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Subjects | Fact sheet | Samples
United States and Canada: Sample biographies
Carnegie, Andrew (1835–1919)
Scottish-born US industrialist and philanthropist, who used his personal fortune from the creation of his Pittsburgh iron and steel industries to fund educational, cultural, and peace institutions, many of which bear his name. After his death, the Carnegie trusts continued his philanthropic activities. Carnegie Hall in New York, which opened in 1891 as the Music Hall, was renamed to honour his large donations in 1898.
Carnegie invested successfully in railways, land, and oil. From 1873 he engaged in steelmaking, adopting new techniques. Having built up a vast empire, he disposed of it to the US Steel Corporation in 1901.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, but his family, who were Chartists, emigrated to the USA in 1848, settling in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. At the age of 13 he started work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill but soon moved on to become a telegrapher with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was promoted to superintendent of the Pittsburgh division where his investments in the first company to make sleeping cars and in oil lands became the basis of his fortune. During the American Civil War he worked on military transport in the War Department. In 1865 he founded the Keystone Bridge Company to manufacture iron railway bridges and then a steel mill. He was one of the first to use the Bessemer process to make steel alloys from iron. By 1873 he had launched the Carnegie Company, which was to become the largest iron and steel works in the USA. In 1901, at the age of 65, he sold out to J P Morgan for an estimated $400 million in a merger with the US Steel Corporation, and then retired to Skibo Castle in Sutherland, Scotland.
In 1889, he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, which stated his belief that the rich should distribute their wealth for the benefit of society (although Carnegie was attacked by some as an exploiter of labour and an unscrupulous business competitor). From the 1880s to the end of his life he gave more than $350 million to good causes. Although he had no formal education, self-teaching and books were a lifelong interest, and he made donations to around 2,500 libraries in the USA and other English-speaking countries, gave large gifts to US and Scottish universities, and funded improvements in his hometown of Dunfermline. He also endowed charitable foundations, the largest of which, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, provides $15 million annually for the advancement of knowledge. Other bodies have included the Carnegie Institute in Washington, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie UK Trust, the Peace Palace at the Hague (now the International Court of Justice) and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Carnegie Medal, an annual award for a children's book, was created in his honour in 1936 by the UK Library Association.
Grant, Ulysses S(impson) (1822–1885)
born Hiram Ulysses Grant
US Civil War general in chief for the Union and 18th president of the USA 1869–77. As a Republican president, he carried through a liberal Reconstruction policy in the South. He failed to suppress extensive political corruption within his own party and cabinet, which tarnished the reputation of his second term.
Grant was the son of an Ohio farmer. He had an unsuccessful career in the army 1839–54 and in business. On the outbreak of the Civil War he received a commission on the Mississippi front. He took command there in 1862, and by his capture of Vicksburg in 1863 brought the whole Mississippi front under Northern control. In 1864 he was made commander in chief. He slowly wore down the
Confederate General Robert E Lee's resistance, and in 1865 received his surrender at Appomattox. He was elected president in 1868 and re-elected in 1872. As president, he reformed the civil service and ratified the Treaty of Washington with the UK in 1871.
Long, Huey (Pierce) 'the Kingfish' (1893–1935)
US Democratic politician. As governor of Louisiana 1928–32 and senator for Louisiana 1932–35, he became legendary for his political rhetoric. He was popular with poor white voters for his programme of social and economic reform, which he called the 'Share Our Wealth' programme. It represented a significant challenge to F D Roosevelt's New Deal economic programme.
Long's scheme called for a massive redistribution of wealth through high inheritance taxes and confiscatory taxes on high incomes. His own extravagance – including the State Capitol building at Baton Rouge, built of bronze and marble – was widely criticized. Although he became a virtual dictator in the state, his slogan was 'Every man a king, but no man wears a crown'. He was assassinated.
Born in Winnfield, Louisiana, he graduated from Tulane University with a law degree. He was fatally shot at the capitol in Baton Rouge, one month after announcing his intention to run for the presidency.
McCarthy, Joe (Joseph Raymond) (1908–1957)
US right-wing Republican politician. His unsubstantiated claim in 1950 that the State Department had been infiltrated by communists started a wave of anticommunist hysteria, wild accusations, and blacklists, which continued until he was discredited in 1954. He was censured by the Senate for misconduct.
A lawyer, McCarthy became senator for his native Wisconsin in 1947, and in February 1950 caused a sensation by claiming to hold a list of about 200 Communist Party members working in the State Department. This was in part inspired by the Alger Hiss case. McCarthy continued a witch-hunting campaign against, among others, members of the Harry Truman administration. When he turned his attention to the army, and it was shown that he and his aides had been falsifying evidence, President Eisenhower denounced his tactics. By this time, however, many people in public life and the arts had been unofficially blacklisted as suspected communists or fellow travellers (communist sympathizers). McCarthyism came to represent the practice of using innuendo and unsubstantiated accusations against political adversaries.
Born at Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy graduated from Marquette University in 1935, and practised law in Wisconsin, becoming a circuit judge in 1939. He served in the US marines 1942–45.
Pocahontas, Matoaka (c. 1595–1617)
American Indian alleged to have saved the life of the English colonist John Smith when he was captured by her father, the Indian chief Powhatan. She was kidnapped in 1613 by an Englishman, Samuel Argall, and later married the colonist John Rolfe (1585–1622) and was entertained as a princess at the English court of James I.
Pocahontas's marriage and conversion to Christianity brought about a period of peaceful relations between American Indians and settlers. She fell ill on her journey back to Virginia; her ship docked at Gravesend, Kent, where she died and is buried. She had one son, who later returned to Virginia.
Reagan, Ronald (Wilson) (1911– )
40th president of the USA 1981–89, a Republican. He was governor of California 1966–74, and a former Hollywood actor. Reagan was a hawkish and popular president. He adopted an aggressive foreign policy in Central America, attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, and invading Grenada in 1983. In 1987, Irangate was investigated by the Tower Commission; Reagan admitted that USA–Iran negotiations had become an 'arms for hostages deal', but denied knowledge of resultant funds being illegally sent to the Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. He increased military spending (sending the national budget deficit to record levels), cut social programmes, introduced the deregulation of domestic markets, and cut taxes. His Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), announced in 1983, proved controversial owing to the cost, unfeasibility, and opposition from the USSR. He was succeeded by Vice-President George Bush.
Reagan became a Hollywood actor in 1937 and appeared in 50 films, including Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Kings Row (1942), Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), and The Killers (1964).
He joined the Republican Party in 1962, and his term as governor of California was marked by battles against student protesters. Having lost the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976 to Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford respectively, Reagan won it in 1980 and defeated President Jimmy Carter. He was wounded in an assassination attempt in 1981. The invasion of Grenada, following a coup there, generated a revival of national patriotism, and this, along with his record of tax cutting, was one of the various causes of his landslide re-election in 1984. His last years in office were dominated by friction with the USSR over the SDI, popularly called Star Wars because incoming missiles would be intercepted in space.
Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois, the son of a shoe salesman who was bankrupted during the Depression. He graduated from Eureka College, Illinois, and was a sports announcer in Davenport and Des Moines, Iowa 1932–37. As president of the Screen Actors' Guild 1947–52, he became a conservative, critical of the stifling of free enterprise by bureaucracy, and named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Following his re-election in 1984, Reagan pursued his policy of funding the SDI. He believed that this new technology would end the threat of nuclear war by making long-distance intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) obsolete, as their flight path had to be made through space. This insistence on militarizing space contributed to Reagan's failure to achieve a disarmament agreement when he met the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 and 1986. Gorbachev opposed the Star Wars initiative and claimed that it posed a major threat to world peace. However a 4% reduction in nuclear weapons was agreed in 1987.
The impact of Reagan's tough stance on negotiations with the USSR is difficult to assess. It is possible to say that he alienated an otherwise conciliatory USSR through his aggressive foreign policy, and so delayed the reductions of nuclear weapons that could have been achieved in the mid-1980s. Alternatively it could be said that Reagan's pursuit of Star Wars technology made the USSR think that it was about to lose the Cold War, as the USA would be able to destroy their nuclear threat by making their weapons obsolete. The USSR would have been unable to match US investment in SDI, as their centrally-planned communist economy was in terminal decline by the mid-1980s. The prospect of an operational Star Wars defence system meant that the USSR had to negotiate with the USA from a position of weakness. Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders had no wish to start a nuclear war, and the threat of Star Wars technology could be said to have forced them to end the Cold War.
In 1986 Reagan ordered the bombing of Tripoli, Libya, following the alleged killing of a US soldier in Berlin, Germany, by a guerrilla group funded by Libya. Reagan had become increasingly frustrated by the support that he believed Libya's leader Colonel Khaddafi was giving to international terrorism targeted on the USA and its allies. The bombing was condemned by many world powers, including the USA's allies, with only the UK, under Reagan's close friend and ally Margaret Thatcher, supporting the action.
Reagan retired from politics in 1988. In 1994 he revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and by the end of 1999 his wife Nancy reported that he was no longer able to converse. The Washington National Airport in Washington, DC, was renamed the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in his honour in February 1998. In February 2000, as Reagan celebrated his 89th birthday, Congressmen began pushing through legislation to bestow the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian award, on the
former president and his wife. In February 2001, his wife christened a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier after him.
Rosenberg
Julius (1918–1953) and Ethel Greenglass (1915–1953)
US married couple, convicted of being leaders of an atomic-espionage ring passing information from Ethel's brother via courier to the USSR. The Rosenbergs were executed after much public controversy and demonstration. They were the only Americans executed for espionage during peacetime.
Both were born in New York City; Julius owned a radio repair shop and was a member of the Communist Party. Despite an offer of clemency from the government, they both maintained their innocence right up to their executions. Other implicated Party members received long prison terms. The Cold War atmosphere was one of widespread fear of the Soviet Union, and several major spy scandals had occurred at this time. The death penalty was ruled as justified because of the danger to the USA from their actions. Recently published journals kept by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev further implicate the Rosenbergs.
Tubman, Harriet Ross (1821–1913)
born Araminta Ross
US abolitionist. Born a slave in Maryland, she escaped to Philadelphia (where slavery was outlawed) in 1849. She helped set up the Underground Railroad, a secret network of sympathizers to help slaves escape to the North and Canada. During the American Civil War (1861–65) she spied for the Union army. She spoke against slavery and for women's rights, and founded schools for emancipated slaves after the Civil War.
After escaping to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Tubman worked as a domestic servant and soon began to travel back to Maryland to help family and friends escape to freedom. She made 19 trips, freeing an estimated 300 slaves, and became known as the Moses of her people. After the Civil War she established the Harriet Tubman Home for Indigent and Aged Negroes at her house in Auburn, New York. In 1896 she was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women.
Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, and was hired out as a baby nurse when she was six. She began to be called Harriet, her mother's name, while still a child. As a teenager, she was struck on the head by a supervisor, the injury causing blackouts throughout her life. She married John Tubman, a free black, in 1845, but he refused to accompany her when she escaped. In 1869, after learning of the death of her husband, she married war veteran Nelson Davis.
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