Benjamin Franklin | Page 2

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