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> There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their ch
by twblalock 8y ago
> There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their character.
Smith was considered an outlier by his contemporaries. This is not simply a case of applying modern standards to a 19th-century person. People alive at the time considered his marriages abnormal.