The Project Gutenberg eBook, Famous Americans of Recent Times, by James
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Title: Famous Americans of Recent Times

Author: James Parton

Release Date: June 29, 2004 [eBook #12771]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS AMERICANS OF RECENT TIMES***

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FAMOUS AMERICANS OF RECENT TIMES

By

JAMES PARTON

Author of "Life of Andrew Jackson," "Life and Times of Aaron Burr,"
"Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin," etc.

1867

[Illustration: J.C. Calhoun]

CONTENTS

HENRY CLAY

DANIEL WEBSTER

JOHN C. CALHOUN

JOHN RANDOLPH

STEPHEN GIRARD AND HIS COLLEGE

JAMES GORDON BENNETT AND THE NEW YORK HERALD

CHARLES GOODYEAR

HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH

COMMODORE VANDERBILT

THEODOSIA BURR

JOHN JACOB ASTOR

NOTE

The papers contained in this volume were originally published in the
_North American Review_, with four exceptions. Those upon THEODOSIA
BURR and JOHN JACOB ASTOR first appeared in _Harper's Magazine_; that
upon COMMODORE VANDERBILT, in the _New York Ledger_; and that upon
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND HIS CHURCH, in the _Atlantic Monthly_.

HENRY CLAY.

The close of the war removes the period preceding it to a great
distance from us, so that we can judge its public men as though we
were the "posterity" to whom they sometimes appealed. James Buchanan
still haunts the neighborhood of Lancaster, a living man, giving and
receiving dinners, paying his taxes, and taking his accustomed
exercise; but as an historical figure he is as complete as Bolingbroke
or Walpole. It is not merely that his work is done, nor that the
results of his work are apparent; but the thing upon which he wrought,
by their relation to which he and his contemporaries are to be
estimated, has perished. The statesmen of his day, we can all now
plainly see, inherited from the founders of the Republic a problem
impossible of solution, with which some of them wrestled manfully,
others mea