the disaffection and
revolt: Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, and George
Washington. Washington, of course, might properly find a place also in
the second group; but for the purposes of separation he is by preference
placed in the first one, because the Revolution was to so great an
extent his own personal achievement, his transcendent and crowning
glory.

The second group, constituting the constructive period, comprises the
men who were foremost in framing the Constitution, and in organizing and
giving coherence and life to the new government and to the nationality
thereby created. This is introduced by John Adams. He, like Washington,
might properly find a place in both the first and the second groups, but
the distinction of the presidential office brings him with sufficient
propriety into the second. The others in this group are Alexander
Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, John Jay, and John Marshall.

The third group follows the overthrow of Federalism with its theory of a
strongly centralized government. This, of course, begins with Thomas
Jefferson, who led and organized the new party of the democracy. He is
followed by his political disciple, James Madison; by their secretary of
the treasury, Albert Gallatin; and by James Monroe, John Quincy Adams,
and John Randolph. The two last named are hardly to be called
Jeffersonians, but they mark the passage of the nation from the
statesmanship of Jefferson to the widely different democracy of Jackson.

The fourth group witnesses the absorption of the nation in questions of
domestic policy. The crude and rough domination of Andrew Jackson opened
a new order of things. Men's minds were busied with affairs at home, at
first more especially with the tariff, then more and more exclusively
with slavery. This group, besides Jackson, includes Martin Van Buren,
Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas H. Benton, and Lewis
Cass.

The fifth and closing group is that of the civil war. This of course
opens with Abraham Lincoln. The others are William H. Seward, as being a
sort of prime minister throughout the period; Salmon P. Chase, in whose
life can properly be discussed the financial policy and the principal
legal matters; Charles Francis Adams, embodying the important topic of
diplomatic relations; Charles Sumner, representing the advanced
abolitionist element; and Thaddeus Stevens, who appears as a tribune,
perhaps we may say the leader, in the popular br