The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his.
The funeral was a vast, elaborate affair, befitting a monarch or head of state, in marked contrast to the essential simplicity of the man honored. The grandeur emphasized the central place that Grant...
The Federalist Papers ran to eighty-five essays, with fifty-one attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and only five to Jay.
Sometime in March 1804, Hamilton dined in Albany at the home of Judge John Tayler, a Republican merchant and former state assemblyman who was working for the election of Morgan Lewis. Both Judge Tayle...
So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind us no l...
Poison-pen artists on both sides wrote vitriolic essays that were overtly partisan, often paid scant heed to accuracy, and sought a visceral impact. The
Perhaps most problematic was the controversial bargain that Alexander Hamilton had struck with the Constitution, dedicating his life to what he deemed a flawed document.
One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, We forgot.
On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early’s men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, a...
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, 1796, Federalists eked out a razor-thin victory of fifty-one to forty-eight in the House to make money available for the Jay Treaty.
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.
McKean of Pennsylvania swore
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...
John Adams summed up the case succinctly: In general, our generals have been outgeneralled.
It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.
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...