Category: Greatest American

Martin Luther King Jr.

… was born on this date in 1929.

Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.

There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1964
Library of Congress

Alexander Hamilton

… was born in the British West Indies on this date in 1757 (or possibly in 1755).

Hamilton Ten Dollar Bill

He grew up on the tiny island of Nevis, where his father abandoned the family and his mother died when he was just a boy. He was taken in by a local merchant who gave him a job at a general store. He turned out to be quite good at accounting, so when he was thirteen, his boss took a trip to Europe and left young Alexander in charge of the store. He started writing on the side, and an article about a recent hurricane so impressed the adults around him that they all pitched in to pay for his passage to New York, where he could attend school.

He arrived in America just as rebellion against Great Britain was brewing, and he immediately began to write for New York newspapers in support of the colonies’ rights. He impressed George Washington so much that he became Washington’s right hand man when he was barely twenty-years old. After the revolution, when many American politicians believed that the colonies should remain mostly independent of each other, Hamilton was one of the earliest supporters of a strong central government.

In just three years, between 1787 and 1790, he served on the constitutional convention, wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers, which helped garner support for the new constitution, became the first secretary of the treasury, and set up the U.S. National Bank.

While serving on Washington’s cabinet, Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson became bitter enemies, and set out to undermine each other with gossip about each other’s scandalous private lives. Hamilton was having an affair at the time, and there were rumors that Jefferson had had children with one of his slaves. But despite their bitter rivalry, Hamilton later spoke in favor of Jefferson as president over Aaron Burr, whom he considered a scoundrel.

Four years later, Burr challenged him to a duel. They met at sunrise in a wooded area of Weehawken, New Jersey, above the Hudson River. Hamilton showed up for the duel to prove his courage, but he purposely fired his gun straight up into the air. Burr aimed at him anyway, and Hamilton was mortally wounded and died the next day.

He hasn’t been as well remembered as Washington or Jefferson, but by setting up the national treasury, the national bank, the first budgetary and tax systems, and most of all by helping gather support for the U.S. constitution, he did more to design the system of government we now live under than almost any other man.

The columnist George F. Will said, “We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

FDR

Acclaimed biographer Jean Edward Smith (John Marshall, Ulysses Grant) has published a new biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR.

Early reviews are glowing. Smith’s Grant book garnered him a Pulitzer nomination in 2002.

(Actually, I figured this was an important book when I saw it stacked on the table at Costco the other day.)

Why Lincoln Fell Gravely Ill After Delivering His Gettysburg Address

Many school children in the United States memorize President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, considered one of history’s most brilliant speeches and a model of brevity and persuasive rhetoric.

But according to two medical researchers at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, most historians have failed to recognize that when Lincoln delivered it on Nov. 19, 1863, he was in the early stages of a life-threatening illness — a serious form of smallpox. Their report appears in the current issue of Journal of Medical Biography, a scholarly quarterly published by the Royal Society of Medicine Press in London.

Almost a third of those contracting this serious form of smallpox in the mid-19th century died, the researchers said.

ScienceDaily

Link via Andrew Sullivan. NewMexiKen agrees with Sullivan: “Ju[s]t when you thought he couldn’t be more impressive a figure …”

Give ’em Hell, Harry

Harry Truman was born on May 8th in 1884.

The Truman Library has the Truman diary online. The diary, which was just discovered in 2003, was kept intermittently by the President during 1947. It is fascinating reading.

The entry for July 25:

At 3:30 today had a very interesting conversation with Gen[eral] Eisenhower. Sent for him to discuss the new Sec[retary] for National Defense. Asked him if he could work with Forestal [sic]. He said he could. Told him that I would have given the job to Bob Patterson had he stayed on as Sec[retary] of War. I couldn’t bring myself to force him to stay. He has three daughters comming [sic] on for education and I know what that means, having had only one. But she is in a class by herself and I shouldn’t judge Patterson’s three by her. No one ever had a daughter equal to mine!

After the discussion on Forestal [sic] was over Ike & I visited and talked politics. He is going to Columbia U[niversity] in NY as President. What a job he can do there. He’ll do it too. We discussed MacArthur and his superiority complex.

When Ike went to the far east on an inspection tour in 1946 I asked him to tell Gen[eral] Marshall, then special envoy to China, if he’d accept appointment to Sec[retary] of State. Byrnes was tired, sick and wanted to quit. Ike, when he returned came in and said “Gen[eral] Marshall said yes.” So when Byrnes quit I appointed Marshall and did not even ask him about it!

Ike & I think MacArthur expects to make a Roman Triumphal return to the U. S. a short time before the Republican Convention meets in Philadelphia. I told Ike that if he did that that he (Ike) should announce for the nomination for President on the Democratic ticket and that I’d be glad to be in second place, or Vice President. I like the Senate anyway. Ike & I could be elected and my family & myself would be happy outside this great white jail, known as the White House.

Ike won’t quot [sic] me & I won’t quote him.

David McCullough’s Truman is superb.

Benjamin Franklin

. . . died on this date in 1790. He was 84.

In his twenties Franklin had written an epitaph for himself:

The body of
B. Franklin, Printer;
(Like the cover of an old book,
Its contents worn out,
and stripped of its lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost:
For it will, (as he believed) appear once more,
In a new and more elegant edition,
Revised and corrected
By the Author.

By the age of 84 he wished for something simpler. The marble over his grave simply reads: Benjamin and Deborah Franklin.

Information from Walter Isaacson’s superb biography of Franklin.

Thomas Jefferson

. . . was born on this date in 1743.

Eight-three years later, at the end of his remarkable life, he wished to be remembered foremost for those actions that appear as his epitaph:

Author of the
Declaration
of
American Independence
of the
Statute of Virginia
for
Religious Freedom
and Father of the
University of Virginia.

Jefferson Epitaph

Draft Declaration of Independence

At a White House dinner honoring 49 Nobel laureates in 1962, President Kennedy remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

It seems to NewMexiKen that the country could use a federal holiday during that long spell from Washington’s Birthday to Memorial Day. I propose that today, April 13, Jefferson’s birthday, would be ideal.

Despite serious flaws, Jefferson remains one of the most remarkable Americans — statesman, scientist, architect, philosopher agronomist, author.

Click on the image of the document to view Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence. The photo of Jefferson’s tomb above taken by NewMexiKen, 2001. Click to enlarge.

The man behind the curtain

NewMexiKen finished The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World yesterday and came away with a more realistic view of the great inventor.

The book, published just two weeks ago, attempts to discuss Edison as the first great American celebrity who was not a politician or military leader. In that regard it pretty much succeeds; as a full-scale biography, however, the book falls short. We get nearly day-by-day discussions of the important inventions — though no real technical details — then skim through the last 50 years of Edison’s life in a couple of chapters. (Edison was 32 when he invented the incandescent light bulb. He lived to be 84.)

Stross writes well and he does make the case that becoming famous contributed to Edison’s limitations as a businessman, which were well known even then. Indeed, Edison was a fairly one-dimensional human being — but it was an important dimension.

Aside: When Edison died in 1931, much of the country — including the White House — turned off the lights for a minute the evening of his funeral as a salute.

Further aside: Here’s the recommended biographies from The Edison Papers. (The first item is by the managing editor of those same Papers, so take that for what it’s worth.)

The standard biography is Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley, 1998). A good older biography is Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; reprint New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992). Two other biographies that focus on Edison’s personality and family relations are Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck (New York: Seaview Press, 1979) and Neil Baldwin, Edison: Inventing the Century (New York: Hyperion, 1995). A short biography is Martin V. Melosi, Thomas A. Edison and the Modernization of America (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990).

Walter Elias Disney

… was born on this date in 1901. At The New Yorker Anthony Lane has an assessment.

Even now, forty years after his death, the slight figure of Walt himself is almost impossible to pick out from the parti-colored throng of movie clips, projects, and moral tendencies that march under the banner of “Walt Disney.” Say the name to most people and you know what will flash onto their mind’s eye: unashamedly bright hues, flying elephants, singing bears, corporate dominance, happy endings, and a helping of values that slip down as easily as ice cream. How did we arrive at this blinding apotheosis? One attempt at an answer, the most comprehensive to date, is provided by Neil Gabler, in “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination” (Knopf; $35). Gabler takes more than eight hundred pages to tell and note his tale, which sounds excessive, but then Disney himself was a model of unflagging thoroughness, and, as Thumper would say, if you can’t do nice annotations, then don’t do nuthin’ at all.

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

The 100 Most Influential Figures in American History

Some interesting omissions, of course (from The Atlantic 100).

No Hispanics (Serra, Kino, Cesar Chavez)?

No American Indians (Sequoyah, Pontiac, Sitting Bull, Joseph)?

No explorers other than Lewis and Clark (Carson, Fremont, Powell)?

Several from film, but no one from broadcasting (Sarnoff, Pat Weaver the creator of Today and Tonight shows, Ed Sullivan)?

Just sayin’.

Here’s my take on another list of 100.

The Bottom Five of the Top 100

From The Atlantic. NewMexiKen thought the last five of the 100 most influential figures in American history was interesting.

96 Ralph Nader
He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president.

97 Stephen Foster
America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home.”

98 Booker T. Washington
As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery.

99 Richard Nixon
He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.

100 Herman Melville
Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the American Shakespeare.

The Top 100 Americans

This time from The Atlantic and a panel of ten eminent historians. Here’s the top 10 “most influential figures in American history.”

1 Abraham Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.

2 George Washington
He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.

3 Thomas Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”

4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.

5 Alexander Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.

6 Benjamin Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.

7 John Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.

8 Martin Luther King Jr.
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.

9 Thomas Edison
It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.

10 Woodrow Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.

Amazing, four Virginians and no sign of John Warner.

Most Influential Americans Redux

For “The Anatomy of Influence,” a forthcoming feature in our December issue, we asked ten prominent historians—Joyce Appleby, H. W. Brands, Robert Dallek, Ellen Fitzpatrick, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Steele Gordon, David M. Kennedy, Walter McDougall, Mark Noll, and Gordon Wood—to each pick and rank the 100 most influential Americans throughout history. We then tabulated their lists to come up with an Atlantic top 100, which will be published in the December issue.

We invite readers to submit their guesses as to who ended up as the top ten names on our combined list. Participants who correctly guess all ten will receive a selection of books by the panel of historians. Entries must be received by Thursday, November 2.

The Atlantic Online | Contest

Poor Aidan

Just three Tuesday, Aidan found out from his mother Wednesday that Abraham Lincoln was dead and they couldn’t go visit him. The little guy cried for 20 minutes.

I feel the same way some times.

Which reminded me of a meme1 I saw at Shakespeare’s Sister.

“If you could sit down to a meal with a president (any president) and ask him one question: who is the president and what is the question?”

Shakes’ Sister suggested George W. Bush and her question was “What the f**k?”

I think I’d have to choose Lincoln. And, being from New Mexico, of course I’d have to ask him, “Red or green?”

1 A meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.

“Red or green?” is the official state question of New Mexico. It refers to the kind of chile you’d like on your New Mexican cuisine. Check it out.

Greatest American — The Final Five

Joel Achenbach:

      Ronald Reagan is a greater American than Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson. That is the implication of the final 5 names on this Greatest American show running on Discovery. FDR and Jefferson got voted out Sunday, along with 18 others, leaving just five people still singing: Reagan, King, Washington, Lincoln and Franklin.

      With the exception of Reagan, it’s a solid list, almost as good as the one I produced last week (I had a Fab Four of King, Washington, Lincoln and FDR, and if someone had forced me I would have let Franklin play keyboards). The slight of FDR is appalling (and consternating, and causes my gorge to rise, and gets my dander up — all sorts of things that are physically uncomfortable). FDR got us out of the Depression, Reagan got us out of a very mild Jimmy Carter malaise. FDR overcame polio and paralysis, Reagan overcame a mediocre acting career. People say that Reagan won the Cold War, but dagnabbit, FDR won a hot one. (Was WW2 so long ago that people have forgotten? As Dick Durbin would say, that was the war that was a lot like Gitmo.)

      They announce the winner on Sunday after each contestant sings one final song of his choosing. Obviously George Washington will win. Why? Because being first is his shtick. He was just that kind of guy. After that little disaster at Fort Necessity in 1754, he didn’t come in second to anyone. Look at the monument to him on the Mall and you’ll see how he’ll finish in this competition.

Is This a Great Country, or What?

The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten goes after the Greatest Americans list. An excerpt:

Me: Not only are both George Bushes on the list, but Laura Bush and Barbara Bush, too! Whereas, say, James Madison is not. So, basically, Laura Bush and Barbara Bush are deemed to be greater Americans than the person who wrote the United States Constitution. What philosophical statement do you think the American public might be expressing by this decision? Do you think the statement might be, “We are as shallow as a loogie on the sidewalk?” Or, “We are self-involved, self-congratulatory, parochial-minded nitwits with a ludicrous ignorance of our own national history?” Which one?

More on the greatest American

Joel Achenbach has The Greatest American in his sites. Go read his whole entry, but here’s the jist:

But now there are only 25 left on the list, and we see that Dubya made the cut, as did Bill Clinton, Lance Armstrong, and Oprah. Bob Hope makes the Final 25 but not Alexander Hamilton. Bill Gates is a finalist, but not Teddy Roosevelt. Elvis in, Frederick Douglass out. [Oops; for a second I had a hankering for some umbrage.]

The Final 25: Ali, N. Armstrong, L. Armstrong, Dubya, Bubba, Disney, Edison, Einstein, Ford, Franklin, Gates, Graham, Hope, Jefferson, Kennedy, King, Lincoln, Parks, Presley, Reagan, E. Roosevelt, F.D. Roosevelt, Washington, Winfrey, and Wright Bros.

That’s a horrifying number of Armstrongs just for starters, and makes you wonder how the public missed nominating George Armstrong Custer, Armstrong Williams and Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy. As for Einstein, I was under the distinct impression that he was pretty much a German.

Among the more formidable names that shouldn’t make it to the final round, Franklin gets demerits for being the 18th century equivalent of a blogger (too much self-promotion and intellectual vagrancy), and Jefferson is disqualified for being a raving states-rights lunatic and unrepentant slaveowner who lived high on the hog and then, in death, left a community of African Americans to face the auction block.

It should be obvious that only four people could be considered the Greatest American: Washington, Lincoln, FDR, or King. You could make a persuasive case for any of the four: Washington for being the indispensable figure in the creation of the country, Lincoln for saving it, Roosevelt for seeing us through our greatest economic crisis and for helping save the world from fascism, and King for leading the most important social movement in our nation’s history.

Top 25 nominees

The AOL-Discovery Channel top 25 nominees for Greatest American:

Muhammad Ali
Neil Armstrong
Lance Armstrong
George W. Bush
Bill Clinton
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Henry Ford
Benjamin Franklin
Bill Gates
Billy Graham
Bob Hope
Thomas Jefferson
John F. Kennedy
Martin Luther King Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Rosa Parks
Elvis Presley
Ronald Reagan
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
George Washington
Oprah Winfrey
Orville and Wilbur Wright

Ten of the above look right to me.

The discussion of Greatest Americans took place on NewMexiKen on May 16, May 17 and May 18.

I was told there would be no math

It’s been pointed out in a comment that I’m 14 names short on my list of the 100 Greatest Americans; that I started at 57 instead of 44. I’d feel foolish if doing this in the first place hadn’t already made me feel that way.

But here they are:

  1. Charles Lindbergh — see comment re: Lindbergh
  2. Frank Capra
  3. John Ford
  4. Orson Welles
  5. Jedediah Smith
  6. John Wesley Powell
  7. Sequoyah
  8. Sitting Bull
  9. Chief Joseph
  10. Sam Adams
  11. “Black Jack” Pershing
  12. Hyman Rickover
  13. Joseph Henry — foremost American scientist of the 19th century

I can’t restore “Hef” to the list as one commenter has argued. While I agree with Garth that Hefner fostered a healthy liberalization of standards, Hefner also fostered an unhealthy attitude toward women as toys. And, most assuredly, there are other more important publishers who also supported a free press, for one, Katharine Graham during Watergate.

The 100, one last time

NewMexiKen opened up 57 slots on the 100 Greatest Americans list yesterday. Their replacements:

First, I suggested three as I deleted the others:

  1. Bing Crosby
  2. Brigham Young
  3. Omar Bradley

Then, I liked Functional Ambivalent’s nominees, so they’re in as a block, counting Lewis and Clark as one:

  1. Lewis and Clark
  2. Ernest Hemingway
  3. Frank Lloyd Wright
  4. Margaret Sanger
  5. David Sarnoff
  6. Douglas MacArthur
  7. W.C. Handy
  8. Ray Kroc
  9. Rachel Carson

A few incredibly important political-military-judicial figures need to be added:

  1. James Madison
  2. John Adams
  3. Ulysses Grant
  4. George Marshall
  5. John Marshall
  6. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
  7. Earl Warren
  8. Thurgood Marshall
  9. Jane Addams

Inventors were among America’s greatest contribution to the world:

  1. Eli Whitney — the cotton gin yes, but much more importantly, interchangable parts
  2. Samuel Colt — automatic firearms
  3. Cyrus McCormick — agricultural implements
  4. Samuel F. B. Morse — communication
  5. Philo Farnsworth — television
  6. James Watson — DNA

And how about the robber barons:

  1. John Jacob Astor — established America’s first settlement on the Pacific Coast
  2. John D. Rockefeller — oil
  3. J.P. Morgan — capital
  4. William C. Durant — General Motors

And the writers:

  1. John Muir — for his conservation ideology
  2. Louisa Mae Alcott — every young woman read her novels; immeasurable influence
  3. Edgar Alan Poe — Evermore
  4. Toni Morrison — Nobel Prize; seems more relevant than Pearl Buck, another American woman Nobel Prize winner
  5. Sinclair Lewis — Nobel Prize; The Jungle
  6. William Faulkner — Nobel Prize

American music:

  1. Stephen Foster — the 19th century
  2. Irving Berlin — the 20th century
  3. Louis Armstrong — the greatest American musician; changed music forever
  4. Duke Ellington; — America’s greatest composer
  5. Hank Williams — did for Country what Elvis did for pop and Ray Charles did for Rhythm & Blues — revolutionized it

Which gets us to 99 and too many names left:

Frank Capra, John Ford, Orson Welles
Jedediah Smith, John Wesley Powell
Sequoyah, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph
Sam Adams, “Black Jack” Pershing, Hyman Rickover