May 12, 1784, the state legislature passed a law depriving most Loyalists of the vote for the next two years.
It was between rival economic systems, each of which was aimed at generating its own men of property.13 In fact, the Federalist ranks had plenty of self-made lawyers like Hamilton, while the Republica...
In his response to Livingston, Hamilton made clear that some family members thought he was excessively preoccupied by the opposite sex. I exercise [my pen] at the [risk] of being anathematized by grav...
In early July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York fell to the British, prompting King George III to clap his hands and exclaim, I have beat them! Beat all the Americans.58 It was a potential ca...
In a mood of mounting anger, Grant was not content to chastise Jewish traders: he wanted to banish all Jews. On December 17, he issued the most egregious decision of his career. General Orders No. 11...
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...
His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indis...
Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.
Hamilton then picked up a slim volume on the table and turned it over in his hands. Ah, this is the constitution, he said. Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instr...
Hamilton probably spent little more than two years at King’s and never formally graduated due to the outbreak of the Revolution. By April 6, 1776, King’s College, tarred by its earlier association wit...
Hamilton had championed a humane, enlightened policy toward the Indians. When real-estate speculators had wanted to banish them from western New York, he warned Governor Clinton that the Indians’ frie...
Hamilton cast himself as a warm advocate for limited monarchy and an unfeigned well-wisher to the present royal family.
Fearful of being overshadowed by an expanding Republican slave empire in the west, some New England Federalists began to talk of secession from the union. Such plans formed part of the context for the...
Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare...
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.
Clinton epitomized the flaws of the old confederation, and he denounced the pernicious intrigues of a man high in office to preserve power and emolument to himself at the expense of the union, the pea...
Wanted England to heed the peace treaty and relinquish its western forts in the Ohio River valley. The one place where Hamilton deviated from official policy was in applauding Britain’s refusal to han...
The Ku Klux Klan Act. He had planned a California trip that spring, but canceled it in the belief that he couldn’t sidestep this historic moment. The strong new measure laid down criminal penalties fo...
Mordant
Laird