Famous Americans of Recent Times

"I fear you will scarcely be able to read this scrawl, but I feel hurried and agitated. Death is not welcome to me. I confess it is ever dreaded. You have made me too fond of li...

The crowning glory of Mr. Astor's mercantile career was that vast and brilliant enterprise which Washington Irving has commemorated in "Astoria." No other single individual has...

If anything can be predicated of the future with certainty, it is, that the American people will never give up that portion of their heritage from the past which we call Sunday,...

No editor, therefore, will ever reign over the United States, and the newspapers of no one city will attain universal currency. Hence the importance of journalism in the United...

The last act of John Randolph's life, done when he lay dying at a hotel in Philadelphia, in June, 1833, was to express once more his sense of this blighting system. Some years b...

Astor brought to London, according to our quaint Lutheran, "a pious, true, and godly spirit, a clear understanding, a sound youthful elbow-grease, and the wish to put it to good...

It was not, however, until the year 1800, when he was worth a quarter of a million dollars, and had been in business fifteen years, that he indulged himself in the comfort of li...

It was another capital error in Mr. Clay, as the leader of a party, to run at all against General Jackson. He should have hoarded his prestige for 1836, when the magical name of...

At the end of the third month, the daily receipts equalled the daily expenditures. A cheap police reporter was soon after engaged. In the course of the next month, the printing-...

He followed the new clew with an enthusiasm which his friends would have been justified in calling frenzy, if success had not finally vindicated him. He soon discovered that his...

He made his first considerable hit as a journalist in the spring of 1828, when he filled the place of Washington correspondent to the New York Enquirer. In the Congressional Lib...

During the later years of her childhood, her mother was grievously afflicted with a cancer, which caused her death in 1794, before Theodosia had completed her twelfth year. From...

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...

The inauguration of Mr. Monroe on the 4th of March, 1817, ushered in the era of good feeling, and gave to Henry Clay the first of his long series of disappointments. As Secretar...

From 1822 to 1848, a period of twenty-six years, Henry Clay lived the strange life of a candidate for the Presidency. It was enough to ruin any man, body and soul. To live alway...

In the New Hampshire of 1805 there was no such thing possible as leaping at once into a lucrative practice, nor even of slowly acquiring it. A country lawyer who gained a thousa...

This apparent contradiction between the spirit of his preaching and the facts of his position is a severe puzzle to some of our thorough-going friends. They ask, How can a man d...

Patrick Calhoun was a strong-headed, wrong-headed, very brave, honest, ignorant man. His whole life, almost, was a battle. When the Calhouns had been but five years in their for...

"A majority of the citizens of Philadelphia as a political class, and not a majority, as a social community, as trustees of a fund for orphans, having thus got entire control of...

In his lifetime, as we have remarked, few men loved Girard, still fewer understood him. He was considered mean, hard, avaricious. If a rich man goes into a store to buy a yard o...

The question arises, Why has not this paper been long ago outdone in giving the news? It has always been possible to suppress it by surpassing it. Its errors have given its riva...

All wars of which we have any knowledge have consisted of two parts: first, a war of words; secondly, the conflict of arms. The war of words which issued in the late Rebellion b...

A survey of the last fifteen years of Calhoun's life discloses nothing upon which the mind can dwell with complacency. On the approach of every Presidential election, we see him...

From the gains of that summer he built a superb little schooner, the Dread; and, the year following, the joyful year of peace, he and his brother-in-law. Captain De Forrest, lau...

The recent publication of the "Blennerhassett Papers" appears to dispel all that remained of the mystery which the secretive Burr chose to leave around the object of his scheme....

The whole State of New York had been waiting impatiently for the evacuation of the City. Many hundreds of the old Whig inhabitants, who had fled at the entrance of the English t...

"From first to last I have uniformly pursued the just and virtuous course,--asserter of the honors, of the prerogatives, of the glory of my country. Studious to support them, ze...

It is, of course, impossible for us to enter into this question of Napoleon's moral position. Intelligent opinion, ever since the means of forming an opinion were accessible, ha...

And finally, this bad, good paper cannot be reduced to secondary rank except by being outdone in pure journalism. The interests of civilization and the honor of the United State...

It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. To Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose and recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fa...

We enter an edifice, upon the interior of which the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker have exhausted the resources of their trades. The word "subdued" describes the effect at wh...

This is modestly said, but his friends assure us that he felt it earnestly and habitually. It was, indeed, this steadfast conviction of the possibility of attaining his object,...

Mr. Webster always spoke slightingly of his early oratorical efforts, and requested Mr. Everett, the editor of his works, not to search them out. He was not just to the producti...

This passage is one of the large number in the writings of that time to which recent events have given a new interest; nor is it now without salutary meaning for us, though we q...

"This disastrous event [the passage of the tariff bill of 1828] opened our eyes (I mean myself and those immediately connected with me) as to the full extent of the danger and o...

No: the President of the United States is not prime minister, but chief magistrate, and he is subject to that law of nature which places at the head of regular governments more...

The author concludes his essay by a prophetic glance at the future. He remarks, that with regard to the future of the United States, as then governed, only one thing could be pr...

"I enter my solemn protest against this low and 'calculating avarice' entering this hall of legislation. It is _only fit for shops and counting-houses_, and ought not to disgrac...

In March, 1790, Mr. Jefferson reached New York, after his return from France, and entered upon his new office of Secretary of State under General Washington. He was a distant re...

So of the tariff. On this subject, too, he always followed,--never led. So long as there was a Federal party, he, as a member of it, opposed Mr. Clay's protective, or (as Mr. Cl...

Fortunes were not made rapidly in the olden time. After the Revolution, Girard engaged in commerce with the West Indies, in partnership with his brother John; and he is describe...

The religious life of Randolph is a most curious study. He experienced in his lifetime four religious changes, or conversions. His gentle mother, whose name he seldom uttered wi...

Why this change? If there were such a thing as going apprentice to the art of discovering truth, a master in that art could not set an apprentice a better preliminary lesson tha...

The three men most distinguished in public life during the last forty years in the United States were Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. Henry Clay improved as he...

We need not enlarge on the success which has attended the bequest for the Astor Library,--a bequest to which Mr. William B. Astor has added, in land, books, and money, about two...