Oh how blessed the young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and a beginning in life. I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and a half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties...
McDougall was a certified revolutionary hero, while the Scottish-born cashier, the punctilious and corpulent William Seton, was a Loyalist who had spent the war in the city. In a striking show of bipa...
May 1780, he had fresh cause to meditate on the failings of Congress when news came of a calamitous defeat: the British had taken Charleston, capturing an American garrison of 5,400 soldiers, includin...
Like most people, Hamilton and Adams were preternaturally sensitive to flaws in the other that they themselves possessed.
James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step in their rootless, topsy-turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, embi...
It was already an age of scientific wonders that promised to reshape economies and boost productivity. From the first steam engine that James Watt built in Great Britain in the 1760s to the hot-air ba...
It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.
It is the food of my hopes, the object of my wishes, the only enjoyment of my life - Alexander Hamilton
It is puzzling that Aaron Burr is sometimes classified among the founding fathers. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, and Hamilton all left behind papers that run to dozens of thick volu...
In his essays on the need for executive-branch vigor, Hamilton continually invoked the king of England as an example of what should be avoided, especially the monarch’s lack of accountability. Every p...
In addition to his better-known title of Father of His Country, Washington is also revered in certain circles as the Father of the American Mule.
In a country riven by quarrels, Hamilton produced a vision of harmonious parts. Agriculture and commerce were mutually beneficial. North and south, the western frontier and the eastern seaboard, enjoy...
In March 1780, Congress tried to restore monetary order by issuing one new dollar in exchange for forty old ones, a move that wiped out the savings of many Americans.
If those who ‘gain all they can’ and ‘save all they can,’ will likewise ‘give all they can,’ then the more they will grow in grace.
If the party elected Burr, it would be exposed to the disgrace of a defeat in an attempt to elevate to the first place in the government one of the worst men in the community.14 Hamilton had never spo...
How to remedy this want of confidence? Hamilton submitted a twelve-point program, a fully realized vision of a financial system that reflected sustained thinking. Congress should create a central bank...
Henceforth he would project himself into opponents’ minds and comprehend their fears and anxieties instead of blowing them up into all-powerful bugaboos, giving him courage when others quailed.
He favored granting Congress supreme power in war, peace, trade, finance, and foreign affairs.
He endorsed the dollar as the basic currency, divided into smaller coins on a decimal basis. Because many Americans still bartered, Hamilton wanted to encourage the use of coins. As part of his campai...
He downplayed the significance of technical knowledge in business. I never felt the need of scientific knowledge, have never felt it. A young man who wants to succeed in business does not require chem...