Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 2 of a new series identifying those responsible for the corruption of the constitution and capitalism.

Though Stowe has recently been painted as a loving abolitionist, her lies lead to a brutal war which ultimately made black life worse.

Her Crimes

Lincoln acknowledged Stowe as the monger of the Civil War:

 So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!

She was raised by abolitionists. She was born in Connecticut, and spent a little time in Ohio before moving to Maine. She never saw slavery herself; she knew only what her parents had told her.

Angered by the Fugitive Slave Act, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book depicted slavery as cruel and masters as evil demons. While some actually were, and doubtless the slaves she had talked to had had such masters, it is most unlikely that the large majority of slave owners were cruel. In fact, southerners rejected Uncle Tom’s Cabin, calling it slanderous and a misrepresentation.

However, Yankees who had not actually seen slave life were moved by its imagery. The abolitionist movement spread, causing many Yankees to hate the South, and angering many southerners.

The result of this sectionism was secession, which would have included much of the West as well as the South if Lincoln had not taken action to stop Western legislatures from voting on secession (proving once again that slavery did not cause the Civil War, but it did contribute to the sectional divide that did).

Before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Civil War was avoidable, and after long enough, slavery would have ended peacefully. Instead, the forced emancipation lead to only sharecropping and grudges that would lead to racism and segregation.

Next in this glorious series: Andrew Johnson.

Andrew Jackson

Part 1 of a new series identifying those responsible for the corruption of the constitution and capitalism.

Andrew Jackson was the 7th President of the United States, the first Democrat to be president, and an established racist.

His Crimes

Andrew Jackson did many great things to our country, including reducing the federal debt to $33,733.05 (what happened?).

However, he also defeated many of the founding principles. First, he lessened state sovereignty, and destroyed the state’s rights that had existed from the start. Second, he set signed the Indian Removal Act. Third, he increased the power of the president.

Outrageously high taxes and an authoritarian north may have lead to the Civil War. Jackson decided that states could not nullify acts of national congress and that they could not secede at will. The north would then use this to bully the south into high tariffs (making the southern farmers poorer and the northern manufacturers richer) and would create the very sectionalism that started the Civil War.

Jackson also forced the American Indians into reservations. Though many of these Indians were adapting to Western Life, Jackson felt it necessary to move them. The driving forces behind this were settlers who didn’t believe that they could live with the American Indians. Jackson pandered to these settlers, and the Indians were brutalized.

The Supreme Court ruled the Indian Removal Acts unconstitutional and in violation of the treaties already in place, but President Jackson believed that the president did not have to abide by the laws and ignored the Supreme Court’s decision. By doing this, he made the president’s powers stronger.

Next in the series: Harriet Beecher Stowe