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Early Republic
Born 1780-1819 — expansion west, the market revolution and the road to disunion.
–1699
Colonial era
9
1700–1779
Founding era
46
1780–1819
Early Republic
77
1820–1864
Antebellum & Civil War era
132
1865–1899
Industrial & Progressive era
156
1900–1929
Early 20th century
327
1930–1949
Mid-20th century
251
1950–1969
Late 20th century
127
1970–1999
Contemporary era
51
2000–
Digital era
77 people, oldest first
The people
Henry Clay 1777–1852Government & PoliticsSenator and statesman known as the Great Compromiser for his role in preserving the Union.
Roger B. Taney 1777–1864Government & PoliticsChief justice whose Court shaped federalism but is principally remembered for the disastrous Dred Scott decision.
Zebulon Pike 1779–1813Frontier & SportArmy officer who led expeditions to the Southwest and after whom Pikes Peak is named.
John C. Calhoun 1782–1850Crime & NotorietyVice president and theorist of slavery and states’ rights whose doctrines intensified sectional conflict.
Martin Van Buren 1782–1862Government & PoliticsEighth president who helped build the Democratic Party machine and governed through the Panic of 1837.
Daniel Webster 1782–1852Government & PoliticsSenator and orator whose speeches on the Union and Constitution are among the greatest in history.
Washington Irving 1783–1859Arts & LettersEarly American storyteller whose Sketch Book gave the country Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow.
Zachary Taylor 1784–1850Government & PoliticsWar hero elected twelfth president who opposed extending slavery into western territories.
John James Audubon 1785–1851Reform & RightsNaturalist and illustrator whose Birds of America shaped American ornithology and the society bearing his name.
Davy Crockett 1786–1836Frontier & SportFrontiersman, soldier, and politician who became a folk hero of the American frontier.
Winfield Scott 1786–1866Government & PoliticsCommanding general whose long career, Mexico City campaign, and Anaconda Plan shaped nineteenth-century U.S. military strategy.
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet 1787–1851Ideas & MediaFounded the first permanent American school for deaf students.
Emma Willard 1787–1870Ideas & MediaWomen's education reformer who founded the Troy Female Seminary, a model for women's higher education.
Sacagawea 1788–1812Frontier & SportShoshone woman who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the Louisiana Territory.
John Ross 1790–1866Reform & RightsPrincipal chief of the Cherokee Nation for 38 years, who fought removal in Congress and the Supreme Court and lost.
John Tyler 1790–1862Government & PoliticsFirst vice president to assume the presidency on a president's death and to annex Texas.
James Buchanan 1791–1868Government & PoliticsFifteenth president who failed to halt Southern secession in the months before the Civil War.
Samuel Morse 1791–1872Technology & BuildingPainter and inventor who developed the telegraph and Morse code, enabling instant long-distance communication.
Charles Grandison Finney 1792–1875Ideas & MediaTurned religious revival into a set of repeatable methods that every American evangelist since has used.
Thaddeus Stevens 1792–1868Government & PoliticsRadical Republican leader who drove congressional abolition, civil-rights measures, and a transformative vision of Reconstruction.
Sam Houston 1793–1863Government & PoliticsCommander at San Jacinto who became president of the Republic of Texas and later its governor and senator.
Lucretia Mott 1793–1880Reform & RightsAbolitionist and women’s-rights organizer who helped convene the Seneca Falls Convention.
Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794–1877Business & LaborShipping and railroad magnate whose empire made him one of the wealthiest Americans in history.
James K. Polk 1795–1849Government & PoliticsEleventh president whose expansionist policies added the Southwest and Oregon to the United States.
Horace Mann 1796–1859Ideas & MediaReformist who championed public education and is considered the father of the American public school system.
Mary Lyon 1797–1849Ideas & MediaFounder of Mount Holyoke, the first endowed college for American women
Sojourner Truth 1797–1883Reform & RightsAbolitionist and women's rights activist whose Ain't I a Woman? speech became a rallying cry for equality.
Thurlow Weed 1797–1882Government & PoliticsPolitical boss of New York and editor of the Albany Evening Journal
Charles Wilkes 1798–1877Frontier & SportNaval officer who led the United States Exploring Expedition, mapping the Pacific and Antarctica.
Jedediah Smith 1799–1831Frontier & SportMountain man and fur trapper who was the first American to enter California by an overland route.
Catharine Beecher 1800–1878Ideas & MediaPioneer in women's education who founded schools and advocated for female teachers across America.
John Brown 1800–1859Reform & RightsMilitant abolitionist whose raid on Harpers Ferry sharpened sectional conflict preceding the Civil War.
Millard Fillmore 1800–1874Government & PoliticsThirteenth president who signed the Compromise of 1850 including the Fugitive Slave Act.
Charles Goodyear 1800–1860Technology & BuildingSelf-taught chemist who discovered the vulcanization process that made rubber commercially viable.
Dred Scott 1800–1858Reform & RightsEnslaved man whose lawsuit produced the Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans could not be citizens.
Nat Turner 1800–1831Reform & RightsLed the 1831 Virginia slave rebellion that prompted harsher slave codes across the South.
David Farragut 1801–1870Government & PoliticsThe U.S. Navy's first admiral, whose victories at New Orleans and Mobile Bay were decisive in the Civil War.
William H. Seward 1801–1872Government & PoliticsLost the presidency he was expected to win, then ran Lincoln's foreign policy and bought Alaska.
Brigham Young 1801–1877Ideas & MediaReligious and territorial leader who directed Mormon migration and settlement in the American West.
Dorothea Dix 1802–1887Reform & RightsSocial reformer who championed humane treatment of the mentally ill and established asylums nationwide.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882Arts & LettersEssayist and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement and shaped American intellectual thought.
John Ericsson 1803–1889Technology & BuildingSwedish-American engineer who designed the ironclad USS Monitor, revolutionizing naval warfare.
Jim Bridger 1804–1881Frontier & SportMountain man and guide who explored the Rocky Mountains and founded Fort Bridger.
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804–1864Arts & LettersNovelist whose The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables explored Puritan guilt and sin.
Osceola 1804–1838Reform & RightsSeminole leader whose resistance during the Second Seminole War challenged federal removal policy.
Franklin Pierce 1804–1869Government & PoliticsFourteenth president whose support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act deepened the sectional crisis over slavery.
Cochise 1805–1874Reform & RightsChiricahua Apache leader who led resistance in the Southwest and negotiated a reservation for his people.
William Lloyd Garrison 1805–1879Reform & RightsEditor of The Liberator and founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Joseph Smith 1805–1844Ideas & MediaFounder of the Latter Day Saint movement, one of the most consequential religions to originate in the United States.
John A. Roebling 1806–1869Technology & BuildingDeveloped wire-rope suspension bridge design and planned the Brooklyn Bridge.
Robert E. Lee 1807–1870Government & PoliticsConfederate commander whose military reputation and later commemoration became central to Civil War memory and the Lost Cause.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882Arts & LettersThe most widely read American poet of the 19th century, and the most argued over since.
Jefferson Davis 1808–1889Crime & NotorietyPresident of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory.
Andrew Johnson 1808–1875Government & Politics17th president whose obstruction of Reconstruction weakened protections for formerly enslaved people and led to impeachment.
Kit Carson 1809–1868Frontier & SportFrontiersman and scout who guided John C. Frémont and became a legend of the American West.
Abraham Lincoln 1809–1865Government & Politics16th President who preserved the Union during the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Cyrus McCormick 1809–1884Technology & BuildingInventor of the mechanical reaper that transformed agriculture and fed a growing nation.
Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849Arts & LettersMaster of macabre fiction and poetry who invented the detective story and influenced horror worldwide.
Horace Greeley 1811–1872Ideas & MediaFounding editor of the New-York Tribune whose editorials shaped antebellum and Reconstruction-era debate.
Wendell Phillips 1811–1884Reform & RightsAbolition's great orator, who refused to disband the movement when slavery ended.
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811–1896Reform & RightsAuthor of Uncle Tom's Cabin whose novel galvanized the abolitionist movement.
Charles Sumner 1811–1874Government & PoliticsMassachusetts senator and abolitionist leader who pressed for Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation.
Stephen A. Douglas 1813–1861Government & PoliticsIllinois senator whose popular-sovereignty doctrine and debates with Lincoln framed the crisis over slavery.
John C. Frémont 1813–1890Frontier & SportExplorer and military officer whose five expeditions mapped much of the American West.
Samuel Colt 1814–1862Technology & BuildingIndustrialist who popularized the revolver and pioneered interchangeable parts in manufacturing.
Edwin M. Stanton 1814–1869Government & PoliticsLincoln's war secretary whose refusal to be fired triggered the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Samuel J. Tilden 1814–1886Government & PoliticsThe reform governor of New York who won the popular vote in 1876 and lost the presidency
George G. Meade 1815–1872Government & PoliticsUnion general whose command victory at Gettysburg marked a turning point in the Civil War.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815–1902Reform & RightsPrincipal theorist and organizer of the nineteenth-century women’s rights and suffrage movements.
Henry David Thoreau 1817–1862Reform & RightsWriter and philosopher whose works on nature, individual conscience, and civil disobedience influenced environmentalism and political protest.
Frederick Douglass 1818–1895Reform & RightsFormer slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights.
Mary Todd Lincoln 1818–1882Government & PoliticsFirst Lady who buried three sons and was committed by the fourth in a public insanity trial.
Maria Mitchell 1818–1889Science & MedicineFirst American woman professional astronomer who discovered a comet and taught at Vassar College.
Elias Howe 1819–1867Technology & BuildingInventor who developed the first practical lockstitch sewing machine, revolutionizing the garment industry.
Herman Melville 1819–1891Arts & LettersNovelist whose Moby-Dick is considered one of the greatest works of American literature.
Walt Whitman 1819–1892Arts & LettersPoet whose Leaves of Grass celebrated democracy, nature, and the human body in free verse.
Isaac Mayer Wise 1819–1900Ideas & MediaBuilt the three institutions that still hold American Reform Judaism together.