Does the desire to party conquer all? If you asked one small town in America, it would heartily agree — and it has the historical evidence to back it up.
Kal Penn joined host Ed Helms on the Wednesday (November 19) episode of SNAFU with Ed Helms, a podcast "about history's greatest screwups." The appearance was also part of a joint episode of SNAFU and Penn's new podcast Here We Go Again.
In the episode, Helms regaled Penn with the tale of Rough And Ready, a small town in California that tried to secede from the Union in 1850 during the Gold Rush over unpopular laws. It all started with the Foreign Miners Tax, a "discriminatory as hell" state law later deemed unconstitutional, that put a fee on non-U.S. citizens wanting to dig for gold.
"Even though the tax didn't target U.S. born miners, towns like Rough and Ready still hated it. Why? Because it drove away cheap labor, sparked conflict and messed with the free-for-all Gold Rush hustles that they were all trying to cash in on," Helms said. "Plus, it planted the idea that any miner could be next in the government's taxation crosshairs."
And that's exactly what happened as the government attempted to implement a general mining tax that affected everyone and also tried to ban alcohol. This caused an uproar among "pissed off" residents who banned together to secede from the U.S. and rebrand as The Great Republic of Rough And Ready.
However, the plan didn't last long as residents quickly realized they wouldn't be able to purchase alcohol from nearby towns, effectively putting an end to partying as they knew it since shop owners refused to sell them alcohol "because they were now technically foreigners."
"After realizing that commerce with their neighbors was going to be a huge pain in the a--, and only three months into their independence, the citizens of this young nation gathered for another emergency meeting, and — wait for it — voted to rejoin the Union," Helms said.
Find out what happened next, and learn more about modern-day secession movements like Calexit or Texit, by tuning into SNAFU's "Kal Penn and the Republic of Rough and Ready." Follow along with new episodes of SNAFU or catch up on what you missed at iHeart.com.