Grant’s fortuitous move to Illinois on the eve of the election had monumental consequences, conveniently situating him in the president’s home state and overtly pro-Union northern Illinois. It also pl...
Grant roomed with Fred Dent, who also singled out Grant as the clearest headed young man I ever saw . . . He always wanted to do what was right, and we all had great respect for him. He was a singed c...
Grant deserves an honored place in American history, second only to Lincoln for what he did for the freed slaves. He got the big issues right during his presidency even if he bungled many of the small...
George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will prod...
For some days past there has been little less than a famine in the camp, Washington said in mid-February. Before winter’s end, some 2,500 men, almost a quarter of the army, perished from disease, fami...
For anyone studying Hamilton’s pay book, it would come as no surprise that he would someday emerge as a first-rate constitutional scholar, an unsurpassed treasury secretary, and the protagonist of the...
For all their fratricidal warfare, the Federalists ran a surprisingly close race for the presidency. Jefferson and Burr tied with seventy-three electoral votes apiece, while Adams and Pinckney trailed...
Finally, he flung his hat on the ground in disgust and fumed, Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?
Few figures in American History have aroused such visceral love or loathing as Alexander Hamilton.
Far from being a pro-British lackey, much less a high-level spy, Hamilton stubbornly defended U.S. interests at every turn. He was bargaining with Beckwith, not groveling. He insisted that the United...
FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR, Abraham Lincoln recognized the pivotal role of Kentucky, a centrally located buffer state between North and South. I hope to have God on my side, he admonished colleagues...
Even later, as a private citizen, he said that his own scrupulousness had prevented him from being concerned in what is termed speculation.9 This made his blindness to Duer’s shameless machinations th...
Determined not to be caught shorthanded in case of war, Hamilton supported an annual purchase of military weapons to aid the formation of arsenals.57 So vital were supplies to national security that H...
Despite Grant’s best efforts at Appomattox, the breach of the Civil War never healed but became deeply embedded in American political culture.
D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one’s resolve in the face of enemies.
Clinton represented what would become a staple of American political folklore: the local populist boss, not overly punctilious or savory yet embraced warmly by the masses as one of their own.
Both Jefferson and Adams detested people who earned a living shuffling financial paper, and when Adams launched a bitter tirade in later years against the iniquitous banking system, Jefferson agreed t...
Both Hamilton and Jefferson believed in democracy, but Hamilton tended to be more suspicious of the governed and Jefferson of the governors.
Before McHenry returned to Philadelphia, Washington slipped him a sheet naming the three men he wished to see as his major generals, listed in order: Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a...
BY 1798 the Federalist party had grown haughty by being too long in power. When a party grows strong and feels its power, it becomes intoxicated, grows presumptuous and extravagant, and breaks to piec...