Plebiscite on the American treaty and resorted to strong-arm
Panegyric
Old Abe is through with his next four years, we will put him [i.e., Grant]
Man who felt no need to placate Thomas Jefferson or James Madison had to grovel before the raffish James Reynolds, whom he later described bitterly as an obscure, unimportant, and profligate man.
Leitmotif
Its chief draftsman, Morris shrank the original twenty-three articles to seven and wrote the great preamble with its ringing opening, We the People of the United States. Paying tribute to Morris’s cra...
He worried that a separate senate, elected solely by propertied voters, will degenerate into a body purely aristocratical.
He elaborated the fashionable argument that the colonies owed their allegiance to the British king, not to Parliament. The point was critical, for if the colonies were linked only to the king, they co...
Early July 1792, it was clear that George Washington would not have the option of silence or inaction in stemming the feud between Hamilton and Jefferson. He had probably waited too long to assert con...
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 $...
Dishclout
Chaste and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness),
Beginning
Arguing for a new trial, Hamilton highlighted the principle at stake, the protection of a free press: The liberty of the press consists, in my idea, in publishing the truth from good motives and for j...
Adumbrate a
A striking example of political gaucheness, Adams then nominated Washington to command the new army before he had a chance to register an opinion. On July 3, the Senate hastily approved the choice.
Would a treaty ratified by Congress trump state law? Could the judiciary override the legislature? And would America function as a true country or a loose federation of states? Hamilton left no doubt...
When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.
We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned...
Washington’s decision to forgo a third term was momentous. He wasn’t bound by term limits, and many Americans expected him to serve for life. He surrendered power in a world where leaders had always g...