Justice, and Samuel, a plantation owner, also owned nearby houses.
It is a melancholy truth that the behaviour of many among us might serve as the severest satire upon the [human] species. It has been a compound of inconsistency, falsehood, cowardice, selfishness and...
His view that in framing a government every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in all his actions but private interests. The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—...
His optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature.
Greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind.
Equaled. If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraft.
Elite pedigree on both sides of his family, Jefferson was anything but common. His father, Peter, was a tobacco planter, a judge of the court of chancery, and a member of the Virginia House of Burgess...
Echo John Dickinson, who had written that the essential rights to happiness are bestowed by God, not man. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals.64 Hamilton added beauty and rhythm to the...
Best government posture toward religion was one of passive tolerance, not active promotion of an established church.
Avowed preference for an elite based on merit was misconstrued by enemies into a secret adoration of aristocracy.
Without Washington’s guidance or public responsibility, he had again revealed a blazing, ungovernable temper that was unworthy of him and rendered him less effective. He also revealed anew that the ma...
With an exalted sense of his place in history, he viewed himself as a potential savior of the republic. He once told a friend, Perhaps my sensibility is the effect of an exaggerated estimate of my ser...
When the XYZ papers were published, they proved a bonanza for the Federalists, and John Adams attained the zenith of his popularity as president.
When Grant made Edward S. Salomon governor of the Washington Territory, it was the first time an American Jew had occupied a gubernatorial post. (When Salomon proved corrupt, Grant handled his case le...
Whatever Hoar’s injury, he departed in gentlemanly fashion, sending Grant a gracious farewell note. In private, however, he broadcast his anger and wished the government might be destroyed.
What pretty much guaranteed that Johnson would side with white supremacists was his benighted view of black people. No American president has ever held such openly racist views. This is a country for...
What makes Flagler’s ethics consequential for Rockefeller’s career was that he was the mastermind of many negotiations with the railroads—the single most controversial aspect of Standard Oil history.
What a world of scarred emotion and secret grief Alexander Hamilton bore with him on the boat to Boston. He took his unhappy boyhood, tucked it away in a mental closet, and never opened the door again...
Washington was taciturn, once advising his adopted grandson, It is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends.
Washington had several surrogate sons during the Revolution, most notably the marquis de Lafayette, and he often referred to Hamilton as my boy.