Sunday, March 31, 2019

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.

1 comment:

Jerry said...

I would include Franklin Delano Roosevelt although his impact his first two terms was negative he did change how we are governed and the power of the central government