Hartford Convention

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="six" border="0" convention="" delegates="" england="" federalist="" from="" hartford="" in="" met="" new="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsnXvRibZB4b3wfBCbqoJF0qWo6YrPKN3z98L4lJC7WEDFptRG-wSMGuIhvL_iYtgu_8mXQHIAG6mAfRE7OgkYzaj18EZHcioVgbzMgrWd_CeeXCeT2cbSS9eXEjcHpC33jZRld57CzM/s1600/Hartford-Convention.jpg" states="" the="" title="Hartford" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hartford Convention</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Between 15 December 1814 and 5 January 1815, twenty-six Federalist delegates from the New England states met in Hartford, Connecticut, to consider their future as members of the United States. New England Federalists increasingly feared a southern/Republican conspiracy to weaken the northern region and subjugate it to the Republican agenda. <br /> <br /> Concerted, forceful action by the New England states seemed imperative. To concerned New England observers, “Mr. Madison’s War” of 1812–1815 and the hardships it imposed on the region demonstrated the extent of anti–New England conspiracy. <br /> <br /> By 1814, the scattered calls for a convention of New England states to resist subjugation reached a fever pitch Federalist leaders could no longer ignore. New England fears of conspiracy thus prompted action that in turn engendered Republican fears of Federalist conspiracy to break apart the union.<br /> <b><br /> </b> <b>Sectionalism and Partisanship</b><br /> <br /> Fears of conspiracy grew out of vigorous sectional jealousies and partisan politics. Even before the 1787 Constitutional Convention, political leaders and observers had noted the differences of climate, geography, economy, religion, and custom that differentiated New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West from each other. <br /> <br /> The interests of one region often conflicted with those of the others, and ratification of the 1787 Constitution in no way dispelled perceptions of regional incompatibility. Throughout the decades of the early Republic, any attempt to enhance the interests of one region usually brought accusations from other regions of conspiracy to strengthen one part of the country at the others’ expense.<br /> <br /> Adding to the sectional tension, partisan politics quickly emerged during George Washington’s presidency and intensified under his successors. In the new system of government, political opposition had not yet gained legitimacy and was seen as conspiratorial by definition. The Federalist Party, based in New York and New England, supported Alexander Hamilton’s jadwal of economic and commercial development and his pro-British, elitist attitudes. <br /> <br /> Republicans, led by Virginians Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, preferred French friendship, and advocated agricultural individualism and the democratization of politics. Federalists, the party in power under Washington and Adams, feared that Republicans would gain ascendancy in the state and federal elections of 1800. <br /> <br /> In an attempt to suppress “treasonous” Republicans, Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In turn Republicans, who perceived Federalists as the true conspirators, responded with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that labeled the acts unconstitutional. <br /> <br /> Jefferson’s election in 1800 and other Republican victories reversed the parties’ political fortunes, putting Federalists on the defensive. Shrinking to a political minority, New England Federalists perceived even more dangerous conspiratorial designs by the opposition.<br /> <br /> Foreign affairs only exacerbated the sectional and partisan disputes. As warfare between France and Great Britain resumed in the first decade of the nineteenth century, both sides preyed upon U.S. shipping to prevent New World resources from reaching each other. Jefferson and his successor, Madison, attempted to coerce the combatants into respecting U.S. neutrality by denying them the advantages of U.S. trade until they ceased harassment of U.S. ships. <br /> <br /> Their trade embargoes, however, greatly curtailed economic activity in New England, which had always relied on its commercial relationships, especially with Britain. It seemed to New Englanders that the southern, Republican conspiracy to weaken their region and party was rapidly gathering momentum.<br /> <br /> <b>The War of 1812 and the Hartford Convention</b><br /> <br /> To many New England Federalists, the decision in 1812 to go to war with their primary trading partner, Britain, instead of France, seemed arbitrary and discriminatory. They viewed the war as much more than the Republicans’ callous disregard for New England interests. <br /> <br /> Already becoming a minority in the federal government, due to expansion in the southwest and the three-fifths clause of the Constitution that used slave population to increase southern representation in Congress, New England states feared that the South would subjugate their interests to enhance its own. <br /> <br /> With Madison’s election in 1808 and his continuation of Jefferson’s policies, many New Englanders, unable to repeal Jefferson’s embargo due to their diminished proportion in Congress, believed they were being increasingly subjected to the “Virginia interest.”<br /> <br /> Sporadic calls for a convention of New England states began well before the outbreak of war. By late 1814, with yet another embargo in place and the British threatening the northeastern region, the state governments of New England could no longer resist constituent pressure and, led by Massachusetts, scheduled a convention for that winter. <br /> <br /> The moderate Federalist Party leadership intended the convention as a forceful means of petitioning the federal government and an attempt to contain more radical Federalist sentiment. But when Federalists demanded constitutional reform to protect their beleaguered region, Republicans and their Virginian party leadership perceived an attempt to break up the union. <br /> <br /> Just as New Englanders feared a conspiracy to subjugate them to southern interests, southerners saw the Hartford Convention as a vehicle for New England secession. As early as 1809 inconclusive evidence linked New England Federalists to a British plot to separate and perhaps retake the region. <br /> <br /> Since Jefferson’s election in 1800, the hard-core Federalist Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts had periodically advocated a separate New England confederacy. And, while Federalist leadership proclaimed their unionist sentiment and moderate intentions, the popular mood in New England tended toward radicalism, and scattered but insistent calls for a separate peace with Britain or outright secession fed southern fears of disunionist conspiracy.<br /> <br /> In actuality, the convention held to a moderate course. The twenty-six delegates came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, two individual New Hampshire counties, and one county of Vermont. Their tamat report highlighted the need for the region’s defense, criticized the developments that had reduced its influence in the federal government, and suggested correctives for the situation. <br /> <br /> The convention proposed seven constitutional amendments that included abolition of the three-fifths clause, raising the voting majority necessary to admit new states to two-thirds, limits on the federal government’s war and embargo powers, and an injunction against successive presidents from the same state.<br /> <br /> Despite the moderate aims of the convention, Federalists could not shake their reputation as secessionists, and amidst the nationalism that swelled after Andrew Jackson’s decisive victory at New Orleans, Federalist influence outside the state of Massachusetts evaporated. <br /> <br /> The Federalist proposals ultimately came to nothing, and contrary to its detractors’ assertions, the Hartford Convention did not further disunionist conspiracy but rather diffused and contained secessionist sentiment. However, it also demonstrated the depth of suspicion of both New Englanders and southern Republicans that the other was conspiring against them.

Hartford Convention

Hartford Convention Between 15 December 1814 and 5 January 1815, twenty-six Federalist delegates from the New England states met in Har...

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Warren G. Harding

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="died" border="0" evening="" francisco="" g.="" harding="" hotel="" in="" of="" on="" room="" san="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7fQc4vgsjEPtRa5ZavhZhq82PVUCzaPkCQztcyt3Vx4JGdhq1ufeBQV70xIwahzEKGVTTZ_wWEd_TwDZcEO_J5NkEu4hjqzCvE5hkTRhFlHGwWK5FEmM6E88-7aIWDbv0x2cnydosE2A/s1600/Warren-Harding.jpg" the="" title="Warren" warren="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Warren G. Harding</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Warren Gamaliel Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States, died in a San Francisco hotel room on the evening of 2 August 1923. The sudden end to his brief, unhappy administration, and the refusal of First Lady Florence Harding to permit an autopsy, fueled subsequent rumors of foul play and cast a retrospective shadow over the president’s simpulan days. It has been suggested that Harding committed suicide, or might even have been murdered, in order to avoid imminent revelations of scandal that could have resulted in his impeachment and removal from office.<br /> <br /> Within months of his death, some of the president’s key associates, including Attorney General Harry Daugherty, Interior Secretary Albert Fall, and the Veterans Bureau chief, Charles Forbes, were mired in the Teapot Dome oil lease investigations. <br /> <br /> Teapot Dome was America’s worst experience of political scandal before Watergate and has since become a catchall term to describe the illegal sale of government oil lands in Wyoming for profit, along with other, loosely linked cases of fraud, embezzlement, and bribery by Harding’s cronies— the men who constituted “The Ohio Gang” who followed the new president to Washington in 1921. <br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805069569/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0805069569&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=X6TPKXPUBGTX4IUK"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0805069569&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="died" border="0" evening="" francisco="" g.="" harding="" height="1" hotel="" in="" of="" on="" room="" san="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0805069569" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" warren="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0945707274/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0945707274&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=MOYU4PCJSZZCWNXK"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0945707274&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="died" border="0" evening="" francisco="" g.="" harding="" height="1" hotel="" in="" of="" on="" room="" san="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0945707274" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" warren="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Harding himself is not thought to have been personally involved and probably knew little or nothing of the corruption within his government until mid1923. The dawning realization, however, was known to have deeply troubled him. Embarking on a tour of the western United States to promote U.S. membership of the World Court, Harding exhausted himself by insisting on a punishing schedule of public appearances. <br /> <br /> After his collapse in Seattle, the rest of the tour was canceled on Florence Harding’s orders and the president was rushed through to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. At first, his condition seemed to improve but, on the evening of 2 August, as his wife read to him a favorable news article from the Saturday Evening Post, the president suffered a relapse and died.<br /> <br /> Conspiracy theorists have had plenty of material to work with in the case of Warren Harding. Conflicting accounts of the exact time of the president’s death, its exact cause, and the number and identity of persons in the presidential suite at the time, aroused suspicion among reporters, as did Florence Harding’s refusal to allow an autopsy. <br /> <br /> The former first lady later destroyed many of her husband’s personal papers, while the rest were closed to historians for forty years. This generated fresh rumors that she, or her husband, had something to hide. In the absence of detailed, academic analyses of the president and his administration, the way was left open for less reliable commentators to fashion Harding’s image and place in history. <br /> <br /> In 1930, Gaston Means, a private investigator and convicted perjurer, published The Strange Death of President Harding, alleging that Florence Harding had confessed to administering an overdose to her husband, with his tacit complicity, during his illness in San Francisco. <br /> <br /> Her aim, she told Means, was to spare him the humiliation of impeachment. Harding apparently understood what she was doing as the fatal dose was administered and accepted it as his sole means of escape from onrushing disaster. <br /> <br /> Means also confirmed the claim of Nan Britton’s 1926 memoir, The President’s Daughter, that she had been Harding’s mistress and had borne his child. Jealousy of Harding’s philandering, Means wrote, had driven Mrs. Harding to employ private detectives to keep track of his extracurricular activities.<br /> <br /> Popular fiction later took up these promising themes of adultery, scandal, and petty espionage. In the 1926 play Revelry, Samuel Hopkins Adams’s pastiche of the Harding years, the failed “president” Willis Markham commits suicide to avoid humiliation. <br /> <br /> In Gore Vidal’s Hollywood (1989), much is made of Florence Harding’s 1920 visit to noted Washington astrologer Madame Marcia, who had famously predicted in 1920 Harding’s election and premature death. Vidal, however, has Marcia prophesying the president’s murder.<br /> <br /> The rumor mill ground on for four decades. While Harding’s philandering nature has been confirmed by most scholars of the period, there exists no clear evidence to substantiate the wilder rumors of presidential murder. The most likely explanation for Harding’s death is that of sheer nervous exhaustion, exacerbating an already dangerous heart condition. <br /> <br /> Two recent Harding analysts, Robert Ferrell (1996) and Carl Sferrazza Anthony (1998), support the theory of death from natural causes. Anthony adds an extra dimension by speculating that the homeopathic remedies practiced on the president by Dr. <br /> <br /> Charles Sawyer may have been a significant contributory factor to Harding’s sudden death at a time when he had appeared to be on the road to recovery. Ferrell and Anthony point to a postmortem disagreement between Sawyer and other medical experts as to the cause of Harding’s death. <br /> <br /> Anthony suggests that the real cause of death—a fatal heart attack brought on by strong purgatives that were administered relentlessly by Sawyer and weakened the president’s condition—was covered up in order to protect Sawyer’s reputation. Anthony claims that although the death was innocent and accidental, it was nevertheless a case of negligent homicide.<br /> <br /> Despite this, the rumors of conspiracy have never entirely been silenced. Interpretations of the Harding years have been dominated more by hostile journalists, gossip, and popular fiction than by serious historical analysis and this has given the entire period an “unbalanced” character, in which the focus has been almost entirely upon the president’s love life, his wife’s addiction to clairvoyants, and his associates’ thievery. <br /> <br /> In such a lurid environment, murder conspiracy theories thrive. The facts are insufficient to sustain such theories but, in the case of President Harding, the justifying principle appears to be not that presidential murder took place, but that, given the surreal nature of the Harding era, it would not have been surprising.

Warren G. Harding

Warren G. Harding Warren Gamaliel Harding, twenty-ninth president of the United States, died in a San Francisco hotel room on the eveni...

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Alexander Hamilton

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" accused="" alexander="" alt="was" american="" border="0" conspiring="" hamilton="" into="" monarchy="" of="" republic="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXuh3BU4lsIL1jx-A8wwGzQc8oBFDA7CeK9Y0q8oQGK2tJW5JOgr8YAeRL5Sul1oP1en__qr2c-eNru98SoeJmGK3_8ZU12MENQpE7v80zzfyIJoy4It8UNdDvQMNA2WWkdSca9-gat5k/s1600/Alexander-Hamilton.jpg" the="" title="Alexander" to="" turn="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alexander Hamilton</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> In the early 1790s Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of the treasury, was accused of conspiring to turn the American Republic into a monarchy. The origin of that theory can be dated, fairly specifically, to April 1791 and a dinner engagement between Hamilton, <a href=" " target="_blank">Thomas Jefferson</a> (then secretary of state), and John Adams (then vice-president). <br /> <br /> In the course of a conversation on political subjects Adams remarked that the British Constitution “would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man” if only it were purged of its corruption and if the House of Commons had equality of representation. <br /> <br /> Hamilton responded with sentiments derived from one of his favorite political writers, David Hume: “purge it of its corruption, and give to its popular branch equality of representation, and it would become an impracticable government: as it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.”<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143034758/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0143034758&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=UKOKXNYSL75IOTNO"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0143034758&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" accused="" alexander="" alt="was" american="" border="0" conspiring="" hamilton="" height="1" into="" monarchy="" of="" republic="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0143034758" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" to="" turn="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013JLBPGE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B013JLBPGE&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=VP37BGRBYDKHUKGD"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B013JLBPGE&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" accused="" alexander="" alt="was" american="" border="0" conspiring="" hamilton="" height="1" into="" monarchy="" of="" republic="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B013JLBPGE" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" the="" to="" turn="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Jefferson was horrified by Hamilton’s declaration and from that moment purportedly believed that Hamilton was “not only a monarchist” but that he preferred “a monarchy bottomed on corruption” and, furthermore, Jefferson believed that Hamilton was actively conspiring to erect such a system in the United States.<br /> <br /> Jefferson and Madison (who had come to think like him) began to see evidence of Hamilton’s conspiring ways in many of his writings and actions, past and present. Hamilton’s fiscal policy in particular, a policy that aimed to concentrate wealth at the national level by assuming debt through a national bank, was characterized as an elaborate ploy designed to deprive the U.S. people of their liberty. As the Republican Party began to coalesce around Jefferson and Madison, Hamilton was portrayed in the popular press as the head of a “Royal Faction” intent on ending Republican government. <br /> <br /> Rumors spread in newspapers that Hamilton was plotting to have the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1517220602" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="2202702e3742c1cae90e7c16b4260b2c" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Duke of Kent" href="http://www.amazon.com/HRH-Duke-Kent-Life-Service/dp/1517220602/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=2202702e3742c1cae90e7c16b4260b2c&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4482656" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Duke of Kent</a><img a="" accused="" alexander="" alt="was" american="" border="0" conspiring="" hamilton="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4482656" into="" monarchy="" of="" republic="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=2202702e3742c1cae90e7c16b4260b2c&_cb=1483164910107" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" the="" to="" turn="" width="0" />, a son of George II, crowned as king of the United States. The National Gazette, a paper published in Philadelphia by Philip Freneau (with the backing of Madison and Jefferson), fanned the flames of suspicion, by painting Hamilton as an advocate for monarchy and aristocracy. <br /> <br /> In May 1791, Jefferson assembled his evidence of Hamilton’s conspiracy and presented it to <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">President George Washington</a>, charging that Hamilton’s scheme was to “prepare the way for a change from the present republican form of government to that of a monarchy”. <br /> <br /> Washington did not believe a word of this and pressed for an end to the accusations. Learning from Washington of the charges against him, Hamilton defended himself in a long letter in which he argued that the real conspirators were his accusers. <br /> <br /> Hamilton later spoke of the “unkind whispers” leveled against him and maintained that the “real threat to republicanism came not from Madison and Jefferson’s imagined group of monarchists and aristocrats, but rather from the disorder and anarchy that would result from the destruction or lessening of the influence of the national government.” Hamilton summarized the issue in a fairly accurate way when he wrote: “One side appears to believe that there is a serious plot to overturn the state Governments and substitute monarchy to the present republican system. <br /> <br /> The other side firmly believes that there is a serious plot to overturn the General Government and elevate the separate power of the states upon its ruins. Both sides may be equally wrong and their mutual jealousies may be materially causes of the appearances which mutually disturb them, and sharpen them against each other”. <br /> <br /> Washington rightly considered the “wounding suspicions, and irritating charges” of conspiracy and counterconspiracy to be harmful to the harmony of the early American Republic, but he was unable to bring the parties together.

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton In the early 1790s Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of the treasury, was accused of conspiring to turn the America...

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Gulf War Syndrome

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img a="" alt="is" border="0" cluster="" describe="" general="" gulf="" of="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjICjsZfZO-pon2WcWENClre10AveKoqmxFdlO6-KXf58YFgSio6X21cCBoPQIMrY3n7hYy3Tlu8wcK44tk6AhyphenhyphenmSnNThUmR_OMPzvhWogHIhaQExcg7Jt0xsZRnYCavOCBGRpoA4zTaMs/s1600/gulfwar-syndrome.jpg" symptoms="" syndrome="" term="" the="" title="Gulf" to="" used="" war="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gulf War Syndrome</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gulf War</a> Syndrome (GWS; also known as Persian Gulf Syndrome) is the general term used to describe a cluster of symptoms, disorders, and diseases, whose common factor is that the victims were veterans of the war in the Persian Gulf in 1990–1991. <br /> <br /> The veterans and their families (principally from the United States, but also from other coalition forces) have accused the governments involved of subjecting unwitting service personnel to untested chemical weapons or antinerve-gas drugs, and/or covering up what they know about the issue.<br /> <br /> Many Gulf War veterans have reported experiencing a variety of physical symptoms and illnesses in the years since the Gulf War. Symptoms reported include nausea, cramps, rashes, short-term memory loss, fatigue, difficulty in breathing, headaches, joint and muscle pain, and birth defects. Ailments have been reported by American, Canadian, Australian, and British veterans alike; in some cases spouses of veterans have reported similar symptoms.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393338738/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0393338738&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=NLQCXOKAP4QHCP7B"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0393338738&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="is" border="0" cluster="" describe="" general="" gulf="" height="1" of="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0393338738" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" symptoms="" syndrome="" term="" the="" to="" used="" war="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/078902389X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=078902389X&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=F5BC2E75K5KGZCKV"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=078902389X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="is" border="0" cluster="" describe="" general="" gulf="" height="1" of="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=078902389X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" symptoms="" syndrome="" term="" the="" to="" used="" war="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> The mysterious syndrome has sparked debate between veterans’ groups, Senate investigators, and the military over questions of accountability, treatment, and compensation. Hypothesized causes include parasites, biological and chemical warfare agents, prophylactic vaccines and medications given against biological and chemical warfare agents, fumes from oil well fires, and stress. <br /> <br /> In 1994 an advisory panel organized by the National Institutes of Health reported that the syndrome represented many illnesses and many causes; they deemed biological and chemical warfare agents unlikely as causes. Causes for the illnesses in many subsets of patients have been identified—for example, some thirty veterans had leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease spread by sand flies—but in many instances the cause has not been identified. <br /> <br /> Veterans groups have blamed a variety of causes for these disparate GWS symptoms, including battlefield exposure to toxicants such as chemical weapons, smoke from oil fires and pesticides, and exposure to such chemicals and vaccines as the nerve agent sarin, the drug pyridostigmine bromide, depleted uranium, and anthrax and botulism vaccines.<br /> <br /> There is still much debate about whether “Gulf War Syndrome” exists. In 1999 researchers said that brain scans of some sick veterans revealed signs of damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, while some medical historians have pointed out that syndromes of undiagnosable diseases have occurred after other wars, including the U.S. Civil War and World Wars I and II.

Gulf War Syndrome

Gulf War Syndrome Gulf War Syndrome (GWS; also known as Persian Gulf Syndrome) is the general term used to describe a cluster of sympt...

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The Green Corn Rebellion

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="During" border="0" celebration="" corn="" green="" in="" of="" rebellion="" season="" shawnee="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioEQYEffpDF3LB9H7sbuSfHFVZwrUUM8pRH2Uem0Xg13Wo_f6DPhoNW6dMaSdjmAMebVlq-Q12Md72KDgMnksvgh3GKvUGHEJrsKvPrPOMnuJbNeXCHx3VqlKG0MFh1-7H95q7KS41mMo/s1600/green-rebellion.jpg" summer="" the="" title="The" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Green Corn Rebellion</td></tr> </tbody></table> During the season of the Shawnee Green Corn celebration in the summer of 1917, a group of discontented, mostly illiterate, tenant farmers in southeast central Oklahoma planned to march to Washington, take over the government, stop U.S. participation in the war in Europe, and end conscription. <br /> <br /> Although signs of the conspiracy were discovered in various parts of <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma</a>, Texas, and Arkansas, overt acts of violence were confined to approximately 6,000 square miles, and the majority in half that area in the four contiguous Oklahoma counties of Seminole, Pottawatomie, Hughes, and Pontotoc.<br /> <br /> Agitators from the <a href=" " target="_blank">Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)</a>, the Working Class Union (WCU), the Socialist Party, the Jones Family (the poor people’s secret name for their organization), and Catholic baiters convinced the farmers that at least 2 million others were mobilized, more would join the cause as they marched east, and the whole nation would rise up in arms. <br /> <br /> They called meetings in the woods, as many as three per week, and promised the farmers two carloads of rifles. They argued that they shouldn’t be fighting farmers and workers in Germany, when the real enemies were the capitalists at home.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806140577/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0806140577&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=2MXWFSJ4OROL3XYX"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0806140577&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="During" border="0" celebration="" corn="" green="" height="1" in="" of="" rebellion="" season="" shawnee="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0806140577" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" summer="" the="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281/ref=as_li_ss_il?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0743296281&pd_rd_r=47JX56SZ9PGGHKXGGZ00&pd_rd_w=QwOze&pd_rd_wg=tHh0i&psc=1&refRID=47JX56SZ9PGGHKXGGZ00&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=6dff83b7d5b5d2e9dde9594031965c95" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0743296281&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="During" border="0" celebration="" corn="" green="" height="1" in="" of="" rebellion="" season="" shawnee="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0743296281" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" summer="" the="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> But it did not take much convincing. Many of the farmers were suffering from poor soil, from uncontrollable costs of production, transportation, and storage, from bad weather and insect infestation, and from an uncertain market. They also saw those with whom they dealt, the banker and the smalltown merchant, as highly prosperous.<br /> <br /> H. H. Rube Munson, a paid IWW organizer, came to the area to stir up resistance to the draft. Another IWW professional, J. E. Wiggins, revived the dormant, indigenous Working Class Union and built upon the strength of the Socialist Party in the area. He combined socialism and anarchism to foment draft resistance and inflated the group’s feeling of strength by numbering membership cards in the millions, and holding meetings in secret.<br /> <br /> But only isolated incidents occurred. Rebels dynamited the Dewar waterworks on 7 June, resulting in the arrests of nine WCU members, cut the livestock fences owned by some banks, pulled down communication lines in Francis and a few other places, partially burned four bridges, attempted to blow up the storage tanks of the Magnolia Petroleum Company in McAlester, threatened to destroy the McAlester Grain and Elevator Plant, and stole property of some of the wealthy.<br /> <br /> The IWW set 2 July for the grand mobilization, but when the day arrived it was postponed to 3 August. On 2 August a party of five black WCU members ambushed Sheriff Frank Grall and his deputy, J. W. Cross, in Little River country, south of Seminole. <br /> <br /> After wounding Deputy Cross, the farmers fled. That same night a band of rebels marched from farm to farm soliciting recruits and camped on a sandbar in the South Canadian River. The next morning part of the group tried to destroy the railroad bridge over the river. <br /> <br /> About a hundred others, under command of Captain Bill of the Red Sash, moved to a bluff on Old Man Spear’s farm, where the owner ran up a red flag in his backyard and denounced “Big Slick,” <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">President Woodrow Wilson</a>, for getting the country into war. When a twenty-five-man posse approached the bluff the rebels ran into the woods.<br /> <br /> The next day nearly 1,000 posse men from seven counties began the simpulan campaign. Three rebels were killed, 400 arrested, and 120 indicted for seditious conspiracy and conspiring to obstruct the Selective Service Act. Three were sentenced to ten years in prison, two to six years, and a number from one to four years; 154 pleaded guilty to draft resistance. During the trials authorities set exorbitant bails and systematically excluded socialists from juries.<br /> <br /> The eastern press portrayed the farmers as perpetual renegades who merely used the draft as a pretext to resist the government. It did not understand the economic plight of the farmers, their real concern that conscription would lead to their death in Europe, and their traditional honesty and law-abiding nature.

The Green Corn Rebellion

The Green Corn Rebellion During the season of the Shawnee Green Corn celebration in the summer of 1917, a group of discontented, mostly ...

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Gold Standard

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="Control" been="" border="0" component="" every="" gold="" has="" history="" in="" key="" money="" of="" regime="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUPVlkqDNMeR7YdW_IezFp0yKRNBEuQAGbZ0Iyv9_bfxKc6LunfmYLS8mlQF85Q153TQ5daroPVZoeaOzZ4aBwBZ8XH0N93q_lG8qUo0TUDhK5j2hZZdzlBbsr-TGQjnXNMEFJUlGv-w4/s1600/Gold-Standard.jpg" standard="" supply="" the="" title="Gold" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gold Standard</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Control of the money supply has been a key component of every regime in history, and when looking for a conspiracy, most theorists “follow the money”—in this case, the government’s relationship to gold. Roman emperors were notorious for shaving gold coins so that they would look normal but actually contain slightly less gold, thereby allowing the rulers to inflate even a gold-based currency. <br /> <br /> Generally, however, by the Middle Ages most monarchs were constrained by the ease of weighing and measuring gold, and therefore found it difficult to meddle with the state’s money supply. Instead, they borrowed against both gold reserves and taxes. <br /> <br /> Throughout this period, silver was desired for coinage, but its value was almost always measured against gold. Since silver was mined at an approximate stable ratio to gold (somewhere in the range of 13–17 ounces of silver taken out of the ground for every ounce of gold), the relative value of silver to gold remained fairly constant over the centuries.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195101138/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0195101138&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=A7U56BXK3HXUAX3G"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0195101138&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Control" been="" border="0" component="" every="" gold="" has="" height="1" history="" in="" key="" money="" of="" regime="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0195101138" standard="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" supply="" the="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BBK2WNA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B01BBK2WNA&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=MS4ZJ63PRUQERUN7"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B01BBK2WNA&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="Control" been="" border="0" component="" every="" gold="" has="" height="1" history="" in="" key="" money="" of="" regime="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B01BBK2WNA" standard="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" supply="" the="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Perhaps surprisingly, the large discoveries of gold and silver in the New World—mostly in Spanish-held territory—did not significantly alter the European economy. Prices did begin a gradual creep upward in about 1200, and increased sharply at times, correlating roughly with the “commercial revolution,” then again with the birth of capitalism in the late 1700s. <br /> <br /> Of course, other events unrelated to gold or silver production also caused prices to skyrocket, as with the grain shortages in France in the 1780s. The important point, though, is that gold remained the polestar by which virtually all other values in the European world were fixed, and thus it obtained a certain mythic character.<br /> <br /> Gold proved the world’s most useful and reliable money in the premodern world because it possessed several important characteristics of money:<br /> <ol> <li>it was easily divisible, </li> <li>it was (somewhat) portable, </li> <li>it had inherent jewelry value, </li> <li>it was scarce, and </li> <li>it was durable. </li> </ol> Gold’s scarcity, however, became increasingly unattractive as a characteristic of money in the developing European economy and in the United States, where capitalism demanded constant exchange, financing, and, above all, a steadily growing circulating medium. <br /> <br /> By 1800, mining and minting of gold coin in no way could keep pace with the demands of the capitalist system. Nor could silver adequately fill in: what capitalism demanded was an order-of-magnitude increase in the money supply, not the minor incremental surge provided by minting silver.<br /> <br /> The Bank of England, the world’s first “central bank,” was the first to break from the “mercantilist” notion that only gold and silver constituted wealth. The Bank operated on a gold reserve upon which it issued banknotes that were redeemable in gold. <br /> <br /> What note holders and depositors did not know (and were not told) was that if all those holding notes suddenly and simultaneously appeared at the bank to redeem their paper money in gold (and later, silver coin), there would not be nearly enough metal in all of England to redeem every note at 100 percent (“par”) value. <br /> <br /> A banking term, “fractional reserve banking,” was used to describe the concept, which relied on a statistical probability (or, at the time in the 1700s, a likelihood based on common sense) that only a fraction of the note holders would ever appear at any given time to redeem their paper money in gold or silver “specie” (coin).<br /> <br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="Control" been="" border="0" component="" every="" gold="" has="" history="" in="" key="" money="" of="" regime="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid35w1ofWz9HnI4ZgthlGDc-KxJCT7gW-fwEsc68z2ETBN_eDhOw90rJPOvyJzl1bBMACOK0NyuIkyxqobbUjrncIC8Ka5iK91Uqj2yGvJuX5t-RiST3aGz9_gYf0udUh_RDhbqdFfqOM/s1600/gold-certificate.jpg" standard="" supply="" the="" title="Gold" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">US gold certificate</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> To a conspiracy theorist, this had all the indications of a plot. It appeared that the Bank of England, with the support (or at the direction) of the king, was deliberately cheating the public by issuing notes that it could not redeem in an emergency. <br /> <br /> In fact, “fractional reserve banking” involved a trade-off in which the public agreed to accept paper money for its convenience in exchange for a small amount of risk. What went unstated was the degree of risk, or under what conditions the money would not be redeemable.<br /> <br /> Scottish “free” banks approached the matter differently. They did not attempt to mandate any specific reserve ratio, but rather allowed competition to sort out the good from the bad banks. However, if a bank failed, its president and directors were subject to double liability for the loss. <br /> <br /> Lawrence White has argued convincingly that the Scottish system proved extremely stable and resilient, especially in contrast to the Bank of England. Competitive money, rather than gold convertibility of a national currency, White maintained, was the key to a stable monetary system.<br /> <br /> In the United States, state legislatures attempted to bridge the gap between the two systems. States adopted a system of chartered banks whose charters authorized them to issue paper notes, backed by specie. The banks had to maintain convertibility at all times. <br /> <br /> This did not prove difficult in normal economic circumstances, but during panics, almost every bank in the state—or even the nation—could “suspend” specie payments and simply refuse to convert paper money for gold or silver. <br /> <br /> According to the bank charters, the legislature was to terminate the bank’s authority to do business, but in fact, since suspension was nearly universal, and termination would effectively shut down all banks, legislatures rarely invoked these clauses. Instead, banks resumed business—and payment of specie—as soon as economic conditions warranted.<br /> <br /> Still, a healthy competition among banknotes let people know which institution’s notes were reliable, and which were not. A “Dun and Bradstreet” catalogue of banknotes, called Dillistin’s Bank Note Reporter, was published and widely circulated among bankers and merchants. <br /> <br /> It accurately and in a timely fashion alerted storekeepers to money that had lost its value on the open market. Still, to operate as a bank, until the 1830s and the appearance of “free banking” laws, an institution required a charter from the state legislature in order to issue notes. <br /> <br /> It was note issue that differentiated chartered banks from “private” banks—deposit and lending operations. But the burden of chartering numerous new banks in the booming 1840s proved great enough that many states adopted “free banking” laws, further severing the relationship between the paper money and gold. <br /> <br /> Under the “free banking” laws, all a bank had to do to issue notes was to place an appropriate amount of designated bonds on deposit with the secretary of state. After minor problems with the wording of the laws were ironed out in Michigan and other states, free banking proved effective and reliable. <br /> <br /> Indeed, in the U.S. antebellum period, competitive note issue, backed by a gold reserve, more than adequately served the economy’s needs. When competition was enhanced by a branch banking system (which many states allowed), the system became even stronger and more reliable.<br /> <br /> Wedged into this mix were the First and Second Banks of the United States (BUS, 1791–1811, and 1816–1836, respectively). These were national banks that were four-fifths privately owned, and could issue notes that had a universal quality in that the Banks were the only institutions permitted to have interstate branches. <br /> <br /> Because of their ubiquity and national character, they were viewed by critics as inordinately powerful and “controlled” by foreign interests. However, they were still both tied to the gold standard.<br /> <br /> Of equal concern to the conspiracy-minded was a suspicious change of the Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, which states, “The Congress shall have Power ... To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin ...” <br /> <br /> According to the “gold bugs,” or early “hard money” advocates, this section stipulated that the phrase “coin Money” meant only metallic money could constitute the circulating medium of the United States. The Jacksonian Democrats, especially, interpreted the phrase this way and demanded an end to all noteissue by private banks. <br /> <br /> Led by Thomas Hart “Old Bullion” Benton, the “hard money” wing of the Democratic Party wanted to stop all banks from printing paper money, threatening to cease chartering any banks at all if they could not ensure it in other ways.<br /> <br /> The United States, like England, had never “gone off” the gold standard, in that all international transactions were delineated in gold and currencies of all types were still redeemable in gold. Moreover, from time to time, such as Andrew Jackson’s “Specie Circular,” payments on government land were required to be made in gold. When the value of silver or gold changed, the U.S. Congress or Parliament passed a law reestablishing the value of silver to gold, not vice versa.<br /> <br /> The Civil War brought new pressures on the gold standard. Abraham Lincoln’s Union government needed additional revenue to finance the war, and temporarily suspended all gold redemption, then authorized the printing of $450 million in “greenbacks.” These notes differed from previous money in that they were not immediately redeemable in gold, but rather had a promise to pay in gold at a future date. <br /> <br /> In addition to the greenbacks, the Union chartered a wave of national banks, which had the authority to print money, and, in order to remove competition from the national banks, the government passed a 10 percent tax on all nonnational banknotes, effectively eliminating all competition with government money. Thus, in a period of three years, the link to gold was temporarily severed and competition in note issue ended.<br /> <br /> Following the Civil War, the United States felt the effects of an international deflation. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the national banking system, this deflation hit the South and the West harder than other sections of the country, and there was an acute shortage of money in the West, especially. At the same time, new silver discoveries (the Comstock Lode, for example) had boosted the amount of silver coming out of the ground relative to gold. <br /> <br /> Instead of a ratio of 16 ounces of silver to one ounce of gold, by the 1870s the ratio reached 17:1. Politicians and agrarian activists saw an opportunity to use the power of government to rearrange the rules in their favor. They lobbied for the “free and unlimited coinage of silver at 16:1,” hoping to force the taxpayers to pay the additional costs for turning the cheaper silver into coins. <br /> <br /> Two half-measures were adopted under silverite pressure: the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Both bills attempted to force the government to purchase large quantities of silver at artificially inflated prices, but each failed to achieve its objective. Neither could purchase nearly enough silver to affect the market, and neither artificially fixed prices at a significantly higher level.<br /> <br /> The Sherman Act proved disastrous. It required the government to purchase silver at the price of 33:2, thus opening a window for speculators without increasing the quantity of silver in circulation. Domestic and foreign speculators pounced on the price differential to pour silver into U.S. vaults, while gold flowed out. The government came close to bankruptcy before banker J. P. Morgan bailed out the United States Treasury with a massive loan. <br /> <br /> This only further inflamed the anger of those convinced that industrialists and bankers such as Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and <a href=" " target="_blank">John D. Rockefeller</a> controlled the money supply. Somehow, the critics argued, Morgan, Rockefeller, and the “money trust” manipulated the economy by its “control” of the gold standard.<br /> <br /> This view, of course, flipped the old Jacksonian and English “goldsmith” views on their heads: they had argued that only through a gold standard could the “common man” be protected against the machinations of “big business” and the “money interests.” <br /> <br /> Within a fifty-year period, however, conspiracy theorists—many of them the same voices who had called for a gold-only standard—now lobbied for a bimetallic standard. Businessmen and bankers favored a gold standard, not because they controlled it, but because it was predictable and stable.<br /> <br /> The “free silver” movement reached its apex with the nomination of William Jennings Bryan as the Democratic candidate for president in 1896. Echoing the conspiracy-theorists’ fears of a “money trust,” Bryan delivered his famous “Cross of Gold” nomination acceptance speech in which he warned that shadowy forces were attempting to “crucify mankind” on a “cross of gold.” The Republican, William McKinley, ran on a gold-only standard (as well as a “full dinner pail”), and won handily, ending all discussion of bimetallism.<br /> <br /> In 1913, the Federal Reserve System was created as the new “central” bank of the United States, and it further centralized monetary authority in the hands of the federal government. As one historian of U.S. central banking, Richard Timberlake, has pointed out, there was never any question that the Federal Reserve would operate under the existing gold standard. However, the deflationary shocks of the 1920s caused most countries, culminating with England, to go off the gold standard for international exchanges. <br /> <br /> That left the United States as the only major nation still on the gold standard, meaning that people could purchase paper dollars with paper pounds sterling or francs, then convert dollars to gold. U.S. gold flowed out of the Federal Reserve’s vaults to Europe, weakening the banking system, until Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off gold during the New Deal.<br /> <br /> Conspiracy theorists then came full circle again: Roosevelt was attempting to control the money supply of the United States by eliminating the gold reserve requirement—precisely what the previous generation of conspiracy theorists had advocated. <br /> <br /> By that time, conspiracy theories had split into two streams when it came to gold and money. One stream argued that the Rockefellers, through the Bank of England (and with the support of the Rothschilds), manipulated the international price of gold. <br /> <br /> The other stream claimed that, in line with the objective of a “one-world government,” the Federal Reserve served as a tool for the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the United Nations to weaken the U.S. economy and provide convenient inflation for politicians favored by these groups. Critics such as J. Orlin Grabbe and Sherman Skolnick have argued that the Federal Reserve has, at political direction, inflated and deflated the monetary base at critical times.<br /> <br /> As the Internet has made electronic money transfers easier, the significance of gold-backing of any monetary system has faded. Gold prices, except for a pair of spikes related to oil price increases in the 1970s, have hovered at post–<a href=" " target="_blank">World War II</a> lows. Despite claims by Grabbe and Skolnick, no Federal Reserve inflationary “mischief” has resulted in any substantial gold price increases. <br /> <br /> Quite the contrary, during the time that individuals or foreign interests were supposedly masterminding a massive inflation, gold prices continued to languish at low levels. Indeed, to simultaneously manipulate both Federal Reserve policies for inflation and gold prices is self-contradictory. If gold is the “ultimate guarantor” of monetary value, then economic logic suggests that gold prices would have risen in the case of inflation. <br /> <br /> More likely, the Internet has opened up a new kurun of genuinely competitive money, although not privately issued money. Instead, national currencies—the yen, the ruble, the dollar, the peso, and the euro—all compete against each other with productivity and national wealth providing the real guarantor of monetary values.

Gold Standard

Gold Standard Control of the money supply has been a key component of every regime in history, and when looking for a conspiracy, most ...

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Ghost Dance Religion

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img a="" alt="following" beginning="" border="0" dance="" ghost="" in="" of="" powerful="" religion="" series="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy8S8Q4gQrkiEHcxjF2oDXvV-7LTtHeO30sePWBUVLK1MJETxcdpIpmX2d7wsWq7AJ_PvWGfJ00dfc-wa-LAWTn5q-ayJQMRB4bIN4ereGOU5NzY6du-WD5mDfJDSo97l5Lbp0esrwQ5I/s1600/Ghost-Religion.jpg" title="Ghost" visions="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ghost Dance Religion</td></tr> </tbody></table> <br /> Wovoka (Jack Wilson), a Paiute mystic from Nevada, revived the teachings of Tävibo, a member of the Paiute tribe, following a series of powerful visions beginning in 1886. A short time later, Wovoka began instructing proselytes in the Wanagi Wacipi (Ghost Dance, or the Dance of the Souls Departed), a sacred ceremony designed to hasten earthly renewal for all American Indians, living and dead. <br /> <br /> Wovoka’s teachings spread rapidly among a dispirited and hungry people assigned to desolate western reservations. Government officials, frightened settlers, and Christian missionaries responded to the Ghost Dance’s popularity with alarm. <br /> <br /> To complicate matters, newspapers flooded the public with exaggerated tales of an Indian Messiah and impending rebellion. The unconfirmed conspiracy allegations later culminated in the murder of Sitting Bull, a respected Hunkpapa chief, and the massacre of 150 American Indian men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in December 1890.<br /> <br /> <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486267598/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0486267598&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=7KTXQZBM62QXI4AC"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0486267598&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="following" beginning="" border="0" dance="" ghost="" height="1" in="" of="" powerful="" religion="" series="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0486267598" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" visions="" width="1" /></span><span style="padding-left: 7px; padding-right: 7px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1861712766/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1861712766&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=VJB5MFSONZTQ4XBT"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1861712766&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img a="" alt="following" beginning="" border="0" dance="" ghost="" height="1" in="" of="" powerful="" religion="" series="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1861712766" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" visions="" width="1" /></span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <br /> When the Lakota tribe learned about the Wanagi Wacipi in 1889 they dispatched a delegation to meet Wovoka and to join in the dancing. After the delegation returned to South Dakota the following April, tribal leaders convened a council. <br /> <br /> To quell any disturbance that the proposed gathering might cause, the government’s Indian agent in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, arrested three of Wovoka’s disciples and detained them until the prisoners offered assurances that no councils would be held. Other Indian agents in the Dakotas withheld rations until the dancing stopped.<br /> <br /> The popularity of the ritual led many non-Indian observers to conclude that widespread dancing was a precursor to armed rebellion. Residents of both Dakotas panicked when they learned of the Ghost Dance’s allure. Charles Hyde, a resident of Pierre, South Dakota, informed the secretary of the interior that he had obtained information about a planned Indian outbreak. <br /> <br /> Although an investigation later revealed that there was no cause for apprehension, tensions remained high. On 26 September 1890 residents of Mead County wrote to Thomas J. Morgan, the commissioner of Indian affairs, warning that Indians were planning an uprising. Perain P. Palmer, Cheyenne River’s new agent, confirmed that dancers with Winchester rifles were preparing for the arrival of a messiah.<br /> <br /> Political leaders took notice when Kicking Bear carried a militant version of the Ghost Dance to Standing Rock in the Dakotas. James McLaughlin, Standing Rock’s agent, expressed grave concern when Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa chief and symbol of American Indian resistance, expressed an interest in the ceremony. Although McLaughlin successfully evicted Kicking Bear from Standing Rock, the dance’s popularity continued unabated throughout the Dakotas.<br /> <br /> <b>The Newspaper War</b><br /> <br /> During the fall of 1890 reporters flooded the Dakotas. Rex Alan Smith, author of the acclaimed Moon of Popping Trees (1981), comments that the resulting “newspaper war” inflamed an already unstable situation. <br /> <br /> Reporters from the Chicago Daily Tribune, Omaha Daily Bee, Harper’s Weekly, and the New York Times emphasized the hostile nature of the Ghost Dance religion, when, in reality, Wovoka emphasized peace and brotherhood. “War correspondents” who rushed to the scene also paid a Pine Ridge “news factory” to supply them with melodramatic conspiracy stories and titillating rumors. <br /> <br /> As a result, reporters on the scene flooded the uninformed American public with outright lies. Local newspapers, especially the Pierre Free Press and the Rapid City Journal, also contributed to the settlers’ unwarranted fears. <br /> <br /> In an attempt to stop the hysteria, Charles Moody, editor of the Sturgis Weekly Record, and Elaine Goodale Eastman, a noted educator living in the Dakotas, condemned the “wild and wooly newspaper liars.” Terrified North and South Dakotans, however, ignored the pleas for calm.<br /> <br /> By September 1890 the Ghost Dance had also reached the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa communities of the Southern Plains. Newspapers in Guthrie, El Reno, and <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma City</a> also circulated rumors of frenzied dancers, scalping parties, and impending warfare. Not surprisingly, terrified inhabitants responded to the news by requesting military protection. <br /> <br /> During this period, however, Thomas J. Morgan was completing a tour of the western reservations. His visits to the Southern Plains convinced the commissioner of Indian affairs that the reports from Oklahoma were grossly exaggerated. A subsequent investigation, which found no evidence of danger, advocated a policy of noninterference until the dancing had stopped.<br /> <b><br /> </b> <b>The Ghost Dance War</b><br /> <br /> Daniel F. Royer, the new agent at Pine Ridge, buckled under the pressure of the escalating crisis. Fearful for his own safety, a frightened Royer informed his superiors that 3,000 crazed Indians were dancing in the snow. Royer and other agents reported that they were at the mercy of “wild and crazy” Indians. Fearing the worst, bureaucrats informed the Dakota agents that President Benjamin Harrison had authorized the use of military force to suppress the Ghost Dance on 14 November 1890.<br /> <br /> Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, a former agent at Pine Ridge, rushed to the scene. In his opinion, the presence of armed soldiers only exacerbated the threat of violence. Many dancers, alarmed at the troops’ presence, fled to the security of the Stronghold, a natural Badlands fortress located 50 miles northwest of the agency. McGillycuddy, an eyewitness to the unfolding tragedy, correctly predicted that there would be trouble unless the soldiers immediately withdrew from the region.<br /> <br /> On 11 December 1890 Sitting Bull requested permission to travel to Pine Ridge. Rather than allow the Lakota chief to bolster the Ghost Dance’s popularity, General Nelson A. Miles approved James McLaughlin’s request to arrest Sitting Bull, the dance’s “high priest and leading apostle.” Four days later a bungled arrest attempt resulted in Sitting Bull’s murder. <br /> <br /> Angry Hunkpapas, fearing for their own safety, bolted Standing Rock and fled to Indian camps along the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. Although Hump, a Miniconjou adherent of the Ghost Dance, had surrendered peacefully on 21 December 1890 at Fort Bennett, Big Foot’s band decided to flee to Pine Ridge.<br /> <br /> Major Samuel M. Whitside’s Seventh Cavalry finally caught the desperate band of 370 Indians at Porcupine Butte and escorted them to Wounded Knee Creek on 28 December 1890. The next day Colonel James Forsyth gave orders to disarm the Indian camp. During the subsequent search a scuffle ensued, causing a rifle to fire. The soldiers, fearing that they were being attacked, responded with deadly force. When the smoke cleared some 150 Lakota men, women, and children lay dead.<br /> <br /> Following the tragedy at Wounded Knee Wovoka withdrew from the spotlight and encouraged the Ghost Dance adherents to travel the “white man’s road.” He died in Yerington, Nevada, on 4 October 1932. Sadly, the jingoism of the “war correspondents” assigned to cover the Ghost Dance in the Dakotas contributed to the bloody episodes of December 1890. The Wounded Knee tragedy was the culmination of thirty years of armed conflict between the U.S. military and American Indians. <br /> <br /> Although never completely removed from the public’s consciousness, the Ghost Dance religion and the Wounded Knee massacre received renewed interest during the modern civil rights movement and the takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by members of the American Indian Movement in 1973.

Ghost Dance Religion

Ghost Dance Religion Wovoka (Jack Wilson), a Paiute mystic from Nevada, revived the teachings of Tävibo, a member of the Paiute tribe, ...

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