Forty-Eighter who fought in the Baden revolutionary army of 1849 and became a US senator and Secretary of the Interior
Born at Liblar in Prussia's Rhine Province in 1829, he studied at the University of Bonn. In 1848 he and his teacher Gottfried Kinkel founded the Bonner Zeitung for democratic reform, and in 1849, answering the call to defend the imperial constitution, he joined the revolutionary army of the Palatinate and Baden and fought the Prussians. Escaping when the fortress of Rastatt fell, he reached Zurich, and in 1850 he slipped back into Prussia to free Kinkel from Spandau prison. He emigrated to the United States in 1852, joined the Republican Party in Wisconsin and campaigned against slavery. After serving as minister to Spain in 1861 he became a Union general, fighting at Gettysburg among other battles. As senator for Missouri from 1869 to 1875 he helped found the Liberal Republican Party, and he was Secretary of the Interior from 1877 to 1881. He died in New York in 1906.
Career timeline
- 1848Co-founded the Bonner Zeitung
- 1849Officer in the revolutionary army of the Palatinate and Baden
- 1861Minister to Spain
- 1862–1865Union general
- 1869–1875US Senator from Missouri
- 1877–1881Secretary of the Interior
Five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate and pioneer of industrial railroad unionism
At his 1918 sentencing he declared: "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
The most iconic figure of American socialism and a pioneer of industrial unionism. After leading the American Railway Union through the Pullman Strike of 1894, he embraced Marxism in prison and helped found the Socialist Party of America (1901) and the IWW (1905). He ran for president five times, winning 6.0% in 1912, and from an Atlanta prison cell in 1920 he won over 914,000 votes, the high-water mark of American socialist electoral politics.
Career timeline
- 1875Joined Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen
- 1880–1893BLF Grand Secretary-Treasurer & magazine editor
- 1885Indiana State Representative (Democrat)
- 1893–1897Founder & president, American Railway Union
- 1901Co-founder, Socialist Party of America
- 1905Founding member, Industrial Workers of the World
- 1900–1920Socialist Party presidential candidate (5 campaigns)
- 1919–1921Imprisoned, Atlanta Federal Penitentiary
US president whose Fourteen Points and League of Nations failed to win the Senate’s ratification
Born in Virginia, he was president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey before winning the presidency in 1912, and in his first year imposed racial segregation across the federal bureaucracy. In April 1917 he asked Congress to declare war over unrestricted submarine warfare, and in January 1918 set out the Fourteen Points, with a League of Nations and self-determination. At the Paris Peace Conference he presided over the drafting of the League Covenant but conceded much to the other powers to get it. A stroke in October 1919 incapacitated him, and his refusal of a compromise sank the Senate’s ratification of the treaty. The Palmer Raids of the Red Scare came in the same years. He received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1924.
Career timeline
- 1902–1910President of Princeton University
- 1911–1913Governor of New Jersey
- 1913–1921President of the United States
- 1918Announced the Fourteen Points
- 1919Paris Peace Conference; chaired the League Covenant committee
The American colonel who brought General Electric turbines and dam-building expertise to the Soviet Union's showcase construction site
At the 1932 Dneprostroi dedication: "The practical experience of American methods thus acquired will be a lever in raising the living standards of this country."
A self-taught dam engineer, Hugh Lincoln Cooper made his name by taming the Horseshoe Rapids at Niagara (1907) and spanning the Mississippi at Keokuk (1913), rising to become America's foremost hydroelectric builder. In 1926 the Soviet government invited him as chief consultant for Dneprostroi; he supplied General Electric turbines, supervised every phase of construction, and delivered Europe's largest power station eight months ahead of schedule in 1932. That September the USSR awarded Cooper and five other American engineers the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the first time the decoration went to a foreigner. He remained an anti-communist all his life, but without his dam there would have been no flagship achievement for the First Five-Year Plan.
Career timeline
- 1907Completed Toronto Power Generating Station, Horseshoe Rapids, Niagara
- 1913Completed Keokuk Dam and power plant, Mississippi River
- 1914Consultant, Aswan Dam power conversion (interrupted by WWI)
- 1917–1918Supervising engineer, US Army Corps of Engineers; colonel
- 1919Completed Lake Zumbro Hydroelectric Plant, Minnesota
- 1924Completed Wilson Dam, Alabama (later part of TVA)
- 1927–1932Chief consultant, Dneprostroi (DneproGES), USSR
- 1932Awarded Order of the Red Banner of Labour (first foreign recipient)
