Can you name the Top 100 Most Influential People in American History ?

created by supermegan
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  • Source: The Atlantic Magazine
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1He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America's second founding.
2He made the United States possible - not only by defeating a king,but by declinig to become one himself.
3The author of the words 'All men are created equal.'
4He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.
5Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.
6The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
7The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches
8His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.
9It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history
10He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
11The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by making money, then by giving it away.
12He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
13He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
14He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America’s love affair with the automobile.
15Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
16Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.
17The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War’s end.
18The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy.
19The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
20The original self-made man forged America’s industrial might and became one of the nation’s greatest philanthropists
21An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.
22He sang of America and shaped the country’s conception of itself.
23They got us all off the ground.
24By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications and shrank the world.
25His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed.
26The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched influence over our childhood.
27His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.
28He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.
29His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars.
30One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform and women’s right to vote.
31One of America’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged compromises that held off civil war for decades.
32His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity earned him undying fame in America.
33The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us all to do the same.
34His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world’s worst plagues.
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35He broke baseball’s color barrier and embodied integration’s promise.
36“The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections, but his populism transformed the country.
37The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall Street barons who followed.
38She was the country’s most eloquent voice for women’s equality under the law.
39The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement.
40He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic life.
41Her Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set the stage for civil war.
42She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become “first lady of the world.”
43One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem of the color line” his life’s work.
44His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us Vietnam.
45Before the Internet, there was Morse code.
46Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition.
47After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation’s conscience with an eloquent accounting of its crimes.
48The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear era.
49The genius behind New York’s Central Park, he inspired the greening of America’s cities.
50This one-term president’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California, Texas, and the Southwest.
51The ardent champion of birth control—and of the sexual freedom that came with it.
52The founder of Mormonism, America’s most famous homegrown faith.
53Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court opinions that continue to shape American jurisprudence.
54The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy alike.
55The Monroe Doctrine’s real author, he set nineteenth-century America’s diplomatic course.
56His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the title “The Father of American Education.”
57He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in defeat.
58The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery’s most ardent defender.
59The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper.
60The most gifted chronicler of America’s tormented and fascinating South.
61The country’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of unions possible.
62The mind behind Pragmatism, America’s most important philosophical school.
63As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.
64The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social work.
65The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity for 150 years.
66The king of rock and roll. Enough said.
67The circus impresario’s taste for spectacle paved the way for blockbuster movies and reality TV.
68He codiscovered DNA’s double helix, revealing the code of life to scientists and entrepreneurs alike.
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69As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the modern American newspaper.
70They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.
71He didn’t create American English, but his dictionary defined it.
72He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him up on the offer
73His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture.
74What Joseph Smith founded, he preserved, leading the Mormons to their promised land.
75He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and permanently linked sports and celebrity.
76America’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism.
77She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired a revolution in gender roles.
78Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War.
79His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to Broadway, television, and beyond.
80The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the Spanish-American War.
81With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and controversial.
82He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.
83The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of the frontier.
84As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of the civil-rights revolution.
85His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo a cliché.
86She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing to all.
87With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed American parenting.
88A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental in building the atomic bomb.
89The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.
90Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the country’s most influential theologian.
91This clergyman earned fame as an abolitionist and an evangelist.
92As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.
93He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the white South for a century.
94The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of film.
95A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul.
96He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president.
97America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My Old Kentucky Home.”
98As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery.
99He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.
100Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but he is remembered as the American Shakespeare.
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Top 100 Most Influential People in American History Quiz

  1. by supermegan
  • Created Aug 11, 2011 in History
  • Game Plays 899

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