Trust us: This was even more boring than the Treaty of Ghent.

Meanwhile, culture was continuing to occur in some areas. In New England, for example, essayist Henry David Thoreau created an enduring masterpiece of American philosophical thought when, rejecting the stifling influences of civilization, he went off to live all alone on Walden Pond, where, after two years of an ascetic and highly introspective life, he was eaten by turtles. That did not stop the march of culture. Authors such as James Fenimore Cooper (Pippi Leatherstocking, Hiawatha, Natty Bumppo Gets Drunk and Shoots His Own Leg), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Ludicrously Repetitious Poems That Nobody Ever Finishes), and Herman Melville (Moby-Dick, Moby-Dick II, Moby-Dick vs. the Atomic Bat from Hell) cranked out a series of literary masterpieces that will be remembered as long as they are required reading in high school English classes.

Tremendous advances were also being made in technology. A nautical inventor named Robert Fulton came up with the idea of putting a steam engine on a riverboat. Naturally it sank like a stone, thus creating one of many underwater hazards that paved the way for a young man named Samuel Clemens, who got a job standing on the front of riverboats, peering into the water, and shouting out literary pseudonyms such as “George Eliot!” The steam engine also played a vital role in the development of the famous “Iron Horse,” which could haul heavy loads, but which also tended to produce the famous “Monster Piles of Iron Droppings” and thus was eventually replaced by the locomotive.

Tremendous strides were also being taken in the area of communication. With the invention of the rotary press, newspapers were made available not just to the wealthy literate elite, but also to the average low-life scum, who were suddenly able to keep abreast, through pioneering populist papers like the New York Post, of such national issues as NAB FAIR IN NUN STAB and LINK PORN SLAY TO EYE SLICE MOB. Another major advance in communication was the telegraph, which was invented by Samuel Morse, who also devised the code that is named after him: “pig Latin.” Wires were soon being strung across the vast continent, and by October 8 a message could be transmitted from New York to California, carried by courageous Pony Express riders, who galloped full speed on courageous horses that would often get as far as thirty feet before they would fall off the wires and splat courageously onto the ground.

This created a growing awareness of the practical value of roads, and in 1809 work began on the nation’s first highway, the Long Island Expressway, which is scheduled for completion next year (Barring unforeseen delays.). In 1825, New York completed the Erie Canal, which connected Buffalo and Albany, thus enabling these two exciting Cities to trade bargeloads of slush. The Erie Canal was an instant financial success, and became even more profitable fourteen years later, when a sharp young engineer suggested filling it with water.

“MANIFEST DESTINY”

“Manifest destiny” is a phrase you see in a lot of history books. Another one is “Fifty-four-forty or fight.”

At this point Mexico owned the territory that we now call “Texas,” which consisted primarily of what we now call “dirt.” Gradually, however, it began to fill up with Americans, who developed a unique frontier life-style based on drinking Pearl beer, going “wooo-EEEE!” real loud, and making cash payments to football players. This irritated the Mexican government, which sent a general named Santa Anna (SAN-TA ANN-A) up to attack the Texans at the Alamo (AL-A-MO), where, in one of the most heroic, (HE-RO-IC) scenes in American history, the legendary Davy Crockett (played by Fess Parker) used his legendary rifle, “Betsy” (played by “Denise”), as a club in a futile (STUPID) effort to fend off Santa Anna’s troops. But the tragedy served as a blessing in disguise, because a short time later the legendary Sam Houston, showing that he had learned the harsh lesson of the Alamo, ordered his troops to try using their rifles as rifles. Not only did they rout the Mexicans, but they went on to defeat Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. And thus Texas was born although it was not permitted to enter the union for ten more years, because of NCAA violations.

At this point the president of the United States, a stud named James K. Polk, declared war against Mexico. Don’t ask us why. We are a history book, not a mind reader. This resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (GUA-DA ... OH, NE-VER MIND), under which the uNited States got the rest of the Southwest and California, and Mexico got smaller.

One day in the winter of 1848, a worker was digging in a pond on the northern California farm of Swiss immigrant Johann Sutter. Suddenly the man stopped and stared, for there, gleaming through the muck on his shovel blade, was a discovery that was to transform the entire California territory almost overnight: a movie camera. Word of the discovery spread like wildfire, and Soon thousands of actors, agents, producers, and so forth were rushing westward, overburdening the territory’s limited restaurant facilities and causing the price of valet parking to skyrocket. Soon there were more than a hundred thousand residents, which raised the issue: Should California be declared a state? Or, in this case, maybe even a separate planet?

These were just some of the storm clouds now gathering over the nation’s political landscape. For meanwhile, back east, the cold front of moral outrage was moving inexorably toward the low-pressure system of southern economic interests, creating another of those frontal systems of conflict that would inevitably result in a violent afternoon or evening thundershower of Carnage. Also, it was time for the Civil War.

1. In the song “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain When She Comes,” why do they announce so cheerfully that they intend to “kill the old red rooster when she comes”? Is it some kind of ritual thing? Or is it that they just hate the old red rooster, because maybe it pecked them or something when they were children, and now they’re just using the fact that she’s comin’ ‘round the mountain as an excuse to kill it?

2. An-cay oo-yay eak-spay ig-pay atin-lay? Explain.

3. Define the following: “Wooo-EEEE!

The seeds of the Civil War were sown in the late eighteenth century when Eli Whitney invented the “Cotton gin,” a machine capable of turning cotton into gin many times faster than it could be done by hand. This created a great demand for cotton-field workers, whom the South originally attempted to recruit by placing “help wanted” advertisements in the newspaper:

ATTENTION SELF-STARTERS! Are you that special “Can-do” kind of guy or gal who’s looking for a chance to work extremely hard under horrible conditions for your entire life without getting paid and being severely beaten whenever we feel like it, plus we get to keep your children? To find out more about this exciting career opportunity, contact: The South.

Oddly enough, this advertisement failed to produce any applicants, and so the South decided to go with slavery. Many people argued that slavery was inhuman and cruel and should be abolished but the slave owners argued that it wasn’t so bad, and that in fact the slaves actually were happy, the evidence for this being that they sometimes rattled their chains in a rhythmic fashion.