This book has been purposefully written without the inclusion of a resource list, glossary, or bibliography, for the facts and real U.S. history contained within.

The reason is simple; this narrative was written to enlighten in a manner of one human being talking to another, as one U.S. citizen in time to other U.S. citizens and the world, throughout time.

Readers are encouraged to do their own research, as these accounts are truncated and meant to get readers thinking, and then taking action to ensure our generation of humanity treats each other better than our ancestors. For the readers benefit, referenced points are underlined and dated with a year so those who do want to verify for themselves, can do so easily.

This book is also written in two parts, with several chapters in each. Part 1 is focused on the historical events themselves as they happened, while Part 2 is focused on the actual powers that controlled these historical events. One cannot consider the motives that move, without first knowing the symptoms of the system so; history has to be told before the reasons can be fully understood. Provided, of course, that the knowledge or record of history doesn’t become outlawed.

(Yes, that was a “The Giver” [by Lois Lowry 1993]reference, there.)

Point is, the past has already happened, we cannot change anything in it [we should hope to never forget it], and this narrative simply aims to describe the big picture in as brief, but complete a nature as possible from one person to another.

The future is tomorrow, and today we have the power to do something about it.

-M.E.

(solushospes)

If you think the United States is a true Democracy in 21st century Presidential Elections, you haven’t been paying attention.

Before you can even discuss the current elections (which I will detail in later chapters,) know your U.S. history. This Narrative starts the tour through U.S. history in the first U.S. presidential election [know that it did not begin here but we have to start somewhere] because in the 21st century, most Americans see the Presidential Elections as the most important election in the governmental process. History, however, will eventually make it obvious that it is not, and how real changes have been [and can be] accomplished.

For the record:

The only time the U.S. government “gave” anyone the right to vote, was when it established itself, allowing only its "white," property owning men the right to vote. 

So, twelve years after the Declaration of Independence [1776], and months before the U.S. Constitution [March 1789] is fully signed by 2/3rds of the states for ratification, in the first U.S. Presidential Election of December 1788 - January of 1789, only ten of thirteen states participate, and voters are limited to a select demographic of "white" men.

It should be considered: at the time, it was a popular thought that poor people had never experienced a level of independence required to understand the responsibilities set before a voter, therefore were too dependent on others to not be easily swayed by bribe or intimidated by ignorance; this was why most states accepted the property requirement.

So much for the Declaration of Independence! 

Let me repeat: the United States government denied the rights of previously “declared equal” persons from the very beginning, simply by disallowing all but the selected demographic the right to vote.

It has been a constant problem;

history isn’t a line, it’s a web that I will explain as concisely, but thoroughly as I can.

The United States' systematic suppression and oppression of the people has never been in question for those who were denied their Constitutional [and human] Rights, like the non-property owning "white"-men [and some property-owning men of different ideologies] left out of the first ten Presidential Elections.

Or, more significantly:

The Native Americans who were not even consulted, but practically exterminated, and otherwise forced to strip themselves of their cultural identity to better assimilate with the Anglo Americans, or leave their homelands; don't forget they'd lived on the continent [over 550 independent nations] before The Americas were "discovered!"

The slaves who, among being property (let's not pretend this didn't happen,) only actually counted as 3/5ths of a person in the U.S. census [slaves still made up 18% of the counted population according to theU.S. Census Bureau 1790] -and only to benefit the men who owned them. Nevermind Africans had been brought to the country as slaves and indentured servants [men and women who worked off their debts to become freed] since the early 1600s. Nevermind they are actually whole persons!

The "non-white" immigrants denied natural citizenship, regardless of their contributions to revolutionary and growing industrial success. Although the U.S. census Bureau didn't even take count of non-"white" free people at the time, keep in mind that aside from Britain, there were people from Mexico, Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Scotland, and Africa, plus of course, the Native American Tribes living in the United States by the 1780's!

The women who, in some colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence were allowed to vote in their local elections and after had their rights re-written out every state constitution [except New Jersey, which I’ll cover later in this chapter], and whose U.S. Constitutional Rights would also be ignored for over 100 years!

All of them denied more than their right to vote.

The United States' idea of democracy, in the birth of its Presidential Elections circa 1788, was property-owning Anglo American men, and in some states, also of a specific ideology manifested as a religious requirement favoring Protestants and Quakers at the time.

[Note: the political “party” system did not exist yet].

So, when you're talking about 21st Century U.S. politics, you must realize it's been “rigged” from the start, and only after grueling battles (political, social, personal, and physical), by the common people and members of congress, has anyone else gained a foothold in the United States political process.

History will teach you this!

During the first forty years, [I’m repeating this again so you understand not the specific demographic, but that the demographic was that specific] when only "white," property owning men of state-specified “friendly” religions had control of the Unites States vote, one of their first acts of business was to drop their Native American relations [present since 1775 to secure at least, non-conflict with the Natives during the American Revolution 1765-1783] and replace it with the brand new War Department [1789-present].

The newly founded War Department forgot about Native American relations, and focused on maintaining and appropriately deploying the militia armies and the scattered Navy [until a separate Naval Department forms in 1798]. Most records prior to 1800 were destroyed in a fire November 8, 1800, other documents and witness accounts reveal the use of this department to end the Whiskey Rebellion [1791-1794]. Though the rebellion [or insurrection] was due to a tax on all distilled spirits [the first domestic tax on the U.S. populationWhiskey Tax 1791-1801], whiskey was the most favored and therefore, the most affected, which is how the tax, and rebellion got their names.

Farmers were used to using their left-over’s to make whiskey, on their own farms, using their own equipment! These stills weren’t just “extra” income, but often counted on income to make ends meet. Still, the United States was in debt [about 54 million dollars, the equivalent to 1.4 trillion dollars in 2016] after the American Revolution, and in effort to gain revenue from the Nation to support that debt, the tax became law. Whisky is a luxury, right? Drinking was a sin right? No one would mind a luxury-sin tax! While I will discuss money in later chapters, I want to outline the effects of this law on the people who didn’t get a say in its enactment, and it wasn’t pretty.

Farmers [mostly in the west] rebelled. Protesters physically blocked U.S. officials from collecting the tax, often with violence. Kentucky’s Distilleries were notoriously "untaxable," in that no one could get in to collect a tax, and the Distilleries sure weren’t mailing them in to the Tax Inspector! Indeed, by 1794, angry citizens [estimated just over 500 people] attacked a Tax Inspector’s [fortified] home.

It’s important to know that the Insurrectionists were under the belief “taxation without representation” was being violated with the new tax law on distilled liquors, and the Revolution was so fresh in many minds, most of the violence came from Veterans of the Revolutionary war trying to maintain what they’d fought for. This was the first real fight of the voting and veteran public against their [very new] government.

Still, [Federalist] U.S. President Washington (into his second term, the first Presidency with a political party), sent 13,000 men to shut down the rebellion. Only 3 or 4 men were lost in the battle, a few more dying of illness, accident, or complicated injury in the months to follow, but all in all, the majority of the Rebellion was captured and imprisoned. Eventually, though, all of them were also released with a pardon or acquittal. The United States government demonstrated, for the first time against the voting population, that the laws it created could not be violently objected to, because the United States not only had the power, but the willingness to suppress violent dissent.

At the same time (though it began earlier) the United States was not faring well in the Northwest Indian War [1785-1795]. The British were giving support to various Native American tribes, fighting the United States for Northwestern lands, despite the earlier Treaty of Paris [1783] legally giving claim of the land to the United States. With over 10,000 Native Americans in the fight, and a little over 2,000 British soldiers, the meager 4,000 U.S. soldiers allotted to control the territory [the majority of them untrained] didn’t stand much of a chance. While both sides of the conflict lost over a thousand men in those ten years, the United States took the heavier brunt of casualties.

It’s important to know, in earlier efforts to gain Native American Cooperation during the American Revolution, the [then] Colonies did set up land that was supposed to belong to the Native American tribes who’d been willing to negotiate terms of treaty. Of course, this was a popular method of simply moving Native Americans out of the way, and into a singular location, voluntarily. Once in these unofficial reservations, the size of the land was easily decreased every time a new influx of settlers came to the U.S. and wanted to settle in the same territory promised to the Native Americans.

This history repeats over and over again. It is also the reason the Western Confederacy reformed of Native American villages (of different tribes). It’s why they came together to face the United States and declared the Ohio River as the border between Native American land and the United States.

In the end though, the United States (despite larger losses) pushed the Native Americans into signing the Treat of Greenville [1795]which not only made the Native Americans give up Ohio land, but land in Illinois too, as well as a declaration that they recognized the United States claim on the land, and not the British. Also, the Native Americans had to hand over ten of their Chiefs to be held as hostages by the United States, until such a time when all the U.S. prisoners of Native Americans were returned. The only reason this was signed, it was supposed to be in exchange for $20,000 worth of much needed supplies like food, livestock, and blankets, annually.

At the same time, Britain signed the Jay Treaty [1795] which basically made Britain re-vow to give the United States claim to the Northwest Territories, and to remove their support from the Native Americans. Too, many U.S. merchants demanded Britain compensate them for the ships they’d taken between ’93 and ’94, and they agreed to that too, paying out over 10 million dollars [in 2016 terms, that’s about $214 million] by 1802. Similarly, the United States owed the British Merchants too, for pre-war debts they couldn’t technically collect in courts so; the U.S. paid Britain £600,000 [about equal to £54 million in 2016] by 1802.

While the Northwest Indian War was waging, as if the war against the Native American people weren’t enough, and the Whiskey Rebellion was being fought (and lost), the threat of escaping and rebelling slaves was mounting. It was clear [to the pro-slave members] laws had to be made to ensure the safety of slave-owners investments despite what else was going on!

Through intense opposition [mostly from northern state representatives], the U.S. passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 which allowed the capture and return of escaped slaves (including the escaped children born of enslaved mothers) from any U.S. state or territory, and prosecuted anyone who aided an escaped slave, as they were considered fugitives for life.

This is very important to think about, because it didn’t just affect slaves who escaped, or the their children (even 60 years, and two generation later,) but also free black men and women who were born of free black men and women, and had settled into Northwest Ordinance territory [An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio circa 1787] to live as decently as any contributing member of a suppressed society could, in a place where slavery was allowed but not legal.

Still, African Americans were then kidnapped and sold “legally” into slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act and Abolitionists [still mostly Northerners] had to combat this by creating “Personal Liberty Laws [1793-1865]” to make slave owners, their heirs, and the mercenaries they hired to recapture slaves or take another “colored person” in their place, provide the courts with proof that the person they wanted to claim was, indeed a slave and more importantly, the slave they were looking for.

In some of these laws, states also refused to help other states in the pursuit of escaped slaves, though they couldn’t legally stop them from the pursuit in the first place. Not all “white” men, nor all Politicians, wanted to suppress the people, but those that did had built a foundation of securing power and wealth[which I will cover in more detail in another chapter, rest assured]. Those who sought to right the wrongs in the unbalanced structure of the “approved” U.S. society also had to be vigilant and clever to keep up.

Following the end of the Northwest Indian War, and the Whisky Rebellion, The U.S. government had time to carefully draft and pass four bills in the Alien and Sedition Act [1798], including the Naturalization Act, Alien Friends Act, Alien Enemies Act, and the Sedition Act.

The first Naturalization Act of 1790 did not originally require a waiting period after declaration of intent to Naturalize as a U.S. Citizen, and only required immigrants to live in the United States for two years prior to declaring their intent. The revision in 1795 increased the residential time period to five years and required at least three years of waiting [also known as "notice time"] before such a resident could declare their intent to become naturalized as a U.S. Citizen.

While the latest [up to this point] revision of the Naturalization Act, in 1798, increased the residency requirement again, to fourteen years, and increased the waiting period to five years. Incrementally making it more and more difficult for new immigrants to become U.S. Citizens in a time when immigration was at one of its highest points in U.S. history; and you don't need to be a politician to figure that one or why it’s still a huge topic in 21st century politics.

The Alien Friends Act authorized the U.S. President [Federalist John Adams at the time] to order the imprisonment and/or deportation of any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the U.S. government in peacetime, or war. This was largely due to the tensions brought about between the U.S. and France during the French Civil War [French Revolutionary War 1792-1802], while the U.S. was getting back on good trading terms with Britain.

It was a cautionary Act made after "French Diplomat X" [Yes, they really called him that because it was all very secret] threatened war [Quasi-War 1798-1800] with the U.S. if the U.S. did not bribe Diplomat X [and two others; Y and Z] with $10 million dollars [equivalent of $185 million in 2016] to ensure negotiations between France and the United States [XYZ Affair 1798-1800]. French Immigrants could turn at any moment! Limited to two years, the Alien Friends Act was not actually used. Whew.

The Alien Enemies Act was similarly not used [and likewise limited to two years] because the U.S., nor France, ever declared war on one another. However, the Alien Enemies Act allowed the U.S. President to detain and deport all male citizens of an enemy nation once war was declared. So, even if French immigrants were cleared of plotting against the U.S. if brought to trial, the U.S. was prepared to imprison and deport the Frenchmen anyway (pointedly not including their women) if France declared war. Whether the U.S. government felt itself so politically fragile even one French spy could ruin everything, or it was a grand-standing gesture of power to evict the French People if France didn’t play nice, the Act was never tested but this does come up again in the United States History so; don't forget about the Alien Enemies Act!

To understand the Sedition Act portion of this orgi’law (and I mean that in terms of the four separate bills being approved at the same time in the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798), you must know that "sedition" means basically to "rile resistance to authority" or "to incite resistance or rebellion to 'lawful' authority [specifically]."This is clearly not a new concern for the United States government in the 21st century, but I digress.

First, the Sedition Act outlawed conspiracies to oppose the government in any measure. Playing a role was fact that the second U.S. Presidential Election of 1792 saw the start of the "two party" political system with candidates [who all ran for the presidency, the second highest votes then becoming Vice President at the time] running as "Federalists" or "Anti-Federalists." Since the Federalists won the 1792 election for Presidency [George Washington], and the 1796 election [John Adams] which also saw the first Democratic Republicans, it was widely believed that the American people had no right to question the government they'd elected.

So, the 1st Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights [1791] was negated by the Sedition Act [1798] by also outlawing any “false, scandalous, and malicious” writings about the U.S. government. It should be noted that the legislative language of this part of the Act did specifically protect the President and Congress from such bad press, but not the Vice President [Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson at the time] and should not be overlooked.

All in all, Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 basically allowed the government to stall U.S. Citizenship for immigrants, detain or deport Frenchmen in peacetime if suspected of conspiracies against the U.S. Government, or do it anyway if France declared war, and to hold a trial against any person they felt were bashing them, for which a person could face up to 5 years in prison, if found guilty of "bad intent" toward the U.S. Government, and be fined up to $5,000 [the equivalent of about $98,000 in 2016].

Point of example is the case of [United States v. Matthew Lyon 1798], in which Lyon (a former and future member of Congress) was tried under the Sedition Act and found guilty of “bad intent” after just one hour of deliberation. He represented himself at trial, and stated that the Sedition Act was unconstitutional. The judge did not allow the jury to consider the constitutionality of the Act, but rather, only if Matthew Lyon was guilty of violating it.

Since Lyon had not denied writing an article which stated he’d never seen such “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice" in reference to other Congressman and the President [Adams] himself [which would be like saying“vampires of greed, farting parties that cost enough they could feed or shelter thousands, all the while wanting to be worshiped for such greedily gained (and spent) wealth and status. ” in 2016…], not to mention a not so friendly statement that President John Adams was using corruption of religion to posture to France about war…

Nor did Lyon deny the charge concerning letters he had written, with equally unfavorable opinions of corrupt politicians and ideals, in response to the lack of Main Press willing to publish his article at the time, the Jury really had no choice but to find him guilty. It should be noted, he published the “seditious” article himself, and then found it being pushed for publication in the main press, only be arrested under the Seditions Act soon after. If the Jury had rendered any verdict but guilty, they’d have set a precedence that some negative opinions could be made without “bad intent” toward the U.S. government, and the whole point was to quiet dissent.

Mission partially accomplished:

The Sedition Act had a prominent man as the first conviction! Though sentenced to 4 months in a 16’ x 12’ cell [common size for the time], and fined $1,000, Matthew Lyon’s popularity climbed, and he remains the only Congressman ever elected while in jail [with almost twice the votes of the next-in-line candidate, by the way]. The Judge expressed "disappointment" in not being able to make Lyon’s sentence more severe, after all, before the whole Sedition Trial, Lyon had outright been in two altercations with a Federalist Congressmen, and though he apologized for his conduct, he did not apologize for his opinions.

Lyon’s imprisonment nearly started a riot and a conspiracy to break into and destroy the prison [Green Mountain Boys 1798], but the newly elected Democratic Republican Vermont State Representative urged his supporters to remain peaceful in their resistance to the Unconstitutional Laws. Just as he had not resisted arrest, nor became violent when his constitutional rights were being violated, he expected his followers to behave with the same honorable decorum. Whether his plea was what stopped them, or the very real reality that they might not succeed, and thus only make matters worse, Lyon served his sentence in relative quiet.

However, “The Spitting Lyon” became then known as “The Free Speech Martyr” and two years later, unseated the Federalists from the Presidency with his single, Representatives vote after a tie in electoral votes gave him [and the rest of the House of Representatives by Constitutional Law] an option between Federalist John Adams again, or one of two Democratic Republicans [Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr] [and yes, democrats and republicans started off as the same party against the federalists.] Lyon’s deciding vote went to Forth U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and the early 1800’s saw some changes (including Lyon moving to Kentucky and serving the next decade as a Kentucky state representative.)

Note: 

The Louisiana Purchase is made in 1803 from the French [with a $15 million price tag, the equivalent of $305 million in 2016], and included land stretching across the United States into present day New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, but I’ll get into that in a later chapter.

Before I explain the other changes of the early 1800's, let me start with a little back-track to explain the “New Jersey Exception [1797].” Between 1797 and 1806, the legislators of New Jersey State actually made it legal for women to vote in their state (they were alone in this interpretation of Constitutional Rights), and many of the eligible, property owning women did! This became known as “The New Jersey Exception,” as if to solidify that New Jersey wasn’t setting precedence, but was instead, an exception to the male-only rule. It does come up again later, when independent women ban together to demand their rights.

However, by 1807, male legislators wrote them back out again, literally to clarify that the broad “all inhabitants” original language [1797] and “he or she” revised language [1803] did not actually include “Aliens” [Immigrants] or “colored people” [Africans/African Americans] within the [NJ and U.S.] Constitutional Rights to vote, in the Supplement to an Act entitled; An Act to Regulate the Election of Members of the Legislative-Council and General Assembly, Sheriffs and Coroners in this State [New Jersey][1807].

If there are records of any New Jersey women protesting their right to vote simply being written out by way of clarifying that other suppressed Americans couldn’t vote with the specific terminology “free white men,” eventually replacing the original “all inhabitants,” I’ve never crossed one in my research.

Something to consider:just because no one speaks out against something, doesn’t make it right. Every single person [PERSON! We are all people! Human-beings!] in the United States is affected by the Politics of the United States so, not giving them an honest and equal say in the system is simply the exact opposite of democracy. I digress again, and history goes on.

Also changed in 1807, Britain banned the trading of slaves, specificallymaking it illegal for British ships to transport slaves, but not actually banning slavery as a commodity. This was only twelve years after the bitter-sweet end of the Northwest Indian Wars. It’s important to United States history, and their record of inner political battles, because the Royal Navy physically patrolled the coast of Africa [West African Squadron 1807-1860] and searched ships for human cargo [freeing an estimated 150,000 slaves in the securing of over 1,000 ships].

Of course, British ships [and Denmark, which had their own ban on slave trading since 1803] were the only ones legally bound to allow the Royal Navy to search their ship, but many countries who were allies with Britain also gave them permission.

Did the United States? Of course they didn’t. Refused. African Slave Trader Classes [Yes, Africans sold other Africans] were happy to sell Americans more and more slaves, as the needs on plantations and farms grew so, the Americans were still bringing new slaves to the United States, and they didn’t need their proverbial Dad telling them NO, and confiscating their stuff [people, they were people].

It should also be considered: 

The U.S. Constitution’s Article 1 Section 9 literally and legally stopped the United States from banning slave trading across the Atlantic until January 1st 1808. Instead, as long as Merchants declared their cargo to the U.S., and paid a $10 tax [equivalent to $183 in 2016] for each person, they were free to import people at will, and Britain wasn’t going to stop them from milking every day of that law.

While I am going to cover the slave trade again in another chapter, in more detail, 1808 marked the end of Article 1 Section 9 and the Abolitionist of Congress already had this covered. In 1807, they drafted, voted on, signed, and ratified the Act Prohibiting the Import of Slaves, effective January 1, 1808. When Article 1 Section 9 expired, the Act Prohibiting the Import of Slaves went into effect, and legally, slave trading across the Atlantic was a crime.

This limited the number of slaves that were entering the country, as ships now had to pass the West African Squadron successfully with human cargo, and then get through U.S. port customs. Obviously, the law was not always enforced, and it had no effect on stopping the domestic slave trade within the United States, outside of their transport in the waters along the coast.

I would list an accurate number to quantify the massive human deaths that occurred during legal slavery, but the simple fact is no one has an accurate number. [Much like the Native American deaths in early English “settlement.”] Estimates though, range from 40 million to 100 million deaths during legal slavery. Just let that sink in… because when this Act Prohibiting the Import of Slaves took effect in 1808, more slave owners began to look at their slaves as breeding slave stock for future generations; generations of innocent childrenand some of them are those 40 to 100 million that died.

It was already happening; they simply hadn’t been thinking to cultivate their stock before, because new slaves had been readily accessible at the markets, regardless of how many died along the way, or died in their labors or mistreatment. Slave owners didn’t necessarily start treating their slaves better (those who would, already were), but simply took more care to keep them alive in the process.

Just let me repeat: 40 to 100 million slaves are estimated to have died between the 1600's and 1800's; they were human beings, and they had no say in the matter. Keep this in mind as America’s Red Dawn goes on, we’re only approaching the halfway point since we began.

While most of Europe considers the War of 1812 just a piece of the Napoleonic Wars [1803-1815], Canada and the United States consider this its own war lasting officially from 1812 to 1815. The reason is as simple as it is complicated; Britain was attempting to re-claim parts of Northwest America, to create an Indian-Nation buffer between the U.S. and the frontier West they’d just purchased. Meanwhile, the U.S. was trying to claim parts of Canada, and the Canadians were trying to stop them, to keep their own claim. For many Americans, the War of 1812 was a second war of Independence from the British fought in the Northwest, the gulf, and the Atlantic. Eh, Canadians.

In the Atlantic, rival nations attacked one another’s merchant ships. In the Northwest, the British fought the U.S. for territory they intended the Native Americans to hold and keep the U.S. from expanding, while the U.S. was trying to claim more land from Canada to appease some General’s desire to make the United States bigger [only making the British feel more justified]. In the gulf, the British were likewise providing Native Americans with Arms and support in an effort to fight the United States from getting any bigger.

Battles were won and lost on all side. In the end though, by the signing of the Treaty of Ghent [December 24th, 1814]no borders were really changed for any of the nations in the war, except the exponentially losing Native Americans who lost their land and their British support, trade was re-negotiated freely between the U.S., Canada, and Britain, and still it took months for this news to reach all of America.

This is the only real reason the war didn’t officially end until 1815, despite the treaty already being signed; in the time it took the Treaty news to reach the rest of the States [news traveled by pony mail, the telegraph wasn’t invented until 1837], the United States scored additional victories like the Battle Of New Orleans [January 8, 1815], and the Second Battle of Fort Bowyer [February 12, 1815].

Consider this: 

It was during the War of 1812, midst the Battle of Fort McHenry [1814] that the lawyer from Washington D.C. [Francis Scott Key] witnessed the events that he later transcribed in poetic verse, set to the music of the already favorable “Anacreontic Song” and then became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner [1814].” It doesn’t officially make it as the National Anthem of the United States for over hundred years.

The War of 1812 was pivotal in American Politics because it made it obvious that the “militia” strategy wasn’t working very effectively overall and the United States "needed" a stronger, more structured, and more permanent army and navy to protect its hard won independence [and governance]. After the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, most Americans favored this thought, and felt the triumph of beating back the Native Americans from the north, and gulf, as well as stopping British intervention in the continents future! No one talks about trying and failing to take parts of Canada. Well, I did, and I’ll admit it, the United States makes a shitty neighbor, Canada!

The decade that followed is often called

The Era of Good Feelings [1815-1825] but I find that deceptive;

maybe the property-owning "white-men" and their benefiting families felt good, but much of the United States was still hurting.

Even so, by 1816 Congress passed the Act for the gradual increase of the Navy, at a cost estimated between $8 and $10 million dollars [equivalent to between $82 million and $164 million in 2016]. While I will discuss more details about the U.S. spending and the U.S. Central Banking systems later, I do want to note that this war also brought about the Second Central Bank of the U.S. [1816-1836] in efforts to stabilize the United States’ position as an independent nation, but it wasn’t even close to being as effective as the first, or those that would come after it.

Also in 1816, Democratic Republican Secretary of State John Quincy Adams sent General Andrew Jackson to Florida [a Spanish territory, but without many Spaniards present to hold it] for the purpose of collecting runaway slaves, and pushing out the Native Americans [leading to the First Seminole War 1817-1818]. 

He and his men followed their orders by burning down Native American villages, Spaniard settlements [looking for escaped slaves and tormenting them into leaving], and capturing every African American they crossed and didn’t kill in battle. General Jackson also deposed the Spanish Governor of Florida, and appointed a U.S. Governor in his place. Too, he executed a couple of Spanish merchants who were supplying munitions to the African Americans (many probably were escaped slaves) and Native Americans fighting the United States.

The President [Democratic Republican James Monroe] and his Cabinet felt that General Jackson had over-reached in his original orders, but Secretary of State Adams disagreed. More importantly, he cleverly used the incident to push the Spanish into the Adams–Onís Treaty [1819] to give the United States control of Florida. Let’s not pretend this land-grab, so soon after the failing in the War of 1812, wasn’t on purpose and didn’t affect countless people living in the peninsula, just as the Louisiana Purchase had. The people now suddenly subject to the laws of the United States with no real choice, except to leave, and only after having already lost in war.

Sense a pattern yet? The nation of the United States, supposedly born of freedom and bravery to fight oppression, continues to slaughter, imprison, oppress, and steal to expand its borders, and most Americans are left only with the news as brought to them by their Politicians, while simultaneously being suppressed large-scale, and denied their rights to have a say in the legal decisions of the country.

By the election of 1824, the “no party system” temporarily returned to United States Politics. Democratic Republicans were in conflict within their party, and in the process of splitting ideologies, while Federalists were scattered and unorganized. This election relied on the people’s popularity. The people pushed various popular names to run, including [but not limited to] John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and William Crawford.

Though General Jackson had the most electoral votes, it was not enough to hold majority and take the Presidency so, again the decision fell upon a vote from the House of Representatives, and it was former Secretary of State John Adams who became the Sixth U.S. President, and the first son of a former U.S. President to be elected. This caused an up-roar in the public, for the first time, seeming to realize that the popular vote of the people did not always guarantee the Presidency. Note: roughly 25% of eligible voters actually voted in the 1824 election, as many states still had not dropped property requirements for their voters, but some also had religious requirements too, and the only ones voting were “white.”

Remember the fall of the Native American Relations? Well, Adams had no idea till after it was done, but his Secretary of War John C. Calhoun decided to re-create it as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1824-present) [BIA] as a sub-department of his War Department, and put the same man in charge of it, who was previously head of the Native American Relations.

Not that anyone has ever asked me, but I think it should have been called the Bureau of Natives Management, because they were Native to the contentment, not Indians despite the dark-skinned though red-tinted resemblance, and because it wasn’t just a record of what was going on with Native American claims on U.S. claimed land, their resources, their populations, etc., but literally to figure out how to manage the Native Americans as the United States grew.

By 1828 though, all states finally relinquished their religious requirements for the Anglo American, male voters! [Yay!] This only opened the voting demographic to more "white-men" who owned property, of course. Meanwhile the BIA decides Native Americans were only "permitted" to remain east of the Mississippi (in their homelands) if they adopted the "white-man's ways;" religion, language, economy, even slave ownership in some cases. So, while dropping restrictions on Anglo American male voters, the United States and the individual states that make it up put more restrictions on the people who had been living there longer than the “white-man” had even known it existed.

Everything you’ve read so far was in the first forty years of the United States Political System. It changed, it warred with itself, and it suppressed the majority of people living in the Unites States from even having a say, but more importantly, killed millions along the way. If you think it’s over, you haven’t done your math, to get even a quarter ways through U.S.’s bloody, conflicted history racing to the 21st Century, we have to at least make it to the 1850's.

Still, two years after giving the Natives an ultimatum of convert or leave, the U.S. took it a step further and passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to force the negotiation of the Native American Tribes off their ancestral lands altogether. The United States promised the Tribes pieces of the newly acquired land to the west for "forever," and a guarantee that their sovereignty [which the U.S. still didn’t actually acknowledge] would remain intact within their promised lands (As with the Northwestern Native Americans, it wasn't, and they still had to fight for that too but I’ll discuss that in later chapters.)

Consider this: 

The states of the United States by 1830 included [in order of their admission as a state of the United States] Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, and Missouri, but the U.S. territories affected by the laws they enacted included what would eventually become [not in a specific order] Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. 

That is why they wanted to relocate the Native Americans.

That land was controlled by the U.S. but the people had no rights in making congressional decisions because they weren’t considered a state, which would further eliminate the Native Americans from having any legal foothold to rights in the country.

Why would they even agree to that? It's as simple as it is complicated; the U.S. used the the Constitution against the Native Americans (not that it meant anything to the Native Americans at the time, least of all authority), allowing them to live on United States land, but not to own it [hold U.S. land deeds], pay taxes, but not vote; likewise, they could keep the sovereignty the U.S. didn’t recognize -but only on United States “federal” land, which was only "available" west of the Mississippi.

Put another way, the United States basically said: "You can live here, but we own your land now so, you have to abide by our laws, and if you want to govern yourselves otherwise, you have to move west where we can grant you that permission." This left the Native Americans with three options: Convert completely [losing their roots and being persecuted anyway], move voluntarily, or more War that could possibly obliterate them as a people altogether.

To survive, negotiations were made and agreed to; over five hundred and fifty tribes [once spread out in 4 million square miles of North America] were segregated into 326 reservations of just under 88 thousand collective square miles west of the Mississippi River. [Some reports put it at 55 thousand collective square miles, and that’s kind of my point. Who needs accurate records when you’re suppressing people that largely had to teach themselves your language?]

 But, just saying it that way doesn’t cover what actually happened, and nothing I can say, will.

Consider: 

Not only were many U.S. Citizens against the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and many Native American tribes resisting their removal, but the Cherokee Population specifically had assimilated well enough to have just the right amount of knowledge, and advocates, that they forced the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case [Worcester v. Georgia] and declare the Cherokee Nation as its own sovereign nation. [Note: Prior Case “Cherokee Nation v. Georgia” in 1831 ended in the favor of Anglo-American rule and denied the Cherokee people their sovereignty].

With the 1832 U.S. Supreme Court ruling the Cherokee Nation as a Sovereign Nation, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 no longer applied to them. If the U.S. wanted them moved, both Nations had to sign a treaty, and then have the States ratify it before it was legal. So, what happened?

The Treaty of New Echota [1835] happened, and in it, enough of the estimated 3% of Cherokee people for the “Indian Removal Act of 1830,” signed away the rest of the Cherokee people’s rights to their own land [three of them were later killed for it]. The United States immediately sent the treaty to be ratified by the States, and though there was much dissent, it passed by a single vote. In 1836, Democrat Martin Van Buren won the Presidential Election [the first born U.S. Citizen to become President] and didn’t just oversee the evacuation of Cherokee people from their homelands, but also started another Campaign against the Seminoles to better secure Florida.

In 1838, the United States began to forcibly remove the Cherokee people from their homes. It should be noted; U.S. General John Wool resigned his commission in protest of those orders, which did delay the Military’s action. Even so, by May [1838], the Cherokee were being moved to make-shift forts until their masses could be controlled, and then forced to march over two thousand miles [later named “The Trail of Tears” after the Cherokee's name for retelling of the journey "Nunahi-Duna-Dlo-Hilu-I" meaning "trail where they cried"] to their new “home” in the Oklahoma territory.

Of the estimated 16,000 Native Americans who marched (or were sailed) to the west, it’s estimated between 4,000 and just over 5,000 of them died [men, women, and children] of starvation, exposure, and disease along the way. Exact number of deaths is not known, for they were not allowed to bring their belongings, soldiers looted their homes, and limited official records were kept of any of the Native Americans under the U.S. Military’s control from Georgia to Oklahoma [which did not become a U.S. state for another seventy years].

Remember, the United States wasn't some empty land a bunch of fed-up English guys claimed, and built a great nation upon, for which Republicans and Democrats have been fighting to control and protect from job-stealing immigrants, or those who would destroy them; it was "claimed" right on top of indigenous people [who were nearly killed to extinction], it was stolen, bought, and manipulated into the hands of control that persist today, in 21st Century Politics.

(I'll get into controlling powers in the U.S. in another chapter,

but spoiler, it's not really the easily demonized

"white people" “Democrats” or “Republicans”)

While the Native Americans were being targeted with the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the African American population was rocked by a Slave Rebellion [1831] lead by Nathaniel “Nat” Turner which ultimately caused the deaths of Anglo American men. [The exact numbers seem to fluctuate between fifty and sixty-five Anglo American men, though I’m not sure why their records are shoddy…] Nat Turner was quickly convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in a six day period, after he had eluded capture for over two months.

With him, fifty-six other slaves were executed by the state of for suspicion of being a part of the rebellion, but between one and two hundred other African Americans were killed by “white” militias in angry relation. Subsequently, Virginia and other states began to outlaw the education of African Americans, required a “white” Minister be present for African American’s worship, and limited when, where, why, and in what numbers they could assemble. These laws often included slaves and freed men, as well as African and Anglo American “mulattoes.”

Now, it’s important to know that, in addition to these attacks on the people, the pro-slavery property owning "white" men in control of the votes, also passed a series of gag laws [Pinckney Resolutions1836/37, Patton Resolutions 1837,  Atherton Gag 1838] and the Twenty-First Rule [1840]] to prevent the Abolitionists from even discussing, and then receiving petitions to abolish slavery. The “gag laws” only kept enraging the Abolitionists, who kept sending more and more petitions for the end of slavery, and then for the unconstitutionality of the gag-laws stopping Congress from discussing the grievances of the people on the topic of slavery.

Pro-slavery votes still held the majority by 1840 too so, when the gag-orders had the opposite effect they intended, they passed a different rule [Twenty-First Rule]. This was the rule which stopped the Congress from being able to even accept a petition that concerned slavery. The 1st Amendment was shut down once again, by one side of Congress to stop the other side from changing the power structure. History repeats itself again and again in this regard also.

After all, if the Plantation owners and Farmers lost the right to own slaves, where would they get such cheap labor to work the fields? They’d have to pay for them like all the other industries, and that wasn’t a very promising outlook for those hit first [and heaviest] by the financial crisis blooming at that time.

After the end of the Second U.S. Central Bank in 1836, between 1837 and 1844, with a notable reprieve between 1838 and 1839, the economic state of the United States was thrown into a panic. [Panic of 1837] and the effects of which caused plantations to go out of commission or into debt, 343 banks [of 550 in the U.S.] closed their doors, while sixty-two more were on the edge of failing but never crossed the line into closer, and the United States temporarily withdrew from international markets because most of the U.S. couldn’t pay its foreign debts.

This financial instability only made slave-owners even more dependent on their “free labor.”

1840 also marked the first Whig Party Presidency. The Whig’s had soaked up many of the scattered Federalists, the disgruntled Republicans, and had three Presidential Candidates in the previous election [though none had won until 1840], including the 1840 winner, William H. Harrison. U.S. President Harrison caused quite the stir in 1841, just a month into his Presidency, when he died unexpectedly.

At the time, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution 1789 simply stated: “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President…” which, to those who were not the Vice President, left to question whether or not the Vice President would become President, or simply have to execute the President’s duties as Acting President until the next election.

Whig Vice President John Tyler never doubted his succession as the 10th U.S. President, and though he is reported to have believed his oath as Vice President stood as solid in his Presidency, he also had himself “sworn in” April 6th, 1841 in his hotel room, and then convened the President’s Cabinet (Harrison's picks) to get started. Harrison had favored his cabinet’s council, and it was natural for them to believe, Whigs to Whigs, Vice/President Tyler would too.

Of course, he saw it differently, and President Tyler’s record of vetoes against his own party’s agenda eventually saw the cabinet members resign and the Whig party throw him out. Any time they sent him correspondence addressed to the “Vice President Tyler” or “Acting President Tyler” he is said to have returned them unopened. More importantly, they threatened [though never reportedly attempted] to assassinate him.

This also marks the first time in United States history a Presidential Veto was overturned by Congress. March 3, 1845, at the end of Tyler’s controversial Presidency [still the longest serving non-elected President], Congress’s conflicting ideologies agreed just long enough to gain a 2/3rds majority vote to override the President’s prior veto to a bill that would have denied him the “Presidential power” to appropriate U.S. [federal] money for the building of revenue-cutter ships without Congress’ approval.

That the over-ride gave that power to the Executive Branch anyway is (in my opinion) secondary to the fact Congress had previously attempted to have the laws changed to not require a 2/3rds majority to over-ride a Presidential veto, but just a majority [he veto’d that one too and they still could only get a few votes over the opposing side]. Though members of Congress also tried to have President Tyler impeached several times, he was never unseated during his term.

Another standing record in the history of U.S. Presidents, Tyler had the misfortune of losing two U.S. Supreme Court Justices [they died while in office], and finding all four of the candidates he nominated to replace them… vetoed by the Senate, some of them two and three times. Even with all the opposition, President Tyler found pressure from Merchants to open up U.S. trade with China, since Britain had the monopoly at the time.

So, in 1844-45, the Treaty of Wanghia was signed and ratified, being the first to include a clause that required China allow U.S. Citizens to learn Chinese [which was forbidden in Chinese Laws], in addition to having an option to renegotiate in twelve years. Interestingly, they also declared the Opium trade illegal, and the United States agreed to hand any offender over to China. This treaty is pivotal, because the Mexican-American War [1846-1848], and the California Gold Rush [1848-1855] are right around the corner for the United States.

Before Mexican-American War, it’s important to know the territory of Texas was considered by Mexico, to be Mexican territory. Texas, however, felt it was strong enough to be its own republic [largely “occupied” by Americans] and in 1835-1836, staged the Texas Revolution. While a convention of American Texans’ declared Texas Independence [1836] and established a small government for the new Republic of Texas [which was much smaller than it would eventually become], the Mexican President vowed to reclaim the Texas territory, and not only caught the Texans’ unprepared, but executed those in his way, and many of those who surrendered as well.

In the Battle of San Jacinto [1836], however, the Texans surprised the Mexicans and returned the favor of killing those who surrendered in addition to those who fought. While the conflict continued, Mexico never really regained control of Texas, and by 1845, the United States supported Texas as U.S. territory,  including a claim to the otherwise disputed Texas Territory between Mexico [what would later become New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and California] and the Republic of Texas. This only pissed Mexico off even more [and some Texans who wanted Texas to remain an independent and sovereign nation].

Consider this: 

Mexico itself was a new nation, only thirty years free of the Spaniards to the United States forty-eight years (sixty-one if you’re counting from the Declaration of Independence), and the loss of the Texas territory was devastating. It didn’t just shrink the baby nation, but left many of its citizens [Mexican Citizens] stranded in U.S. territory, and then in the United States. Again, the United States is a shitty neighbor, Mexico, sorry!

To make matters more intense, the British were trying to put colonies in Alta [upper] California, while the natives and settlers of Alta California [Native Americans, Mexicans, Spaniards, and French] were talking of joining either the British, or the United States, or claiming Independence by the early 1840’s. Mexico couldn’t seem to hold on to its lands, and the other nations [Britain and the United States mostly] kept alluding to Mexico’s fall in many negotiation, including outright offering to forgive Mexican debt from their fight for Independence, and to pay additional millions [$25 - $35 million at the time] for Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo México above the Rio Grande border. Even if the Mexican government wanted to agree, to stop all the fighting, they couldn’t.

Not only did the people of Mexico think such a sale would dishonor their new country, but the political leaders were changed so frequently in 1846, a solid decision literally couldn’t be reached. Most of the leaders, who lost their office in this time, lost it because the people rejected any notion that their leaders would negotiate with the United States or Britain, rather than fighting for what was already theirs. The United States did not wait for Mexico to decide, but marched on Mexico. Some reports suggest the act was deliberately to provoke war without actually attacking first. The moment the Mexican soldiers crossed into the United States and killed U.S. soldiers in response, word was sent to Congress, May 11, 1846. Three days later, the United States signs a war declaration against Mexico.

History repeats itself again (in less than 100 years),

and another war is born.

“Myside, Yourside, Myside, Yourside!” 

[Famous line of the character Stark in Farscape 1999-2003]

In a war where both sides felt they had a stake in the land, and claim on it already, the real losers are those who die, and those who get left behind. The United States didn’t just fight the physical war with the Mexicans, but fought a war on the people of the United States too, in trying to control the news being published about the War.

Before the Mexican American War, the invention of the printing press had already made it much cheaper to distribute news, and that meant by the time the U.S. declared war, reporters were traveling to the disputed territories to witness and recount the action first hand. They weren’t just excited about the press getting their words out faster, but the invention of the telegraph in 1936 allowing the war itself to progress faster!

Reporters collected old messages [dispatches from the very new Telegraph system] between the militaries and their governments, namely the United States; they filled in blanks so the American people felt like they knew what was going on, while the U.S. never really made it clear what the war was really about when anyone asked for specifics. [Such as: Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Joshua Giddings, Robert Toombs, and Frederick Douglas just to name a few].

Still, the American people were riled every time a new report was issued, a new paper released, drinking in the news and celebrating the United States victories. After the “era of good feelings” was followed by a recession, it seemed like the U.S. needed the War to connect the people beyond their ideologies and behind the United States ambition.

I’d cover a few of the individual battles, but there is more history to reveal, and in the end, the unstable Mexican government signed Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [1848] and received half the amount the Unite States offered the first time, for handing over what would become California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, while reseeding their claim on Texas. The U.S. took on the debt of the Mexicans to U.S. citizens [estimated just over 3 million, equivalent to 89 million in 2016]. Again, those who lost the most were those who died, and those who were left behind. 

Mexico lost almost half it landmass, while the U.S. gained almost the entire Middle America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Meanwhile, Native Americans were ignored, herded, or killed along the way, and the slaves of the southern U.S. faced even more territory they could be broken in on.

In the same year, the United States held its twelfth Presidential Election. It should be noted that before the Mexican American war, the U.S. Army reported only 6,000 troops, and during the war, that number rose [mainly by volunteers] to over 100,000. Fewer than 2,000 of those men died in battle, but another 11,000 died in the following months of the diseases they’d caught in the fight [i.e. yellow fever, cholora, etc.] and it wasn’t widely reported. What was reported, aside from the Victory over the Mexicans, was gold found in California. Democrats and Whigs fought for the Presidency, but Whig Major General Zachary Taylor won the majority vote.

Though President Taylors record extends beyond the wars he fought in, I do feel it necessary to mention, in an election following a recession and a war after years of wars, Taylor’s history of serving in the U.S. military since before (and in) the War of 1812, plus the Black Hawk War [1832], and the Second Seminole War [1835-1842], before he succeeded in the Mexican American War, made him [in a new press-flush society] the people’s popular candidate. Perhaps more importantly, Taylor was a slave owner, while his main opponent [Democrat Lewis Cass] was already lobbying to pass a bill which would give the residents of the new territories the authority to decide if it should be a pro-slavery territory, or anti-slavery territory, and no one actually seemed to know where Taylor stood on the slavery issue exactly [and by exactly I mean in the newly gained territories].

This is imperative to know considering the U.S. Civil War follows in the next decade and slave-owners needed all the power they could obtain in the United States politics.

What they didn’t know, until he was running, and not for sure until he was elected, President Taylor had his own ideas on what made sense for the Country and was an advocate for a balance in that power. Instead of deciding on the slavery issue in the new territories at all, he urged them to draft state constitutions (especially the gold-“rich” California) so that, as a state, they could indeed, decide for themselves and Congress would have no say in the matter.

California was already working on it, and by 1849, they’d agreed to join the Union and ban slavery within their borders. Texas and New Mexico were in conflict, because both claimed the territory between them. President Taylor sided with New Mexico but the dispute continued to stall either from becoming a U.S. state until after the Civil War.

About 150,000 people traveled by land to California, and another 150,000 by sea, all in search of a piece of the riches. [Incidentally, this is also how the San Francisco 49’rs American Football team got their name, in reference to the gold-seekers of 1849 being called “49ers”] Between 1848 and 1850 (just 2 years) the town of San Francisco grew from about 1,000 people, to over 25,000 people, and much of the newly built city was made of ships left behind on the shores from previous gold-seekers.

All those new settlements, new land-claim laws, didn’t just displace even more Native Americans, but also killed an estimated 100,000 Native Americans from 1848-1868, a third of their local population.

Gold, though! Right? [Not an excuse, not even a good reason, but I’ll cover that later.] It’s true, the early gold-rushers (who were largely Californians or from near-by territories) were reported to have found as much gold in six days, as would have paid their wages for six years. It was an exciting prospect for workers on the East Cost, laboring in cotton mills, steel mills, lumber mills, and so on, either as slaves, or as low wage workers. While the majority of 49ers were from different parts of the United States, there were also Mexicans (and other Latin Americans not associated with Mexico), Asians (primarily Chinese), Europeans (Mostly Britons, French, and Germans), Australians, Filipinos, Turks, Italians, and Jewish people who all came in search of a gold fortune.

This is important, because if you recall, California didn’t actually get added to the United States union yet, which meant the first discoveries of Gold were made when Mexico owned California, and the 49ers discovered their gold in the shady time when California was legally a U.S. [unorganized] Territory. So, the land was considered “public land” but that was still such a new idea, there were no rules in place to keep the territory organized, and the result was a mixture of Mexican laws, United States ideals, and personal dictatorship of every man for himself.

This lead to “claims” being made on a dig site [which gave the claimer rights to any finds as long as they were actively digging the site], then abandoned for its low yield, only to be re-dug by another claimant [claim jumping] who would find a worthy gold deposit and fall into a conflict with the original claimer. These disputes were often very violent, and the winner took all. That is, unless a Prospector intervened like judge and jury, determining whose claim was more valid. Not all Prospectors were crooked, but it wasn’t uncommon for a claim to be given to the in the favor of the bigger bribe.

Perspective: 

It’s estimated over a million pounds of gold were mined from California during the rush (not the first or last gold rush in the U.S.), which in 2016 would net about $1.3 billion dollars. Back in 1850, it was about $300 million. Still, a pair of boots to mine in might cost you over $1,000 if the rush repeated in 2016. Similarly, you might buy an egg for $25 and a pound of coffee grinds for $500 if an event like the Gold Rush occurred in 2016.

Finding gold in California didn’t make everything more affordable, the wealth being so spread out; instead, it made the cost of everything (especially mining supplies) more expensive for future miners. Too, mining methods destroyed the land, and some of it was already owned. Did anyone compensate those land owners? Nope. Including a Mill owner whose land the first nuggets were found upon. The ones who made the most on the Gold Rush, were the one’s selling everyone else the equipment to mine with. This includes the founder of Levi Jeans [the ones with the red-tab], who originally marketed his superior canvas-cloth skills to make wagon covers and tents. One too many complaints from miners that their pants didn’t hold-up and a Denim Jean company was born.

Less happily, as the gold became more and more scarce, laws were enacted to charge a tax on immigrants (mostly the Chinese) every day they mined, and while it was as little as $2 dollars a day in the 1850’s, in 2016 that would be like taxing you $60 dollars a day to work. Keep in mind, 25% of the people in California by 1850, were immigrants from outside of the U.S., moreover, 1 in every 90 people living in the United States were living in California so, if the gold rush itself wasn’t enough to seek some level of protection under the United States umbrella, the threat of immigrants still pouring in, unbalancing the U.S. dominance of the land, did persuade them to finish that State Constitution! Do not forget this, because it comes up again, as all things seem to do.

However, before California could be ratified as a U.S. State, U.S. President Taylor died halfway into his term, and was succeeded by Whig Vice President Millard Fillmore as the 13th President of the United States in July of 1850. By September, the Compromise of 1850 was written (and fought over) eventually including 5 bills signed into law at the same time [yay, another orgi’law!].

The first, obviously, was to make it official that California was a State of the United States. The second settled the dispute between the Utah and New Mexico territories slavery position, letting the people of the territory decide for themselves. The third forced Texas to give-up its claim to other territories in exchange for the United States taking on the Republic’s debt.

The last two dealt with slavery specifically, the forth making slave-trade (but not slavery itself) illegal in Washington D.C., while the fifth was a brand new Fugitive Slave Act [1850]. Learning from the first Fugitive Slave Act [1793], pro-slavery authors included language to force all the States [but mostly northern “Free States”] to cooperate with the southern “Slave States” in any manner of attempting to secure an escaped slave. More importantly, this also included aiding in the capture, detention, and transportation of the slave to their rightful owner. Abolitionists quickly dubbed it the “Bloodhound Law.”

As usual, when the U.S. targets African Americans, the next target against the Native Americans is quick to follow. By 1851, many tribes signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. In it, boundaries were set for Native American settlements, which they agreed to live within in exchange for allowing the U.S. to build roads and forts in the territory. As a part of that agreement, the U.S. also promised to keep the "white"-settlers from attacking the Native American settlements, AND make annual payments (in money and supplies) to the Native Americans.

Interestingly, despite the bloody history, the Cheyenne , Sioux, Crow, Arapaho, Assinibione, Mandan, Gros Ventre and Arikara tribes not only signed the treaty peacefully (it sounded like a good deal) but also negotiated amongst themselves for peace between the tribes in the hopes of making the new agreement work for everyone! Unfortunately, history didn’t play out that way, but I’ll discuss that in the next chapter.

Then, just before the 1856 U.S. Presidential Election, eight years later, North Carolina became the last state to drop their ban on non-property owning "white" men at least twenty-one years of age, surprise! We’re a quarter of the way into U.S. history, and still, only "white" men can vote! Sadly, this fact is used suppress future generations of non-"white" citizens in the United States. Why? "Those in power wanted to remain in power" is the simplest answer, but many [not all] also thought "non-whites," especially of different ideologies, were actually lesser human beings if human at all.

It is that fundamental difference, between those who recognized “people” being all-inclusive of everyone and those who thought the notion of “people” only applied to other civilized "white-folk," which has been brewing since before the American Revolution, and took half a century to reach the limit of tolerance. While I want to be clear that there were (in fact) people fighting for the Native American’s and immigrant’s rights, the main threshold of tolerance was broken between Abolitionists and Slave Owners first, and both sides felt the country could not move forward until the other side was subdued.

America’s Red Dawn was not so suddenly shadowed by the clouds of war yet to come; America’s Civil War was just over the horizon.

The United States has always been (and always will be) full of people with conflicting ideals.

(Hello!? This is Planet Earth; diversity is kind of our thing!)

The most well known example of the United States' internal political war is slavery. 

The United States had always included people on both sides of the political slavery fence, those who wanted to see slavery Abolished, and those who wanted to keep slavery legal. (You will find this true of any political topic.) It was not a new development or sentiment by the 1860’s, but rather, a long overdue volcano that finally exploded like Mount Vesuvius onto Pompeii. The warning signs were there, but the Civil War couldn’t be avoided because each side felt they were fundamentally right and the other side was wrong.

After the last state dropped its property-owner restrictions in 1856, still leaving only Anglo-American men the eligibility to vote, things became progressively direr between the states and the United States. The 1845 coining of the phrase “Manifest Destiny” took root in many of the Southern States, drawing a line of sovereignty between states and the overall governing body of the nation, the United States. 

To the Slave-Owners, the slave industry was a way of life, they believed it was their right to enslave the Africans and African American people, and that the “negros” were so inferior a race, that right could not be challenged. In 2016, we know differently about slavery and the perception of race inferiority, but in the 1850’s, those who knew slavery was wrong, didn’t find the Slave-Owners even willing to consider it.

In one of the smallest, but most brutal Republican/Abolitionist v. Democrat/Slave-Owner battles, Democratic South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks beat Republican Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner nearly to death with a cane after Senator Sumner's aggressive speech about slavery, attacking slave-owners and the slave industry, in May of 1856 (Caning of Sumner [1856]). 

The incident fired up the nation when the South believed Brooks was a hero, while the North believed Sumner was a martyr. Over a million copies were sold of the speech Sumner gave which lead to his beating. Hundreds of canes were even sent to Senator Sumner in intimidating approval of his beating, one of which is reported to be inscribed "hit him again."

William Cullen Bryant asked at the time, what I'd have liked to ask, in the New York Evening Post: "Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters?... Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?" 

In confirmation and contrast, the south had publications praising Brooks for beating Sumner, that Sumner should be caned daily, and more colorfully, that the caning was "good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences" because "these vulgar abolitionists in the Senate...have been suffered to run too long without collars. They must be lashed into submission."

Representative Brooks was tried and convicted for his assault on Sumner,which left Sumner in debilitating pain for the rest of his life. Brooks' sentence? A fine of $300 [equivalent to $8,047 in 2016] and no jail time. I am sure if I had been able to dig-up Brook's financial stability at the time, that $300 would have been chump-change and hardly a punishment for his new fame. 

More interestingly, Brooks resigned to give his constituents the freedom to decided whether or not he should serve in the House of Representatives anymore. A special Election was held in July of 1856, and Brooks was re-elected to office in the next term. Before he could serve that term however, he died "a horrid death, and suffered immensely" of coup in 1857. It was one step in the many-runged ladder leading to the Civil War.

1857 also saw the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dred Scott v Sandford case favor the continued oppression the African Americans. More specifically, it began years prior when a man named Dred Scott, who was born a slave, got married (though not recognized legally), had a family, changed ownership a couple of times, and worked for his owners directly, or for other free people as a rented slave for labor, tried to earn his freedom.

Back in 1846 (11 years before the Supreme Court Case), Scott tried to purchase his family's freedom from his owners, but was denied. The daughter (and her husband) of his previous ownersassisted Dred Scott in filing a lawsuit for his (and his wife's) emancipation, on the grounds of living in a free-state, and that his wife had been born free (on a steamboat between free territories and free states.) Unfortunately, they lost the trial on a technically of proving he was enslaved.

Let me repeat that more clearly: Dred Scott lost his first trial (1846) because he only had "hearsay" that he was in fact, enslaved by his owner and being rented out as slave labor, therefore, the courts could not emancipate him because there was no "proof" he was a slave.Catch 22, anyone?

Scott appealed the decision and was granted a new trial in 1847, but due to fires, diseases, and the resulting continuances, Scott and his family were detained for 3 years by the Missouri Sheriff's department where he was still rented out as slave labor, the profits of which were held in escrow to be paid to his owner, or him, pending the outcome of the trial. I just want to point out after denying this man his freedom because he cannot prove he is a slave, the legal system treated him like a slave because he was not a free man.

In 1850, Scott finally won his appeal after "proof" was provided during a deposition which confirmed Scott and his family were being rented as slave labor by the wife of the former witness who's testimony had been "hearsay." Unfortunately, it was a short-lived victory.

The ownership of the Scott's was transferred [though no records were ever found of it] to the brother-in-law, Sanford, of his owner in the first two trials, and an appeal to the Scott's victory was put to the courts once more. By 1852, the victory was overturned and the Scott's were named as slaves who had no right to the escrow money, or their freedom. 

By 1853, the Scott's owner's lived in yet another state, and opened the next appeal to be made in the federal Supreme Court as Dred Scott v. Sandford [1853-1857]. The case was tried for over four years, and as it neared it's end, U.S. President Elect (as in, he was elected but not sworn in yet) Democrat James Buchanan corresponded with the Justices on the case to determine whether or not their verdict would arrive before he was sworn in; more importantly, he urged the ruling to be a broad judgement on the matter of slaves in free states and territories. 

(If you think this kind of behavior doesn't exist in 21st Century U.S. Politics, you haven't been paying attention, but I will outline in later chapters.)

Ultimately, the decision came two days after Buchanan was sworn in, March of 1857:

The Supreme Court ruled that "negro" people born of parents imported or born as slaves, whether they were free or slave themselves, could not be U.S. Citizens, and therefore, couldn't sue in court; too, that the U.S. Government (by interpretation of the Constitution) had no right to regulate slavery issues in territories "acquired" after the creation of the United States. In effect, this upheld the original ruling in the favor of the Scott's being slaves to their owners, and established they had no right to appeal because they weren't, and "would never be" U.S. Citizens so, they held no rights to be heard by the Courts.

Following the trial, however, the Scott's family were transferred to the ownership of his first owner's daughter and husband, those who'd helped him in the trials (though, again, no records have surfaced of the transfer), and the family was given their papers of manumission. Dred Scott lived 18 months as a free man before he died, while his wife lived long enough to see slavery shifted from ownership to post-civil war "freedom" under segregation and oppression. I will be mentioning this case gain in Part 2 so don't forget about Dred Scott!

By 1859, an Anglo-American man by the name of John Brown was settled into Maryland, across the river from a U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, under an alias of Isaac Smith, for the purpose of inciting a nation-wide slave revolt he expected to be a success with limited and minimal casualties. Despite believing in the cause, believing success wasn’t just possible but inevitable, having notable support from Abolitionist, free African Americans, Freed Slaves, and escaped slaves, having arms of their own, minimal training, and actually gaining a foothold in Harpers Ferry, the rebellion was a failure just as Frederick Douglass had predicted when he refused to be a part of it.

Douglass was a sharp minded escaped slave, and he, unlike Brown, knew from history that any perceived attack (and taking over a U.S. arsenal was more than a perceived attack) against the U.S. would endure the wrath of the U.S. Military. Douglas, despite the generally accepted notion that African Americans were an inferior race, was able to deduce the outcome of John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry [1859] with better accuracy than John Brown himself.

Also of interest, on the day of Brown’s execution for the raid (along with 4 others), he wrote, “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty, land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.” It became known as “John Brown’s last Prophecy” [1859] and he wasn’t wrong about that, or the first to proclaim it.

It should not be overshadowed by John Brown’s last speech in which he also stated: "...had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment." Which in 21st century terms, is still the case, but I’ll get to those details in later chapters.

By 1860, a year before the Civil War began; Slave Owners had enough clout in their State governance, they pushed for each state to secede from the United States, starting with South Carolina on December 20th, 1860. Mississippi followed January 9th, 1861, Florida on January 10th, Alabama on the 11th, Georgia on the 19th, Louisiana on the 26th, Texas on February 1st, Virginia on April 17th, Arkansas on May 6th, North Carolina on May 20th, and Tennessee on June 8th, 1861 to form the “Confederate States of America [1861-1865].”

At the same time [December 1860- March 1861], the 36th Congress received over 200 resolutions that pertained to slavery, and at least 57 of them requested constitutional amendments. One of these resolutions requesting a constitutional amendment was considered for the unique wording suggested:

“No amendment of this Constitution, having for its object any interference within the States with the relations between their citizens and those described in second section of the first article of the Constitution as "all other persons," shall originate with any State that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the States composing the Union.”

The amendment was accepted by Congress in March of 1861, and pushed into the ratification process as the “Corwin Amendment [1861]” but was never successful in becoming a law; perhaps because it failed to convince or entice the border states and Confederate States to rejoin or stay in the Union. 

It is important to realize how close it came to becoming a law, and if it had, it was basically giving the states the right to conduct their business (including slavery) without the intervention of the U.S. Government to tell them no or to make laws that interfered with the State’s affairs without the approval of those within the state, and all the other states in the Union.

Some believe it would have made the later 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments impossible to pass, while other suggest the “Reconstruction” Amendments would have repealed the Corwin Amendment, and the truth is, we’ll never know; but we do know both the leaving U.S. President Buchanan, and the incoming President Lincoln both publicly supported the Corwin Amendment in the early 1860s. Of course, by then, it was already too late, and the first battle of the Civil War began shortly thereafter on April 12th 1861 when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter.

While the Confederacy was busy in the Civil War, the U.S. Congress finally got the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Act of 1862 passed and ratified. The Homestead Act act offered an average of 160 acres to any male U.S. Citizen 21 years of age or older (or the head of a household), who (specifically) had never taken up arms against the United States, IF they promised to live on and farm said land for five years, and IF they could provide evidence of “improving” the land with at least a  12' x 14' home and crops. 

 While this was a victory in keeping slave-owners from monopolizing the best land and leaving independent farmers with whatever was left over, it was also an attempt to convince southern men not yet fighting for the Confederacy to head west, and an effort on the part of the United States to ensure domestic crop sources not dependent on the slaver-owners plantations should the civil war take even longer, or be unsuccessful for the Union. There were over five hundred claims in the first year, and by the early 1900’s, over one and a half million.

The Morrill Act offered any State not “in a condition of rebellion or insurrection against the government of the United States” thirty thousand acre’s (or the profit of its sale at $1.25 an acre if reported annually by the State’s Governor) per State Representative based on the 1860 Census, to establish and fund universities for education in sciences, mechanical arts, agriculture, with other educations not excluded, and a Reserve Officers Training Corp program required.

The Act did stipulate that funds couldn’t be used to repair buildings, that each State was responsible for all fees so that the entire sum of any sale could be used for the sole purpose outlined, which included investing in U.S. or State specific stocks, and making up any differences, to ensure funding continued beyond the Morrill Act. Too, the institutions funded or created by the Morrill Act were then required to report their progress not just to the Secretary of Interior, but every other institution on the list. 

States had two years to accept or have the offer rescinded, and five years from accepting to have their Institution running, or the required programs in an established University, often as additional A&M ( Agriculture and Mechanics) colleges. In total, over seventeen million acres were granted; that’s over twenty-seven thousand square miles, and it (again) expressly excluded the Confederate States.

Not surprisingly, the Confederacy began drafting soldiers in 1862, and required three years of service from men selected between 18 and 35 years old. In the following years, the draft was extended to any male between 17 and 50 years old.

Note: In 1863 work began on the Transcontinental Railroad and continued until 1869, but I will cover it in a later chapter, just realize the pattern of self-sufficient and industrial focus in the middle of a civil war on the part of the U.S. Government; it's strategic.

Also in 1863, during the middle of the Civil War,and despite his first Inaugural Speech not to, 16th U.S. President Lincoln announced theEmancipation Proclamation [1863], and every child in the U.S. since, learns about it in High-School history. 

What is often not found in school text books, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederate States, and refused freedom to slaves still owned in the Union States; purposefully excluding the states not in rebellion and still, the Proclamation affected an estimated 3 to 4 million slaves in ten states. 

Furthermore, Lincoln announced plans for the Emancipation Proclamation a year before it became a legal act which could be used in confederate regions occupied or taken over by the Union, as a threat to the rebellious Confederate States. It did not intimidate them enough to back down, but caused many slaves to escape their ownership to fight for the Union in the hopes of being protected and securing their freedom.

The Draft Act of 1863is the first draft in U.S. history. Any male citizen, including immigrants who had declared their intent to become a Citizen, between the ages of 20 and 45 were on notice of being a potential selectee for the draft. Unmarried men had to be drafted before Married men, but if a man should hire another man to take his place, or paid $300 [equivalent to $5,085 in 2016], he could evade the draft. Obviously, the lower classes resented this, as they could neither afford to hire a substitute, nor pay such a fee, and worse (to them), African Americans were excluded because they were not Citizens.

Shortly after, in July of 1863, New Yorkers took to the streets to protest and express their rage at the draft, but it quickly turned into a race riot that lasted three days [New York City draft riots 1863]. African Americans were hunted down and killed by the rioting mob of Anglo-American men, a large number reported to be Irish immigrants. Over a hundred people were killed and over two thousand injured. Churches, Businesses, Homes of Abolitionists, African Americans, and sympathizers were destroyed, including the complete burning down of a colored orphanage.

It’s important to realize that not only was New York exporting for the plantation owners, mostly cotton, but they also feared competing with freed slaves for jobs. The riot was as much about being drafted for the war, as it was about the perceived economic threat to their livelihood with the freeing of so many African Americans. 

Too, the newspapers at the time were notorious for painting the African American population as a taint in America, and often blatantly warning against socializing with different races, especially romantically, and absolutely not to marry outside of one’s race. With Police outnumbered, and the Military too far away to be of immediate help, telegraph lines cut to prevent the news from reaching other cities, it was not the first or last riot to end with deaths in the United States.

November 29, 1864 (5 days after the first Thanksgiving had on the Last Thursday in November, set by Presidential Proclamation from President Lincoln that October) several Regiments of Colorado Volunteers attacked Native American villages of Cheyenne and Arapaho in the Big Sandy Creek, Colorado area. The Soldiers camped not far from the village of Black Kettle’s tribe. The day before the attack, Black Kettle’s warriors left to hunt buffalo on the assurance the village would be safe if Black Kettle flew a U.S. flag and a white flag beneath it, from his lodge. Two commanders told their men to hold fire (whether because of the Flags, or the nature of the orders), and refused the order to attack the village filled mostly with women, children, and men too young, injured, or old to hunt.

The number of Native’s killed has been debated, but most seem to agree over a 100 were killed, and only 20 or 30 of which were warriors while the rest were women and children of all ages (including fetuses cut from the womb of their dead mothers). The soldiers were not satisfied with just killing the Natives (men, women and children), but cut off their scalps, noses, genitals, ears, and so on, not only wearing them back to the Camp, but displaying them in Denver’s Apollo Theater and saloons in the area as well. Furthermore, after the smoke cleared, they looted the tipis and bodies, as well as killing wounded still alive. As if the act itself is not horrific and tragic enough, eight of the more prominent Peace-Talker Chiefs were killed in the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, and forever changed Native American and U.S. relations.

Consider this:

The Natives had already agreed to live on the reservation granted to them during the Treaty of Fort Laramie [1851], but in 1858, Pikes Peak saw a gold rush that brought Anglo settlers through and all over the reservation. Instead of asking for permission to mine, or hunt, or harvest the land as needed, the U.S. negotiated with select, bribed Chiefs to sign the Treaty of Fort Wise that reduced the reservation size to less than a 13th of it's original size; the rest of the Tribes denied the Chiefs knew what they were signing, and refused to abide by the treaty. 

So, by 1864, both sides felt they had a claim to the land that the other side kept trespassing on.

During the same time in 1864, and through December, Union General William T. Sherman took his army men through Georgia, from Atlanta to the port of Savannah, and left much of the south obliterated in their wake.Sharman’s March to the Sea [1864] disrupted the Confederate’s supply lines, while having no supply lines of their own. They destroyed businesses, homes, plantations, basic infrastructure, and military targets.

President Lincoln wrote the General after receiving his word (via Christmas gift) of the capture of the Savannah Port:

“Many, many thanks for your Christmas gift – the capture of Savannah. When you were leaving Atlanta for the Atlantic coast, I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge, and remembering that 'nothing risked, nothing gained' I did not interfere. Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce. And taking the work of Gen. Thomas into the count, as it should be taken, it is indeed a great success. Not only does it afford the obvious and immediate military advantage; but, in showing to the world that your army could be divided, putting the stronger part to an important new service, and yet leaving enough to vanquish the old opposing force of the whole—Hood's army—it brings those who sat in darkness, to see a great light. But what next? I suppose it will be safer if I leave Gen. Grant and yourself to decide. Please make my grateful acknowledgements to your whole army, officers and men.”

November of 1864 was busy, too, withthe U.S. Presidential Elections where Lincoln ran again for the Democratic Party, and by a land-slide in the Electoral College, he won. The reconstructed Louisiana and Tennessee were not counted in the vote, and neither were the remaining Confederate States of America. Still, there was a 75% eligible Voter turn out, and three new States [Kansas, West Virginia, and Nevada] in the voting process.

The day before President Lincoln was sworn in for the second time as U.S. President, the Freedmen’s Bureau [March 3, 1865] was established. It’s powers were limited, but it was instrumental in not only helping freed slaves learn to read, write, obtain clothing, food, shelter, medical care, “legal marriages,” and to find work, but also connected families of African Americans separated during the Civil War.

Of course, the local and state legislation did everything they could to make the Freedmen’s Bureau duties difficult to achieve successfully, and made conditions for African Americans nearly duplicate to their slavery, for which the Bureau had no power to fight or appeal.

While the Confederacy came to a practical end with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to the United States Commanding Army General Ulysses S. Grant at the Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, on April 9, 1865, those warring in the Bering Sea were late to get the news... 

And while news was traveling of the Confederate Army’s surrender, President Lincoln was watching a play [Our American Cousin] at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC, April 14th, 1865 when he was assassinated. The first U.S. President to be assassinated, he was succeeded by Vice President Andrew Johnson the same day. The plan was to kill all three, President, Vice President, and Secretary of State in the same day, but two of the shooters failed and the plot to disrupt the American Government failed with them, shocking the Nation in the process.

The Steam Ship that fired the last shot in the Civil War in June 22, 1865 in the Bering Sea (Alaska) was not only a Confederate ship, but delivered from the "off-hands (neutral)" British via a secret meet off the coast of Africa with the Confederate Navy in 1864.

It was built to have changeable masts, rigging, and sails, and to raise and lower it’s smoke stacks to disguise it as a transport ship and not a war ship. They named this deceptive war ship,CSS Shenandoah [1863-1865], and the Confederates armed her to win. In twelve months of service [1864-1865], the Shenandoah and it’s Confederate crew are reported to have taken a thousand United States prisoners, and captured or sank thirty-eight ships, all without a single battle death on either side. 

In total, between April 12th 1861 and June 22nd 1865, The Union saw over 2 million service men fight for the United States (easily half of which were volunteer immigrants from Ireland and England primarily), and the Confederates raised an Army, Marines, and Navy half that size. In over 5000 battles, the Four Year Civil War had only estimates of casualties somewhere between 750,000 and 1 million; 50,000 of them are recorded as civilian deaths.

Consider this:

While counted in American History as the deadliest War ever fought, even the high estimate of 1 million deaths during the Civil War is substantially shy of the estimated 40 million to 100 million slaves killed during slavery, and the near genocide of the Native American population. In my honest opinion, The United States had been waging a 300+ year war on entire races of people and their descendants, but it becomes a sad-face cliff note in a History about "America; Land of Opportunity." 

The Civil War wasn’t just about slavery being moral or immoral; it was about economy, life-style, and the fundamental differences in the perceived future of the United States, and both sides fought whole-heartedly to see their version succeed. People died, the land was scorched and bloody, livestock stolen or killed, crops burned, stolen, or battle-trodden, homes destroyed, families scattered, broken, or wounded, and “victory” for United States was bitter-sweet. 

The Union won, slavery in the south was abolished, but the North was still free to own slaves and the U.S. government had to work diligently to catch legislation up with the perception of the Union's Civil War defeat of the Confederacy.

Although the U.S. Constitution's 13th amendment [1865]abolished slavery in the United States following the Civil War, the Civil Rights Act of 1866granted that "all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, ... [are] citizens of the United States," and the 14th Amendment [1868]included African Americans in naturalized U.S. citizenship, there was that persistent Supreme Court Ruling of 1857; Dred Scott v Sandford.

In the United States, legally, the 14th Amendment negates the Supreme Court ruling, but the government failed to remind or enforce the Amendment to the individuals who'd fought for the Supreme Court ruling, and then lost the Civil War. The laws had changed, but the reality of living in the U.S. as a Native American or African American largely didn't.

Think about that for a moment.

After each new law was passed for the African American community, the Anglo-American community legislators, and state legislators, started to pass what later became known as “Jim Crow” laws to segregate the African Americans from the Anglo-American population. The term “Jim Crow” came from an Anglo-American Mistral show actor who painted his face black with melted cork or wax, and portrayed himself as an African American slave who sang a song “Jump Jim Crow” that was very popular entertainment for the Anglo-American society of the 1830’s. The laws gained the name because of the stereotypical way the actor portrayed his African American character, and the notion “that” was what the Anglo-Americans were attempting to keep from tainting their society and way of life with the new freedom of the African American slaves making them "neighbors" instead of "property.".

Many states started with segregating the children, African Americans being banned from Anglo-American schools as early as 1865. By 1866, not only did the Ku Klux Klan become established, but “Black Codes” were established to prevent African Americans from becoming citizens, voting, claiming decent work contracts, and even limited their mobility. Eventually, these laws also included making marriage between African Americans and Anglo-Americans illegal, forcing separate railcars, dining rooms, building entrances, water fountains, etc. 

While records before 1882 are slim and sketchy at best, there were also Lynchings in the 1860's; mobs of “righteous” people seeking “justice” and hanging (sometimes shooting, sometimes both) select people or persons to death, sometimes after first whipping or beating them, and sometimes burning their corpses after their death.

Consider this:

The term “Lynching” is an American made term, believed to be named after one Virginia Justice for Peace, Charles Lynch, who hanged and shot British Loyalists during the American Revolution. Lynch inadvertently invented the “Lynch Mob” as we know it in the 21st century, and from the 1700s to the early 1900s, Lynching was a common form of American sans court “Justice” that also murdered thousands of innocent people, most of them African American, Mexican/Latin American, and Native American.

In a single example of 1868, during the Presidential Election that saw Ulysses S. Grant become the 18th U.S. President, Democratic Anglo-Americans attacked Anglo and African American Republicans, and set off a Massacre of Lynching’s that killed over a thousand voters from Georgia to Arkansas. The Civil War didn’t end African American oppression, subservience, or murder, but it did give a legal foothold for future generations to climb upon and fight for a true democracy, to fight for the unalienable rights the U.S. “founding fathers” wrote of in the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. 

That fight continues into the 21 century, but first, the early 20th century awaits.