#or that james monroe's wife helped rescue lafayette's wife from the guillotine

[fictionadventurer]

The fun part of digging into history from multiple different sources is that you start to piece together information about people across different eras, until history starts to feel like a massive crossover event involving surprise guest stars.

For example:

The book about Lincoln's Cabinet presents William Seward as the expected Republican candidate for the 1860 election. As they discuss his backstory I'm like, "Oh, he's Seward the anti-slavery New York Whig who influenced Zachary Taylor." And then they mention Seward becomes Lincoln's Secretary of State.

And I'm like

Wait a minute...

SEWARD'S FOLLY???

HE'S BEEN THE ALASKA MAN THIS WHOLE TIME???

An emergency trip to Wikipedia confirmed that he was. Which feels much stranger than it probably should, but in high school, all the Alaska stuff was presented as completely separate from the Civil War, so it's taken me a long time to put the pieces together. Still kind of fun to make connections like that, though.

#random thought of the day #history is awesome #presidential talk #a similar thing is learning that historical figures had lives before and after their most famous periods #like john quincy adams being monroe's secretary of state #and then serving in the house of representatives as a strident anti-slavery voice until he dies on the house floor in the 1840s #(and lincoln was there cuz it happened to be his one term as a representative) #or that dolly madison helped jefferson with first lady hostess duties because his wife had died #and then played a major social role for several presidencies afterward #or that james monroe's wife helped rescue lafayette's wife from the guillotine #this is just people living their lives but these facts feel like plot twists #because history gets fragmented into a bunch of different groups of facts #so you can forget how it all fits together