VIII — Lincoln’s Place in History
The Three Greatest Americans
By Theodore Roosevelt
As the generations slip away, as the dust of conflict settles, and as through the clearing air we look back with keener vision into the Nation’s past, mightiest among the mighty dead, loom up the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln and Grant. These three greatest men have taken their places among the great men of all nations, the great men of all times. They stood supreme in the two great crises of our history, in the two great occasions, when we stood in the van of all humanity, and struck the most effective blows that have ever been struck for the cause of human freedom under the law.