Author: Ye Olde History Teacher

Teacher. Author. Pro: facts, reason, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Anti: stupidity, ignorance, intolerance, inflexibility, hate, grifters.

This Week in History – September 22

September 22, 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, warning the states in the Confederacy that if they did not end their rebellion by January 1, 1863, all slaves in Confederate controlled areas would be deemed freed. Spoiler alert – they didn’t. Continue reading “This Week in History – September 22”

The Electoral College is Awful, But It Had Nothing to do With Slave State Power.

Google “Electoral College Slavery,” and your search will turn up dozens of articles written in the past two years claiming that our Electoral College system for choosing the President was proposed and placed in the Constitution to give more political power to slave states. Go to the comments section of any online article concerning the Electoral College and you will find it replete with comments written in the “everybody knows” vein repeating this idea as indisputable fact. The idea does, after all, have a nice symmetry to it: a racist electoral system ended up giving us a racist President despite the fact that he lost the popular vote.

Continue reading “The Electoral College is Awful, But It Had Nothing to do With Slave State Power.”

This Week in History – September 17

September 17, 1787 – At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, delegates from twelve states voted unanimously to approve the proposed U.S. Constitution. Missing was Rhode Island, which boycotted the Convention due to distrust over any attempt to create a more powerful national government. Continue reading “This Week in History – September 17”