Hall of Fame for Great Americans 1910

About the members of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans for 1910 including Cooper, Bryant, and Motley and others.

THE HALL OF FAME FOR GREAT AMERICANS

1910

There were 97 electors, so 49 votes were required for election.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author (74)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, author (69)

Edgar Allan Poe, author (69). There had been some criticism because Poe had not been selected in 1900 or 1905.

James Fenimore Cooper, author (62)

Phillips Brooks, clergyman (60). A towering figure in American religion in the late 19th century, Brooks (1835-1893), forgotten now, loomed large in the electors' memory in 1910.

William Cullen Bryant, author (59)

Frances E. Willard, reformer (55). Willard (1839-1898) devoted her life to combating the evils of alcohol and became a leader of the temperance movement in the U.S. Her choice in 1910 can be attributed to her sex and to contemporary progressive political thought as much as anything.

Andrew Jackson, statesman (53). The failure to include Jackson in 1900 or 1905 (when he received 48 and 46 votes respectively) can be laid to the conservative interpretation of U.S. history held by many electors in the early 20th century.

George Bancroft, author (53). Bancroft (1800-1891) was chosen for his historical writings. Beginning in the 1830s, he continually wrote on U.S. history and glorified the American experience.

John Lothrop Motley, author (51). Like Bancroft, Motley (1814-1877) was a historian. Motley has not held up over the years, and it is unlikely he would be given serious consideration for membership if a vote were taken on him now. Particularly disconcerting is the failure of the electors to choose William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859), since he was superior to Motley as a historian and certainly the equal of Bancroft and Francis Parkman, who was elected in 1915. Prescott did receive 33 votes in 1900, but never improved upon that total. He was nominated in 1960 and got 2 votes.

Getting her largest number of votes in 1910 but never elected was First Lady Martha Washington with 43. Calhoun continued his downward slide with 42 votes while Horace Greeley--who did so well in 1900--dropped to 30.

Several electors, for reasons best known to themselves, cast votes for clergyman Francis Wayland, artist Frederick Edwin Church, and philanthropist Sarah Bache.

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