American Men of Action

piest and most useful ever lived in America. There are half a dozen chapters of this series in which he might rightfully find a place, and in which, indeed, it will be

kind-hearted philosopher, who devoted the greater portion

ion of Benjamin, ever attained any especial distinction; this being one of those mysteries of nature, which no one has ever been able to explain, and yet which happens so often-the production of an eagle i

during the day; but-and here is the first gleam of the eagle's feather-instead of going to bed with the sun as most boys did, he sat up most of the night reading such books and papers as he was able to get hold of at the office, or himself writing short articles for the paper which his brother published. These he slipped unsigned under the front door o

hem only in being right. So he sold some of his books, and without saying anything to his father or brother, who would probably have reasoned him out of his purpose with a cowhide whip, he hid himself

oaf under each arm, and eating the third. He has told the story in his inimitable way in his autobiography, a work which gives him high place among American men of letters. Small wonder that red-cheeked Deborah Reed smiled at him from the door of her father's house-but Franklin saw the smile and remembered it, and though it brought them both distress enough at first, he asked Deborah to be his

d, "that tailors are a conscie

miling; "how could I? You

ven into cloth and cut out and fitted and sewed together by his wife's own hands; and it was no do

vania Gazette. Two years later, he began the publication of an almanac purporting to be written by one Richard Saunders, and which soon won an immense reputation as "Poor Richard's Almanac." As an almanac, it did not differ much from others, but

ade are a child

in dust, bene

safe is neve

to others, you are

s better th

em that help

h to live long

be counselled

he sold his business, intending to devote the remainder of his life to science, of which he had always been passionately fond. Already he had founded the Philadelphia Library and the American Philosophical Society, had invented the Franklin stove, and served as postmaste

AN

then as ambassador to France, where, practically unaided, he succeeded in effecting the alliance between the two countries which secured the independence of the colonies; and finally as President of Pennsylvania and a member of the Constitutional Convention. His last public act was to petition Congress to abolish slavery in the United States. If one were asked to name

n?" inquired the noblema

replied, "I succeed him.

er had more t

-hearted, and unselfish man, whose chief motive was the promotion of human welfare. He had his faults and made his mistakes;

ll ever enjoy-had a second cousin who played a much more important part than he did in securing the independence of the United States. His name was Samuel Adams, and when he graduated from Harvard in 174

ence from Great Britain, and he worked for this end unceasingly and to good purpose. The wealthy John Hancock was one of his converts, and it was partly to warn these two of the troops sent out to captu

ent of Virginia's favorite son, George Washington, as commander-in-chief of the American army, and who seconded the motion to that effect made by John Adam

in New England. He was only twenty-seven at the time, and his fortune made a fool of him, as sudden wealth has a way of doing. It was at this time, being young and impressionable, he met Samuel Adams, a silent and reserved man, fifteen

afers joined them, for drink was flowing freely, and pretty soon there was a riot, and the troops were called out and fired a volley and killed five men, and the rest of the mob decided that it was time to go home, and went. And that was the Boston massacre about which you have heard so much that it would almost seem to rank with that of St. Ba

r out for Hancock's arrest; Adams contrived that Hancock should be one of the three delegates from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress-John and Samuel Adams were the other two-and Hancock was deeply impressed by the honor; at the second Congress, Adams saw to it that his friend was chosen President. In consequence, Hancock was the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, the incident which is the best known in his career. He

at Williamsburg, a young friend named Patrick Henry dropped in to see him

u studied law?" J

six weeks,"

st a fortnight longer; but Henry declared that the only way to learn law was to

eing that he lacked the industry and diligence which are essential to success in any profession; but he had one supreme gift, that of lofty and impassioned oratory. In 1765, as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, he made the rafters ring and his audi

ies of colonies? The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yo

a year later, again in Virginia, in defense of his resolution to arm the militia, he gave utterance to the most famous speech of all, starting quietly with the sentence, "Mr. President,

r of the Continental Congress, as commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, and as governor

ut sometimes it shows a darker side, and the controlling force in two men's lives will be hate instead of love, and the end

entered the army, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and resigned in 1777 to study law, being admitted to the New York bar five years later. Hamilton was sent to New York, entered King's, now Columbia, College, got caught in the rising tide of Revolution, proved himself uncommonly ready with tongue and pen, enlisted, saw th

ament and disposition; each was "passionate, brooking no rivalry; ambitious, faltering at no obstacle; proud with a fiery and aggressive pride; eloquent with the quick wit, the

t on opposite sides of a case, it was, indeed, a meeting of giants. But in 1789, Washington appointed Hamilton his secretary of the treasury, and leaving New York, Hamilton applied himself to the great task of establishing

s, and the contest was referred to Congress for decision. As a Federalist, Burr felt that he should have Hamilton's support, but Hamilton used his great influence against him, stigmatizing him as "a dangerous

n fighting men"-a quarrel which Hamilton had been seeking for five years and which he had done everything in his power to provoke-and Burr promptly sent a challenge. Hamilton as promptly accepted it, named pistols at ten paces as the weapons, and at seven o'clock on the morning of July 11, 1

expedition, and was on his way down the Mississippi when he was arrested and taken back to Richmond for trial. But his plan could not be proved to be treasonable; indeed, his arrest was due more to the animosity which Jefferson felt toward him, than from a

f treason he was acquitted, even at a time when public feeling ran high against him, and in the quarrel with Hamilton, it was Hamilton who was at all times the aggressor. Both were brilliant,

ell into the nineteenth century, and his great work was to interpret that Constitution to the country, to give it the meaning which it has for us to-day. Marshall was a Virginian, was just of age at the outbreak of the Revolution, and served in the American army for five years, enlisting as a private and rising to the rank of c

remain the standard authority on constitutional questions. In clearness of thought, breadth of view, and strength of logic they have never been surpassed.

ng and culminating in the great struggle for the preservation of the Union. Across this era

ucky, so removed from the South that it did not secede from the Union. Webster was a product of Massachusetts. Calhoun and Webster were, in temperament and belief, as far apart as the poles; Clay stood between them, "the great compromiser." Calhoun and Webster were greater than Clay, for they possessed a larger genius and a broader culture; and Webster was a greater man than Calhoun, because he possessed the truer vision. Calhoun died

romises. Born in Virginia, and admitted to the bar in 1797, he moved the same year to Lexington, Kentucky, where his practice brought him rapid and brilliant success. His personality, too, won him many friends, and it was so all his life. "To come within

n, and once, when victory seemed almost his, by William Henry Harrison. That other great party leader, James G. Blaine, was to meet a similar fate years later. Henry Clay lacked the deep foresight, the prophetic intuition necessary to statesmanship of the first rank, and some of the achievements whi

olitical astuteness. If Clay were the fox, Webster was the lion. As a constitutional lawyer, he has never been excelled; as an orator, no other American has ever equalled him. He had in supreme degree the orator's equipment of a dominan

ld the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth'? nor those other words of delusion

n, arose and left the Capitol like persons in a dream. Nev

anding talents, or, perhaps, because of them, he never at any time had a chance of receiving the

BS

o Congress. We find him at once violently opposing the second war with England, for which Clay was working so aggressively. For ten years after that, he devoted himself to the practice of his profession, and s

and void an unconstitutional law of Congress-in other words, the right of secession from the Union. Two days later, Webster rose to reply. His appearance, always impressive, was unusually so that day; his argument, always close-knit and logical, was the very summati

be scarcely remembered to-day but for the fact that it was to him Webster addressed his reply, but that formidable giant of a man, John C. Calhoun-the man whom the South felt to be her peculiar representative on the question of state rights, of nullification,

a, graduated from Yale in 1804, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and, returning to his native state, was, i

occasion at a cabinet meeting to express some censure of Andrew Jackson's conduct of the Seminole war-a censure which was deserved, since Jackson had violated the law of nations in pursuing his enemy into a foreign country. Twelve years later, when Jack

e. But Jackson did not wait for that. Seeing that here was an opportunity to strike his enemy, he ordered troops to South Carolina, and threatened to hang Calhoun as high as Haman-a threat which he very possibly would have attempted to carry out had not hostilities been averted by the genius for compromise of Henry Clay. Fro

a North Carolina man who had removed to Nashville, and at the outbreak of the war, enlisted under Andrew Jackson, and got into a disgraceful street fight with him, in the course of which Jac

, in 1848, Democratic nominee for President and defeated because of Martin Van Buren's disaffection; finally, in 1857, Buchanan's secretary of state, resigning, in 1860, because that shilly-shally President could not make u

ossess, its name, Stephen A. Douglas, nicknamed "The Little Giant," but giant in little else than power to create disturbance. Perhaps no other man ever

ries, in the vain hope of winning southern support, but finding himself instead dubbed traitor and Judas Iscariot, receiving thirty pieces of silver from a club of Ohio women, travelling from Boston to Chica

oln in debate-and one which cost him the presidency. For his opponent drove him into corners from which he could find no way out except at the risk of offending the South. In th

uld he be within sight of that long-sought prize; yet rising nobly at the last to a height of purest patriotism, declaring for the Union, pledging his support to Lincoln, pointing the way of duty to his million followers, and destroying a

wo years later, pastor of a Unitarian church in Boston. There his eloquence soon attracted attention, and won him a wide reputation. At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed professor of Greek at Harvard; and in 1824, at the age of thirty, he was chosen to represent the Boston district in Congress. He remained there for

0,000 from the Public Ledger by writing for it a weekly article for the period of a year, and added $3,000 more, secured from the readers of that paper. From that time on, he delivered various lectures for philant

to politics by the ineffectual and absurd anti-Masonic party, which flitted across the stage in the early thirties. In 1851, Massachusetts rebuked Daniel Webster for his supposed surrender to the sla

e which was in him, and these three men labored unceasingly for the defeat of the South-indeed, for more than its defeat-for payment, to the last drop, for the sins it had committed. They were bound toget

epublic. Two years later, Stevens was chosen a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, but his career did not really begin until, in 1848, at the age of fifty-seven, he was elected a member of the national House of Representatives, where he soon took his place as the leader of the anti-slavery faction. From that

orce a system of reconstruction which was at least better than that which Stevens advocated. For a time he seemed to suffer from a very vertigo of hatred, which ate into his soul and destroyed him. The plan of reconstruction adopted by Congress was an embodiment of his ideas; but Johnson was acquitted of th

ough and through to slavery. He was a successful lawyer, and as his sentiments were well known, he was chosen to succeed Webster when the latter wavered on the anti-slavery question, and threw some pledges of assistance to the South.

tion of the slaves. When this had been accomplished, his first thought was to make sure that the slaves would remain free, and he began the contest for negro suffrage, as the only guarantee of negro

rity as was afterwards exhibited. So it is true in a sense that the South has itself to blame for the horrors of the reconstruction period, and for the suspicion with which its good faith toward the negro was for many years regarded. Sumner was not a vindictive man, and in his last years, incurred a vote of censure from his own State for offering a bill to remove the names of battle

c wave of 1830. Eight years later, he was the Whig governor of the state, and in 1849 was sent to the Senate. There he soon rivetted attention by his rebuke of Webster for condoning the Fugitive Slave Law, and caught the reins

and Seward continued to be the leader of Republican thought, and the chief originator of Republican doctrine. Indeed, he was, in a sense, the Republican party, so that, four years later, he seemed not only the logical but the inevitable choice of the party for President. His most formidabl

ard lingered between life and death. He recovered, however, to resume his place in Johnson's cabinet. Over the new President he had great influence; he had long been an advocate of mercy toward the South, and he did much to persuade the President to the course he followed in restoring the southern states to the Union, without reference to the wishes of

outh. Perhaps the wisdom of his judgment was never better exemplified than in his purchase from Russia of the great territory known as Alaska, for the sum of $7,200,000. Alaska was r

io by the Republicans. He was Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, and financed the country during its most trying period in a way that compelled the admiration even of his enemies. He served afterwards as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, dying in 1873. He was another man whose life was embittered by failure to attain the prize of the presidency. Three times he tried for it, in 1860, in 1864, and in 1868,

Thaddeus Stevens, and collaborating with him in the production of the reconstruction act. He was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Hayes, in 1876, and his great work for the country was done in that office, in re-establishing the credit which the Civil War ha

rich as the Confederacy was in generals, it was undeniably poor in statesmen. The golden age of the South had departed; with John C.

en abruptly resigning from the army to elope with the daughter of Colonel Zachary Taylor, and settling near Vicksburg, Mississippi, to embark in cotton planting; drawn irresistibly into politics and sent to Congress, but resigning to accept co

advocate the South possessed. That fiery and impulsive people, looking always for a hero to worship, found one in Jefferson Davis, and he soon gained an immense prestige among them. On January 9, 1861, his state se

olutely, and its principal business was to pass the laws which he prepared. Only toward the close of the war did it, in a measure, free itself from this control, and, finally, in 1865, it passed a resolution attributing Confederate disaster

e of Petersburg, and was in full retreat. Davis left the church quietly, called his cabinet together, packed up the government archives, and boarded a train for the South. For over a month, he moved from place to place endeavoring to escape capture, his party melting away until it comprised only his family and a few serv

ing in him only the martyr who had suffered for his people, and welcomed him with a kind of hysterical adorati

hout means, at the age of fifteen he had nevertheless secured an education, and, in 1834, after two months' study, was admitted to the Georgia bar. He at once began

t off while there was time. In 1860 he made a great Union speech; and it is a remarkable proof of the hold he had upon the people of the South, that, in spite of this, and of his well-known convictions, he was chosen Vice-President of the Confederacy a year

ent in the political life of Georgia for fifteen years thereafter, being governor of the state at the time of

nk. Great men are moulded by great events, or, at least, require great events to prove their greatness. Let us pause a moment, however,

ore brilliant. Blaine had a genius for making friends and keeping them; Conkling's quick temper and hasty tongue frequently cost him his most powerful adherents. Three years later, this rivalry came to an open clash, in which each denounced the other on the floor o

he most popular and powerful man in his party, so that it seemed that nothing could stand between him and the desir

to Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes, however, was pledged to a single term, and Blaine was hailed as the nominee in 1880; but when the convention assembled, there was Conkling with a solid phalanx of over three hundred delegates for Grant. The result was that neither Blaine nor Grant could get a majority of the votes, and the n

the nomination, but his name had lost its wizardry, and he was defeated by Benjamin Harrison. There are few more pitiful stories in American politics than that of this brilliant and able man, consumed by the d

te, did memorable work; not the sort of work which appeals to popular imagination, for there was nothing spectacular about it; but quiet and effective work in the forming of informal alliances and treaties with foreign nations, maintaining America'

ealized his ideals and who died in peace; and this, I think, because he asked nothing for himself, hungered for no preferment, was consumed by no ambition, sacrificed nothing to expediency, but accepted life with large philosophy and never-fa

MM

a, 1743; demonstrated by means of a kite that lightning is a discharge of electricity, 1752; deputy postmaster-general for British colonies in America, 1753-74; colonial agent for Pennsylvania in England, 1757-75; elected to second Continental Congress, 1775; ambassador to France, 1776-85

cond Continental Congress, 1775-76; lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, 1

he Provincial Congress, 1774-75; President of Continental Congress, 1775-77; g

red Virginia House of Burgesses, 1765; member of Continental Congress, 1774; of Virginia Convention, 177

artillery, 1776; on Washington's staff, 1777-81; member of Continental Congress, 1782-83; of the Constitutional Convention, 1787; secretary of the tre

tor, 1791-97; Vice-President, 1801-05; killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, July 11, 1804; in 1805, conceived plan of conquering Texas and perhaps Mexico and establishing a great empire in the South-w

United States envoy to France, 1797-98; member of Congress, 1799-1800; secretary of state, 1800-0

1823-25; peace commissioner at Ghent, 1814; candidate for President, 1824; secretary of state, 1825-29; senator, 1832-42 and 1849-52; Whig candidate for President, 18

rom New Hampshire, 1813-17; removed to Boston, 1816; member of Congress from Massachusetts, 1823-27; Whig United States senator, 1827-41; received several electoral votes for President, 183

Carolina general assembly, 1808-09; member of Congress, 1811-17; secretary of war in Monroe's cabinet, 1817-24; Vice-President, 1825-32; United States senat

rch 14, 1782; United States senator from Missouri, 1821-51; m

n Territory, 1813-31; secretary of war, 1831-36; minister to France, 1836-42; United States senator, 1845-48; Democrati

preme Court of Illinois, 1841; member of Congress, 1843-47; United States senator,

819-24; member of Congress, 1825-35; governor of Massachusetts, 1836-40; minister to England, 1841-45; president of Harvard College, 1846-49; s

ved to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and admitted to the bar, 1816; Whig member of Congress, 1849-53; Republican me

bar, 1834; United States senator, 1851-74; assaulted in Senate chamber by Preston Brooks, May

to the bar, 1822; member State Senate, 1830-34; Whig governor of New York, 1838-43; United States senator, 1849-61; candid

s senator from Ohio, 1849-55; governor of Ohio, 1856-60; secretary of the treasury, 18

ss from Ohio, 1855-61; senator, 1861-77; secretary of the treasury, 1877-81; senator, 1881-97; secretary of

n war, 1846-47; United States senator, 1847-51; secretary of war, 1853-57; senator, 1857-61; resigned his seat, January 21, 1861; inaugurated President of the Confederacy,

r of State legislature, 1836; member of Congress, 1843-59; Vice-President of the Confederacy, 1861-65; imprisoned in Fort Warren,

Congress from Maine, 1862-76; senator, 1876-81; secretary of state, 1881 and 1889-92; unsucce