Two of my favorite historical Americans are Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln.
Mark Twain is my favorite author of all time in any genre. His command of the writer's craft was (and is) unparalleled and his ability to use the English language in very unique and surprising ways is guaranteed to make me stop and think (or laugh out loud) every few paragraphs.
There is certainly a lot to admire about Lincoln - absolutely the perfect leader at the right time for the nation's most desperate post-Revolution era. But actually a lot of my admiration stems from the same roots as Twain. The man had an uncanny, natural way to state something in a few words that had a meaning and color far beyond his sparse choice of words. The Gettysburg Address is probably the best known example of that, but I recently came across another.
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