History Bytes: People, Places, and Events That Changed American History (ePub)

Don't like history? You're probably reading the wrong books.

Read this book, and you're going to think, wow! Why didn't somebody tell me that?

American history is full of strange paradoxes, and that's what makes it so interesting. The truth is much of what we learn about history is a series of little white lies that have grown into tall tales over time.

Why doesn't everyone know the Boston Massacre wasn't really a massacre? Subsequent testimony proved the soldiers fired in self-defense. The King Street riot was started by a group of four street thugs who got their rocks off attacking lone British soldiers. Sam Adams and Paul Revere twisted it into a massacre.

And, if you think the Boston Tea Party was a response to British taxes that raised the price of tea in the colonies, think again. The Tea Act of 1773 reduced the price of tea paid by the colonists. The people hurt by the Tea Act were the smugglers. The lower price of tea undercut their business and ensured that the East India Company would have a monopoly on tea.

The South Carolina Nullification Congress of 1832 was a harbinger of things to come. The question was if a state disagrees with federal law, does it have the right to nullify it and disregard that law? Vice-president John C. Calhoun argued state's rights supersede federal laws. President Andrew Jackson believed to his dying day that Calhoun was a damned traitor and that he should have strung him up from the nearest branch.

In the fall of 1845, President James K. Polk offered Mexico five million dollars if they would recognize the Southwestern Boundary of Texas at the Rio Grande. When Mexico refused his offer, Polk decided to force the issue. He sent General Zachary Taylor and 3,000 troops to Corpus Christi, Texas. In March 1846, General Taylor moved his forces into the disputed territory between the Rio Grande and Nueces Rivers. Soon after that, Mexico was provoked into a war with the United States.

It has been said that James Buchanan was a "weak, timid, old man" who didn't do anything to prevent the Southern states from seceding. Some historians have even gone so far as to declare Buchanan was an "accessory after the fact." He was a president, a Southern sympathizer, and a traitor. But was he?

Imagine what it would be like to wake up, flip on the morning news, and discover Bradley Cooper or Ashton Kutcher assassinated President Obama. But that's what happened in 1865. People were shocked when they learned John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln. Booth was one of the most popular actors of his day. He was young, just twenty-six years old,and considered one of the most attractive men in America. At the time he killed Lincoln, Booth was pulling down $20,000 a year as an actor (that's roughly $300,000 in 2015 money). And, yet-he sacrificed it all for his political beliefs. What was going on in the mind of John Wilkes Booth?

I could tell you more, but you get the idea. Things aren't always what they appear to be. There are two sides to every story. All that stuff your teacher told you in school-it may or may not be true.