The Slacker's Guide to U.S. History: The Bare Minimum on Discovering America, the Boston Tea Party, the California Gold Rush, and Lots of Other Stuff Dead White Guys Did (3 page)

I
t took twelve years for the white Euro settlers to realize that building a country from its roots could not be done on the backs of those whose complexion was similar to that of George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio. Instead, it needed to be accomplished by volunteers who looked more like Denzel Washington and Will Smith. Using the resources of well-connected Dutch slave traders, the men of Jamestown, Virginia, placed an order for twenty hardworking black men, who were enthusiastic about working on labor-intensive farms while enduring brutal beatings by those they yearned to call “Master.”

Slavery was not the state of utopia that you might suspect.
LONG HOURS, NO PAY, AND BEING TREATED LIKE PROPERTY DID NOT MAKE FOR AN EASY LIVING.
After being yanked from the Motherland you could be separated from your family on a whim, and your white master could decide he wanted to see if your wife's legendary bedroom skills were what he was looking for. The hours were long, the benefits were almost nonexistent, and office beatings were common. But from an altruistic standpoint, your hard labor was the backbone of the economy in the Southern states, which you should have felt good about.

The idea of using slave labor fit nicely into the business plans of America's first farmers. Like many businesses, high labor costs and soaring health insurance made it difficult to turn a profit. By using slave labor almost exclusively, a farm owner's operating costs were reduced significantly, and the need to pay FICA taxes could be overlooked. These savings could be passed on to the farmer's wife and kids. More importantly, the slaves themselves could be passed on to the farmer's wife and kids. The descendants of rich slave farmers should give thanks every year for the bounty provided to them by somewhat underappreciated slaves.

Seeing how effective their new human property was working out on their farms' balance sheets, nearly every farmer's expansion plans included the purchase of new and equally enthusiastic slaves. Over the next several decades the slave labor market grew to nearly 4 million brothers and sisters in bondage. With so many slaves hitting the job market so quickly, many were forced to post their resume on
CareerBuilder.com
. Many Africans who had experience in tobacco and cotton hoped to further their slaving careers in growth states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. This realignment of slave talent made life easier on whites in these areas, and changed the landscape of Popeye's franchises forever.

T
he now famous castoffs who fled British harassment and bad beer on the mostly seaworthy
Mayflower
vessel disappointedly landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. Far removed from the British monarchy's line of succession, William Bradford assembled a tight-knit group of members from the Separatist sect of British Protestantism along with a number of not-so-God-fearing additional fare paying passengers on their voyage in order to make the trip financially feasible.

Bradford's group called themselves “Saints,” and (keeping in mind that their God was better than everyone else's God) they named the rest of the passengers “Strangers.” With the Strangers threatening mutiny and a brutal winter approaching, the “let's be more civil to each other” Mayflower Compact was drawn up to help the two groups work out their differences in the name of mutual survival.

DESPITE THEIR FUNNY ACCENTS AND BLINDINGLY PALE SKIN, THE PILGRIMS WERE MISTAKEN FOR MEXICAN ILLEGALS AND TURNED AWAY BY AREA BORDER CONTROL AGENTS WHEN THEY ATTEMPTED TO MAKE CAPE COD THEIR NEW HOME.
With the island playground of the affluent off the list of possible settlement destinations, the
Mayflower
voyagers decided to continue their search for a friendlier, British-appreciating location. In November 1620 they stumbled upon Plymouth and set up shop. As the 102 settlers collectively broke out singing The Soup Dragons' version of “I'm Free,” a star was born.

Nearly 400 years after the fact, the Plymouth Rock landing is often regarded as simply the rumored site of where the
Mayflower
and its Pilgrims came ashore in 1620. It really is a nice way to say that they probably didn't land their ship on the rock, but since the locals have built a museum and carved out a tourist trap around the legend, most of us just play along.

While making plans to build on the waterfront in 1741, a ninety-four — year-old town elder named Thomas Faunce, the town's records keeper since the beginning of time, identified the precise rock where his father had claimed the Pilgrims set foot. Legend has it the old man took a swig of whiskey from his flask, walked the area, spun around three times, and pointed to the nearest stone. The scientifically selected rock quickly became famous as townsfolk and tourists stormed the harbor where the rock is located to get their pictures taken with it.

Rock Star Plymouth Rock has enjoyed quite a history since being identified as the rock where the Pilgrims first landed, or quite possibly misidentified as the rock where the Pilgrims first landed. In 1774, the good people of Plymouth decided to move the rock. Their clumsy effort resulted in the rock splitting in half like an amicable divorce, so they moved half of the historic stone into the town hall.
YEARS LATER, THE CLEVER PEOPLE OF PLYMOUTH DECIDED TO BUILD A WHARF OVER THE BOTTOM HALF OF THE STONE, AND IN 1880 THE TOP HALF WAS REUNITED WITH THE BOTTOM HALF IN A CEREMONY THE TOWNSPEOPLE CALLED “THE 69.”
With the ceremony over and the rock now in permanent foreplay, the state of Massachusetts has created its smallest state park, Pilgrim Memorial Park, for everyone's voyeuristic rock viewing pleasure.