RPTM Podcast Episode Fifty-Two: California Police Tax, the Homestead Act, and the Sioux Uprising

A phrase I have heard throughout my life is, "no one wants to see how the hotdogs are made." If I were a betting man, I would think this is a play on The Jungle, a 1906 novel by the American writer Upton Sinclair. The novel portrays the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Most readers were more concerned with several sections revealing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat packing industry during the early 20th century. A lack of manufacturing standards and lax food inspection meant that companies often made sausages from harmful, degraded, if not poisonous components. Lin­gering in the public imagination was the common German practice of integrating dogmeat into sausage recipes. Horsemeat was an­other widely whispered ingredient. Meatpackers added sawdust and fillers to their products, regularly debasing the links with formaldehyde and other toxic preservatives. This significantly contributed to a public outcry that led to reforms, including the Meat Inspection Act.

But here we are, over 100 years later, and many Americans still consume hotdogs. Myself included! Nothing tastes better after a night of soaking up booze than several coney dogs at 3 am. Why is that? It is an example of blissful ignorance. We don't want to know what goes into the hot dog because we like the taste. The same is valid for history. We enjoy our modern society, but few take a step back to see what products went into making it. The genocide. The government overreaches. The blood. The oppression. All mixed into our democratic freedoms like sawdust. When we study history, we see the steps that got us here, which can sometimes be tough to swallow.

HIGHLIGHTS

• European settlers created Chinese Police Taxes in the 1860s required all Chinese men and women 18 and older to pay $7.50 a quarter – what it called a "Chinese Police Tax." 
• Cochise was leader of a band of the Chiricahua Apache. A key war leader during the Apache Wars, he led an uprising that began in 1861 and persisted until a peace treaty was negotiated in 1872. 
• When it came to clothes, there were different outfits for different occasions. 
• Ex parte Merryman is a prominent and contentious US federal court case from the American Civil War. It was a test of the power of the President to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" under the Constitution's Suspension Clause when Congress was in recess and thus unreachable to do so. More typically, the case presented queries about the executive branch's power to refuse enforcement of judicial decisions when the executive considers them to be wrong and damaging to its legal authorities.
• The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could obtain ownership of government land or the public domain, generally called a homestead. In all, more than 160 million acres of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders. Most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River.
• The Dakota War of 1862 was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of eastern Dakota, also known as the Santee Sioux. On December 26, 1862, US officials hung 38 in Mankato, Minnesota, with one getting a reprieve. This was the largest one-day mass execution in American history. 

​CHAPTERS
0:37 Introduction
2:51 California Police Tax
 7:24  Cochise
11:03 1860s Fashion
 13:52  Ex Parte Merryman
20:21 The Homestead Act
28:52 Sioux Uprising
33:55 Outro

RESOURCES
Washington Territory’s race-based, discriminatory Chinese Police Tax
Cochise
Fashion In The 1860s
Lincoln and Taney’s great writ showdown
Homestead Acts
Dakota War of 1862