Noisome
Mordant
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
He worried that a separate senate, elected solely by propertied voters, will degenerate into a body purely aristocratical.
Echo John Dickinson, who had written that the essential rights to happiness are bestowed by God, not man. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals.64 Hamilton added beauty and rhythm to the...
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...
Dishclout
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.
When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, slaves constituted 40 percent of the population of his home state, Virginia.
Washington’s hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later li...
Washington gave orders to construct six frigates—the birth of the U.S. Navy—and Hamilton negotiated contracts for many naval components: cannon, shot and shells, iron ballast, sailcloth, live oak and...
This treasured gift retained a secret meaning for Eliza, for it had been a tacit gesture of solidarity from Washington when her husband was ensnared in the first major sex scandal in American history....
There are some people whom the Lord Almighty cannot save, he later said wearily of the Oil Creek refiners. They don’t want to be saved. They want to go on and serve the devil and keep on in their wick...
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...
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...