This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
It’s election season in the old USA, and that means two things - people are vehemently arguing for politicians that they don’t actually like very much and we look back at the guys who got us into this mess and wish they could see us now.
The Founding Fathers were smart guys, there is no doubt about it, but because of the time that they were alive, today we can look at them and see some real weird, real dumb choices. For example, George Washington died from loss of blood - he lost the blood because he, and medical smarties of the time, believed that bloodletting would cure most ills. In this case, three doctors took out more than half the blood in Washington’s body. Bet those guys feel real stupid now, huh? Way to go doctors James Craik, Gustavus Brown, and Elisha Dick! You killed the father of America!
In all fairness to Craik, Brown, and Dick, they were applying the “scientifically proven” method of healing for the time they lived in. Much like Bones being disgusted at the procedures in the hospital of 1986 San Francisco, it is easy for us to look at the actions of people who died some 300 years ago and scoff. In time, we will be scoffed at for our systems and beliefs. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t scoff at some of them, though. Take Gouverneur Morris, for example.
Morris represented Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. At the convention, he was a major player, going so far as to write the preamble of the Constitution of the United States. Morris was not a fan of the idea of states, and felt that the country should be a single union, which pretty much everyone else at the convention thought was a terrible idea. Still, wanting to push the idea of a single union, Morris opened his preamble with “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union”.
Oh, and he had one leg. The official story is that he broke his leg when he was getting into a carriage and it ended up being amputated. The myth is that Morris broke his leg when he jumped out of a window in order to escape the husband of a woman he was schtupping. Whatever the case, Morris didn’t bother to go to a doctor until an infection had set in and off came the leg.
Continuing his style of not bothering with medical professionals (and considering Washington’s demise, maybe don’t judge him too harshly on this) Morris decided to handle it himself when he found it difficult to pee. It seems that Morris had a urinary tract infection and it was a rather bothersome one, so Morris did what any person would do, he took a piece of whale bone and shoved it up his pee hole.
Excuse me a moment… I’m in a great deal of pain writing that… oof… just the idea of… of sticking a whale bone up my junk… I’m gonna throw up in this Panera. OK… just breath. Move past it… OK… here we go...
The whale that Morris sent through his… ugh… whooo… urethra… did some serious damage. Still, Morris did not go to the doctor, instead he let the internal damage get infected, killing him. You could say that Gouverneur Morris died from dick fever.
I’m sure if he had still been alive when Gouverneur Morris jammed a whale bone up his wang, Benjamin Franklin would have had a great, pithy quote for it. Something like “Better to bone than to be boned”.
Speaking of the America’s best known kook, if he were alive today, I believe Franklin would be, to quote the great movie HUDSON HAWK, eating microwave sushi, naked, in the back of a Cadillac. Franklin was easily the weirdest of the Founding Fathers. He was terrible at math but made up for it by nearly electrocuting his son. Sometimes, Franklin dressed like a 1950s TV version of Davy Crockett long before Davy Crockett or TV came around, and was often a real jerk to his pals.
If you’ve watched DRUNK HISTORY, you know Ben Franklin slept with his best friend’s wife. That, for Franklin, was an average day. What he did to Titan Leeds is, in my opinion, the most amazing moment of assholery in the history of the Founding Fathers. When Leeds, the man with the greatest name ever, and a one time friend of Franklin, started his own almanac, Franklin started up one too, the ever famous POOR RICHARD’S ALMANAC. In the 1733 edition, Franklin wrote a prophecy of the death of Leeds, going so far as to say the day and time (October 17, 1733 at 3:29 PM),
Titan Leeds didn’t die on October 17, 1733 at 3:29 PM, but that didn’t stop Franklin from writing about the death of his “friend” in the next printing of POOR RICHARD’S. Titan then took to his own almanac to tell everyone he was not dead and to call Franklin a liar. To this, Franklin responded with another piece on Leeds, saying:
Having received much Abuse from the Ghost of Titan Leeds, who pretends to still be living, and to write Almanacks in spite of me and my Predictions, I cannot help saying, that tho’ I take it patiently, I take it very unkindly.
Leeds continued to proclaim his lack of dying, and Franklin continued to say that Leeds was not Leeds, but an imposter. When Leeds did actually die in 1738, Franklin wrote to congratulate the imposter and those who knew and supported him on finally deciding to end their hoax.
John Adams had no time for such actions. He was too busy getting the rest of the Founding Fathers to quit screwing around so they could create a country. Often overlooked because of how terrible of a president he was, without Adams, there would be no United States. The guy shoved the rest of the Founding Fathers into it and they hated him for it. Adams wanted to be the guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence but knew that the rest of the 2nd Continental Congress would never go for it because, as the song goes...
Well, if I'm the one to do it,
They'll run their quill pens through it
I'm obnoxious and disliked, you know that, sir
And obnoxious John Adams was. Adams loved to push limits and debate politics and religion. Born Congregationalist, Adams switched to Unitarian later in life. Adams’ dad wanted him to be a preacher, but Adams was all about politics, so that didn’t happen. While Adams continued to attend mass regularly, he seemed to lose his faith in religion. Adams saw that religion could be good, but felt that the powers behind all religions were using their powers for their own desires. Religion, Adams felt, was not a very good thing.
So he named his dog Satan to bug people.
For a guy who so liked to rile people up, Adams had a real thin skin. During his time as POTUS, Adams and his party, the Federalists, were having a real barn burner with the other big party of the time, the Democratic-Republicans. The Federalists were in control of the three branches of government, but the Dems were quickly catching up and getting real angry at the actions of the Federalists. So, to keep the Democratic-Republicans down, Adams and his crew created and passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Among other things, these acts increased the period of residency within the United States to 14 years before an immigrant could attain citizenship - naturalized citizens tended to vote Democratic-Republican. They also made it illegal to print "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about government officials. The Federalists in power used that to shut down multiple newspapers that slanted Democratic-Republican. These actions, created to keep the Federalists in power, ended up doing the exact opposite.
In 1800, in what is still considered the most disgusting presidential election in US history, Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, not afraid to play dirty, put out a pamphlet claiming that Adams was a hermaphrodite who wanted to go back to English rule. Adams, not one to shy away from a battle of words, claimed that if Jefferson were to become POTUS, he would force Americans to commit incest. Why? Who knows.
Adams lost and became the first president to serve only one term. Jefferson got two terms. Later in life, Jefferson and Adams mended their damaged friendship before they both died on the same day, July 4th, 1826.
Before his death fifty years to the day of the singing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was busy being one of America’s first cryptozoologists. In 1804, while serving as president, Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark out on a two year expedition across the continent to check out all the new land the US got in the Louisiana Purchase and what lied beyond it. Jefferson also asked Lewis to keep an eye out for giant sloths. In 1797, Jefferson wrote a paper on giant sloths after bones of one were found in Virginia. Jefferson became somewhat obsessed with the creature and wanted badly to see one alive and in person. Alas, the giant sloth died out some ten thousand years earlier.
After Lewis and Clark finished their journey, Lewis was made governor of the Louisiana territory. Along the way, Lewis found himself to be deep into debt. Looking to get out of debt, Lewis headed to Washington to hit up Thomas Jefferson about the $240 Jefferson owed him. Lewis never made it. On October 11, 1809, Meriwether Lewis died by a gunshot to the head. His death was pronounced as a suicide and Lewis was quickly buried. He was buried so quickly that everyone forgot to mark where he was buried. In 1848, after an exhaustive search, Meriwether Lewis’ remains were found and dug up to be buried in a proper manner. It was after exhuming his body that the idea of Lewis committing suicide came into question.
Lewis was not just shot in the head. He was also shot in the chest. And stabbed multiple times.
Back to Jefferson, if you will excuse the digression…
While other presidents had dogs or cats as pets, Jefferson did things a little differently - he had two pet grizzly bears that he kept in cages on the lawn of the White House. The bears were a gift from Captain Zebulon Pike who snagged them up when they were cubs. Jefferson ended up giving the bears to his pal Charles Wilson Peale, who planned to put them in a museum. Before Peale could complete his goal, one of the bears broke free in his home. Peale and his team were forced to kill the bear, then they killed the other one just in case. Clearly, PETA did not exist at this time.
So, this election season, as we argue the pros and cons of our two major candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, when you hear people say that Trump is the worst candidate ever, never forget John Adams, who lost re-election even after he made it illegal to say mean things about him. When people say Hillary is the most dishonest politician ever, remember Franklin spent five years trying to convince people that Titan Leeds was dead. When you see someone on TV wondering what the Founding Fathers would think of today’s leaders, think of Gouverneur Morris and the piece of whale bone he shoved up his dick and ask yourself, “should we really worry about these cats anymore?”.