Excerpt from The Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States: Illustrated In selecting names for the Biographical Encyclopedia of the United States, the publishers have aimed to give a life-sketch of the representatives of the various interests of our republic: the professional men, the business men, the agriculturists, and indeed all who have taken part in the intel lectual, political and material progress of the people. While engaged in the preparation and publication of this volume, a constant and strong incentive has been the belief of the publishers that theirs was a praiseworthy work, the fruits of which could not but supply a pressing need and command public commendation. Had it been otherwise, and had the only motive for their risk of capital and enormous expenditure of time and labor been the hope of pecuniary profit, they certainly could not have felt themselves justified in the undertaking. Until within a comparatively recent period, recording and preserving biographies has been confined to the few, the great or noted, while the history of that vast army of workers, whose life struggles, whose defeats and whose successes have contributed so largely to our national growth. And become so intimately identified with our institutions, has been passed over without comment. Unnoticed and unsung. That such should have been the case was but natural, as the outgrowth of that spirit of hero-worship. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.