Statesmen & Politicians

Influential senators, congressmen, diplomats, and political figures who shaped American policy without serving as president.

Aaron Burr

Third Vice President of the United States — and Alexander Hamilton's killer

Charles Sumner

Abolitionist Senator Beaten on the Senate Floor, 1811–1874

Daniel Webster

Senator, Orator, and Champion of American Union

Henry Clay

The Great Compromiser who held the Union together — and delayed its reckoning

J. Edgar Hoover

The director who ruled the FBI for half a century — and amassed unrivaled power

Jefferson Davis

President of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865

John C. Calhoun

Senator, Vice President, and the intellectual architect of Southern secessionism

Joseph McCarthy

U.S. Senator whose anti-Communist crusade defined — and disgraced — an era

Roger Williams

Puritan exile who founded Rhode Island and first argued that church and state must be separate

Stephen A. Douglas

The "Little Giant" Whose Kansas-Nebraska Act Fractured the Union, 1813–1861

Thaddeus Stevens

Radical Republican Congressman and Architect of Reconstruction

William Jennings Bryan

The Great Commoner — three-time presidential candidate and prairie populist