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
An American diplomat who pressed for free trade and international institutions
On November 26, 1941, he delivered the Outline of Proposed Basis for Agreement Between the United States and Japan to the Japanese ambassador.
Cordell Hull was a Democratic politician and diplomat who helped shape U.S. free-trade policy and a multilateral international order. He promoted lower trade barriers and the Good Neighbor policy in the 1930s, while often working in tension with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who retained final control over foreign policy. In the 1941 negotiations with Japan, Hull delivered the November 26 Outline of Proposed Basis for Agreement, the last major diplomatic document before the Pacific War. Afterward, his work for the United Nations earned him the 1945 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
- 1893–1897Member, Tennessee House of Representatives
- 1907–1921U.S. Representative
- 1921–1924Chairman, Democratic National Committee
- 1923–1931U.S. Representative
- 1931–1933U.S. Senator from Tennessee
- 1933–1944United States Secretary of State
- 1945Delegate, United Nations Conference on International Organization
An international relief commander amid famine
In October 1921, Haskell cabled Hoover that starvation would peak in winter and strike sixteen million people.
William N. Haskell was a U.S. Army officer who combined military command with postwar international relief administration. Appointed by Herbert Hoover, he directed the American Relief Administration’s operations in Soviet Russia from 1921 to 1923, organizing the large-scale distribution of food and medical supplies during the famine. His task required negotiating both the controls and the cooperation of Bolshevik officials while sustaining the speed and administrative accountability of relief. He later held senior commands in the New York National Guard and directed civilian-defense work, extending his career across military and state administration.
Career timeline
- 1901Graduated from West Point; cavalry officer
- 1905Graduated from the Army Staff College
- 1906–1907Served in U.S. operations in the Philippines
- 1916–1917Temporary colonel, 69th New York Infantry
- 1918–1919Field artillery with the AEF; temporary colonel and Distinguished Service Medal recipient
- 1919–1921Chief of the ARA Armenia Mission
- 1921–1923Director for Russia, ARA; directed famine relief
- 1926–1940Major general and commander of the New York National Guard
- 1944–1945Director of the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense
Free-trade champion who built the world's largest cotton firm, then set the Marshall Plan in motion with his memo on Europe's collapse
In his memo to Secretary Marshall on May 27, 1947, Clayton wrote: 'Without further prompt and substantial aid from the United States, economic, social and political disintegration will overwhelm Europe.'
Clayton left school at thirteen and rose from stenographer to build Anderson, Clayton & Company into the world's largest cotton trading firm. A Democratic free-trader, he was named Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs in 1944 and Under Secretary in 1946; returning from Europe in May 1947, he sent George Marshall his memo 'The European Crisis,' warning that 'without further prompt and substantial aid from the United States, economic, social and political disintegration will overwhelm Europe.' The memo became the direct catalyst for the Marshall Plan announcement, and Charles Bohlen drew heavily on Clayton's language when drafting the speech. In retirement he championed free trade and Atlantic alliance, co-founding the Atlantic Council with Christian Herter in 1961.
Career timeline
- 1880Born on a cotton farm near Tupelo, Mississippi
- 1904Co-founded Anderson, Clayton & Company in Oklahoma City as a cotton brokerage
- 1916Moved headquarters to Houston; firm grew into the world's largest cotton trader
- 1918Served on the Cotton Distribution Committee of the War Industries Board
- 1940–1944Served successively with the RFC, Export-Import Bank, and Surplus War Property Administration
- 1944–1946Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs; economic adviser at the Potsdam Conference
- 1946–1947Under Secretary for Economic Affairs; his 'European Crisis' memo catalyzed the Marshall Plan
- 1961Co-founded the Atlantic Council with Christian Herter
The only four-term president, who carried America through depression and war and spent his last strength at Yalta
Returning from Yalta, Roosevelt addressed Congress on March 1, 1945 seated — the first time he publicly conceded to the disability he had hidden all his public life.
Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States, the only one elected to four terms, who led the country through the Great Depression and the Second World War. His New Deal redefined the role of the federal government, and after Pearl Harbor he drove the Allied war effort under a Europe-first strategy. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, already gravely weakened by congestive heart failure and hypertension, he staked his personal diplomacy with Stalin on two overriding goals: Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the founding of the United Nations. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage two months later, and his Yalta agreements (praised for securing the UN and criticized for conceding Eastern Europe) remained a flashpoint of Cold War historiography.
Career timeline
- 1882Born into the wealthy Roosevelt and Delano families in Hyde Park, New York
- 1913–1920Assistant Secretary of the Navy, drove naval expansion during the First World War
- 1921Diagnosed with polio, permanently paralyzed from the waist down
- 1929–1932Governor of New York, pioneered unemployment relief during the Depression
- 1933–194532nd president, led the New Deal and the US war effort
- 1943.11Met Stalin for the first time at the Tehran Conference
- 1945.02.04–11Yalta Conference: secured Soviet entry into the Pacific war and the UN Security Council framework
- 1945.04.12Died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia
Roosevelt's "assistant president" who, as Secretary of State, designed the Potsdam reparations compromise
After Byrnes took the oath as Secretary of State, Truman said, "Jimmy, kiss the Bible." Byrnes did so, then handed it back to the President and told him to kiss it too. Truman did, as the room laughed.
James F. Byrnes was a Democratic politician from South Carolina who, as senator, steered New Deal legislation through Congress; as director of war mobilization, earned the nickname "assistant president"; and as Truman's Secretary of State, designed the reparations framework at Potsdam. At Potsdam, Byrnes negotiated the compromise with Molotov whereby each occupying power would extract reparations from its own zone, while the USSR would receive 15% of western-zone industrial equipment in exchange for food and raw materials and an additional 10% without payment. Passed over as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944 and later sidelined by Truman as their relationship soured, Byrnes returned to elective politics as governor of South Carolina, where he championed "separate but equal" schooling against desegregation.
Career timeline
- 1911–1925U.S. Representative, South Carolina
- 1931–1941U.S. Senator, South Carolina
- 1941–1942Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court
- 1942–1943Director, Office of Economic Stabilization
- 1943–1945Director, Office of War Mobilization
- 1945–1947U.S. Secretary of State
- 1951–1955Governor of South Carolina
The 33rd president who framed the Cold War with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
On his Oval Office desk sat a sign reading 'The buck stops here,' and from the atomic bomb to MacArthur's dismissal, he lived by it.
Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt and ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. In March 1947 he declared the Truman Doctrine (that 'it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures') and in April 1948 he signed the Marshall Plan into law, building the institutional framework for Western Europe's reconstruction and the containment of Soviet power. When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, he led the UN military response and later fired General Douglas MacArthur, reasserting civilian control of the military at the cost of his own popularity. Widely reviled at the end of his presidency, Truman was posthumously rehabilitated as a 'near great' president whose Cold War architecture outlasted the Soviet Union.
Career timeline
- 1884Born in Lamar, Missouri, the son of a farmer and livestock dealer
- 1917–1918WWI: captain commanding an artillery battery in France
- 1935–1945US Senator from Missouri; chaired the Truman Committee on wartime waste
- 1945.01–04Vice President; succeeded to the presidency on Roosevelt's death, April 12
- 1945–195333rd president: atomic bombs, Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, Korean War
- 1947.03.12Declared the Truman Doctrine, requesting aid for Greece and Turkey
- 1948.04.03Signed the Economic Cooperation Act, launching the Marshall Plan
- 1951.04.11Fired General Douglas MacArthur over Korean War strategy
Two-time presidential nominee who pressed the Soviet Union over its missiles in Cuba at the UN Security Council
At the emergency UN Security Council session of 25 October 1962 he told Soviet ambassador Valerian Zorin, "Don't wait for the translation: yes or no?" When Zorin refused to answer, he said he was "prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over," then had missile-site photographs shown.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (1900–1965) was an American politician and diplomat from a prominent Illinois political family; he was the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, losing both times to Dwight Eisenhower. As governor of Illinois (1949–1953, counted as the 31st or 33rd governor under differing conventions) he removed political considerations from state police hiring, introduced a merit system, and vetoed a Red Scare bill requiring loyalty oaths of public employees. In 1949 he privately gave a sworn deposition as a character witness for Alger Hiss, which Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon used in the 1952 campaign to attack him as soft on communism. U.S. ambassador to the UN from 1961 until his death, he died of a heart attack in London on 14 July 1965.
Career timeline
- 1940–1944Principal attorney and special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy
- 1945Special assistant to the Secretary of State; deputy U.S. delegate to the UN Preparatory Commission
- 1948–195331st Governor of Illinois
- 1952Democratic Party nominee for President
- 1956Democratic Party nominee for President (re-nominated)
- 1961–1965U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
The administrator who organized Apollo
After the Apollo 1 fire, he pressed President Johnson to let NASA lead the investigation and recovery.
James Webb was an American public administrator, not a scientist or engineer, who organized large-scale public work. As NASA administrator, he joined stable funding and political support for Apollo to a centralized system coordinating research centers, industry, and universities. While pursuing a crewed lunar landing, he also protected planetary programs such as Mariner and Pioneer and backed space-telescope research. After the Apollo 1 fire, he directed the agency’s response and defended its accountability before Congress while preserving the program’s continuity.
Career timeline
- 1928Graduated from the University of North Carolina
- 1936Earned a law degree and joined the District of Columbia bar
- 1936–1944Personnel director, secretary-treasurer, and vice president of Sperry Gyroscope
- 1946–1949Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget
- 1949–1952Undersecretary of State
- 1961–1968Administrator of NASA
- 1969Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and published Space Age Management
A Cold War president caught between reform and war
In July 1968, he announced that the United States and the Soviet Union had agreed to begin talks on limiting strategic weapons.
Lyndon B. Johnson was a president whose congressional mastery joined an ambitious program of domestic reform to a strategy of Cold War containment. He expanded the Great Society through civil-rights and voting-rights laws, Medicare, education, and anti-poverty programs, while the escalation of the Vietnam War became the defining responsibility that overshadowed those achievements. He also pursued arms control within continued rivalry, using the 1967 Glassboro summit and the July 1968 agreement to begin strategic-arms discussions to open a path that later led to SALT. In his final year he combined peace efforts in Vietnam with arms-control diplomacy, but the agreements were completed by his successor.
Career timeline
- 1937–1949U.S. Representative from Texas's 10th district
- 1949–1951U.S. Senator from Texas
- 1951–1953Senate Democratic whip
- 1953–1955Senate Democratic leader
- 1955–1961Senate majority leader
- 1961–1963Vice President of the United States
- 1963–196936th President of the United States
The Cold War's last American president, who genuinely believed in nuclear abolition but would not yield on SDI
On the afternoon of October 12, 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to eliminate every nuclear weapon on earth by the year 2000. Forty minutes later, the talks collapsed when Reagan refused Gorbachev's condition that SDI research be confined to the laboratory.
Ronald Reagan went from Hollywood actor to governor of California to the 40th president of the United States, inaugurating the 1980s with Reaganomics and the largest peacetime military buildup in American history. Early in his first term he denounced the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire,' yet he also held a genuine, long-standing conviction that nuclear weapons should be abolished, a conviction he brought to four summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev. At Reykjavik in October 1986 the two leaders came within reach of eliminating all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse when Reagan refused to confine his Strategic Defense Initiative to the laboratory. A year later they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first abolition of an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the Cold War ended months after he left office.
Career timeline
- 1911Born into an Irish-American family in Tampico, Illinois
- 1937–1964Hollywood actor in 53 films; served twice as Screen Actors Guild president
- 1967–1975Governor of California; crackdown on campus protests, welfare reform
- 1981–198940th president: Reaganomics, military buildup, 'evil empire' speech
- 1986.10Reykjavik summit: near-total nuclear abolition collapsed over SDI
- 1987.06'Tear down this wall' speech at the Brandenburg Gate
- 1987.12Signed the INF Treaty abolishing all intermediate-range nuclear missiles
- 1994–2004Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; died in Los Angeles, 2004
A hawkish Democratic senator who tied Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration
"The American people, above all, are committed to a human détente… to the free movement of men and ideas," he said, "on which a stable and more lasting peace must be based."
The son of Norwegian immigrants, born in Washington state, he served in Congress for over four decades as a Cold War liberal. A champion of civil rights and environmental legislation yet skeptical of détente, he drove the Jackson-Vanik amendment tying Soviet trade status to Jewish emigration. When the informal 1974 bargain with Kissinger and Dobrynin collapsed under Soviet rejection, Jackson effectively sank the 1972 trade agreement. His hawkish aides later formed the core of neoconservatism.
Career timeline
- 1938–1940Prosecuting attorney, Snohomish County
- 1941–1953U.S. Representative (WA)
- 1953–1983U.S. Senator (WA)
- 1963–1981Chair, Interior/Energy & Natural Resources Committee
- 1972Democratic presidential candidate
- 1976Democratic presidential candidate
- 1974Co-sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment
The congressman who made emigration a condition of trade
In 1974, he brought the Jackson–Vanik amendment to the House, making freedom of emigration a condition of trade.
Charles Vanik was a Democratic congressman rooted in Cleveland's East Side, representing workers and communities of Eastern European immigrant background. He paired domestic reform concerns, including tax fairness, Social Security, Medicare, and Lake Erie cleanup, with an assertive role in foreign economic policy. In 1974 he co-sponsored the Jackson–Vanik amendment with Henry Jackson, conditioning normal trade relations with non-market economies that restricted emigration. The law became a lever for the emigration of Soviet Jews and other religious minorities, while also making congressional human-rights conditions a direct intervention in détente and trade policy.
Career timeline
- 1938–1939Member, Cleveland City Council
- 1940–1942Member, Ohio Senate
- 1942–1945U.S. Naval Reserve officer, served in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters
- 1947–1954Judge, Cleveland Municipal Court
- 1955–1969U.S. Representative, Ohio's 21st district
- 1969–1981U.S. Representative, Ohio's 22nd district
- 1973–1981Chair, House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade
- 1985–1995Lawyer, Squire Sanders & Dempsey's Washington office, Eastern European trade
- 2007Died in Jupiter, Florida
The quantitative defense secretary who led the Vietnam War and helped prevent nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis
The major lesson of the Cuban missile crisis: the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will destroy nations.
The eighth U.S. Secretary of Defense (1961–1968), and its longest-serving holder, leading the Pentagon under both Kennedy and Johnson for over seven years. In the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he was the first in EXCOMM to propose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and became its fiercest advocate, arguing it would show Khrushchev resolve while remaining a controlled choice that need not escalate into military conflict. Yet in Vietnam, the same quantitative analyst who championed escalation grew privately skeptical, and 27 years after leaving office he confessed in his memoir that the war was 'wrong, terribly wrong.' He later served as president of the World Bank (1968–1981), redirecting its focus from infrastructure to poverty reduction.
Career timeline
- 1943–1946USAAF Office of Statistical Control, discharged as Lt. Col.
- 1946–1960Ford Motor Company, president (1960)
- 1961–19688th U.S. Secretary of Defense
- 1968–1981President of the World Bank
The youngest U.S. president, who took the world to the brink of nuclear war and back
Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
The 35th president of the United States (1961–1963), elected at 43 as the youngest president and the first Catholic. He authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and later that year his tense Vienna summit with Khrushchev helped convince the Soviets to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. In the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he chose a naval 'quarantine' over an airstrike and, through his brother Robert, secretly traded the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey for the withdrawal of Soviet missiles, pulling the world back from nuclear war. He was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963; after his death, his civil rights and tax-cut agenda passed through Congress.
Career timeline
- 1947–1953US Representative, MA-11
- 1953–1960US Senator, Massachusetts
- 1961–196335th President of the United States
The 39th U.S. president whose administration marked both the peak and the end of détente
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter declared in his January 1980 State of the Union: 'An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America.'
A Georgia peanut farmer and Baptist, Carter rose from Navy nuclear submarine officer to become a 'New South' governor who pledged to end racial discrimination. Elected president in 1976 as a Washington outsider, he brokered the Camp David Accords, returned the Panama Canal, and normalized diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. In June 1979 he brought détente to its peak by signing SALT II with Brezhnev in Vienna, only to withdraw the treaty from Senate consideration after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that December, proclaiming the Carter Doctrine and closing the era of détente. After leaving office he founded the Carter Center, dedicating his post-presidency to human rights, public health, and conflict mediation, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Career timeline
- 1963–1967Georgia State Senator
- 1971–197576th Governor of Georgia
- 1977–198139th President of the United States
- 1982Founded the Carter Center
- 2002Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
The president's brother and attorney general who engineered the secret settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis
He later wrote: 'The strongest argument against an all-out surprise attack was that it would be a Pearl Harbor in reverse and would blacken the name of the United States in the eyes of the world.'
The younger brother and most trusted adviser of President John F. Kennedy, he was appointed attorney general at 35 and led a crusade against organized crime while championing civil rights. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he initially favored invasion but was persuaded by George Ball's Pearl Harbor analogy to support a naval blockade instead; in the crisis's final hours, his secret meeting with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, delivering the promise that U.S. Jupiter missiles would be removed from Turkey, was the key to the settlement. After his brother's assassination, he served as a U.S. Senator, opposing the Vietnam War and fighting poverty, before being assassinated during his own presidential campaign in 1968.
Career timeline
- 1952Campaign manager, JFK Senate campaign
- 1953–1955Assistant/Counsel, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
- 1957–1959Chief Counsel, McClellan Committee (Senate Labor Rackets)
- 1961–196464th United States Attorney General
- 1965–1968U.S. Senator from New York
Kennedy's speechwriter whose pen chose 'quarantine' over airstrikes at the nuclear brink
Asked if he wrote 'ask not what your country can do for you,' his lifelong reply was: 'Ask not.'
John F. Kennedy's chief speechwriter and closest adviser, whom Kennedy called his 'intellectual blood bank.' During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he opposed the Joint Chiefs' call for airstrikes and backed the naval blockade, drafting Kennedy's October 22 televised address and choosing the word 'quarantine' over 'blockade' to avoid the legal implication of a declaration of war. He later called it 'the Kennedy speech with the greatest impact on the planet,' and also drafted the president's secret correspondence with Khrushchev. After the assassination he wrote Johnson's 'Let Us Continue' address, resigned in 1964, and spent decades as an international lawyer and author, endorsing Barack Obama in 2008.
Career timeline
- 1953–1961Chief legislative aide to Senator John F. Kennedy
- 1961–1964Special Counsel and chief speechwriter to President Kennedy
- 1964–1966Author (Kennedy, international bestseller)
- 1966–2010International lawyer, Paul, Weiss LLP
- 1977CIA Director nominee (withdrawn)
