x, this is your kind of list.
As for industrialists, I’d add to consideration J.P. Morgan, or Andrew Carnegie. I’m also thinking Billy Durant over Henry Ford. And what about Milton Friedman? Or Isaac Singer any of the various inventors and disseminators of the sewing machine. Or Hiran Moore and/or Cyrus McCormick.
All these folks made life better for all Americans. And they made their fortunes on the great American empowerment of the individual. Truly, the great American hero is the everyman. As such, I nominate Alexis de Toqcueville for being the best to articultate it.
Usually, though, inventors are one-shot guys. Edison makes the list because he come up with so many things. Bell and Morse, Singer and McCormick just didn't get that second brainstorm.
Henry Ford was a controversial figure because of some of his opinions, but I'd put him on the list. At Ford he was the guy who had responsibility for everything. With GM, you've got Durant and Sloan as important figures, though you'd know better than me who was the true mastermind. Right now anyway, GM stock is probably low among historians as well as on the stock exchange.
The country alternates between Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian periods. There was a long period of Jefferson worship that began with Woodrow Wilson, took off with the Depression and FDR and was sustained by Kennedy and Reagan. It started when Southern Democrats came to power in Washington, and endured because Republicans valued Jefferson's limited government stand.
Since the 1990s, Jefferson's reputation declined, due first to the Sally Hemmings story and the things Jefferson wrote about race and about the French Revolution. Then 9/11 and a need for stronger defense measures. Also, the rise of a Democratic Party that doesn't play the Southern card. And now a new turn toward big government that doesn't need the fig leaf of Jeffersonian rhetoric.
I'm glad that Hamilton's finally getting his due after more than a century. But I suspect that, at least among conservatives things are going to change again. When one party embraces bigger government, the other usually falls back on Jefferson. For me personally, reading Hamiltonian conservative Richard Brookhiser's recent books was a major disappointment. Whether it's What Would the Founders Do? or Right Time, Right Place the guy literally doesn't have much to say about politics or government. Maybe I shouldn't hold it against Hamilton, but there it is.
I also took a look at a new book on Marshall, The Activist. Not a good read, but an interesting thesis: Marshall basically created judicial review as a part of the Constitution. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing in itself -- somebody had to decide the hard questions -- but there weren't sufficient checks on the Supreme Court to match those on other branches, so the courts became potentially a more dangerous branch of government than the founders intended.
Have a happy Fourth!