American Men of Action

ge. A blessing and an inspiration-a mystery, too; an enigma among men, lonely and impressive; not fully understood nor understandable to the depths of that

squalid log cabin in Washington County, Kentucky. His surroundings were such as are commonly encountered in a coarse, low, ignorant, poverty-stricken family. His father was at the very bottom of the social scale, so ignorant he could scarcely write his name. His mother inherited the s

feet square-that is to say, a covered shed of three sides, the fourth side being open to the weather. Then the family achieved the luxury of a cabin, but a cabin without floor or door or window. Amid

as not without his redeeming virtues, after all. She made him put a floor and windows in his cabin, and she was a better mother to his children than their real one had ever been. For the first time, young Abraham got some idea of the comforts and decencies of life, and, as his step-mother put it, "began to look a little human." He

kened within the boy a trace of unusual spirit. He actually liked to read. He saw few books, but such as he could lay his hands on, he

were comforts in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, and so, as soon as he was of age, he left that unattractive dwelling-place and struck out for himself, making a livelihood in various ways-by splitting rails, running a river boat, managing a store, enlisting for the Black Hawk war-doing anything, in a word, that came to hand and would serve to put a little money in his pocke

most lawyers sharing the oft-quoted opinion of Patrick Henry that the only way to learn law was to practise it. Lincoln decided to establish himself at Springfield, opened an office there, and for the next twenty years, practised law with considerable success, riding from one court to another, and gradually

one in Congress, All of this did much to temper and chasten his native coarseness and uncouthness, but he was still just an average lawyer and politician, with no evidence of greatness abo

it in 1860, and was carefully building to that end. His term as senator expired in 1858, and his re-election seemed essential to his success. Of his re-election he had no doubt, for Illinois had always been a Democratic state, though it was becoming somewhat divided in opinion. The south

m Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office." A month later, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a serie

ted glory. But in addition to that, he had the better side of the question. His course was simple; he was seeking the support of anti-slavery people; Douglas's task was much more complex, for he wished to offend neither northern nor southern Democrats, and he soon f

es alleging that the purpose of the pro-slavery men was to make slavery perpetual and universal, and pointing to recent history in proof of the assertion. When asked by Douglas whether he considered the negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal

his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage, which, however, Lincoln's earnestness and directness soon overcame. Tens of thousands of people gathered to hear the debates, they were printed from end to end of the country, and

o Lincoln unsought; but this is anything but true. On the contrary, in those debates with Douglas, he was consciously laying the foundation for his candidacy two years later. He used every effort to drive Douglas to admissio

et, some of us are reluctant to admit: that every nation has a right to maintain by force, if it can, its own integrity, and that a portion of a nation may sometimes be justified in struggling for independent national existence. The whole justification of such a struggle lies in whether its cause and basis is right o

liam H. Seward. Let it be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln. But in the course of his public career he had ma

y to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington to head the Revolutionary army-a selection made primarily, not becaus

a spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men, Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all alo

s and munitions of the country into the southern states. It gave the southern leaders, too, opportunity to work upon the feelings of their people, more than half of whom, in the fall of 1860, were opposed to disunion. It should not be forgotten that, however fully the South came afterwards to acquiesce in the policy of secession, it was, in its inception, a plan of the politicians,

America, is hereby dissolved." Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed. Opinion at the North was divided as to the proper course to follow. Horace Greeley, in the New York Tribune, said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as t

nd direct. He said, "The union of these States is perpetual. No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union. I shall take care that the laws of the Union are fait

ty, his complete understanding, his ready sympathy; how, once having undertaken the task of conquering rebellion, he never faltered nor turned back despite the awful sacri

NC

amation, indeed, proposed to liberate the slaves only in such states as were in rebellion on the following first of January. Nor did emancipation create any great popular enthusiasm. The congressional elections whic

3 electoral votes. The end of the Confederacy was by this time in sight. A month after his second inauguration, Richmond fell, and five days later

he play went forward quietly, until suddenly the audience was startled by a pistol shot, followed by a woman's scream. At the same instant, a man was seen to leap from the President's box to the stage. Pausing only to wave a dagger which he carried in his hand and to shout,

n refuge; he refused to come out, and the barn was set on fire. Soon afterwards, the assassin was brought forth with a

in which his funeral procession paused on its way to his home in Springfield. The whole country was in mourning, as for its father; business was practically suspended, and the people seemed stunned by the great calamity. That so gentle a man should have been murdered wakened, deep down in the heart of the North, a fierce resentment;

ugh the troubled period of Reconstruction which followed, he might have emerged with a fame less clear and shining; and yet the hand which guided the country through four years of Civil War, was without doubt the one best fitted to save it from the misery and disgrace which lay in store for it. But speculations as to what might have been are vain and idle. What was, we know; and above the clouds of conflict, Lincoln's figure

r guns and drums; Disturb

s; These all are gone, a

his fame, The kindly-earne

aise, not blame; New birth of o

is condition was, if anything, even more hopeless and degraded than Lincoln's, and if any one had prophesied that these two ignorant and poverty-stricken children would one day rise, side by side, to the greatest position in the Republic, he would have been regarded, and justly, as a hopeless madman. But not even to a madman did any such wild idea occur. "Poor whites" were despised throughout the South, even by the slaves; if there was, in the whole United States, any law

en named Eliza McCardle, and, with youth's sublime improvidence, married her! As it happened, he did well, for his wife had a fair education, and night after night taught him patiently, un

h was to influence his after life so deeply. He had a certain rude eloquence which appealed to the lower classes of the people, and, in 1835, succeeded in gaining an el

which he filled well. In this position, he seemed the embodiment of the Union element of the South, and at their national convention in 1864, the Republicans decided that the President's policy of reconstruction for the South would be greatly aided by the presence of a southern man on the ticket, and Johnson was thereupon chosen for the office of Vice-President. On the same day that Lincoln was

of suffrage for the negroes should be left to the several states; a majority of Congress were determined to exact this for their own protection. This was embodied in the so-called Civil Rights Bill, conferring citizenship upon colored men. It was promptly vetoed by the President, and was passed over his veto; soon afterwards the fourteenth amendment was passed, conferring the suffrage upon all citizens of the United States without regard to color or previous condition of

which Johnson had vetoed. He failed of the nomination on the Democratic ticket, and after the inauguration of his successor, at once returned to his old home

he policy of fanatics like Thaddeus Stevens, which left the South a prey to the carpet-bagger and the ignorant negro for over a decade. Johnson himself might have accomplished more if he had been of a less violent disposition; but he was ignorant of diplomacy, incapable of comprom

am Henry Harrison loomed large after the battle of Tippecanoe, and how Zachary Taylor was chosen President as a result of his victories in Mexico. The country was now to un

or the first time in the history of the country, a man had been elected President without regard to his qualifications for the office, for even Jackson had had many years' experience in public affairs. Of such qualifications, Grant had

the first he was successful more than any other of the Union generals, not so much because of military genius as from a certain tenacity of purpose with which he fairly wore out the enemy. But a people discouraged by reverses were not disposed to inquire too closely into the reason of his victories,

ad entrapped in Fort Donelson; the other, the famous: "I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer," with which he started his campaign in the Wilderness. Both were characteristic, and if G

ene unconsciousness of it. He fell at once an easy prey to political demagogues, and before the close of his first administration, demoralization was widespread throughout the government. A large portion of the Re

cabinet, but not the President himself, of whose personal honesty there was never any doubt, and in 1873, came the worst panic the country had ever experi

g the nomination. It was characteristic of the man's egotism that, even yet, he did not realize his unfitness for the office, but thought himself great enough to disregard

of James G. Blaine. Hayes was by no means a national figure, although he had served in the Union army, had been in Congress, and, as has been said, was governor of Ohio at the time of his nomination. Nor was he a man of

returns. The Republicans disputed the vote in these states, however, and by the inexorable use of party machinery and carpet-bag government, declared Hayes elected. For a time, so manifest was the partisan bias of this decision, the count

that the debt he owed it for getting him his seat was a doubtful one. His administration was noteworthy principally because he destroyed the last vestiges of carpet-bag government in the

on any of the more prominent candidates. They were Grant, Blaine and John Sherman, and after thirty-five ballots, it was evident that a "dark horse" must be found. The c

il War, and later for eighteen years in Congress, where he made a creditable but by no means brilliant record. He was elected President by a small majority, and enraged the many enemies of James G. Blaine by selecting that astute politician as his secretary of state. One of t

s, his selection as Vice-President being due to the desire of the Republican managers to throw a sop to the Empire State. His administration, however, while marked by no great or stirring event, was for the most pa

campaign of 1884, would at last realize his consuming ambition to be elected President. He had an immense personal prestige, he had outlived the taint of corruptio

by its adherents as a new and brilliant economic device for enriching everybody at nobody's expense, and which had really enriched a few at the expense of the many. The Democr

ere fastened upon him. Elected as a reform mayor, he continued to be one after his induction into office. He actually seemed to think that the promises and pledges made by him during his campaign were still binding upon him, and astounded the politicians by proceeding to carry those promises out. So scathing were the veto messages he sent in, one after another, to a corrupt council, that they awakened adm

ting its reasons in language which did not mince words and which all could understand. He showed himself not only to be entirely beyond the control of the political machine of his own party, but also to possess remarkable moral courage, and he became naturally and inevitably the Democratic candidate for President, since the Democratic platform was in the main an arraignment of Republican corruption

ed advancement, no matter what the politics of the individual might be. He made some changes, as a matter of course, but he was from the first sturdily in favor of civil service reform. It is worth remarking that a D

Republic, and worked unceasingly for increased pensions, which Congress had found itself unable to refuse. More than that, the members of Congress were in the habit of passing hundreds of special bills, giving pensions to men whose claims had been rejected by th

ratic leaders had deemed it prudent to maintain a discreet silence since the preceding election, and which many of them hoped would be forgotten by the public. But Cleveland's message brought the question squarely to the front, and made it the one issue of the campaign which followed. Cleveland would have been e

VEL

the country has just witnessed a second example. In accordance with the platform pledges, a bill to lower the tariff was at once framed in the House and adopted; but the Senate, although Democratic in complexion, so altered it that it fell far short of carrying out the party pledges. The leader in the Senate was Arthur P.

aring that the rioters had no right to interfere with the United States mails, ordered national troops to the scene to maintain order. A year later, when the British Government, involved in a boundary dispute with Venezuela, declared that it did not accept the Monroe Doctrine and

d privileges which should be respected; he sometimes blundered through very anxiety to be right. You have heard some men called so upright that they leaned over backward-well, that, occasionally, was Cleveland's fault. He was subjected to such a storm of abuse as no other ex

t years before. He was an able but not brilliant man, had served through the Civil War, and was afterwards elected senator from Indiana, to which state he had removed from Ohio at an early age. The platform on which he was ele

these policies did not appeal to the public; besides which, Harrison, although a man of integrity and ability, was popular with neither the rank nor file of his party, throu

he party itself was soon to run upon virtual shipwreck, under the guidance of strange leaders.

e in his state, and had served in Congress for four years, but he was practically unknown when he arose before the convention and made a free-silver speech which fairly carried the delegates of

and the conservative element of the party regarded him and his theories with such distrust that it put another ticket in the field, and he was badly beaten. Twice more he led the party in presidential campaigns, each time being defeated more decisively tha

ice governor of Ohio. He was a thorough party man, and modified his former views on the silver question to conform with the platform on which he was nominated; his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, was one of the mo

edit, was driven unwillingly by public clamor, cunningly fostered by a portion of the press. Its close saw the purchase of the Philipp

ns. Great hopes were built upon his second administration, and they would no doubt have been fulfilled, in part at least; but a few months after his inauguration, he was shot through the body by an irresponsible anarchist while holding a public reception at Buffalo, and died within the week. The years which have el

ular clamor, rather than by the will of the politicians, to whom his rough-and-ready methods were extremely repugnant. So when the national convention was about to be held, they conceived the great idea of removing him from state politics and putting him on the shelf, so to speak, by electing him V

helming majority. For a time he was, indeed, the central figure of the republic. His energy was remarkable; he had a hand in everything; but many people, after a time, grew weary of so tumultuous and strenuous a life, and drew away from him, while still more we

s successor, William Howard Taft, an experienced jurist and administrator, who is but just entering upon his work as

back at them, one perceives a certain rhythmical rise and fall

rio will be he who will solve the vast economic problems which are the overshadowing issues of our day. Will he be a Dem

MM

lature, 1834-42; member of Congress, 1847-49; Republican candidate for United States senator and held series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, 1858; elected President, 1860; inaugurated, March 4, 1861; re-el

2; military governor of Tennessee, 1862-64; inaugurated Vice-President, March 4, 1865; succeeded Lincoln as President, April 15, 1865; impeached by Congress for high crimes a

volunteers and made commander of the Army of the District of West Tennessee, March, 1862; gained battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862; captured Vicksburg, July 4, 1863, and made major-general in the regular army; won battle of Chattanooga, November 23-25, 1863; made lieutenant-general and commander-in-chief of American armies, March, 1864; took up his headquarters with the Army of

r-general of volunteers in 1864; member of Congress from Ohio, 1865-67; governor of Ohio, 1868-72 and 1876; Republican candidate for Pre

of volunteers, 1861; defeated General Humphrey Marshall at the battle of Middle Creek, January 10, 1862; promoted brigadier-general, 1862; promoted major-general, 1863; member of Congress, 1

rk City; inspector-general of New York troops, 1862; collector of the port of New York, 1871-78; elected Vice-President, 1880; succeeded Garfi

y, 1863-66; sheriff of Erie County, 1871-74; Democratic mayor of Buffalo, 1882; governor of New York, 1883-84; elected President, 1884; served as President, 1885-89; advocated a reducti

law and practiced at Indianapolis; served in Civil War and was brevetted brigadier-general; United States se

the rank of major; member of Congress, 1877-91; elected governor of Ohio, 1891; re-elected, 1893; elected Pr

Commissioner, 1889-95; president New York Police Board, 1895-97; assistant secretary of the navy, 1897-98; resigned to organize regiment of Rough Riders and served through war with Spain; go

ge Superior Court, 1887-90; solicitor-general of the United States, 1890-92; United States circuit judge, 1892-1900; Pr