National portrait gallery of eminent Americans: including orators, statesmen, naval and military heroes, jurists, authors, etc., etc (Volume 1).

  • Duyckinck, Evert A. (Evert Augustus), 1816-1878.
Date:
1861-64
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National portrait gallery of eminent Americans: including orators, statesmen, naval and military heroes, jurists, authors, etc., etc (Volume 1). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    The constant supervision and sifting of our political system renders it almost impossible, while the heart of the nation is sound, that its higher officers, its Presidents, and Governors of States, its Judges of the Supreme Court, its members of the Cabinet, its leading representatives abroad, its great authors, its eminent clergy, should not be of moral excellence as well as distinguished ability. When this ceases to be the case, they will no longer afford topics for popular biography; the story of their lives can give no pleasure to ingenuous readers; it cannot delight the youth of the nation. In the present work we shall endeavor to present a narrative of the lives of those who have more than others helped .to make America what it is to-day. Commencing with the era of the Revolution, which gave the first great impulse to originality of thought and action on this continent, we shall trace the career of the men who were its leading actors in the Senate and in the field, from Franklin and Washington to Jefferson and Madison, who continued their labors in the succeeding period. We shall see a great struggle carried triumphantly to an honorable conclusion, lifting a few previously neglected provinces to rank among the nations of the earth. We shall see that national existence confirmed in the establishment of a Constitution and system of government which, yet in their infancy, have been illustrated and strengthened for three quarters of a century, by an uninterrupted series of brilliant achievements under their fostering care. New successes in arms, important inventions of the arts of world-wide use, pro- ductions of poets and historians, known and read wherever the English language is spoken, grace this period and these patriots, authors, statesmen, naval and military heroes, are the subjects of our story.