Basis. Because many Americans still bartered, Hamilton wanted to encourage the use of coins. As part of his campaign to foster a market economy, Hamilton suggested introducing a wide variety of coins,...
While Hamilton’s Senate would be chosen for life by electors, his House of Representatives, by contrast, was exceedingly democratic, chosen directly by universal male suffrage every three years.
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 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 must have seen that Hamilton, for all his brains and daring, sometimes lacked judgment and had to be supervised carefully.
Washington had several surrogate sons during the Revolution, most notably the marquis de Lafayette, and he often referred to Hamilton as my boy.
Washington departed the planet as admirably as he had inhabited it. He had long hated slavery, even though he had profited from it. Now, in his will, he stipulated that his slaves should be emancipate...
Washington contrived a statesmanlike compromise between Hamilton’s truculence and Randolph’s civility. He issued a proclamation telling the insurgents to desist by September 1, or the government would...
To understand Hamiliton’s productivity, it is important to note that virtually all of his important work was journalism, prompted by topical issues and written in the midst of controversy.
To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules.
To Jefferson we owe the self-congratulatory language of Fourth of July oratory, the evangelical conviction that America serves as a beacon to all humanity. Jefferson told John Dickinson, Our revolutio...
This was Alexander Hamilton’s recurring nightmare: an electoral deal struck between Virginia and New York Republicans.
This falling-out was to be more than personal, for the rift between Hamilton and Madison precipitated the start of the two-party system in America. The funding debate shattered the short-lived politic...
Thinking the move suicidal, Grant believed the South would stop short of the awful leap of secession.41
They profess to aim only at a reform of the constitution and of certain abuses in the public administration, but an abolition of debts public and private and a new division of property are strongly su...
There does not exist a more villainous calumniator or incendiary, he wrote.86
Their strategy was to make clients feel accepted into a private club, as if a Morgan account were a membership card to the aristocracy.
The next incendiary issue was that some debt was owed by the thirteen states, some by the federal government. Hamilton decided to consolidate all the debt into a single form: federal debt.
The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness.7