The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-10-29
STILL OF THE 'IMMORTALS."
Great Americans Overlooked in the
 Hall of Fame Voting.

Great Americans Overlooked in tn, Hall of Fame Voting.
 The list of names which were widely | favored, but which fell short of a ma
 jority vote of the hundred judges, is as | interesting in It's way as the list of sue. | cessful worthies. It includes a number l of men as conspicuous in their day in | letters and affairs as those who were | preferred to them in the voting.
 | While some of these names are as- sured of an early elevation to the rangs of the immortals, and while others have suffered from the operation of sectional prejudice and favoritisn and probab biy
 from those undulations of popular fa-
 vor which do not imply fixed and ir-
 revocable verdict the general conside-
 ration that has barred distinguished regulations has been that the men who
 won them did not embody as completely
 as some others an idea, a movement, an
 epoch.
 Thus it was with that bluff and great
 old Missourian, Thomas H. Benton.
 Part of his life work is embodied in the
 career of Daniel Webster and part in
 that of Henry Clay. Thus 1t was also
 with Charles Sumner and William H.
 seward. Each of them played a great
 role in the ethical and political incl
 dents of the anti-slavery movement,
 but their services are overShadoWed by
 Abraham Lincoln, who received nearly or twice as many votes in the competi- ton as both of them together For the same reason the names of his great
 cabinet chiefs, Salmon P Chase and
 Edwin M. Stanton, appear only in the scattering" list.
 There are certain names, however, to which admittance has been refused, but whose title to honors in the Hall of Fame may not be gainsaid. No list of distinguished Americans is complete that does not include Andrew Jackson, whose personality was as dominant in his generation as that of Henry Clay, whom, as Blaine has said, he resembled in character and temperament. The masterful democrat was not an orator like his whig opponent, but his deter mined will shaped his party and his generation and left it's imprint on pos- terity. Old Hickory misses an nscrip- ton byonly two votes. By the same narrow margin John c. Calhoun whom he once threatened to hang, escapes inn mortality. Through sheer force of in telect the Carolinian would seem to have an equal right with his old chief to high honor Calhoun was not a po- litical leader. He had no devoted per- sonal following and his name suggests an abstraction rather than personali- ty, but he was the brains of the state rights idea, and his were the arguments which fortified Robert F. Lee in the that have given him a place among the listed worthies. James another democrat, whose sub- stance was intellectual but who stood for the opposite idea in an earlier gene ration, just escaped the inscription he is sure to have soon.
 It will impress many foreign critics as odd that Edgar Allan Poe should have failed of fifty votes from judges who gave Henry Wadsworth Longfel- low elshty-four, and 1t will impress many American critics as odd that Will liam Cullen Bryant should have re- ceived fewer than majority vote when was thus honored. The less fortunate fate of these two poets | nay perhaps be ascribed to the neces- sary conditions of the contest which { involved the modification of the canons | of criticism by the less authoritative | test of present popularity
 Among European writers Edgar Al an Poe has been singled out as the one American to whom possession of the iivine spark of genius is conceded, but | lis bodiless melancholy and the subtle of death and decay that l langs over his words place him at !