Another Ranking

I came across this idea the other day, in line with my recent post of rankings of Presidents.  This one is far more difficult for many reasons.  Who are the most influential figures in US history?  Wow!  What an undertaking that one is!

Again, perhaps we have to set parameters, as we did with Presidents.  What is meant by "most influential?"  Does it mean for the better, whatever that might be, or merely changed things regardless of good or bad?  Of course, such a ranking would transcend politics and would lead to considerations  of far more than that.

A ranking from one to whatever would be far too arduous for me.  But I have some inclusions to consider.  They aren't by any means my only ones, just ones off the top of my head this morning.

Surely I would include some Presidents.  Those who know me even a little know Abraham Lincoln and George Washington would be near the top of my ratings.  Lincoln, of course, won the Civil War and started the ball rolling to abolish slavery.  He redefined the great American experiment, adding the principle of equality to those of freedom and liberty.  Washington, by sheer dint of his personality and his prestige, forged a new nation, establishing a republic.  Remember, many wanted and even expected him to become the king; that's what history showed--a victorious general became the ruler. He refused.  Somewhere in there would be Andrew Jackson, too.  For all of his bigotry and racism, Jackson and his era created the American democracy.  For the first time, control of the government was not exclusively in the hands of the elites, but common folks, too.  (Well, for the time being, at least adult white males regardless of wealth and religion.)  I suppose we could debate his role in that democratization, but can you think of another person at the time who could have inspired such growth?

But what about some other Presidents, maybe not such good ones?  For instance, didn't James Buchanan have great influence on the coming of the Civil War?

More than likely I'd have others, too, perhaps not for their roles as chief executives.  Thomas Jefferson wrote the American Creed, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence.  James Madison is considered the Father of the Constitution and was the primary author of most of the Bill of Rights.

Getting away from politics/government, how about Henry Ford?  It is not mere hyperbole to say "He put the nation on wheels."  Toss in mass production of cars and the $5 day.  (Let's give Charlie Sorensen and James Couzens credit, too.)  Not only did these make cars available/affordable for more and more Americans.  If something as complex as a car could be mass produced on an assembly line, anything could.  That paved the way for the affluence of the 20th Century.   And what about how the Model T changed the gene pool of the US??????

Surely Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller should be considered.  They made oodles of money and then gave much of it away.  Think of how they transformed American life, helping to create an urban society out of an agricultural one.  Think of the jobs they provided, for better or worse, and the new and affordable goods they made available to more and more Americans.  "Robber barons?"  Of course, but their influence extended far beyond that.

Thomas Edison?  Philo Farnsworth?  The list of inventors and entrepreneurs is so vast maybe we could have a list of the Top 100 of them.

Susan B. Anthony surely would be on such a ranking, with her courageous and eloquent (at least sometimes!) efforts toward women's suffrage and other rights.  We could toss in others such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt (I love that name!).  Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Perhaps that is the most significant novel in US history.  It (along with the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850) brought to the North visions of the reality of slavery, something that Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote might well have been in "the Feejee [sic] Islands."

No doubt, Martin Luther King would be on my list.  Who more than he led the modern civil rights movement?  And, very much related, what about Jackie Robinson?  King once said to Don Newcombe, "Don, you'll never know how easy you and Jackie and Roy [Campanella] and Larry [Doby] made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field."

I know he's on our ten-dollar bill, but I wonder if most Americans realize that Alexander Hamilton forged the American financial/economic system, paving the way for the later transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial one.  Have many heard of Henry Clay, whose sobriquet was "The Great Compromiser?"  As odious as some of those compromises were, it might well be argued that they held off the Civil War for decades until the North was in a position to win it, that is, preserve the Union.

Think of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, Charles Drew, and all the other doctors and scientists who have saved countless lives.  Polio?  Quite a few young people today never heard of it thanks to Salk and Sabin.  In the '50s, 2,000 lives were annually claimed by polio and another 16,000-17,000 were paralyzed by the disease.  Blood donations and transfusions?  Drew was the driving force behind blood banks and blood mobiles.  He not only was a brilliant doctor, but also a man of great courage and integrity.  During WW2, when the US military segregated blood from blacks and blood from whites, Drew resigned in protest from his position as the head of American and British blood plasma banks.

History That Never Happened

I was reminded of the book, History That Never Happened: A Treatise on the Question, What Would Have Happened If.....?  It was written by Alexander DeMandt, a German historian.  I have often said I would like to teach a course on historiography.  (But there are two roadblocks.  I don't want to do the paperwork and I'm pretty sure I couldn't get any students to take such a course.)  The book is quite pedantic, but I would still require it for reading in my historiography course.  It offers a number of ideas well worth pondering.

I'm not talking about "fake history."  (Ha Ha Ha!)  That's stuff that everyone is taught, but never really occurred.  I'm thinking about Washington and chopping down the cherry tree, the apple falling on Newton's head, Paul Revere's "ride," Nero fiddling while Rome burned, and the like.

I (and DeMandt) don't mean things like these.  Rather, I mean, as DeMandt's title suggests, things that could have happened if......   Here are some examples.  The possibilities are not unrealistic, but with a little tweak here or there could very well have come to pass.

Someone today told me of a new book out about a failed (obviously) assassination plot against George Washington. This led me to thinking about DeMandt's book.  What if Washington had been assassinated during the Revolution?  Where would that have left us, left the US?  I am pretty sure there wouldn't have been a US, although I don't have a crystal ball.  Of the three or four major factors in the Americans winning their independence, Washington was certainly one of them.  Yet, had he been killed......

Perhaps not so dramatic, what if Abraham Lincoln had won the US Senate seat from Stephen Douglas in 1858?  It was a tight race.  In fact, a historian later surmised that had US Senators been elected by voters instead of chosen by state legislatures (The 17th Amendment was not added until 1913.) in 1858, it is likely Lincoln would have been the winner.  Would Lincoln have been satisfied with a seat in the US Senate, so much so that he'd not have considered running for the Presidency two years later?  Would he, in learning the ropes in the Senate, not have had enough time to prepare to be a Presidential candidate?  After all, the Cooper Union Address won him the Republican nomination and, hence, the election.  If he was in the US Senate, it was probable he wouldn't have come to Cooper Union.  So then, imagine the Civil War, the institution of slavery, and more without Abraham Lincoln.

How different history would have been had the piece of shrapnel that hit Hitler's thigh had hit a foot two higher or the mustard gas attack to which he was subjected had taken far worse than it did.  What if, at the Battle of Marathon, the "favored" Persians had defeated the Greeks?  Think of the consequences if Charles "the Hammer" Martel had not defeated the Muslim Umayyad armies at the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732.

There are many, many other examples we can find.  Of course, getting students to read such a book might be problematic.  It's hard enough to get them to read history that did happen!  But the lesson is this.  Our choices have consequences, some far more significant that others.  The outcomes of events have consequences, too.  We need to be careful in what we decide.  We need, perhaps, to try to imagine the results of a decision.  What will possibly happen if we do this?  What will likely happen if we do that?  It's yet another reason why we should study history.

I'm in a rush this weekend, so please forgive any typos or other mistakes.

Ranking Presidents

I recently came across several more evaluations/rankings of Presidents.  They were similar, but did have some differences.

This, I think, would be quite a task.  The very best and very worst would be easy or at least easier.  Differentiating between, say, Truman and Eisenhower would be tough.  And the more I learn/older I get, my views change, too.  For instance, I'm no longer a big fan of T. Roosevelt--he was a progressive who planted the early seeds of Big Government and, for all of his popularity, he was an egotistical jerk.

My first two, in this order, are Lincoln and Washington, with no likely rivals.  I think my reasons have been made abundantly clear.  (That some, just a couple, of rankings didn't have Abe and George as the top two befuddles me.  Such rankings immediately lose their legitimacy with me.)  As noted, I like Truman and Eisenhower.  John Adams (Daddy) and Reagan are in the top eleven or twelve, too.  I also think a lot of Coolidge and not just because he is also a Lord Jeff.  For me, unless faced with situations like those countenanced by Lincoln and Washington, mostly less is more.  Madison and Monroe deserve some recognition as well.

The absolute worst include Buchanan, Carter, Harding, and A. Johnson, maybe a few others.  I'd have to separate my prejudices to try to be fair to Nixon (I don't like him), Clinton (I don't like him), Obama (I don't like him), L. Johnson (I don't like him), and a few others.  Perhaps naively, I still think that character matters.  (For instance, I can't be convinced to vote for "the lesser of two evils."  "Evil" is "evil.")  I'm not sure the current historians/political scientists (mostly teachers/authors) separate their political beliefs from their personal views in their evaluations.  How else to explain their perpetually low ranking of Coolidge and high ranking of Kennedy?  (One ranking had JFK in the top half dozen citing only two assets, both of which made me laugh.  He was assassinated and he was the first Roman Catholic President.)

We can eliminate W. H. Harrison and J. Garfield, who were in office far too short to evaluate.  But how to tell the difference between Van Buren, Fillmore, Cleveland (actually pretty decent), Taft (also not too bad), Bush (Daddy), etc.?

I'm not a fan at all of Wilson, a racist/bigot besides being an arrogant progressive.  Jackson is very problematic for a lot of reasons.  If we count only Jefferson's first four years, he'd be in the top five.  His second term wasn't so hot.

I suppose, though, I'd have to define "great."  Does it mean the "best," as in doing the most good?  Or, as I might have to grudgingly admit, does it mean "most influential," as in changing things for better or worse, regardless?  I think I've noted before this would include F. Roosevelt, not at all a favorite of mine.  The two lists would be different, other than the top two.  Then toss in contemporary popularity.  How does that affect, say, J. Q. Adams?


It's not as simple a task as one might think, as in cherry-picking one President and rating "good" or "bad."