Presidents of the United States, in the Century from Jefferson to Fillmore (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Presidents of the United States, in the Century From Jefferson to Fillmore

The value of this biographical basis for the history of the United States extends further than political evolutions. Connected with the careers of these presidents are to be observed the movements of the social, economic, industrial and intellectual progress of the people, the enlargement and development of territory, military events and naval achievements.

Moreover, biography in presenting the individual illumines the whole period. To apprehend clearly a type of man in the Executive Office 1s to see in the background the unhistorical multitude who created him. The eleven presidents of these fifty years were plain men elected by plain people. They stood without a fictitious aid of birth or of hereditary rights. They came to the post and left it feeling that they were only common citizens on whom the lot had fallen. Personal ambition has thrived on American soil no less than elsewhere, but it never has vaulted beyond the patriotic principle that a democratic republic is for the good of all. Pride and pomp and circumstance cast no glamour over these careers. Their history is not a romance. The whole interest of their lives is to know what manner of men were the first political leaders of the first free people how sage they were, how human, how intelligent, how short-sighted and how prophetic.

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