Great Hoaxes, Fixes & Frauds in American History Quiz

Answer: Land grants at bargain basement rates by a tainted legislature.

Jake Gittes and Noah Cross in "Chinatown", but in the early 19th century. A corrupt Georgia legislature sold public lands in Mississippi to private companies at ridiculously low rates; almost all the legislators had money invested in the companies picking up the real estate on the cheap.

The next legislature canceled the dirty deal; on an appeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the original purchasers, thus striking a blow for contract rights, Federalism, and, unfortunately, a number of unscrupulous crooks.

Answer: The U.S.'s claim to the soil on which the bloodshed occurred was questionable at best.

In what was essentially an imperialist land grab, and the apotheosis of Manifest Destiny, Polk, spoiling for a fight with our southern neighbors, sent U.S. troops into disputed territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande in what is now Texas. Lincoln, smelling a rat, stood in Congress to demand that Polk respond to interrogatories about the actual location of the bloodshed, but his outcry was seen as unpatriotic and as a result he was subjected to such scorn that he couldn't get himself reelected to Congress.

Answer: JFK's victory over Nixon in 1960.

Nixon challenged the results in 11 states, but there were no changes except for Hawaii, which was lost to Kennedy on a recount).

Answer: James Buchanan

1856. The slavery question, and the issue of its spread into the territories (made more urgent by the unfortunate Kansas-Nebraska act), was tearing the country apart. A virtual civil war already existed in the Kansas territory. Buchanan, in his inaugural speech, made a cryptic reference to a slavery case soon to be decided by the Supreme Court, and stressed that he and the citizenry would "cheerfully submit" to the Supreme Court's ruling, "whatever this may be.".

The awful Dred Scott decision issued a mere two days later.

There is compelling evidence that Buchanan was in contact with at least one member of the court prior to the speech and knew exactly what the decision of the (pro-Southern) court would be.

Answer: Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Tailgunner Joe jumped onto the bandwagon AFTER Alger Hiss (who actually WAS a Communist in the State Department) had been convicted. While there was certainly no shortage of lefties at Foggy Bottom, McCarthy's scattershot charges were absurd and indefensible.

He later went so far as to suggest that Gen. George Marshall was a traitor. As one might suspect, McCarthy was no stranger to the bottle, and ended up drinking himself to death in May, 1957.

Answer: Grover Cleveland

The annals of American presidents are not exactly overflowing with great friends of organized labor, but some cover up the pro-management bias better than others. Cleveland's use of the federal military power to break the Pullman strike was one of the most blatant examples of the executive branch doing the dirty work for big business.

The governor who spoke out against this was John P. Altgeld, the great progressive of the day.

Answer: Pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border en masse to vote illegally.

The infamous "border ruffians" of Missouri (a neighboring slave state) crashed the Kansas elections and voted in an entirely unrepresentative pro-slavery legislature. It got worse later, when Kansas slavers, by virtue of another circumvention of the popular will, enacted the Lecompton Constitution, protecting slavery
even if Kansas were to be admitted as a free state. They even forced the territorial governor out of Kansas. Clueless
President Buchanan supported the Lecompton fraud and split his own party by so doing. Happily, Kansas was admitted as a free state in 1861 --without the bogus Lecompton Constitution.

Answer: Hayes-Tilden (1876)

Tilden almost certainly won the popular vote, but the electoral count was so close the thing got turned into a political football. Most historians believe that a deal was made whereby Republican Hayes would be allowed to take the office on condition that he end military reconstruction of the South. Hayes wisely declared himself a one-termer, and did in fact pull the Federal troops out of Louisiana and South Carolina shortly after taking office.

Answer: The supposed "missile gap" between the US and Russia.

We were actually well in the lead during the early 60's. The Soviets did infiltrate one of our neighbors, but this was of course Castro's Cuba, and not the land of hockey and harness racing. Apart from telling Berlin that he too was a jelly roll, Kennedy didn't do very much about the Berlin Wall, and as for Brown, JFK took a rather pusillanimous stance on this and most civil rights issues. Johnson, not JFK, pushed the '64 Civil Rights Act through Congress.

Answer: George W. Bush

This the work of a Canadian comic named Rick Mercer. Canadians feel that we are guilty of massive ignorance about that big, cold country up there. (They're right.) Poutine is artery-clogging Quebec soul food. The Canadian PM is (and has been for quite some time) Jean Chretien, a rather interesting man who happens to have been one of 19 children (!) Anglophones and Francophones alike are prone to make fun of his Quebec accent. (Bush once called him "amigo"!)