• prole
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    12 days ago

    Hadn’t heard of this one, thanks. Americans are pros at not learning from history.

    I thought this part was particularly funny/familiar:

    It was a bill designed to fail in Congress because it was seen by free trade supporters as hurting both industry and farming, but it passed anyway.

    Edit: That article lead me to this one, which gave me a good chuckle. How quaint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petticoat_affair

    these women, dubbed the “Petticoats”, socially ostracized Secretary of War John Eaton and his wife, Peggy Eaton, over disapproval of the circumstances surrounding the Eatons’ marriage and what they deemed her failure to meet the “moral standards of a Cabinet Wife”.

    After further reading about Peggy Eaton’s childhood, kind of a bummer. Also, John Eaton pulled a King David/Bethsheba on her first husband, quite literally… That’s wild.

    Once Timberlake told Eaton of his financial troubles, Eaton unsuccessfully attempted to have the Senate pass legislation that would authorize payment of the debts Timberlake had accrued during his Naval service. Eventually, Eaton paid Timberlake’s debts and procured him a lucrative posting to the U.S. Navy’s Mediterranean Squadron; many rumormongers asserted that Eaton aided Timberlake as a means to remove him from Washington, in order for Eaton to socialize with Peggy.

    What a shithead. Literally sent him to fight pirates so he could bang the dude’s wife hahah