The people whose portraits appear in this book were Brady's contempories. They represent a small, if select, cross-section of American life as it was in the mid-1800s. It was an era of stress and of power. The careers of these people intertwined, one reacting upon another, in the newspapers, on the stage, in the pulpit, on the battlefield, in the halls of Congress. Here is Brady's world, and it is the world of our heritage.