my brother and i are both history nerds and today is the coolest day ever i love learning new stuff so please bear with me

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was a very popular French militant officer, you may have heard of him from Hamilton or other pieces of literature if people still actually read books and shit.
You may know him for his victor in fighting in the American Revolution, that of which housed the Boston Tea Party and the base of the plot in Hamilton. Lafayette was led by horse toothed president George Washington in the Continental Army (the army who fought against British colonization.)
He was also a big part of the infamous French Revolution.
Basically, he served in multiple allegiances from 1771 to 1830 for France, 1777 to 1781 for the U.S., continued his duties in France for one more year, left, and joined back in 1830, four years before his death.

He was already born into a wealthy family and joined the military at 13. He was made a general at 19.
He was the start of trade amongst the U.S. and France to help reduce America’s debt…
I’m sure we could really use some of that money right about now.
Around the same time that he embarked on trading, he joined a party known as the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, which was a small French abolitionist group who agreed slavery was bad and slaves should be free which is so COOL!!!
He also protested equal rights for people of color in that time frame, even convincing Washington to let his slaves be freed.
With money and support the from it, he bought three plantations in a small island known as French Guiana to gain property to publicise the movement.

he’s one of the coolest french figures i know about alongside daft punk
but my brother and i talked about it and i thought it was really interesting