Board 8 > Eddv tells stories about History

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yessir, I am bringing it back after a long long hiatus.

The story I was going to tell when this topic fell apart was the story of the first real impeachment trial in this countrys history against Associate Justice Samuel Chase at the request of @Maniac64

It was technically the third impeachment trial but the first two didnt really involve trials. In the first, a senator was accused of illegally aiding England in stealing territory from Spain, he admitted it, and was voted out of office with no trial.

The second was a judge who kept showing up to work drunk and again, there was really no need for a trial.

Chase was a signee of the Declaration of independence (in the musical 1776 hes the comically fat guy from Maryland). He was also a close political ally of John Adams and George Washington and was named to yhe Supreme Court very early in that institutions history. Once Jefferson became president, Chase was a real thorn in his side rejecting many of his legislative and executive actions as being unconstitutional. So Jefferson, ever the political renegade, decided to trailblaze politically motivated impeachment proceedings and incited his allies in the House to indict Chase on charges of being too politically motivated in an apolitical position.

However there were several wrenches in the plan - for one the Vice President, Aaron Burr was both an expert legal mind and a mortal enemy of Jefferson's. So he constructed the process by which the Senate conducts fair criminal trials and heard evidence for and against the politically motivated charges against Chase and for the good of the entire nation, Chase was ultimately acquitted and kept his post? The winning argument was that justices ought to be above political pressure and that actions like Jeffersons should not become the norm lest the court become and remain a political football. That, alongside the removal of John Adams "midnight judges" that he appointed his last hour as president helped to filly establish the independence of the judiciary.

I think this is a story that is important to remember in the current political climate surrounding the Supreme Court and recognizing how we have always found this to be a bad idea with bad consequences

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I am taking requests on which story to tell next
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Battle of Midway Island or Battle of Leyte Gulf
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Remind me, is this looking at US history specifically, or world history in general?
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The conception of George W. Bush please
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Im more expert on US but if its a story I know well I will tell it.
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Tell me a story about Daniel Webster.
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Woo! So glad this is back.
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tag

kateee posted...

tag

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I would like to hear you talk about the Manhattan Project
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Not exactly a story request, but how exactly did Jefferson end up with a VP that hated his guts? Was the VP inherited back then?
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Emeraldegg posted...

Not exactly a story request, but how exactly did Jefferson end up with a VP that hated his guts? Was the VP inherited back then?

Back then it was the guy with he second most votes for president got to be VP. They changed it because this just meant the VP and president would disagree on everything.
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Anagram posted...

Emeraldegg posted...

Not exactly a story request, but how exactly did Jefferson end up with a VP that hated his guts? Was the VP inherited back then?

Back then it was the guy with he second most votes for president got to be VP. They changed it because this just meant the VP and president would disagree on everything.

Ah okay, thank you. God imagine Hilary as VP to Trump >.<
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Could you imagine Trump/Hillary, Obama/Romney, and Bush/Gore white houses?
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Trump/Hillary would be amazing

Imagine the president actively trying to get the VP convicted of felonies
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Emeraldegg posted...

Not exactly a story request, but how exactly did Jefferson end up with a VP that hated his guts? Was the VP inherited back then?

So it was a quirk of the old political system and was the subject of a big part of the Aaron Burr story.

Back then the first place finisher became President and the second place finisher became Vice President. John Adams was a federalist and Thomas Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican and were at odds too. It was intended to be a protection for the minority - the 2nd place finisher still has a say in congress able to directly set the agenda of the Senate and break ties (which there were a lot of back then).

The election of 1800 was the first time that political partys ran "tickets" instead of just having it be a 1 vs 1. Jefferson ran with Burr as his running mate with a selected elector casting a throwaaay vote for James Madison such that the finish would be
1 Jefferson
2 Burr
3 Adams
4 Pinckney

But the person who was supposed to do it flubbed the vote and it was a tie so the Federalist-controlled House had to vote to break the tie. And they strongly preferred Burr to Jefferson so they had planned to vote in Burr. Jefferson mistakenly assumed Burr was behind the plan and took measures to punish and isolate him, which Burr understandably didnt take well.

In order to avoid having that happen again, and apparently dedicated to the idea of having presidential tickets, made it so the electors voted once for President and once for VP instead of selecting their top 2 choices.
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Anagram posted...

Trump/Hillary would be amazing

Imagine the president actively trying to get the VP convicted of felonies

You dont have to imagine - this legitimately happened with Jefferson/Burr!
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Eddv posted...

Anagram posted...

Trump/Hillary would be amazing

Imagine the president actively trying to get the VP convicted of felonies

You dont have to imagine - this legitimately happened with Jefferson/Burr!

Thats even more amazing.
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Maybe tell stories about states with interesting ways/history joining the US?
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Not_an_Owl posted...

Tell me a story about Daniel Webster.

Webster is like the Benjamin Disraeli of American history where a lot of amazing quotes are attributes to him but its hard to really latch on to anything he ever actually, you know, did.

But he was a very gifted orator so lets talk about a speech hes famous for.

First of all Webster was a really flamboyant and well known trial lawyer. It would like Senator Johnny Cochran in terms of how he presented himself. He basically RAN the Congress as part of a 3-Man Whig leadership team alongside Henry Clay and John C Calhoun and this was in the period where Congress ran the country during a stretch of very week presidents.

Its a little known fact that a civil war almost got started in the 1830s during what we call the "nullification crisis". South Carolina basically decided that it wasnt going to pay any tarriffs and that if the federal government wanted them to then they could send soldiers down there to MAKE them. Tensions were high. Andrew Jackson was largely elected under the assumption that he would repeal the Tarriffs with Calhoun, a native of South Carolina, as his running mate. INSTEAD, Jackson asked for and signed ANOTHER Tariff.

So once again the President and Vice President were openly attacking each other with Webster stuck trying to simply prevent civil war and sell the need for unionism. The Senate had just passed an act allowing Jackson to send the army to South Carolina to enforce the tariff. War looked inevitable.
This didn't happen in a vacuum - the slavery debate looped into this too. So Webster engaged Calhouns dog, Senator Hayne in an open week-long rhetorical debate to try and talk the Senate into a compromise where none looked possible.

The result was a passionate speech about the benefits of union and the dangers of sectarianism that would become the rallying cry of every attempt to avoid a Civil War. He was able to actually win his colleagues and Calhoun over and work began on a compromise tarriff.

And that was that. South Carolina convened to vote to nullify the act authorizing the army to march on them - showing they still maintained the right to flout federal law (which would remain their justification for the right to secede 30 years later) but otherwise accepted the compromise and everyone declared victory.

And that's how you get people to remember you as GOAT Senator.
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Aww yeah Dartmouth's best alumnus next to me and Robert Frost
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Dang, that must have been an awesome speech.

Wish we had someone like that now to fight for everyone to work together.
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Otto von Bismarck
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Bump
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Just tell me eddv if I'm supposed to stop bumping the topic
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Yeeeees, tag -- glad to see this is back.

I'm writing about Vice Presidential tie-breakers lately since Pence has broken eight ties in just thirteen months. I wondered if you could elaborate on some of the most important ties to be broken by a VP -- it's hard to tell at a glance of these which really reshaped history and which just allowed another vote to happen as per procedure.
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HaRRicH posted...

Yeeeees, tag -- glad to see this is back.

I'm writing about Vice Presidential tie-breakers lately since Pence has broken eight ties in just thirteen months. I wondered if you could elaborate on some of the most important ties to be broken by a VP -- it's hard to tell at a glance of these which really reshaped history and which just allowed another vote to happen as per procedure.

Hmmm,

My gut instinct is that the answer here is probably John Adams sometime during the first congress breaking a tie on something that defined some sort of important procedure. The first two congresses didnt so much legislate as define the role and rules of congress.

But I am going to have to sit down and research this one vs a few others I know of
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I'd like to hear about constitutional amendments that came (relatively) close to passing
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tell me a story about how I kicked your punk butt in mercenaries 4

or alternatively tell me something interesting about the mexican-american war
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