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President George Washington
George Washington (1732‒99) was the first president of the United States, a founding father and national hero revered by both North and South during the American Civil War. He had limited formal...
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Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Confederate States of America
Alexander H. Stephens (1812‒83) was vice president of the Confederate States of America. Born on a small farm in the Georgia Piedmont, he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and soon was elected to...
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The Photographic Album
The Photographic Album is an album of portraits by the famous American photographer Matthew Brady (circa 1823‒96) that belonged to Emperor Pedro II of Brazil (1825‒91), a collector of photography as...
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Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois
Stephen A. Douglas (1813‒61) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1843 and to the Senate in 1846, where he emerged as a nationally prominent spokesman for the Democratic Party. He is...
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William H. Prescott
William Hickling Prescott (1796‒1859) was a prominent American historian, best known for his major works History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847). From a...
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President Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore (1800‒74) was the 13th president of the United States. The son of a poor tenant farmer from western New York, Fillmore received only a very limited education. After being apprenticed...
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Postmaster General Montgomery Blair
Montgomery Blair (1813‒83) was postmaster general in the cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln. Born and educated in Kentucky, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1836 but soon...
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Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
Gideon Welles (1802‒78) was secretary of the navy in the cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln. Born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the son of a merchant and shipbuilder, Welles studied law but never...
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Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith
Caleb B. Smith (1808‒64) was President Abraham Lincoln’s first secretary of the interior. He was born in Boston but at a young age moved with his parents to Cincinnati. After studying law in Ohio, as...
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Secretary of War Edwin Stanton
Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814‒69) was secretary of war from 1862 to 1868. Born in Steubenville, Ohio, he completed one year at Kenyon College before being forced to leave for financial reasons. He...
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Governor Sam Houston of Texas
Sam Houston (1793‒1863) was born in Virginia. As a teenager he lived for three years among the Cherokee Indians, whose language and culture he learned. He enlisted in the army in 1813 and fought in...
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Washington Irving
Washington Irving (1783‒1859) was one of the most widely read American authors of his day, and one of the first to be recognized in Europe for his works of fiction. Born in New York City of Scottish...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804‒64) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Descended from an early Puritan family, he was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and educated at Bowdoin College. His works,...
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807‒82) was an American poet, translator, and educator, whose poems were immensely popular with the reading public of his day. A graduate of Bowdoin College in his native...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803‒82) was the most prominent American essayist and philosopher of the 19th century. Born in Boston, he was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard College. He...
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George Bancroft
George Bancroft (1800‒91) was one of the most important American historians of the 19th century. After graduating from Harvard, he became one of the first Americans to gain a doctorate in Germany,...
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William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant (1794‒1878) was an American poet and journalist. Born in western Massachusetts of New England Puritan stock, he practiced law in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for a short time...
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John James Audubon
John-James Audubon (1785‒1851) was a self-taught artist and ornithologist known for his magnificent Birds in America, with its 435 folio engravings. The illegitimate son of a French sea captain,...
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Major General Francis Preston Blair, Jr.
Francis Preston Blair, Junior (1821‒75) was a member of prominent political family with ties to the border states of Missouri and Maryland but which opposed slavery and stood with Lincoln during the...
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Young Africa: Or, The Bone of Contention
“Young Africa: Or, The Bone of Contention” is a print, copyrighted by Edward Anthony (1818‒88) in 1862, that was intended as a commentary on slavery, the major cause of the American Civil War (1861‒65)...
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