and other neat stuff from the Salem Witch Trials Here's a cool New York Times article about Amerigo Vespucci, the guy who MAY have had two continents named after him. Some people say it was named after someone else. There are lost of historical mysteries still to be solved - and plenty to argue about! For instance, some people say the continents were named after Richard Amerike, who funded fishing voyages that went to Canada in 1479 (and John Cabot's voyage in 1497). Records indicate that fishermen were using the coast of North America to get cod years before Columbus came - but, having found a good fishing spot, they kept it a secret. Did the lost Roanoke colonists get adopted into Native American tribes? These guys are trying to prove it using DNA. NOTE: the first copies off the line say that the Roanoke Colony was near present day Virginia. It was actually closer to North Carolina, and the football teams in the area are the Braves and the Nighthawks, not the Patriots, the Colonels or the Quitters. See why we keep saying to double check before you quote something out of a history book - including ours? Info-literacy, folks! We're all about info-literacy! And now, a commercial: If the early colonists were here today... ...they'd be zombies. I KISSED A ZOMBIE AND I LIKED IT! A new novel Jan, 2010

Chapter 2: The Colonists are Revolting

In the 1770s, colonists rebelled against British rule. In this famous portrait, General Washington rebels against the basic rules of boat safety.

Lonely ol' Chuck Carroll. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826. Adams' last words were "Thomas Jefferson smmffffss." Those around him decided he was going for "Thomas Jefferson still lives," but he COULD have been saying "Thomas Jefferson smells" or "Thomas Jefferson still owes me five bucks." What he didn't realize was that Jefferson had died a few hours before. And what NEITHER of them probably knew was that Charles Carroll, another signer of the Declaration of Independence, was also still alive. And, judging by his portrait, so, so alone. Paul Revere contemplates the important question of whether to bust the painter over the head with a tea pot or brain him with a chisel. Revere didn't say "The British are coming" (the colonists WERE British). He said "the regulars are out," which either meant that they were being invaded by soldiers or guys who ate a lot of fiber. Either way, the colonists knew to be ready for something messy. ASSIGNMENT ALERT! Write a rambling poem about Prescott or Dawes, the OTHER guys who made midnight rides that night, but failed to become American heroes because their names didn't rhyme with "you shall hear." Send it to the Smart Aleck Staff - we may post a few right here!* See Assignment Gallery * - As always, by sending it in, you grant us the right to post it in the gallery. We will give extra credit for any entries that include the line "out of the bed and onto the floor / fifty yard dash to the bathroom door," as the "joke version" of Longfellow's poem does.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL To the Royal Academy of Farting How Ben Franklin used his new independence: in 1785, he wrote to a group of scientists asking them to find a way to make farts smell better. Extra verses to "Yankee Doodle." Including some slightly naughty ones - check the one about Dr. Warren. Soldiers make up naughty verses to popular songs in every war. The Declaration of Independence Full text. Good reading. What do YOU think Jefferson meant by "all men are created equal," exactly? It's not like the founding fathers granted equal rights to everyone, after all. Was he just saying we shouldn't have "lords" and a class of nobles, like the English did, or was he reaching towards actual equality? Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" Loaded with quotes you'll recognize. Some have said that to be for independence in 1775, you had to be either a fool or a fanatic. "Fortunately," Bill Bryson once wrote, "there existed a man who was a bit of both." Almost no one was for independence in 1775. But after this pamphlet came out, everyone tried to say they were for it back BEFORE it was cool. Paine later wrote another pamphlet that got the French started on their own revolution. But most who knew him said the guy was nuts - and people eventualy turned on him, largely due to his controversial religious views (short version: he was against it). He died broke and forgotten; his bones were dug up to be heroically re-buried, but they somehow got lost. No one knows where they are now, but every now and then someone claims to have a couple of them. Meanwhile, some of the Founding Fathers who didn't even really SAY the quotes they're known for, and didn't do much besides sit around the back of the room in the continental congress whining their heads off, were buried as heroes. Kinda sucks, huh?

Chapter 3: A Nation Declines to Bathe

Having formed a new nation, Americans expanded westward, fought a war or two with pirates, and elected a bunch of rather forgettable presidents who didn't even have the courtesy to grow comical facial hair of which future historians could make fun.

President James K. Polk: Business up front, party in the back, baby. Polk was actually a pretty effective president - he made a list of goals and accomplished them all in one term. He may not be MEMORABLE, but he got the job done. When Frances Trollope wrote a book saying Americans were dirty and rude (which, by all acounts, the early Americans were), they responded in the most mature way possible: drawing a picture of her that made her look like Jabba the Hutt.

ASSIGNMENT ALERT! Above: John Brown, subject of the song "John Brown's Body Lies a-Mouldering in the Grave," one of the solid gold smash hits of the 1850s. Your assignment - write a better song about mouldering. Send it to the Smart Aleck Staff - we may post a few right here!* SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Some of Jefferson's letters to John Adams The Diaries of Lewis and Clark (with the spelling cleaned up by thoughtful archivists - these guys could NOT spell) A "coffin handbill" on Andrew Jackson *As always, by sending it in, you grant us the right to post it here.

Chapter 4: The Civil War - America's Puberty

"The Civil War was like America's puberty. It was growing rapidly, things were getting hairy down south, and blood was starting to flow down there." - Brian Eddlebeck, Smart Aleck Staff

(come on - you didn't REALLY think you were gonna get through a whole YA nonfiction book without something about 'your changing body,' did you?)

Most of the "scary letters" we get are from people who don't believe the Civil War was about slavery. It's true that the initial goal of the war was to preserve the union, not to end slavery, but the idea that it wasn't about slavery is nonsense. Here are sources to back us up- all of them make it awfully clear that the number one issue on the minds of the seceding states was slavery. The issue of abolition in 1861 was sort of like gay marriage is in 2010 - the President said he wasn't planning to do anything about the issue, but people who were against it didn't believe him and could see the writing on the wall.

Can you tell which soldier is fighting for slavery and which is fighting for "state's rights" or something like that? Get ready to duck; no matter what your answer is, SOME historian is probably going to throw a folding chair at you. SPECIAL WEB-ONLY PIC! The grave of Stephen Dougas Douglas was one of Lincoln's rivals. At his monument, you can walk right into the burial chamber. They have brochures set up on his sarcophogus. Get your act together, and maybe someday there'll be brochures on YOUR coffin, too! Lincoln's funeral train in New York. One of the kids in the window is either a young Theodore Roosevelt or someone who snuck into Roosevelt's house (the kind of thing no one would have dared to do if they knew he'd grow up to be the kind of guy who made speechs right after being shot in the chest). ABE LINCOLN: SMART ALECK Everyone has heard the stories of young Lincoln sitting by the fire, doing sums in his "sums book." But what was he writing in it, really? He did, in fact, do math problems in it, but he also wrote the following: Abraham Lincoln is my name and with my pen I wrote the same I wrote it with both haste and speed and left it here for fools to read! See more on "writing in books" in The Smart Aleck's Guide to Naughty Playground Songs.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL People who say the war wasn't about slavery often claim that General Grant said that if it WAS, he would have fought for the confederacy instead. This quote started going around in the 1870s and is still turning up in books and blogs. But he didn't say it; it was a quote made up to make him look bad when he ran for President. Here's an article from the 1870s backing us up: The Truth About Grant's "It Was Not About Slavery, or I Would Resign My Commission And Offer My Sword to the Other Side" Quote ALL of the states that seceded and gave any reason WHY made it VERY clear that they were seceding because it was the only way to preserve slavery. Here's what the states themselves said: Articles of Secession: Georgia Articles of Secession: Mississippi Article of Secession: South Carolina Articles of Secession: Texas Speech Given at the Alabama Secession Convention The Bonnie Blue Flag - one of the confederacy's catchier anthems. The second line refers to either fighting for "our liberty" or "our property," depending on which version you have. Both versions are great fun for smart alecks; the author's lines about Maryland getting ready to leave the union show he wasn't much of a psychic, and he really has to stretch to find a few of his rhymes for "star." THE REBEL YELL Exactly what the famous confederate battle cry sounded like is in dispute - this film footage of a 1930s reunion of veterans may be the only recording of it. However, this doesn't match up with with descriptions of the yell made during the war itself. Most likely, there were several different versions of the yell, and this just was one of them: (note: we embed the video rather than linking because youtube comments make us weep for humanity). Works By Frederick Douglass a better writer than anyone on staff will ever be The Conch Republic The RIGHT way to secede from the Union! The Florida Keys seceded in the early 1980s over a government roadblock that was cutting off their income by blocking tourists. They declared war on the U.S., then immediately surrendered and asked for financial aid. Today, many Keys residents consider themselves dual citizens of the U.S. and the Conch Republic, and have made millions off of "Conch Republic" souveniers. "What's so civil about war, anyway?" - Axl Rose, historian, political philosopher.

MORE ARTICLES RELATED TO CHAPTER FOUR:

Drafting the Confederate Constitution

The Civil War and Slavery

Chapter 5: The Gilded Age (or, Screw the Poor!)

As the nation got back on its feet following the bloody civil war, it also entered the Age of Invention and the age when a handful of rich jerks owned most of the country. The presidents got hairier - and even MORE forgettable. We LOVE the picture (above) of the Farman Flying Machine - look how excited these guys are to have gotten this thing off the ground! How could it have barely taken a century for flying to get so, so boring?

ASSIGNMENT ALERT! Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, sings a song he wrote for the occasion entitled "I'm a-Goin' To the Lordy." It was awful. The full text is in the book. Your assignment: using only stuff from this chapter, complete this sentence: "'I'm a-goin' to the Lordy' sucks even more than______" Some of our suggestions include "being a capitalist at one of Leon Czolgash's dinner parties," "sitting downwind of Taft on three bean casserole day," and "getting Woodrow Wilson's dental bill."Mail your answers to the staff - some MAY be posted here!* Researchers on staff have not been able to figure out whether President Rutherford B Hayes was cross-eyed or just had a real talent for looking confused. People can explain to you how he managed to win the election when the other guy got 51% of the vote (and probably won the electoral college, too), but they can't do it without confusing you. Trust us. People in Hayes' day often called him "Rutherfraud Hayes." Join the Rutherford Hayes: Not My President facebook group! *If you send us your assignment, you're granting us the rights to post it here. We reserve the right NOT to post things, either due to quality, content, or sheer laziness on our part.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL "It Takes More than that to Kill a Bull Moose!" Full text of the speech Teddy Roosevelt gave shortly after being shot in the chest during the 1912 presidential campaign - he made the speech with his bloody shirt still on, while people offstage begged him to go see a doctor. The Bull Moose Party's Platform - which was a generation ahead of its time in its calls for equality, fair labor practices, and social reform (though they were unable to put their money where their mouth was in terms of racial equality - members pressured Roosevelt to exclude blacks from the convention so they'd have at least a vague hope of winning in the South, where voters had never quite forgiven Roosevelt for inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House. They lost the South anyway, and Roosevelt ended up regretting not letting blacks in). Jane Addams seconded Roosevelt's nomination and became the first woman to speak at a major convention. She went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Library of Congress Stuff on the Gilded Age Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. If you ate any meat this week and DIDN'T get sick, you have this book to thank. When it came out, Chicago's stockyards were notoriously unsanitary - a popular rhyme went: "Mary had a little lamb when she saw it sicken she sent it to Chicago and now it's labelled 'chicken.'" Reporters were always kicked out of the stockyards, or only shown the clean spaces, but Upton Sinclair found that if he just walked around with a lunch bucket, everyone assumed he worked there and let him go wherever he pleased. An inventor shows off his latest doohickey. Don't look at this shot too closely, or you may get a mysterious urge to eat Dorsch's bread. And you'll drive yourself to madness trying to find any. Trust us. We lost six interns that way.

Chapter 6: A War To End All Wars (ha!)

Many history books just gloss over this whole affair rather than try to explain it to you. The short version of what it was all about: all sorts of new weapons had been invented, and every old army was obsolete. So countries started to build new ones, resulting in an arms race that, like most arms races, was really just a big "who has the biggest thingie" contest (and by "thingie," we mean "stamp collection," of course.) Once they had a bunch of shiny new weapons, they were all just itching to use them, either to show that they were now a major power in the world or to show that they were STILL a major power in the world. The war was an accident waiting to happen. We got involved largely because President Wilson knew that when it ended, the leaders of the world would meet to decide how the world would work for the rest of the 20th century - and he knew that being involved in the war would get him a better seat at the table.

ASSIGNMENT ALERT! Here's a propaganda poster designed to make people support President Wilson: Your assignment: make a propaganda poster about your history teacher. Mail your results to the staff; some may be posted here!* *As always, by sending them in, you grant us permission to post them, but we probably can't post everything we get. MAKE YOUR OWN MUSTARD GAS! Yes, kids, you can make your own mustard gas from the things you find at home! You'll need: 1/3 cup of milk 1/2 cup of corn syrup 3 oz chocolate, unsweetened 4 tablespoons margarine 4 1/2 cup sugar, powdered 1 tablespoon water 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Melt the margarine and stir everything else in slowly. Pour the mixture into eight inch pan, cool, and serve. You will notice that this doesn't look, smell or taste anything LIKE poison gas. You see, we DO know how to make poison gas, but our lawyers said that, even though we've already told you to hire an intern and poke them in the liver, saw off your friend's legs and hang them, and all sorts of things that we assume that you know are just jokes, providing an actual recipe for poison gas might violate international law. So we replaced it with a recipe for fudge. Everyone just LOVES fudge!* * - see, Kirkus? The recipe in the book is not real.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Songs That Won the War (and learn the "playground version:" "Over there...over there...go and sit in your chair over there...") Around the world, about 65 million peope participated in the war, and there were some nine million casualities. Some say that a whole generation of leaders was lost, leading Europe to be led by the b-team for the next half century. Countless kids fought in the war. Today, some of the kid soldiers are among the tiny handful of veterans known to survive. In 2009, the Smart Aleck Staff swung by Jefferson Junior High in Naperville, IL. We heard they had a WW1 exhibit at which you could see a TRENCH. You know how often we've wished we could go back in time and see trenches for ourselves? Well, never. We're not stupid. But the exhibit was AWESOME, and the kids really knew their stuff. Here's Adam getting all excited about the trench: We sort of thought they'd just dig a trench in the football field, but the trench they made was really cool. No actual mustard gas or rotting corpses, though (history just doesn't come alive for us unless someone gets maimed), but this was about as close to a real trench as we'd ever recommend getting: Here's the staff's youngest intern, putting on a doughboy outfit. When asked if he knew how to make mustard gas, he said "out of my butt!"

Chapter 7: The Roaring Twenties

Soldiers came back from the war ready to party. There was just one problem: as of January 20, 1920, it was illegal for anyone, of any age, to buy or sell alcohol. But no one paid any attention to that particular law - in fact, in many cities, people drank MORE. The 1920s was an age of glitz and glamor and decadence. But it all came crashing down towards the end of 1929, and many war veterans spent the whole decade jaded, disillusioned, and depressed.

For years, people had said that if women got the vote, they would start drinking, smoking, swearing, sleeping around, and wearing short skirts. In the early 1920s, women began drinking, smoking, swearing, sleeping around and wearing short skirts. Of course, they'd always done these things (except for the skirts part - right up through WW1, women kept their ankles pretty well covered), but in the 1920s, women, particularly those known as flappers, became much more open about it. This new openness wasn't because the women had FINALLY gotten the right to vote, though a few people (the 1920s equivalents of message board trolls) probably said it was. In fact, it was just a natural progression for society after the war and the famously stuffy Victorian era (most of the 1800s), when women couldn't say words like "pants" or "toes" out loud without blushing. Periods of repression like that happen now and then, and they're almost always followed by periods when anything goes - especially if people are looking to blow off steam after a devastating war that didn't seem to accomplish much. THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE The Smart Aleck Staff of the 1920s While we have your attention, let us once again plug Adam's new novel: I KISSED A ZOMBIE AND I LIKED IT! Coming in Jan, 2010 Algonquin "Alley" Rhodes, the main character, is loosely based on Dorothy Parker, a smart alecky author of the 1920s who was part of a group known as The Algonquin Round Table - a group of authors who ate lunch together just about every day of the 1920s at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Reporters in the group published the witty remarks the members made during lunch in their columns, making the group the most famous smart alecks in the country. "It was the 20s, damn it," Parker later said. "We had to be snarky."

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Lillian Collier: Teenage Flapper This Chicago girl coined the term "snugglepupping" before being sentenced by a judge to read a book of fairy tales to teach her proper values. Seriously. We've been trying to find out whatever happened to her for years - can YOU find out? Catch Hooverball Fever! We didn't, but, uh, you can. By what right do you refuse to accept a vote of the citizen of the United States?" - Victoria Woodhull. Did she just mean adult citizens? Today, people say that citizens under age 18 shouldn't be allowed to vote because they'd just vote for whoever their parents tell them to, or that people under 18 just aren't smart enough to vote. Sound familiar (to those of you who read the book)? Many of the arguments against letting kids vote are the same ones that people used to stop women and black people from voting in centuries past. Some people say that the voting age should be lowered, and we here on the Smart Aleck Staff are all for it (except for Prof. Rosemont, who isn't wild about ANYONE voting) . Some of us on staff (Adam, for instance) have been paying income tax since the age of 14. And we could all have been tried as adults in court at 12. And while some might point out that kids aren't always savvy enough to make wise political decisions, we can surely point out that many adults aren't, either. So why keep the voting age at 18? Why not let anyone who pays income taxes vote? And, while we're at it, why should a person who was born in Mexico but moved here when they were six months old not be eligible to be president? And if there's a person under 35 who could actually get elected president, why shouldn't that person be allowed to serve? Make noise. Act up. Call your congressman.

Chapter 8: The Depressing Thirties

Every textbook's go-to image of the Great Depression, when the economy collapsed, unemployment levels soared, men who had fought for their country in the war ended up waiting in line for bread, while banks failed right and left - taking people's money with them. When John Dillinger started robbing banks, people weren't all that angry at him. In fact, they thought he was a hero. Is there anyone you could rob (or at least hit in the face with a pie) and look like a hero today? We can think of a few.

The current rent on this place is $1050 a month plus utilities, no pets allowed - it's a "cozy pre-war efficiency oozing with vintage charm featuring exposed pipes and breathtaking city views." Woody Guthrie wrote over 1000 songs, including "This Land is Your Land" and others that you've probably heard before. Every now and then they STILL find another notebook full of songs he wrote and never got around to recording. The sign on his guitar reads "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS." A fascist is an authoritarian dictator (call your teacher one at your own risk). To say that a guitar could bring them down seems like a bold statement - until you consider that many people felt that it was "blue jeans and rock n roll,*" not politics, that brought down communism in Europe in the late 1980s. And when Richard Nixon got in trouble for erasing eighteen minutes and twenty seconds from the Watergate Tapes, a few people noted that that was EXACTLY the length of "Alice's Restaurant" a comedic song about the draft written by Woody's son Arlo. Did Nixon tape over a recording to hide the fact that he was an Arlo Guthrie fan? Well, probably not, but, as Arlo himself asks, "how many things in this world are 18 minutes and 20 seconds long?" Bank robber John Dillinger in the morgue after being shot by the FBI in Chicago. That's his ARM under the sheet, but this photo inspired The Legend of Dillinger's Ding-a-ling. * -Okay, we got that quote from guitarist Keith Richards, who is not exactly an economist, but still - lots of people DO think this. The guy who became president of Hungary after their "Velvet Revolution" has been known to claim, with a straight face, that they named their revolution after the band The Velvet Undergound, and a recent PBS documentary showed some high level officials in the current Russian goverment talking about what a role the Beatles played in making kids think for themselves instead of letting The State do it for them (In Soviet Russia, hand wants to hold you!) There's no doubt that music can, at least in a small way, change the world.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL The song referred to in the end-of-chapter experiment: "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" became an anthem of men whose country had sent them to war and then to work, but ended up in breadlines. This is Al Jolson's version. There was a time when it was generally agreed that he was the greatest entertainer in the world - he starred in The Jazz Singer, the first successful talking movie. However, many people remember him today mainly because he often wore black makeup when performing African American music. Performing in blackface is (quite rightly) considered horribly offensive today; however, it's rarely fair to judge people of the past on the standards of behavior we have today, and Jolson is a good example: blackface wasn't considered offensive at the time (dressing as someone of another ethnicity was standard costuming), and Jolson was by no means a racist. In fact, he helped introduce "black" music to a much wider audience at a time when blacks were often not allowed onstage. Great Depression Cooking: Try "the poor man's meal." We did! It's good! Outside of the Depression, Hollywood became even MORE glamorous as improved movie technology allowed moviemakers to do all sorts of new stuff. This is a musical number from "Gold Diggers of 1933," a film directed by Busby Berkeley, who was known for really weird, extravagant choreography with dancing pianos, giant bananas, and water ballets. This risque number has chimpanzees, perverted babies on roller skates, a snow storm, and metal underwear. Now THAT'S entertainment!

Chapter 9: World War 2 (out of....)

ASSIGNMENT ALERT !

Make a diorama based on the song "Blood on the Risers", a song about the death of a paratrooper that was sung by soldiers. We spent a whole week on our "Blood on the Risers Action Playset." Send in a picture of yours to the Smart Aleck Staff. Be SOMEWHAT tasteful, please. We're trying to run a classy website around here (sort of).

"Rosie the Riveter" With the men off fighting in the war, women were urged to take jobs that were traditionally done by men. Of course, the minute the war ended, they were expected to head right back into the kitchen.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL "Der Fuhrer's Face" - a ww2 cartoon featuring Donald Duck. No, this has NOT been "banned," they just don't show it on TV much any more. People like to call cartoons like this "banned" so they can whine about "political correctness," which is how jerks claim victim status. Private Snafu: a series of cartoons shown as training for soldiers. This one was written by Ted Geisel (better known as Doctor Seuss). Bugs Bunny and friends urge Americans to buy war bonds Daffy Duck urges people to turn in their scrap metal for use in tanks, planes, ships, etc. Franklin Roosevelt gives a speech for his 1944 campaign. He looks about 80% dead here, but he wasn't. He was actually closer to 99% dead:

Chapter 10: We Still Think Billy Joel and His Gang Started the Fire

Throughout the 1990s, many history teachers assigned their students to look up everything from Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire," which was a big list of stuff that had happened in the world while Billy Joel was alive. Some teachers are still doing this. In Chapter 10, we try to determine whether you can learn all you need to know about 1949-1989 from Billy Joel. The result: you can come awfully close!

Baseball great Joe DiMaggio before his marriage to actress Marilyn Monroe (obviously). A meeting between rock singer Elvis Presley and president Richard Nixon. Nixon wore a suit, and Elvis wore what appears to be a wrestling championship belt. Russian satellite Sputnik. The Death Star it ain't - but it scared the crap out of people.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL We Didn't Start the Fire lyrics Build Your Own R-7 Rocket! and get an honorary doctorate from a presigious university (probably). Communist Bloc We made an intern record our parody of "Jingle Bell Rock! Click here to download "Communist Bloc.". It's itunes-ready - the artist is "Smart Aleck Staff Intern," and this is the first cut off his new album, Whipped Interns and Other Delights. LINK FIXED 1/5