Or alternative title, Things I Really Should Have Learned in High School History, but Didn’t.

It would be historically accurate to have a cell of Confederate deserters from the United States Civil War, living in Victorian England. That’s right; the Civil War (1861-1865) occurred smack dab in the middle of Queen Victorian’s reign (1837-1901).

This also means that when Queen Victoria was crowned, we were only on our eighth president, President Martin Van Buren. This means that only 48(!) years had passed since George Washington became our first president (1789) and only 62 years had passed since the Declaration of Independence.

And if you paid attention to those dates, you’d realized only 86 years separated the signing of the Declaration to the Civil War. There very reasonably could have been people, who had lived through both events!

 

The cool fact that started my research train:

The steamboat was invented before the United States became its own country. Steamboats were invented in the 1700s and patented in 1769 by James Watt.

They also only went five miles an hour, which was a huge disappointment to me.

(Yes, the thing that started this was me trying to figure out how fast steamboats could go. CLEARLY, I got distracted)