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 be sure, yet by virtue of substantial lines of division, into a
few sub-series or groups. The first of these belongs to the
Revolutionary period, what may be called the destructive period, since
it witnessed the destruction of the long-established political
conditions. In this group we find the leaders of