$11680 in 1865 is $164391.37 in 2010 inflation adjusted dollars according to [1]. But when considering monthly wage of $25 (although it includes clothing and food and might have been even under "minimal wage") it was probably much more. The ratio is perhaps closer to 20:1

[1] www.westegg.com/inflation

The grammar is wrong for the period. Snopes?

The blog linked to an img of a newspaper from the period. Here is the Library of Congress's archive of the same paper, showing the same letter. Now, that doesn't show that the Tribune wasn't duped as to the letter's source, but it does show that the grammar is from that period. Assuming you trust the LOC.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1865-08-22...

I stand corrected.

Interesting but not Hacker News. Flagged.

Interesting trumps. If its interesting to people who read HN, it belongs on HN.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html is lax enough.

> If its interesting to people who read HN, it belongs on HN.

Completely false. If that were true, there would be no need for guidelines.

In fact it says, "Anything that good hackers would find interesting" which is not semantically equivalent to "people on HN".

If everyone on reddit signed up for an account today, by your interpretation HN would be full of pun threads and cats and that would be acceptable.