Hamilton opposed the vogue for state banks that proliferated in the 1790s, less from narrow political motives than from a fear that competition among banks would dilute credit standards and invite imp...
Hamilton now believed that his great opportunities lay behind him. On December 1, 1794, the day he returned to Philadelphia, he told Washington that he would surrender his Treasury post in late Januar...
Hamilton had analyzed his own rejection thus: I am a stranger in this country. I have no property here, no connections. If I have talents and integrity…these are justly deemed very spurious titles in...
Hamilton continued to stew about the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified belatedly by the last state on February 27, 1781. Hamilton thought this loose framework a prescription for rigor...
Hamilton always expressed himself frankly, no matter what the consequences.
Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many.
Even as a raw country boy, he allowed himself no oath stronger than Thunder and Lightning
Early disappointments with people left Washington with a residual cynicism that was to jibe well with Hamilton’s views.
Despite Grant’s best efforts at Appomattox, the breach of the Civil War never healed but became deeply embedded in American political culture.
December 14, 1790, one day after he jolted Congress with his call for an excise tax on liquor, Alexander Hamilton submitted another trailblazing report, this one a clarion call to charter America’s fi...
Clearly, this ambivalent twenty-year-old favored the Revolution but also worried about the long-term effect of habitual disorder, especially among the uneducated masses. Hamilton lacked the temperamen...
By spotlighting the issue of intent, Hamilton identified the criteria for libel that still hold sway in America today: that the writing in question must be false, defamatory, and malicious.
Both Hamilton and Jefferson believed in democracy, but Hamilton tended to be more suspicious of the governed and Jefferson of the governors. A strange blend of dreamy idealist and manipulative politic...
Both Grant and Sherman were damaged souls who would redeem tarnished reputations in the brutal crucible of war.
As we shall see, Burke stewed about the episode and awaited a strategic moment to retaliate. He and other southerners perhaps also took umbrage at Hamilton’s frank statement that patriotic operations...
As the sole clergyman, Knox resided in a settlement known as the Bottom, sunk in the elevated crater of an extinct volcano; it could be reached only by climbing up a stony path. Knox
Although scheduled to start in early March, the House and Senate took more than a month to muster quorums. In a significant piece of symbolism, the House met on the ground floor of Federal Hall and pr...
Alexander McDougall, John Lamb, Marinus Willett, and other chieftains of the Sons of Liberty.
Ah, this is the constitution, he said. Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happines...
Again and again in his career, Hamilton committed the same political error: he never knew when to stop, and the resulting excesses led him into irremediable indiscretions.