The further one digs into the Phocion essays, the more apparent it becomes that Hamilton was engaging in devious manipulation of the southern vote. He was trying to turn southern slaveholders against...
Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession.
Not only had Burr’s plan failed to provide pure water but it had thwarted other sound plans afoot, including those for a municipal water company.
Partly because his life ended before the age of 50, Hamilton was defined by the other founding fathers, and he managed, with amazing consistency, to alienate most of them.
Philadelphia was a cosmopolitan city, praised by a highborn British visitor as one of the wonders of the world, the first town in America, and one that bids fair to rival almost any in Europe.27 Large...
Dishclout
On April 30, 1781, Hamilton sent a marathon letter to Morris—it runs to thirty-one printed pages—that set forth a full-fledged system for shoring up American credit and creating a national bank.
Surcease
I can bear to hear of imputed or real errors. The man who wishes to stand well in the opinion of others must do this, because he is thereby enabled to correct his faults or remove the prejudices which...
Duration by Britain’s treacherous support for the Confederacy.43 Not simply wanting compensation for destroyed American vessels, he added a still more explosive demand: that Britain pay a staggering $...
Appearances, not reality, ruled in politics, he
It now seemed futile to try to halt a British advance upon the capital.
Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called factions and associated with parochial self-interest.
The more I see, the more I find reason for those who love this country to weep over its blindness, Hamilton wrote.14 He recoiled at the cowardice and selfishness he saw rampant in the New York legisla...
Congress was chased like a covey of partridges from Philadelphia to Trenton, from Trenton to Lancaster, Adams wrote with his usual gift for evocative language.
The trial wasn’t the finest hour of American justice as the treatment of the prisoners seemed medieval in its barbarism. Almost all of the male prisoners were dragged into the courtroom with linen mas...
The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.
It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man’s honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who en...
The first Publius letter pointed out that greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of...
Whatever his disappointments, Hamilton, forty, must have left Philadelphia with an immense feeling of accomplishment. The Whiskey Rebellion had been suppressed, the country's finances flourished, and...
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