SOURCE: Quinn, Arthur Hobson. “George Henry Boker—Playwright and Patriot.” Scribner's Magazine 71, no. 6 (June 1923): 701-15.

In the following essay, Quinn discusses Boker's accomplishments as a playwright, as a founding member of the Union League, and as a diplomat.

It is just a century since one of our greatest dramatists, one of the most uncompromising of our patriots, one of the most successful of our diplomats, was born. That his country has shown so little sense of its debt to him on any of these counts may be due to the fact that he was born on October 6, 1823, in Philadelphia. For it is the characteristic of his native city and mine that it combines a profound content with its collective achievements with a great disinclination to express its appreciation in any tangible form. This preference for being rather than for talking or writing about it has been attributed to...