Lives of the Presidents, United States of America, from America to the Present Time: Containing a Narrative of the Most Interesting Events in the ... of the United States (Classic Reprint)

Lives of the Presidents of the United States without the conviction, that there is no other nation which can present a consecutive series of seventeen rulers of equal excellence of character and administrative ability. Probably the least worthy of all our presidents would rank among the best of the kings whom the accident of birth has placed upon hereditary thrones; and not an individual has popular sufrage elevated to the presidential chair, whom one would think of ranking with those many royal monsters who have in turn disgraced all the courts of Europe. This record settles the question, that popular suffrage, in the choice of rulers, is a far safer reliance than hereditary descent. With us, the freedom of the press is so unlimited, and political partisanship so intense, that few persons have been able to take really an impartial view of the characters of those who have been by one party so inordinately lauded, and by the other so in temperately assailed. But, as we now dispassionately review the past, most readers will probably find many old prejudices dispelled. In writing these sketches, the author has endeavored to be thoroughly impartial, and to place himself in the position which the subject of the sketch occupied, so as to look from his stand-point upon the great questions which he was called to consider. John A dams and Thomas Jefferson were in political antagonism; but no man can read a true record of their lives, and not be convinced that both were inspired with the noblest zeal to promote the best inter ests of their country and of the human race. The writer has not thought that impartiality requires that he should refrain from a frank expression of his own views.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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