By adding the territory of Alaska to the landmass of the country, Seward increased the size of the United States by twenty percent. At the time of the purchase, the rest of the government couldn’t see the point in buying a large piece of empty land that was dark for six months out of the year, had inhospitable weather and was difficult to traverse. But within a few short years oil and gold were discovered in Alaska making the $7.2 million purchase price a bit of a bargain. Seward’s folly turned out to be Seward’s foresight. 
During his senate time, he assisted with the statehood of California, promoted the abolitionist movement and even allowed his home to be used as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He ran for president in 1860 but his party chose Lincoln as their candidate that year. Seward gratefully accepted a nomination from Lincoln to be Secretary of State and served in that capacity for the rest of Lincoln’s term. Secretary of state under Lincoln proved a dramatic role as Seward suffered a knife attack the same evening that Lincoln was assassinated. This was just a setback for the determined Seward who finished his term and then served as Secretary of State under the next President Andrew Johnson.
The Russians had fought against the British in the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856 where both the Russian Empire and the Western European powers fought to obtain the lands now available from the break up of the Ottoman Empire. Russian had no desire to let the British take the land, no matter how fruitless they felt Alaska to be. The Russians offered the land to America out of a determination to upset the British and Seward jumped on the opportunity. 
In England at the end of the 18th century a movement in fashion was finding its voice through young British aristocrats set on defining themselves apart from the average gentleman. A generation of young and world-wise aristocrats, young men whose custom it was to take the ‘Grand Tour’ of the great European cities of antiquity, returned to England wearing ostentatious clothing that remarked on their cultured travels. They had tasted the fashions in Italy and France at the end of the 1700’s and had returned celebrating and perhaps exaggerating these. It is thought that they themselves applied the name ‘Macaroni’ to their set or maybe the label was given to them but it is sure that a distinct style of dress and presentation came to be associated with the term.
The unofficial ‘Macaroni Club’ of young fashion-setters were the opposite of the staid, traditional, and older ‘Beefsteak Club’ of 18th century England. Whereas the prior generation was content with conventional formality and prided itself on its patriotism, the Macaroni’s were devoted to excesses in fashion and the general consumption of things and conferred great importance on their European experience. They wore their trousers tight and their waistcoats short and sported wigs of exaggerated pomp with curls dangling at their ears. They were also known to adorn their jacket lapels with flowers such as nosegay and to wear the narrowest of shoes that almost impaired their manner of gait. The Macaronis would carry canes embellished with tassels and have as accessories pocket watches and spy glasses and they chose to wear wigs of extreme proportions to further set themselves apart.
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They came to be associated with excess frivolity, effeminacy, and were plausibly the last vestiges of a court culture that was invariably giving way to a mercantile and bourgeois class. The social and fashion elite of the aristocratic class were emblemized by the Macaronis and, so too, caricatured by them. The Macaroni fashion as a cultural indicator of elitist aspirations has seen itself revived in fashion history in the styles of the foppish dandy, the more literary flaneur, and, more recently, the ultra urban metrosexual male. | |||||||||||
image: Print of Macaroni fashion, 1774.
image: Print of Dandies, 1830.
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As the Spanish and Portuguese empire expanded in Central and South America, The British established a tenuous presence in North America in 1607 with settlements that stretched along the east coast from Florida to Newfoundland. By 1733, the British Empire had carved out an empire as formidable as their Spanish counterparts. Originally, the entire coast was named “Virginia” after Queen Elizabeth I the “Virgin Queen”, who in the 1580s enlisted the explorer Sir Walter Raleigh to discover new lands for the British Empire. Though Raleigh’s initial attempts to establish a colony in Roanoke Island in 1584 failed, his experience would later pave the way for the successful colonies that followed. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 signaled the dawn of British naval dominance and permitted Great Britain to continue its exploration of the New World virtually unchallenged.
St. John’s and Newfoundland were early colonies as was the Roanoke Colony, founded in 1585 and the Jamestown Settlement, founded in 1607. The Plymouth Colony, originally intended for Virginia, was actually established in Massachusetts in 1620. A flow of colonies followed these original ones along the northeast coast of North America, including the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630. In the decades that followed, the British formed the original thirteen colonies that supplied the crown with spices and other commodities at great economic cost to the colonies. The British imposed heavy taxation policies that eventually led to an increasingly hostile political climate between the colonies and the Royal government. The original thirteen British colonies were Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. 
The British would eventually take control over most of the originally settled lands through either hostile campaigns or commercial ventures, as they did in 1664 when they took the Dutch colony of New Netherland including the New Amsterdam settlement. Parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania had also been colonized by the Dutch prior to British dominance. In 1713 England acquired the French colony of Acadia as well as the rest of New France and, in 1763, the Spanish colony of Florida. In 1776, the thirteen original colonies rebelled against the British crown over representation, local laws and tax issues which by that point had become intolerable to the colonial population, this rebellion or revolution eventually led to the creation of the United States of America.
When we talk about fashion or costume we tend to refer to garments or some type of ornamentation that is external to the body. However, throughout history, cultures have also used the body itself and human skin as a decorative medium to relay aesthetic significance as well as social status or rites of passage. The human epidermis is a remarkable organ that provides a barrier between the inner organs and the external environment and helps us regulate temperature. It is also what we present of ourselves as individuals to the world around us and so the way we treat our skin, or manipulate it, or adorn and change it, can convey a lot about who we are or who we want others to see us as.
The most conspicuous and familiar forms of body adornment to Western eyes are probably cosmetics (including lip coloring, eye shading, nail polishes, etc.) and ear piercings and, more recently, tattoos and piercings on other parts of the body. The history of cosmetics certainly has to be a long one since its application is easy and the sources for natural dyes and treatments are abundant. Other forms of bodily adornment include more painful forms of manipulating the skin, such as body piercings or scarification. Both are a form of ornamentation that tampers with the skin and creates wounds for the purpose of distinguishing that part of the body, whether by attaching further adornment (such as earrings) or changing the surface texture of the skin itself to create patterns (such as through scarring).
Tattooing, also a potentially painful practice, has a long history as feature of human ornamentation; remains of a human preserved in ice, dated to about 5000 B.C.E, show various tattoo patterns and attest to a fairly early use of tattoos. Tattooing as a distinct tradition in some cultures, such as those of Oceania, is further example of its relevance as a form of display/adornment. Today, tattoos are a cultural phenomenon in the West and have become fashion indicators more than social indicators but in cultures where the tradition is longer, tattoos have been a signifier of much deeper binds. In the cultures of Polynesia, different islands had their own traditions and styles of tattooing and the variety of tattoo motifs and patterns and their placement on the body also offered different layers of meaning, both for the person adorned with them and for anyone encountering him.
On May 26, 1828, an emaciated seventeen year old boy clad in filthy clothing stumbled into Nuremburg, Germany. The boy could not speak, except for his name: Kaspar Hauser. The only clues to his identity or origin came in the form of two unsigned letters found on his person.
Though initially thought to be mentally challenged, Kaspar soon learned to read and write, and then went on to tell a disturbing tale. For as long as he could remember, he claimed, he had been confined to a windowless room – one so small that he had been unable to stand or move freely about it. Then one day, his unseen captor drugged him and he awoke to find himself on the road to Nuremburg.
That is until October 17, 1829 when Kaspar was found, bloodied and bleeding from the head. He claimed he had been attacked by a masked man, who had muttered cryptic threats before bludgeoning him mercilessly. Kaspar’s keepers, quite unsure of the story’s veracity, nonetheless decided to move him out of the city and to the small countryside town of Asbach for safekeeping.
