This is the basic difference between great men and little ones—­the little ones are concerned solely with to-day; the great ones think only of the future.  They have gained that largeness of vision and of understanding which perceives the pettiness of everyday affairs and which disregards them for greater things.  They live in the world, indeed, but in a world modified and colored by the divine ferment within them.  There are some who claim that America has never produced a genius of the first order, or, at most, but two; however that may be, she has produced, as has no other country, men with great hearts and seeing eyes and devoted souls who have spent themselves for their country and their race.

One hears, sometimes, a grumbler complaining of the defects of a republic; yet, certainly, in these United States, the republican form of government, established with no little fear and uncertainty by the Fathers, has, with all its defects, received triumphant vindication.  Nowhere more triumphant than in the men it has produced, the story of whose lives is the story of its history.

There are two kinds of greatness—­greatness of deed and greatness of thought.  The first kind is shown in the lives of such men as Columbus and Washington and Farragut, who translated thought into action and who did great things.  The second kind is the greatness of authors and artists and scientists, who write great books, or paint great pictures or make great discoveries, and this sort of greatness will be considered in a future volume; for all there has been room for in this one is the story of the lives of America’s great “men of action.”  And even of them, only a sketch in broad outline has been possible in space so limited; but this little book is merely a guide-post, as it were, pointing toward the road leading to the city where these great men dwell—­the City of American Biography.

It is a city peopled with heroes.  There are Travis and Crockett and Bowie, who held The Alamo until they all were slain; there is Craven, who stepped aside that his pilot might escape from his sinking ship; there is Lawrence, whose last words are still ringing down the years; there is Nathan Hale, immortalized by his lofty bearing beneath the scaffold; there is Robert Gould Shaw, who led a forlorn hope at the head of a despised race;—­even to name them is to review those great events in American history which bring proud tears to the eyes of every lover of his country.

Of all this we shall tell, as simply as may be, giving the story of our country’s history and development in terms of its great men.  So far as possible, the text has been kept free of dates, because great men are of all time, and, compared with the deeds themselves, their dates are of minor importance.  But a summary at the end of each chapter gives, for purposes of convenient reference, the principal dates in the lives of the men whose achievements are considered in it.