The editor has often been asked: "Upon what principle have you constructed this series of lives of American statesmen?" The query has always been civil in form, while in substance it has often implied that the "principle," as to which inquiry is made, has been undiscoverable by the interrogator. Other queries, like pendants, have also come: Why have you not included A, or B, or C? The inference from these is that the querist conceives A, or B, or C to be statesmen certainly not less eminent than E, or F, or G, whose names he sees upon the list. Now there really has been a principle of selection; but it has not been a mathematical principle, whereby the several statesmen of the country have been brought to the measuring-pole, like horses, and those of a certain height have been accepted, and those not seeming to reach that height have been rejected. The principle has been to make such a list of men in public life that the aggregation of all their biographies would give, in this personal shape, the history and the picture of the growth and development of the United States from the beginning of that agitation which led to the Revolution until the completion of that solidarity which we believe has resulted from the civil war and the subsequent reconstruction.

In illustration, let me speak of a few volumes. Patrick Henry was hardly a great statesman; but, apart from the prestige and romance which his eloquence has thrown about his memory, he furnished the best opportunity for drawing a picture of the South in the period preceding the Revolution, and for showing why and how the southern colonies, among whom Virginia was easily the leader, became sharers in the strife.

Benton might possibly have been included upon his own merits. But if there were any doubt upon this point, or if including him would seem to have rendered it proper to include others equally eminent and yet omitted, the reply is that Benton serves the important purpose of giving the best available opportunity to sketch the character of the Southwest, and the political feeling and development in that section of the country.

In like manner, Cass was hardly a great statesman, although very active and prominent for a long period. But the Northwest—or what used to be the Northwest not so very long ago—comes out of the wilderness and into the domain of civilization in the life of Cass.

John Randolph, erratic and bizarre, was not justly entitled to rank among great statesmen. But the characteristics of Congress, as a body, can be brought into better relief in the narrative of his life than in that of any other person of his day. These characteristics were so striking, so essential to an understanding of the history of those times, and so utterly different from the habits and ways of our own era, that an opportunity to present them must have been forced if Randolph had not fortunately offered it.

These four volumes are mentioned by way of illustration of the plan of the series in some of its less obvious purposes. By the light of the suggestions thus afforded, readers will probably see for themselves the motives which have led to the presence of other volumes. But one further statement should be made. It has been the editor's intention to deal with the advancement of the country. When the people have moved steadily along any road, the men who have led them on that road have been selected as subjects. When the people have refused to enter upon a road, or, having entered, have soon turned back from it, the leaders upon such inchoate or abandoned excursions have for the most part been rejected. Those who have been exponents of ideas and principles which have entered into the progress and have developed in a positive way the history of the nation have been chosen; those who have unfortunately linked themselves with rejected ideas and principles have themselves also been rejected. Calhoun has been made an exception to this rule, for reasons so obvious that they need not be rehearsed.

A Series of Great Failures presents fine opportunities, which will some day attract some enterprising editor; but that is not the undertaking here in hand. If the men who guided and the men who failed to guide the movement and progress of the country were to stand side by side in this series its size would be increased by at least one third, but probably not so its value. Yet the failures have held out some temptations which it has been difficult to resist. For example, there was Governor Hutchinson, whose life has since been written by the same gentleman who in this series has admirably presented his great antagonist, Samuel Adams. There was much to be said in favor of setting the two portraits, done by the same hand, side by side. It must be remembered that the cause for the disaffected colonists is argued by the writers in this series in the old-fashioned way,—that is to say, upon the fundamental theory that Great Britain was foully wrong and her cis-Atlantic subjects nobly right. A life of Hutchinson would have furnished an opportunity for showing that, as an unmodified proposition, this is very far from being correct. The time has come when efforts to state the quarrel fairly for both parties are not altogether refused a hearing in the United States. Nevertheless the admission of Hutchinson for this purpose would have entailed too many consequences. The colonists did secede and did establish independence; their action and their success constitute the history of the country; and the leaders of their movement are the persons whose portraits are properly hung in this gallery. The obstructionists, leaders of the defeated party, who failed to control our national destiny, must find room elsewhere. In the same way, Stephen A. Douglas has been left outside the door. Able, distinguished, influential, it was yet his misfortune to represent ideas and policies which the people decisively condemned. Sufficient knowledge of these ideas and policies is obtained from the lives of those who opposed and triumphed over them. The history of non-success needs not the elaborate presentation of a biography of the defeated leader in a series of statesmen. The work of Douglas was discredited; it does not remain as an active surviving influence, or as an integral part amid our modern conditions. Andrew Johnson, also, furnished such an admirable opportunity for the discussion of the subject of reconstruction that some persons have thought that he should have found a place. But this was impossible unless he were absolutely necessary for this especial purpose; and fortunately he was not so, since the work could be done in the lives of Seward and Stevens and Sumner. Then, if one were willing to contribute to the immortality of a scoundrel, there was Aaron Burr; but large as was the part which he played for a while in American politics, and near as it came to being very much larger, the presence of his name would have been a degradation of the series. Moreover his career was strictly selfish and personal; he led no party, represented no idea, and left no permanent trace. There was also William H. Crawford, who narrowly missed being President, and who was a greater man than many of the Presidents; but he did miss, and he died, and there was an end of him. There was Buchanan also; intellectually he had the making of a statesman; but his wrong-headed blundering is sufficiently depicted for the purposes of this series by the lives of those who foiled him.

These names, again, are mentioned only as indications of the scheme, as explaining some exclusions. There are other exclusions, which have been made, not because the individuals were not men of note, but because it seemed that the story of their lives would fill no hiatus among the volumes of the completed series.

The editor cannot expect every one to agree with him in the selection which he has made. We all have our favorites in past history as well as in modern politics, and few lists would precisely duplicate each other. So the only thing which would seriously afflict the editor with a sense of having made a bad blunder would be, if some one should detect a really gaping chasm, a neglect to treat somewhere among the lives some important item of our national history falling within the period which the series is designed to cover.

The whole series naturally shapes itself, in a somewhat crude and rough way to be sure, yet by virtue of substantial lines of division, into a few sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to the Revolutionary period, what may be called the destructive period, since it witnessed the destruction of the long-established political conditions. In this group we find the leaders of 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 branch of Congress.

Almost inevitably the series begins with Benjamin Franklin, the first great American, the first man born on this side of the water who was "meant for the universe." His mere existence was a sort of omen. It was absurd to suppose that a people which could produce a man of that scope, in character and intellect, could long remain in a condition of political dependence. It would have been preposterous to have had Franklin die a colonist, and go down to posterity, not as an American, but as a colonial Englishman. He was a microcosm of the coming nation of the United States; all the better moral and intellectual qualities of our people existed in him, save only the dreamy philosophy of the famous New England school of thinkers. It is very interesting to see how slowly and reluctantly, yet how surely and decisively, he came to the point of resistance and independence. He was not like so many, who were unstable and shifting. There was no backward step, though there were many painful and unwilling forward ones in his progress. One feels almost as if an apology were needed for writing another life of a man so be-written. Yet there is some reason for doing so; the chapter concerning his services in France during the Revolution presents the true facts and the magnitude of his usefulness more carefully than, so far as I am aware, it has previously been done.

As a promoter of the Revolution, Samuel Adams has easily the most conspicuous place. He was an agitator to the very centre of his marrow. He was the incarnation of New England; to know thoroughly his career is to know the Massachusetts of that day as an anatomist knows the human frame. The man of the town meeting did more to kindle the Revolution than any other one person. Many stood with him, but his life tells the story and presents the picture. The like service is done for Virginia by Patrick Henry; and the contrast between the two men is most striking and picturesque, yet not more so than the difference between the two sections of the country to which they respectively belonged.

If John Adams had died before he was made President, he also would have been one of this group. But the lustre of his official position prevents our placing him in the earlier constellation. Yet, though not more prominent than many others, in fact hardly to be called prominent at all in the events which led up to the Revolution, he became a leader in the first Congress, and it is probable that no one contributed more than he did—possibly no one contributed so much—towards forcing the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

Washington, though a member of Congress, was by no means conspicuous in the agitation which preceded the actual outbreak of hostilities. His entry in his uniform among his civilian comrades was indeed dramatic; but his important public career really began with his acceptance of the position of commander in chief. In this capacity he achieved the overthrow of the British supremacy, and brought to a successful close the period of destruction.

This first group is a small one, for the first Congress brought no new men to the front. Indeed, that body lost its own prestige very soon after independence was declared; thereafter it was no stage on which new men could win distinction, or men already famous could add to their store; indeed, members were lucky if they escaped without diminution of their reputations, by very reason of being parts of so nerveless and useless a body. The fact is, that the civilians, after they had set the ball going, did little more. They contributed almost nothing to the Revolution in any practical way during its actual progress. Perhaps they could not; but certainly they did not. Washington and his officers and soldiers deserve all the credit for making independence a reality instead of an assertion. They were not very strenuously or generously backed by the mass of the people after the first fervor was over. The truth is that that grand event was the work of a small body of heroes, who presented freedom and nationality to the people of the thirteen colonies. John Adams and Congress said that the colonists were free, and there left the matter, functi officio. Washington and the troops took up the business, and actually made colonists into freemen. Those upon whom this dignity and advantage were conferred were, for the most part, content somewhat supinely to allow the new condition to be established for them.

JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

September, 1898.