America, he argued, did not need to triumph decisively over the heavily taxed British: a war of attrition that eroded British credit would nicely do the trick. All the patriots had to do was plant dou...
Almost two thousand New Yorkers died, and a fresh potter’s field was consecrated in what is now Greenwich Village.
After the death of John Laurens, Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it.
After Hamilton and his family left Philadelphia in mid-February 1795, they rented lodgings in New York City for several days before proceeding to the Schuyler residence in Albany for a long-overdue re...
Adams made a conciliatory overture and announced plans to dispatch a diplomatic mission to Paris. The three-man delegation was to include two southern Federalists, John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth...
Adams had spent most of his vice presidency exiled in the Senate, casting a record thirty-one tiebreaking votes. Of the number-two post, he said wearily but indelibly that it was the most insignifican...
Actually, Hamilton's exploding cannon may have killed as many as six of his men and wounded four or five others. Some critics blamed inadequate training for the mishap, but the general dissipation of...
Abigail Adams, who did not set sail until November, seemed miffed by the enforced southward shift, swearing that she would try to enjoy Philadelphia but that when all is done it will not be Broadway.
A southerner by choice, Akerman found it sobering to verify the depth of Klan penetration in the region, which revealed a perversion of moral sentiment among the Southern whites which bodes ill to tha...
A prudent silence will frequently be taken for wisdom and a sentence or two cautiously thrown in will sometimes gain the palm of knowledge, while a man well informed but indiscreet and unreserved will...
A master legislative tactician, Madison was now recognized as the first opposition leader in House history and had most of the south lined up solidly behind him.
A central tenet of the American Revolution had been that a corrupt British ministry had suborned Parliament through patronage and pensions and used the resulting excessive influence to tax the colonis...
The last analysis, the durable bond formed between Hamilton and Washington during the Revolution was based less on personal intimacy than on shared experiences of danger and despair and common hopes f...
That countries follow their interests, not their sympathies—was engraved in Hamilton’s memory, and he often reminded Jeffersonians later on that the French had fought for their own selfish purposes.
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Pernicious;
For he had the attorney’s ability to make the best case for an imperfect client. He was not alone in making this transition: all the delegates at Philadelphia had adopted the final document in a spiri...
Demagogue.
Currency, so he wouldn’t be seen as questioning American credit, but by the summer of 1779 he could no longer afford these massive losses and discontinued the practice. The previous winter Washington...
With the Neutrality Proclamation, Hamilton continued to define his views on American foreign policy: that it should be based on self-interest, not emotional attachment; that the supposed altruism of n...