Don't Know Much About History? Read All About It!

Daniel Boone by Chester Harding. National Portrait Gallery

This weekend I was talking with my brother about the birth of the oil industry and the period of history between the Civil War and WW1. He's been reading a history book that he picked up at a garage sale or somewhere that's been on his shelf. He'd gotten motivated to read this history book after reading a copy of the U.S. Constitution.

For me, history has always been fascinating. When I write about a subject I like to research the origins of ideas that preceded that subject. When I write about oil I learn the history of oil. I also ask questions and ask, "How did they lubricate things before there was oil?" Whale blubber, for example, produced an effective lubricating oil for wagon wheels.

Biographies are another way to learn about history. What makes biographies so interesting is that they give us insights into the men and women who created that history, what motivated them, and how they were shaped by earlier events in their lives. 

What's interesting is how new biographies can be written about people that shed new light on the person. For example, an early biography about president James Madison might include all the stories that had been written about him in the newspapers of his day. It is possible that the writer may have, out of deference, left out anything that would put the fourth president in a bad light. Later biographers who had access to all his personal correspondence and diaries might share much that casts the former president and co-author of the Constitution in a new light.

As a descendant of Daniel Boone I have read many books on the 18th century pioneer folk hero. None of the early books mention how one of his daughters was conceived by his brother while he was away on a hunting trip. Lest this sound shameful, consider that the usual "long hunts" were a matter of months. When Boone did not come back from one of his journeys it was assumed he was dead. Two years he was gone. His brother thus stepped in to be the head of the household.

Boone had actually been captured by a tribe of Native Americans in Ohio. The chief liked and respected him, and eventually gave him his daughter. When Boone learned that the tribe was planning to go wipe out the community he helped establish at Boonesborough, he left in the night and ran for three days to warn them of the impending attack. Before his arrival, his wife and brother worried about how Daniel would feel when he came home to see a daughter who was not his. Boone reportedly was completely magnanimous and welcomed Jemima as his own. 

EdNote: As I wrote that story I started wondering whether I may have combined two stories here. In any event, these two incidents were not included in early biographies and appear only in more recent books like Lawrence Elliott's The Long Hunter and John Mack Farragher's Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer.

Robert E. Lee was of stellar importance in the South that it was more than a century before anyone dared to say he may have made any strategic mistakes in the Civil War. Having been to Gettysburg, "Pickett's Charge" was inexcusable.

Meriwether Lewis very likely contracted syphilis during the famous Lewis and Clarke expedition to the Northwest, which was not included in early biographies of the explorer. 

In David McCullough's bio of John Adams there are many surprising details about Ben Franklin, who preached "Early to bed and early to rise" while actually doing otherwise.

Much more could be said, but for now it's time to start my day.

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