Friday, August 10, 2012

A little history from the Moneychanger

The Moneychanger

On 10 August 1821 Missouri became the 24th state to join the Union. Ironically, Missouri within a few years also prompted the first supreme court test of the constitution's Article I Section 10, "No State shall make any Thing but Gold or Silver Coin a Tender in payment of debt." As I remember, Missouri started a state bank and made its notes a legal tender. Somebody sued, and the supreme court, which in those days required that justices possess a brain bigger than a tunipseed, found that paper was not gold or silver after all. More irony: Missouri is the only state I know of that has exercised its power under Article I Section 10 to declare a tender, and declared that US 90% silver coin is its tender. That was a while ago.

On 10 August 1827 race riots in Cincinnati prompted 1,000 blacks to move to Canada. Most people don't realize that the reason the Underground Railway ended in Canada was that states north of the Ohio had constitutions forbidding blacks to settle there, or placing them under severe legal restrictions.

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