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 extra
Hamilton did not think Burr would be a harmless, lackadaisical president. He is sanguine enough to hope everything, daring enough to attempt everything, wicked enough to scruple nothing, Hamilton told...
Hamilton did not know it, but he just wrote himself out of poverty.
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 and his men ran so fast that they almost overtook the sappers, who were snapping off the edges of the sharpened tree branches and opening a breach through which the infantry rushed. Hamilton,...
Had Napoleon been thoroughly unselfish, Grant suggested, he would have been the greatest man in history, such was his military genius. When a young woman on board asked Grant to name the two figures h...
Gordian knot
For this boy destined to be the world’s greatest heir, money was so omnipresent as to be invisible—something there, like air or food or any other element, he later said—yet it was never easily attaina...
For Hamilton, the federal government had a right to stimulate business and also, when necessary, to restrain it. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has observed, Hamilton’s enthusiasm over the dynamics of in...
But who would direct this mysterious bastion of money? Its ten million dollars in capital would be several times larger than the combined capital of all existing banks, eclipsing anything ever seen in...
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...
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...
A spirit of warm and high resentment against the rulers of France has suddenly burst forth in every part of the United States.26 Congress rushed through a program for fortifying eastern seaports and a...
The author refers to Washington as Hamilton’s immaculate daddy,
Something akin to chief of staff, he rode with the general in combat, cantered off on diplomatic missions, dealt with bullheaded generals, sorted through intelligence, interrogated deserters, and nego...
Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power. . . . [T]he former rather than the latter is apparently most to be apprehended by the United States.