Part one answers

1. Reconstruction. The 12-year period following the American Civil War during which the states formerly in rebellion against the government of the United States were controlled by the federal government. Much social legislation was introduced, especially that of a remedial nature to southern African-Americans.

That's the official line, and I'm stickin' to it.

2. At the outbreak of the Civil War, 8 days after the attack on Ft. Sumter, the president offered command of the Union Armies to Robert E. Lee, then an officer in the Union Army, at the recommendation of General Winfield Scott, Lee's commanding officer in the Mexican War. Lee was a top West Point graduate (graduated 2nd in his class) and a distinguished career officer in the U.S. Army, the son of Revolutionary War hero "Light Horse" Harry Lee. He was also related to Meriwether Lewis. He was a captain in the Corps of Engineers and was valuable to General Scott in the conquest of Mexico City, which ended the Mexican war.

Lee was against fighting his own country, but was a Virginian first and foremost. (A concept not understood by many Americans today who support a strong federal government at the expense of the founding constitutional rights of the states.) When it became obvious that Virginia was going to secede from the Union, Lee declined and instead took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was Lee who was to later surrender the armies of the Confederate States of America, ending the war.

Lee was a brilliant military officer and man of honor; Lincoln did the right thing by offering Lee the Union command.

3. Prohibition of alcoholic beverages was the 18th amendment. Women gained suffrage by the 19th amendment.

4. Jim Crow wasn't a person but rather a derisive name given to a repressive system of laws designed as a whole to re-subjugate African-Americans as a race following the Civil War. These laws were enacted in the South following Reconstruction and ending in 1965.

5. James Calley is what Relax Max thought William Calley's name was without looking it up. He should have looked it up. Despite my friend Soubriquet's sermon, the real culprit was, in my opinion Lyndon Johnson, whose personal war required cannon fodder in excess of American youths' willingness to volunteer, and forced the drafting into the army of every 18-year-old not in University. Their training eventually consisted of little more than fitting them for a uniform and handing them a rifle and shipping them to Vietnam. The lowered mentality as a whole of these conscripts made a joke of the standards of the American military, and gave Calley a group of soldiers stupid enough to obey his unlawful orders. I also blame the American University system for giving a degree to a cretin like Calley, enabling him to become a military officer who found himself in Vietnam in charge of people, but with no brains, where only months before he was on campus drooling in class.

My opinion.

6. Denali is the Alaskan Native name for North America's largest mountain, also known as Mt. McKinley. It is located in Alaska.

7. How quickly we forget. Dole challenged Clinton's second term. Dole's would-be vice-president was the great football quarterback, Jack Kemp, then a U.S. Congressman. Jack passed away this past May.

8. The first U.S. Capital was New York City.

9. There are currently 15 cabinet positions. There are an additional 7 "cabinet-level" officers who also sit in on cabinet meetings. One of those "extras" is the Vice-President of the United States. One of Obama's main requirements to be a cabinet member, apparently, is that you have to owe back taxes. The top five in rank are:

a. Secretary of State (Clinton)
b. Secretary of the Treasury (Geithner)
c. Secretary of Defense (Gates)
d. Attorney General (Holder)
e. Secretary of the Interior (Salazar)

10. "Sooner" was the name given to people who entered Oklahoma early to stake claims on choice land before the official entry date. It is no longer a derogatory word.

11. Indiana's nickname is the Hoosier state. People who live there are called Hoosiers. The origin is speculative, really unknown.

12. Tennessee. A schoolteacher by the name of Scopes was accused of breaking state law (The Butler Act) with regard to allowable curriculum. The case was a challenge to the law, financed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan were the attorneys. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but was reversed on appeal on a technicality, a defect in the original trial. He was never punished.

13. His Vice-President, Calvin Cooldge.

14. True. Although the Constitution was changed during his tenure, it did not apply to the sitting president.

15. Captain.

16. Eisenhower.

17. Truman.

18. Georgia promotes itself as the largest, but Michigan, at 96,810 square miles, is by far the largest state east of the Mississippi River. It is trailed by Florida (65,758 square miles), Wisconsin (65,503 square miles), and Georgia (59,441 square miles). The catch, of course, is that much of this is water. Michigan's land area is "only" 56,804 square miles, compared to Georgia's land area of 57,906 square miles. Not much difference but, in my opinion, that makes Georgia number one. Unless you count simple gross area within state boundaries. Sigh. Georgia.

19. Jefferson was president. Lewis and Clark were their first names. Lewis Jones and Clark Palowski. Meriwether was Lewis' first name. Can you imagine his proud parents looking down at their newborn son lying in his crib and saying, "Say, Eunice, let's call him Meriwether!"

William Clark.

20. Truman's most recent occupation was vice-president. The two people who became president directly out of the Senate were Barack Obama and John Kennedy.