Top 100 most influential figures in American History

[trekz 7]

The Atlantic Monthly | December 2006

 

The Top 100

 

 

The most influential figures in American history.

.....

 

1 Abraham Lincoln

He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.

 

2 George Washington

He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.

 

3 Thomas Jefferson

The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”

 

4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt

He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.

 

5 Alexander Hamilton

Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.

 

6 Benjamin Franklin

The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.

 

7 John Marshall

The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.

 

8 Martin Luther King Jr.

His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.

 

9 Thomas Edison

It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.

 

10 Woodrow Wilson

He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.

 

11 John D. Rockefeller

The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away.

 

12 Ulysses S. Grant

He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.

 

13 James Madison

He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.

 

14 Henry Ford

He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile.

 

15 Theodore Roosevelt

Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.

 

16 Mark Twain

Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.

 

17 Ronald Reagan

The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.

 

18 Andrew Jackson

The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy.

 

19 Thomas Paine

The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.

 

20 Andrew Carnegie

The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists.

 

21 Harry Truman

An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.

 

22 Walt Whitman

He sang of America and shaped the country’s conception of itself.

 

23 Wright Brothers

They got us all off the ground.

 

24 Alexander Graham Bell

By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications and shrank the world.

 

25 John Adams

His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed.

 

26 Walt Disney

The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched influence over our childhood.

 

27 Eli Whitney

His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.

 

28 Dwight Eisenhower

He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.

 

29 Earl Warren

His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars.

 

30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton

One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform and women’s right to vote.

 

31 Henry Clay

One of America’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged compromises that held off civil war for decades.

 

32 Albert Einstein

His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity earned him undying fame in America.

 

33 Ralph Waldo Emerson

The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us all to do the same.

 

34 Jonas Salk

His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world’s worst plagues.

 

35 Jackie Robinson

He broke baseball’s color barrier and embodied integration’s promise.

 

36 William Jennings Bryan

“The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections, but his populism transformed the country.

 

37 J. P. Morgan

The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall Street barons who followed.

 

38 Susan B. Anthony

She was the country’s most eloquent voice for women’s equality under the law.

 

39 Rachel Carson

The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement.

 

40 John Dewey

He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic life.

 

41 Harriet Beecher Stowe

Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set the stage for civil war.

 

42 Eleanor Roosevelt

She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become “first lady of the world.”

 

43 W. E. B. DuBois

One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem of the color line” his life’s work.

 

44 Lyndon Baines Johnson

His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us Vietnam.

 

45 Samuel F. B. Morse

Before the Internet, there was Morse code.

 

46 William Lloyd Garrison

Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition.

 

47 Frederick Douglass

After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation’s conscience with an eloquent accounting of its crimes.

 

48 Robert Oppenheimer

The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear era.

 

49 Frederick Law Olmsted

The genius behind New York’s Central Park, he inspired the greening of America’s cities.

 

50 James K. Polk

This one-term president’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California, Texas, and the Southwest.

 

51 Margaret Sanger

The ardent champion of birth control—and of the sexual freedom that came with it.

 

52 Joseph Smith

The founder of Mormonism, America’s most famous homegrown faith.

 

53 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court opinions that continue to shape American jurisprudence.

 

54 Bill Gates

The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy alike.

 

55 John Quincy Adams

The Monroe Doctrine’s real author, he set nineteenth-century America’s diplomatic course.

 

56 Horace Mann

His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the title “The Father of American Education.”

 

57 Robert E. Lee

He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in defeat.

 

58 John C. Calhoun

The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery’s most ardent defender.

 

59 Louis Sullivan

The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper.

 

60 William Faulkner

The most gifted chronicler of America’s tormented and fascinating South.

 

61 Samuel Gompers

The country’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of unions possible.

 

62 William James

The mind behind Pragmatism, America’s most important philosophical school.

 

63 George Marshall

As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.

 

64 Jane Addams

The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social work.

 

65 Henry David Thoreau

The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity for 150 years.

 

66 Elvis Presley

The king of rock and roll. Enough said.

 

67 P. T. Barnum

The circus impresario’s taste for spectacle paved the way for blockbuster movies and reality TV.

 

68 James D. Watson

He codiscovered DNA’s double helix, revealing the code of life to scientists and entrepreneurs alike.

 

69 James Gordon Bennett

As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the modern American newspaper.

 

70 Lewis and Clark

They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.

 

71 Noah Webster

He didn’t create American English, but his dictionary defined it.

 

72 Sam Walton

He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him up on the offer.

 

73 Cyrus McCormick

His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture.

 

74 Brigham Young

What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to their promised land.

 

75 George Herman “Babe” Ruth

He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and permanently linked sports and celebrity.

 

76 Frank Lloyd Wright

America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism.

 

77 Betty Friedan

She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired a revolution in gender roles.

 

78 John Brown

Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War.

 

79 Louis Armstrong

His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to Broadway, television, and beyond.

 

80 William Randolph Hearst

The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the Spanish-American War.

 

81 Margaret Mead

With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and controversial.

 

82 George Gallup

He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.

 

83 James Fenimore Cooper

The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of the frontier.

 

84 Thurgood Marshall

As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of the civil-rights revolution.

 

85 Ernest Hemingway

His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo a cliché.

 

86 Mary Baker Eddy

She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing to all.

 

87 Benjamin Spock

With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed American parenting.

 

88 Enrico Fermi

A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental in building the atomic bomb.

 

89 Walter Lippmann

The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.

 

90 Jonathan Edwards

Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the country’s most influential theologian.

 

91 Lyman Beecher

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s clergyman father earned fame as an abolitionist and an evangelist.

 

92 John Steinbeck

As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.

 

93 Nat Turner

He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the white South for a century.

 

94 George Eastman

The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of film.

 

95 Sam Goldwyn

A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul.

 

96 Ralph Nader

He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president.

 

97 Stephen Foster

America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home.”

 

98 Booker T. Washington

As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery.

 

99 Richard Nixon

He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.

 

100 Herman Melville

Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the American Shakespeare.

 

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Copyright © 2006 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.

The Atlantic Monthly; December 2006; The Top 100; Volume 298, No. 5; 61-78

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I think this list is pretty interesting. I also think it is far better than the Greatest American list that Discovery Channel did.

 

What do you think?

[LoveMalePecs1 0]

Very good top 100 list of Americans I've heard of many of them and a few I'm not that all familair with.

[master_q 0]

Well, I will try not to be negative...(Oh, well too late.) But it is a predictable list ------- predictably bad. And it figures it would name the Dictator thug Lincoln as number one.

[trekz 7]

Admittedly it's far from perfect, but as a starting point for discussion, it's not horrible. Its problems, imo, include having no Native Americans, no Hispanics and not enough women, and a preponderance of more conservative people plus lots of dead white guys. Nonetheless as a list from historians it is a starting point to talk about who has been influential in American history. Many of the choices are reasonable but some are debatable, which I understand is the point of this list.

[He Who Shall Not Be Named 2]

I think you guys are missing the point. This is not a "100 Best Americans" list, just those who have had the biggest influence on American culture.

[Theunicornhunter 2]

LVR makes a good point - this was a list by those who study history - of people that have made an impact on American history. Which raises the issue - how do you measure influence?

 

Personally I think there are too many writers, architects, entertainers etc. Not that these people didn't make some contribution to society but that some had more than others. I just think there were other contributors that may have been overlooked. And while the list seems to focus on individuals who influenced history - when the influence is an invention it is hard to differentiate the influence of an invention over the words of a poet, social theorist etc.

 

What I consider the most glaring omission from the list is any reference to the development of the American railway system. Aside from opening up the country for trade between coasts and expanding the abiltiy to move West - most people don't know that the development of the railroad was a major factor in tort law in this country. (can anyone say tort law - which is civil suits - isn't a major issue in American culture?) IMO the persons responsible for the development railroad had a much greater impact and the course of American history than say the developer of Central Park.

 

Other ommissions - Dorothea Dix - a champion for the mentally ill

The inventor of Nylon -

DuPont - founder of DuPont chemcial IMO did more than some of the other financial tycoons listed.

 

When it comes to writers - it may be a little harder to grasp the influence if we look at it from the perspective of our modern world. I mean today a writer can write mega sellers and still be relatively unknown by a large portion of the population. In his day Mark Twain was more than just a "writer" but a humorist, a lecturer and at times a bitter social commentator. Until I looked a little more into his work I thought he was mostly a humorist and we often think of The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County etc. And I know they made a movie about a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court starring Danny Kaye which would lead one to think the book was a comedy. Actually it was a depressing look at human nature and his observation on the danger of the ties between church and government. I live in such a distant world but it's hard to remember that people used to go and sit in lecture halls and listen to men like Twain. But I do think he belongs on the list.

 

That said, I've never quite understood the fascination with Hemingway - aside from a popular city in the Florida Keys with a bunch of six toed cats I'm not sure what influence he had. And if Cooper is unreadable then why is he on the list?

[youbroughtheryouRiker 2]

What I consider the most glaring omission from the list is any reference to the development of the American railway system. Aside from opening up the country for trade between coasts and expanding the abiltiy to move West - most people don't know that the development of the railroad was a major factor in tort law in this country. (can anyone say tort law - which is civil suits - isn't a major issue in American culture?) IMO the persons responsible for the development railroad had a much greater impact and the course of American history than say the developer of Central Park.

Didn't J.P. Morgan (who is listed) have a lot to do with the proliferation of railroads? Or am I thinking Vanderbilt? Or both?

 

And did I miss it, or is John Deere not on the list? The Midwest would not be what it is without him.

Edited December 17, 2006 by youbroughtheryouRiker