The Slacker's Guide to U.S. History: The Bare Minimum on Discovering America, the Boston Tea Party, the California Gold Rush, and Lots of Other Stuff Dead White Guys Did (20 page)

Around the White House, President Abraham Lincoln could often be heard mumbling, “guns don't kill people, people kill people.” And on April 14, 1865, it wasn't the bullet that left Lincoln dead, it was the triggerman John Wilkes Booth that ended the life of the sitting president, effectively handing the job of commander in chief to the even less attractive, less qualified, and less popular vice president, Mr. Andrew Johnson from the volunteer state of Tennessee.

FOLLOWING LINCOLN'S DEATH, JOHNSON WAS QUICKLY INSTALLED AS THE SEVENTEENTH AND LEAST SEXY PRESIDENT OF THE LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE.
His loud and obnoxious nature made him widely unpopular in all political circles, including the ones within his own home. Using his inability to win friends and influence people against himself, Johnson found his ability to govern effectively to be satisfyingly difficult.

As America's deadliest war came to an end and reconstruction began, those who favored inept leadership were ecstatic with Johnson's efforts. Unlike Lincoln, who spoke openly about not punishing the Confederate South, Johnson preferred a more tempered approach to forgiveness. Johnson's strategy of forgiveness with conditions was wildly unpopular on both sides of the issue. He walked around the oval office with a hard on every time he stirred the pot with a civil rights veto. It was Johnson's continued inability to work well with others in the congressional sandbox that directly led to his history-making impeachment trial.

In November of 1867, C-SPAN began beaming their gavel-to-gavel coverage of Johnson's impeachment trial into the homes of dozens. After several days of uneventful and unsatisfying sloppy oral debate, a vote on Johnson's removal was held on December 5, 1867, in the House of Representatives. Once it was clear that even a hanging chad controversy could not overturn the failed impeachment hearing, Johnson went back to the White House to celebrate his continued authority over the United States.

A second attempt to remove President Johnson from office took place in 1868 when he was charged with violating the Tenure of Office Act. This poorly understood act nearly allowed congressional hatred to succeed in removing the president from the comfortable surroundings of the oval office.
THIS TIME, AFTER ALL THE VOTES WERE COUNTED, HOST OF C-SPAN IDOL RYAN SEACREST ANNOUNCED BEFORE A LIVE TELEVISION AUDIENCE, “CONGRESS HAS VOTED AND BY A MARGIN OF ONE VOTE, ANDREW, YOU ARE SAFE.”
This single vote kept President Johnson in the oval office, only further fueling the resentment and hatred of both sides.

When his time as president came to a close, Johnson scored historically low both in approval ratings and on the “Is he hot or not?” board in the town square. A complete failure in terms of his presidency, Johnson's most important and perhaps only success was his purchase of Alaska from the soon-to-be freewill-restricted Communist nation of the Russia. Without this international land transfer deal, American oil reserves would be embarrassingly low, and the pool of female vice president candidates would be less physically attractive.

The wildly successful Trail of Tears served as the backdrop for spearheading an effort to link the eastern United States with the more laid-back western states as suddenly compassionate legislators everywhere demanded that the country be linked by rails. It was argued that the effort to move the Indians out west by foot decades earlier proved to be too time consuming, and although they were indifferent about the many deaths, they rationalized that if they ever needed to relocate another ethnic group in the future, they needed to prepare for it well in advance. In looking at the wave of unruly immigrants moving into the country, it became apparent the railroad system would serve a much greater purpose than simply moving important business commodities — it would act as an on-call ethnic people shuffler.

Of course, when legislators get sudden compassion for a cause, it can only mean one thing: there is money to be made. After receiving former Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton-sponsored audiotapes on how to get rich quick using no-bid government contracts, Oakes Ames, a prominent and successful shovel manufacturer and congressman, gathered up a handful of the most financially privileged Americans and British to begin a private effort to build the iron minority mover. Ames took the Halliburton system to new heights as he influenced the United States government to not only give them the land to build the railroad, but also give them huge amounts of additional land to sell on their own, ensuring their profitability.

In Halliburton-like fashion, several individuals made fortunes, while the rest of the country had the pleasure of paying nearly twice as much as expected for the completed railway. For many, this seemed impossible, as the east-to-west portion of the track was mostly laid by hungover Irish immigrants and the west-to-east track was laid mostly by Chinese immigrants who were still weak from their journey, all of whom earned slave-like wages at best.

Aiding the investors' efforts to realize huge profits were towns all across the country that paid huge bribes to the railroad companies to convince them of the merits of running the railroad through their town. These eagerly accepted bribes resulted in many twists and turns, inconveniently changing the path of the transcontinental rails.

On May 10, 1869, the ethnic people shuffler was completed when railroad profiteer Leland Stanford drove in a ceremonial golden spike that effectively connected the eastern portion of the United States to the western portion of the United States. This was a relief to compassionate legislators, as they now had a more humane way of taking conveniently located, fertile land from ethnic landowners and exchanging it for less fertile, more inconveniently located land elsewhere in the country. It also ensured that if some great resource was discovered in the Indians' new home, we could move them again. But this time if we needed the exchanged land that was given to Native Americans with the Indian Removal Act back again, we would not force them to walk hundreds of miles to their new government-approved location, providing they could afford the train ticket.