Excerpt from A Conspectus of American Biography: Being an Analytical Summary of American History and Biography, Containing Also the Complete Indexes of the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography The idea of such a compilation grew out of the preparation of The National Cyclopedia of American Biography, when it was determined that all such official names of national standing should have a biography in a publication claiming to be national in its scope, and.when it was discovered how few such records of names were available to the general public, and how wofully inaccurate and unreliable even these few records proved to be. The completeness and originality of these Lists and Statistics are the excuse for issuing them in a separate volume. In this busy age of specialization and systetnization, the utility of the reference book is without question, and it is expected that this Conspectus will supply a long-needed want in the bibliography of American History and Biography. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.