The British were unhinged by the colonists' unorthodox fighting style and shocking failure to abide by gentlemanly rules of engagement. One scandalized British soldier complained that the American rif...
Adumbrate a plan that did not reflect popular opinion.
Hamilton wanted his central bank to be profitable enough to attract private investors while serving the public interest. He knew the composition of its board would be an inflammatory issue. Directors...
By 1792, both political parties saw their opponents as mortal threats to the heritage of the Revolution. But the special mixture of idealism and vituperation also stemmed from the experiences of the f...
Adumbrate a plan
No etiquette yet defined civilized behavior between the parties.
Errors once discovered are more than half amended,
A face so broad and ruddy that he was dubbed Bacon Face.
The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividi...
As his life steadily unraveled, he pawned his gold watch and chain for $20 on December 23, 1857, to purchase Christmas presents for his children—perhaps the symbolic nadir of his life.
And shall we at last become the victims of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it, Heaven." Washington himself could be a hard driving businessman, yet he found the rapacity of many vendors uncons...
The public has lost faith in the ability of Social Security and Medicare to provide for old age. They've lost faith in the banking system and in conventional medical insurance.
The immorality of slavery became patently clear that spring. He had acquired from Colonel Dent the mulatto slave named William Jones who had worked on Dent’s farm and was now thirty-five years old. It...
A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.
Only a free press could check abuses of executive power, Hamilton asserted.
He became known for breaking in wild horses for local farmers, a sight that drew admiring spectators to the village square. He tamed even the most refractory horses through a fine sensitivity to their...
Hamilton, the human word machine,
Hamilton dreaded parties as the most fatal disease of popular governments and hoped America could dispense with such groups.7 James Kent later wrote, Hamilton said in The Federalist, in his speeches,...
Burr, His manner was patronizing. . . . As he revealed himself to my moral sense, I saw he was destitute of any fixed principles.
April 1776, Benjamin Franklin expressed pleasure with the ease and affability with which we were treated and the lively behaviour of the young ladies. 9