On May 12, a thousand New Yorkers cheered from the docks as Jay sailed to England, hoping to avert war.
On January 21, 1793, more grisly events forced a reappraisal of the notion that the French Revolution was a romantic Gallic variant of the American Revolution. Louis XVI—who had aided the American Rev...
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.
Now, for reasons both symbolic and practical, the crowd pulled George III down from his pedestal, decapitating him in the process. The four thousand pounds of gilded lead was rushed off to Litchfield,...
Noah Webster contended that Hamilton’s ambition, pride, and overbearing temper had destined him to be the evil genius of this country.
Like the Reynolds pamphlet, these clandestine messages signal a further deterioration in Hamilton’s judgment once he no longer worked under Washington’s wise auspices and was left purely to his own de...
It now seemed futile to try to halt a British advance upon the capital.
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...
It is easy to snicker at such deceit and conclude that Hamilton faked all emotion for his wife, but this would belie the otherwise exemplary nature of their marriage. Eliza Hamilton never expressed an...
In the felicitous words of one early Burr biographer, The Clintons had power, the Livingstons had numbers, and the Schuylers had Hamilton.
In a blatant affront to the almighty Livingstons, Hamilton threw his weight behind his thirty-four-year-old friend Rufus King, a handsome, Harvard-educated lawyer from New England who had recently mov...
If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.
How exactly the debt should be funded was to be the most inflammatory political issue. During the Revolution, many affluent citizens had invested in bonds, and many war veterans had been paid with IOU...
His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom...
His faculties stayed intact until about fifteen minutes before the end. Then, at 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, July 12, 1804, thirty-one hours after the duel, forty-nine-year-old Alexander Hamilton died gent...
His eloquence . . . seemed to require opposition to give it its full force.
He was especially intent that the federal judiciary check any legislative abuses. In number 78, Hamilton introduced an essential concept, never made explicit in the Constitution: that the Supreme Cour...
He saw that while he had much to lose by refraining from the duel, he had precious little to gain by facing it: I shall hazard much and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of the interview. 72 Why...
He saw that inflation had originated with wartime shortages, which had led, in turn, to the waning value of money. Over time, the inflation had acquired a self-reinforcing momentum. Economic fundament...
He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth and breeding.