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...
From the outset, the young Hamilton had phenomenal stamina for sustained work: ambitious, orphaned boys do not enjoy the option of idleness.
Four Millions of people heretofore declared by the highest tribunal in the land, not citizens of the United States, nor eligible to become so, voters in every part of the land, the right not to be abr...
For this reason, I have stressed his evangelical Baptism as the passkey that unlocks many mysteries of his life.
For the remainder of the gubernatorial campaign, Hamilton issued open letters to the electorate, and at Clinton campaign rallies his essays were hurled under the table as marks of contempt. In shaping...
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...
Few figures in American History have aroused such visceral love or loathing as Alexander Hamilton.
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...
England refused to acknowledge the traditional doctrine free ships make free goods—i.e., that neutral vessels had a right to carry all cargo save munitions and enter the ports of belligerent countries...
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...
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.
Consequential to the election outcome were the many private contacts in the capital between southern Democrats and Hayes’s northern Republican supporters. At Wormley’s Hotel on February 26, five Hayes...
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.
Citing private reasons—Morris was already lurching down a long, slippery path that led to bankruptcy and debtors’ prison—Morris politely declined the offer.