1850-1859: Invasions, Racism, Slavery and Ethnic Cleansing

1850: UNITED STATES. Seems like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and Article 4 Section 2 of the United States Constitution which mandates the return of escaped slaves to their "owners" just ain't doin' the job in the land of the free. So Congress passes a shiny, new Fugitive Slave Act to counter some difficulties in rounding up escaped slaves in some of the northern states. The new act imposes a legal duty on law enforcement officials throughout the United States to arrest anyone they suspect of being an escaped slave. The only evidence required to enforce the sending of a captured person to slavery was a sworn statement by the putative owner. Under the Act, the person said to be a slave had no right to a jury trial and was not permitted to testify on his or her own behalf. Professional slave catchers roamed throughout the U.S.

1850s-60s: UNITED STATES. Individually or as entire tribes, American Indians are kidnapped and bought and sold as slaves in California, recently stolen from Mexico. Indian men are enslaved to work in gold mines. Women and girls are bought and sold as sex slaves. In a "friendship feast" of poisoned food served by whites, a hundred people of the Nomsuus nation and forty five people of the Wintu nation are murdered.

1850s-1862: UNITED STATES. The government of the United States repeatedly violates treaties it has made with the Dakota Indian nation and fails to make agreed payments. As hardship and hunger increase, the Dakota rise up against the whites occupying their land, which they had no right to do since the U.S. had abrograted the treaties.

President "Honest" Abe Lincoln isn't quite honest enough to ensure that the U.S. government honors legally binding treaties it has entered into and instead sends in the U.S. Army to complete the theft of native land. Eventually, more than a thousand Dakota are held in a concentration camp. Many are charged with various war crimes, a charge to which Lincoln's soldiers seem to have blanket immunity.

The native people then get a quick lesson in Truth, Justice Or The American Way. So-called trials are held, some lasting five minutes. The proceedings are not explained to the defendants and they are not represented by counsel.
On the day after Christmas, 1862, thirty eight Dakota, mainly holy men and political leaders are hung in the largest mass execution in American history.

1850-1884: UNITED STATES. William Avery Rockefeller, an upstate New York farmer descended from German immigrants named Roggenfelder, moves to Cleveland and, with true Rockefeller family integrity, lists himself in the city directory as a physician, "Doctor Levingston". Rockefeller then begins bottling crude petroleum and and selling it to the sick and dying as a cure for cancer named "Nujol". Rockefeller has a gift for deceiving the American public and finds it easy to con his unfortunate victims into shelling out cash for his fake cancer cure.

Aside from being a liar, con man and swindler, Rockefeller is indicted, although not convicted, for rape and flees when he is accused by neighbors of horse theft, burglary, arson and counterfeiting. Rockefeller marries a second wife while posing as Levingston and lives as a bigamist for thirty four years.

1851: JOHANN'S ISLAND, AFRICA. U.S. forces invade to "punish natives".

1851: UNITED STATES. The Governor of the State of California, recently stolen from Mexico, officially calls for the "extermination" of Indians in the state.

1851: UNITED STATES. The Governor's plea does not go unheard and a posse assembled in Weaverville attacks an undefended village of the Wintu nation slaughtering between two and three hundred people.

1851: UNITED STATES. State militia kill two railroad strikers and injure others in Portgage, New York.

1851-1856: UNITED STATES. The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance operates during this period as a private gang of vigilantes handing out extra-judicial "justice", forcing public officials to resign and conducting lynchings. The Vigilance Committee later focuses on the persecution of Asian immigrants, leading to numerous anti-Asian race riots.

1852-53: ARGENTINA. U.S. Marines invade Argentina to “protect American interests”.

1853: MEXICO. The United States slips ten million dollars into the vest pocket of the half-mad Mexican dictator, Antonio López de Santa Ana, while simultaneously vilifying him for the “slaughter” at the Alamo. A grateful Santa Ana then makes a present to the United States of the portions of the Mexican states of Arizona and New Mexico it had neglected to steal during its invasion of Mexico in 1846.

1853: NICARAGUA. U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua to “protect American interests”.

1853-54: JAPAN. U.S. Marines invade in order to force Japan to open itself to exploitation by U.S. corporate interests.

1853: RYUKYU AND BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN. U.S. Marines invade Japan to “secure facilities for commerce” by forcing the Japanese to allow U.S. merchant vessels to use Japanese ports.

1854: CHINA. U.S. and British forces invade China to “protect national interests”.

1854: NICARAGUA. Over a six day period, U.S. Navy ships shell and burn the Nicaraguan city of San Juan del Norte to “avenge an insult to the American minister to Nicaragua”. The townspeople had been trying to arrest the American minister to Nicaragua.

1854: RYUKYU AND BONIN ISLANDS, JAPAN. U.S. Marines again invade Japan in order to “secure facilities for commerce” by forcing the Japanese to allow U.S. ships to use Japanese ports.

1855: CHINA. U.S. forces invade China to “protect American interests”.

1855: UNITED STATES. Famed Harvard physician and social commentator Oliver Wendell Holmes observes that Indians are nothing more than a "half-filled outline of humanity" whose "extermination" is necessary. Holmes describes native peoples as "a sketch in red crayons of a rudimental manhood," adding that it is only natural for the white man to "hate" the Indian and to "hunt him down like the wild beasts of the forest, and so the red-crayon sketch is rubbed out, and the canvas is ready for a picture of manhood a little more like God's own image."

1855: FIJI. U.S. forces invade Fiji to “seek reparations”.

1855: URUGUAY. U.S. forces invade Uruguay to “protect American interests”.

We will conquer the world,
but we will lose our souls.

John Quincy Adams

1856: COLOMBIA. U.S. forces invade the Colombian state of Panama to “protect American interests”, which consist of an American-built railroad, from Colombian nationalists.

1856: CHINA. U.S. forces invade China to “protect American interests” and “avenge an insult on a boat bearing the American flag”. The U.S. slaughters five hundred Chinese.

1856: UNITED STATES. The village of Lawrence, Kansas, founded by anti-slavery settlers and a center of pro-democracy activity, is sacked by a posse of 750 under Sheriff Samuel Jones. In the interests of furthering freedom of expression, two printing offices are gutted, the presses destroyed, and the all the lead type thrown in a river.

1857: NICARAGUA. American William Walker attempts to take control of Nicaragua, declares himself President and institutes forced labor and slavery just like back home. U.S. forces under Commodore Hiram Paulding invade and capture Walker. The U.S. Secretary of State disavows Paulding’s action and forces him into retirement.

1857: UNITED STATES. In the infamous case of Dred Scott, a black man who had been bought by a U.S. Army officer, that great defender of liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court, courageously upholds slavery and, it its decision, says that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." Just to drive the point home, the Court also points out that blacks, enslaved, freed or otherwise "were not and could never become citizens of the United States." The Court also declares the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus putting its legal stamp of approval on slavery in all U.S. states and territories.

Blacks are
"a subordinate and inferior class
of beings who had been subjugated
by the dominant race."

Chief Justice Roger Taney

1858: URUGUAY. U.S. forces invade Uruguay to “protect American interests”.

1858: FIJI. U.S. Marines invade Fiji to “chastise natives”.

1858: UNITED STATES. Samuel Green, a minister of religion in Maryland, is sentenced to ten years in prison for possession of a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

1858-59: TURKEY. The U.S. makes a display of naval force off the Turkish coast to intimidate the Turkish government into doing its bidding.

1859: MEXICO. U.S. soldiers invade Mexico “in pursuit of a bandit”.

1859: CHINA. U.S. forces invade China to “protect American interests”.

1859: UNITED STATES. Abolitionist John Brown who, unlike Abraham Lincoln, really was committed to freeing the slaves, and eighteen of his men, capture the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry with the hope of starting a rebellion of slaves in Virginia which will spread to all of the slave states. He and his men are captured and Brown is put on trial and convicted of treason against the state of Virginia, murder and criminal conspiracy. He is hanged on December 2, 1859.

In what is sold to white Americans as their history, Brown will be painted as a virtual madman when, in fact, he was one of the few great moral forces of nineteenth century America.

Now, if it is deemed necessary
that I should forfeit my life
for the furtherance of the ends of justice,
and mingle my blood further
with the blood of my children
and with the blood of millions
in this slave country
whose rights are disregarded
by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments,
I say, let it be done.

John Brown

1859: ANGOLA. U.S. troops invade Angola to “protect U.S. citizens from natives”.

1859: PARAGUAY. The U.S. sends a large naval force to intimidate the government of Paraguay.