November 21, 2006
The 100 Most Influential Americans Posted by John Steele Gordon at 10:45 AM EST The Atlantic this month is running a story on the hundred most influential people in American history. You can find the list here (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/influentials) . It was compiled by asking a panel of ten historians to each produce a list, and the lists were then merged. The panel consisted of Joyce Appleby, H. W. Brands, Robert Dallek, Ellen Fitzpatrick, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David M. Kennedy, Walter McDougall, Mark Noll, Gordon S. Wood, and myself. I might point out that of the 10, only Doris Kearns Goodwin and I are not professors (or a professor emerita) of history at major academic institutions, most holding endowed chairs, and Mss Goodwin has won the Pulitzer Prize in history. This makes me feel a bit as though I had unaccountably been invited to play in a charity golf tournament with the top nine money-winners on the PGA Tour. Needless to say, there can be, probably will be, and certainly should be endless debate over who does and does not deserve a spot on the list. I think James Gordon Bennett (No. 69 on the list) ranks way too low. Elvis Presley, for God’s sake, ranks No. 66. Bennett was the most important journalist in history—the maker of the modern media—and I had him at No. 10. On the other hand I think Jackie Robinson (No. 35) is way too high. J. P. Morgan, probably the most powerful banker who ever lived, after all, ranks only No. 37 on the list. The absence from the list of DeWitt Clinton is inexplicable to me. Without Clinton, the Erie Canal would probably never have happened, and without the Erie Canal, New York City would have been a much smaller, much less influential place. Ralph Nader ranks No. 97. I suspect a hundred years from now he’ll be Ralph Who? For what it’s worth, here is my list: 1) George Washington
2) Abraham Lincoln
3) Alexander Hamilton
4) Thomas Jefferson
5) James Madison
6) Henry Ford
7) DeWitt Clinton
8) Albert Einstein
9) Steve Jobs
10) James Gordon Bennett
11) Eli Whitney
12) Cyrus McCormick
13) Andrew Jackson
14) Franklin D. Roosevelt
15) Ronald Reagan
16) J. P. Morgan
17) The Wright Brothers
18) Martin Luther King, Jr.
19) Thomas Edison
20) John Marshall
21) James Watson
22) James K. Polk
23) Benjamin Franklin
24) Edwin Drake
25) Thomas Paine
26) Robert Fulton
27) Woodrow Wilson
28) Theodore Roosevelt
29) John Von Neumann
30) William Shockley
31) Mark Twain
32) Walt Disney
33) Stephen Foster
34) Harriet Beecher Stowe
35) A. T. Stewart
36) Sam Walton
37) Louis Sullivan
38) D. W. Griffiths
39) Cecil B. DeMille
40) Richard Sears
41) John Adams
42) John Jay
43) Ulysses S. Grant
44) P. T. Barnum
45) William Jennings Bryan
46) A. P. Giannini
47) Lewis and Clark
48) Julia Child
49) Earl Warren
50) David Dudley Field
51) George Gallup
52) Steven Spielberg
53) Rodgers and Hammerstein
54) Joseph Smith
55) Brigham Young
56) Cornelius Vanderbilt
57) William F. Buckley, Jr.
58) Peter Cooper
59) George Peabody
60) Nicola Tesla
61) Oliver Evans
62) John D. Rockefeller
63) William Johnson
64) William Boyle
65) Walt Whitman
66) George Kennan
67) Samuel Slater
68) Samuel F. B. Morse
69) Thomas Cole
70) Jerome Kern
71) Walter Reuther
72) Henry Clay
73) Daniel Webster
74) Noah Webster
75) William Maxwell Evarts
76) Louis D. Brandeis
77) Cyrus Field
78) James Fenimore Cooper
79) Frederick Jackson Turner
80) Rachel Carson
81) Alfred Thayer Mahan
82) Andrew Carnegie
83) John Brown
84) B. F. Skinner
85) William Lloyd Garrison
86) Henry James
87) Alfred Kinsey
88) Eugene O’Neill
89) John James Audubon
90) Henry Flagler
91) William Faulkner
92) Edward R. Murrow
93) Francis Cabot Lowell
94) Frederick Law Olmsted
95) Benjamin Spock
96) Edward Hubble
97) Martha Stewart
98) Oprah Winfrey
99) Elvis Presley
100) Lorenz Hart
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