Out of all the titans in American history -- Presidents and generals, inventors and entrepreneurs, reformers and revolutionaries -- have you ever wondered who the left thinks the best of the best were? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that too and that's why we decided to email more than a 130 left-of-center bloggers to get their opinions. Representatives from the following 28 blogs responded...

The Agonist, Alas A Blog, Brief Intelligence, The Daily Dystopian, The Daily Rant, Scoobie Davis, Electrolite, Happy Furry Puppy Story Time With Norbizness, Lean Left, Mark Kleiman, Mac-a-ro-nies, The Mad Prophet, MaxSpeak Weblog, Pacific Views, Pen-Elayne on the Web, Political Aims, Public Nuisance, The Neal Pollack Invasion, Rashomon, The Rational Radical's Weblog, Doc Searls, Sick Of Bush, Silt, Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, Smythe's World, Eve Tushnet, Unmedia (***10/30/03 -- One blog that was on this list is now saying that they didn't participate. Because I no longer have the original survey responses, there is no way for me to doublecheck whether they sent in a list or not. So since I cannot discount the possibility that I copied and pasted the wrong blog off of the list of left-wing blogs I was using to help prepare this article, I am removing that blog from the list.***)

All bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that this was a fairly liberal group of bloggers and their selections reflected that. Well that's enough about the rules -- without further adieu, the greatest figures in American history according to the left are as follows (with the number of votes following each selection)...

Honorable Mentions: Malcolm X (4), Lucy Stone (4), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (4), Rosa Parks (4), Albert Einstein (4), Eugene V. Debs (4), Jane Addams (4)

20) Sojourner Truth (5)
20) George C. Marshall (5)
20) Mother Jones (5)
20) Lyndon B. Johnson (5)
20) Ulysses S. Grant(5)
16) Margaret Sanger (6)
16) Jonas Salk (6)
16) Cesar Chavez (6)
16) Dorothy Day (6)
15) Teddy Roosevelt (7)
14) Eleanor Roosevelt (8)
11) Harriet Tubman (9)
11) James Madison (9)
11) Thomas Edison (9)
9) Thomas Paine (10)
9) Susan B. Anthony (10)
7) George Washington (11)
7) Mark Twain (11)
5) Benjamin Franklin (14)
5) Frederick Douglass (14)
4) Thomas Jefferson (18)
3) Abraham Lincoln (19)
2) Franklin D. Roosevelt (20)
1) Martin Luther King (22)

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