Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (73 page)

Biddle was determined to save his bank and believed that the best way to do it was by
maximizing
the economic damage from Jackson’s measures. He drastically cut back on lending, prompting banks all across the country to follow suit; the financial panic that resulted sent the country into a recession.

Businesses in every major American city failed, throwing thousands out of work. Yet somehow, the plan backfired—Jackson’s popularity actually increased, and his image grew as the protector of the common person against the greed of aristocrats and bankers. In the end, Jackson got what he wanted: the Second Bank finally collapsed in 1841.

BACKLASH

But the Bank War crystallized the political opposition to Jackson. Robert Remini writes in
The Life of Andrew Jackson
:

The pressures of the Bank War and Jackson’s imperial presidency finally brought a new party into being.…National Republicans, bank men, nullifiers, high-tariff advocates, friends of internal improvements, states’ righters, and—most particularly—all those who abominated Jackson or his reforms slowly converged into a new political coalition that quite appropriately assumed the name “Whig.”

Because of the rotation of the Earth, an object can be thrown farther if it’s thrown west.

The word
whig
, a Scottish-Gaelic term that was first applied to horse thieves, later became the name for anti-royalists in the American Revolution. Now it would be used by the opponents of the executive tyranny of the man some called King Andrew I.

WHAT GOES UP…

Had Jackson limited his economic meddling, perhaps the Panic of 1833–34 would have run its course without the Whigs emerging as a major political force. But he didn’t.

By January 1835, he had managed to pay down the entire U.S. national debt ($60 million), and the federal government was collecting more revenues than it was spending. Jackson returned some of the surplus to the states, most of whom promptly spent it. Then, anticipating similar federal windfalls in the years to come, many states began borrowing against these future funds and spending that, too. In addition, Jackson’s “pet” banks were now bulging with federal deposits, which allowed them to print and issue paper currency backed by federal monies. (In the 1830s, banks printed their own currency.) The country was soon awash with cash. Result: disaster.

The influx of so much capital into the economy led to huge inflation and soaring real-estate prices, creating a speculative economic bubble that burst in 1836 after bad weather led to crop failures in many parts of the country.

…MUST COME DOWN

As the U.S. economy began to teeter, foreign creditors started demanding payment in gold and silver out of a fear that American paper currency was losing its value. Jackson decided it would be good for the federal government to return to “sound money,” too. On July 11, 1836, he ordered that all future payments for the sale of public lands (a major source of government income in the 1830s) be made in precious metals. Bank notes were no longer acceptable for these transactions, so they began to lose their value.

More bad news: A financial crisis rocked England, then the world’s financial capital and a major buyer of American cotton, the country’s largest export. The slump in the U.S. cotton market in turn caused the failure of hundreds of other related businesses.

The smallest known frog is found in Cuba, and is about the size of a dime.

“By the time Jackson finally retired in 1837, America was in the early stages of its biggest financial crisis to date,” Paul Johnson writes in
A History of the American People. “
Far from getting back to ‘sound money,’ Jackson had paralyzed the system completely.”

Jackson’s heir apparent, Martin Van Buren, managed to squeak into office in the 1836 election, partly because the economic crisis was just beginning and nobody knew how bad it would be. But the 1840 election would be another story.

The recession deepened into a full-blown depression that dragged on for five long years, wiping out more than 600 banks and shuttering most of the factories in the East. Thousands of people lost their jobs, and food riots broke out in cities all over the nation.

Van Buren never had the popularity that Jackson enjoyed, and the depression ruined his chances for reelection.

WHIGS TRIUMPHANT

In 1840 the Whigs borrowed heavily from the Jackson-Van Buren formula for victory. They put a war hero at the top of the ticket: General William Henry Harrison, who had defeated the Shawnee Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe 30 years earlier. They staged “monster” rallies all over the country. And when a Democratic writer made the mistake of claiming that Harrison would just as soon “spend the rest of his days in a log cabin with a barrel of cider,” he gave the Whigs a perfect campaign theme that they could use to distinguish their man from a sharp-dressing New York dandy like President Van Buren. Harrison rallies became “Log Cabin and Hard Cyder” rallies: supporters built log cabins at every campaign event and served copious amounts of hard cider to the crowds.

Van Buren, vilified by the Whigs as an effete elitist who drank wine from “coolers of silver,” seemed a sissy by comparison. On election day, he carried only 7 states to Harrison’s 19, and lost in the electoral college, 60 votes to Harrison’s 234.

The Whigs also won their first majorities in both houses of Congress, and in 1840 there were Whig governors in 20 of the 26 United States—not bad for a party that was barely seven years old.

WINNING THE BATTLE

The Whigs seemed to be on the brink of becoming permanently established as the second major party alongside the Democrats. But then their luck ran out.

Pretty goofy: Disney’s Goofy was once married…to an unnamed mystery woman.

• Sixty-seven-year-old Harrison delivered his inaugural address outdoors in the snow without wearing a hat, gloves, or overcoat. He spoke for more than an hour and a half (the longest inaugural speech in American history), contracted pneumonia, and died a month after taking office (the shortest presidency in American history).

• Vice President John Tyler, a former Democrat who joined the Whigs after falling out with Andrew Jackson, became president. But he was still a Democrat at heart, and he vetoed a number of pieces of Whig legislation, prompting all but one member of his cabinet to resign and splitting the Whig party in two. The Whig congressional caucus wrote Tyler out of the party.

• In 1844 the Whigs, still bitterly divided, lost the White House to Democrat James Knox Polk. In 1848 the Whigs repeated their 1840 strategy by putting a war hero at the top of the ticket—General Zachary Taylor, hero of the Mexican War—and won the White House. But on July 4, 1850, history repeated itself when President Taylor consumed large quantities of raw fruit, cabbages, and cucumbers, washed it all down with iced water…and then died from acute gastroenteritis five days later, a little more than a year into his first term as president.

WHIGGING OUT

The Whig party was also divided over the issue of slavery. President Taylor himself had contributed to the split: as a plantation owner with more than 300 slaves, he so alienated anti-slavery Whigs in the north that many of them split off to form the Free Soil Party.

When Taylor died, Vice President Millard Fillmore (also a Whig) became president. He added to the controversy by signing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required the government to assist in the capture and return of runaway slaves to their owners, even in the anti-slavery states of the North. (Though Fillmore was personally opposed to slavery, he feared that ending it would lead to civil war, so he signed the law to cool the secessionist passions of the South.)

Historians generally credit such actions with postponing the Civil War for 10 years, but they doomed Fillmore’s chances for reelection and contributed to the destruction of the Whig Party. By 1848 Fillmore’s hedging on slavery had cost the party support in the North; at the same time, the presence of anti-slavery politicians at the top of the party killed its support in the South. “Cotton Whigs,” as the party’s pro-slavery Southern faction was called, defected to the states-rights appeal of the Democratic Party. And by 1854, most anti-slavery “Conscience Whigs” had defected to a new party founded for the purpose of opposing slavery: the Republicans.

At last count, 1,013 U.S. buildings have a sign that reads, “George Washington slept here.”

To read about the rise of the Republican Party, turn to
page 483
.

*        *        *

AN “OBSCURE” TALE

One morning, a valgus hobberdehoy was cornobbled by a very old leptorrhinian calcographer. “You twiddlepoopy liripoop!” faffled the hobberdehoy, “You’ve given me a wem that smells of bodewash!”

“So sorry,” belched the saprostomous calcographer. “I was unaware that my jumentous mundungus was cornobbling you.”

“Whatever, you spodogenous whipjack! Now I must go to my xystus and run my balbriggan galligaskin through my chirogymnasts to get this wem out!”

The calcographer felt like a dasypygal pismire. “I have lost my toxophily,” he said sadly.

“Wait a second,” faffled the hobberdehoy. “Did you say toxiphily? You remind me of my toxophillic atmatertera. You have the same anisognathous mouth as she.”

“Does she go by the name Esmerelda?” asked the calcographer.

“Why yes, yes she does. She was brideloped by a calcographer many moons ago.”

And then they looked at each other.

“Bob?”

“Jim?”

And then Bob and his great great great grandfather Jim went happily to Bob’s xystus to de-wem his ballbriggan galligaskin.

(
What are we saying? Turn to
page 227
to find out.
)

A species of fern has the most chromosomes of all living things: 630 pairs.

WHO KILLED JIMI HENDRIX?

Jimi Hendrix had an astounding influence on pop culture. Yet few people of the 1960s were truly shocked when the musician died in 1970—he had a reputation for living hard and fast. Most people assumed he just burned out like a shooting star. But did he? Or was there more to it?

D
EATH, DRUGS, AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL

Hours before Jimi Hendrix died, he was working on a song entitled “The Story of Life.” The last lines:

The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye.
The story of love is hello and goodbye,
Until we meet again
.

Perhaps no rock musician is more emblematic of the psychedelic 1960s than Hendrix. The flamboyant guitarist became famous not only for such onstage antics as lighting his guitar on fire, but also for the blistering performances that earned him recognition as a musical genius. Although only five albums were released during his lifetime, he was—and is—considered one of the greatest rock guitarists ever.

OVER-EXPERIENCED

James Marshall Hendrix died in the squalid flat of a German girlfriend in London on September 18, 1970, after a long night of drinking and partying. After indulging in a smorgasbord of drugs and alcohol, he and his girlfriend returned to her apartment in the early hours of the morning where, according to the girlfriend, they both took some barbiturate pills to help them sleep.

A normal dose of the downers would have been just half a pill. The girlfriend claimed she took one pill. After Hendrix’s death, an autopsy showed he had swallowed nine—18 times the recommended dosage. The autopsy also revealed “massive” quantities of red wine not only in his stomach, but also in his lungs. The quantity and combination of substances might well have been fatal if he hadn’t first suffocated on the wine and his own vomit.

Egyptians used urine tests to diagnose pregnancy as early as the 14th century.

There is little mystery as to
what
killed Jimi Hendrix. The question is:
How
did it happen? Was it suicide, an accident…or murder? Ever since Hendrix’s death, there have been those who believe there may have been more to the story than just another rock star done in by wretched excess. For some, things don’t quite add up.

FATAL MISTAKE OR FOUL PLAY?

Friends of Hendrix rule out suicide. According to them, Hendrix believed the soul of a person who committed suicide would never rest. In spite of his many personal and professional problems, he would never take his own life.

Was it an accident? Hendrix was known for being able to take greater quantities of drugs than anyone else in his circle. He may have mistaken the potent barbiturates for regular sleeping pills and grabbed his usual handful. On the other hand, as experienced a drug-taker as Hendrix was, he was unlikely to make that kind of mistake. Besides, it was common knowledge that drinking alcohol with downers is asking for serious trouble.

But the quantity of wine found inside him, and around him on the bed where he died, raises an intriguing question: Did he drink that much or was it poured down his throat by someone else? How did so much get into his lungs? Oddly, the autopsy showed a relatively low blood-alcohol level in his body, leading some to speculate that Hendrix drowned in the wine before much of it was absorbed into his system.

But who would want Jimi Hendrix dead? It may be impossible to know now, more than 30 years after his death, but here are some compelling possibilities:

The Girlfriend.
According to the girlfriend, Monika Dannemann, she woke up the morning of the 18th, saw that Hendrix was sleeping normally, and went out for cigarettes. When she returned she saw that Hendrix had been sick and was having trouble breathing. She tried to wake him, and when she couldn’t she began to panic and called musician Eric Burdon, with whom they had partied the night before. After first hanging up on her, Burdon called back and insisted Dannemann call an ambulance. Dannemann later told the press that Hendrix was alive when the ambulance arrived a few minutes later, about 11:30 a.m., and that she rode with him to the hospital. According to Dannemann, Hendrix was propped upright on the trip and suffocated on the way.