PREFACE
11
Vice-Presidents of the United States
every
member
of all
the cabinets every United States Senator and Speaker of the House every United States Congressman every member of the Supreme Court; ever signer of the Declaration of Independence; the Governors of the States and Territories; all the Authors, Poets and Composers; all the eminent Clergymen, Judges, Lawyers; all the Admirals and distinguished naval officers all the Generals and distinguished army officers while no name eminent in Literature, Art, Music, Science or Invention has been
omitted.
As
the failure to consider the lives of
as of historical
importance
is
men
of affairs
a defective feature of all
biographical works heretofore published, a special feature of this
work has been
to include the lives of the great pio-
neers, merchants, manufacturers, railroad builders,
and
men who have developed the mines, forests and farms, built the railroads, steamboat lines and canals, set afloat and managed the shipping, organized the cor-
other practical
porations, and introduced the
new
processes in science and
mechanics, which have so greatly reduced the cost and
promoted the comfort of living, while contributing to the power and prestige of the nation itself. They have founded the great museums, erected statues, libraries and reading rooms; and it is by them that the colleges, schools and philanthropic institutions are built and maintained; and
it
surely
served for
all
is
befitting that their records should be pre-
time in
this national
work
of representative
Americans.
That
the achievements of such persons should have
their public record
edge of
is
men whose
peculiarly proper, because a knowl-
substantial
fame
rests
upon
their at-
