On July 4, in his sixth Continentalist essay, Hamilton, with a nod to Morris, applauded the appointment of federal customs and tax collectors to create in the interior of each state a mass of influenc...
On July 16, the thick gloom finally lifted at Philadelphia when delegates agreed to a grand bargain, the so-called Connecticut Compromise, proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut and others. The majo...
On December 5, 1792, members of the electoral college assembled in their respective states. The outcome gratified Hamilton and corresponded with his expectations. Washington was chosen unanimously as...
No longer regarded as the Federalist leader, he had acquired the uncomfortable status of a glorified has-been. He still had a law office in lower Manhattan—in 1803, he moved it from 69 Stone Street to...
Mr. Adams is vain, suspicious, and stubborn, of an excessive self-regard, taking counsel with nobody.9 Jefferson predicted to Létombe that Adams would last only one term and urged the French to invade...
Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the U[nited] States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself. And contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from t...
Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by their passion,
Many things beyond the absence of Laurens troubled Hamilton that summer, especially the shortsighted failure of the states to grant mandatory taxing power to Congress in the Articles of Confederation,...
Many observers were disturbed by all the uniformed men striding the White House corridors. In a broad-brush indictment, Charles Sumner disapproved of the way the White House assumed the character of m...
Like her youngest son, Julia administered stern lectures on republican virtue. Before supper, two noblewomen stopped by to school her in palace etiquette. Mrs. Grant, one said, I hope you will not fee...
Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.
It was not until February 11, 1801, that votes cast by presidential electors in the various states were actually opened in the Senate chamber, confirming what was already common knowledge: that Jeffer...
It speaks volumes about the prevalent detestation of banks that Hamilton dwelled so long on combating myths against them. For example, he had to contest that banks would invariably engender speculativ...
It quickly became apparent that a new president could not be named because three of the contested states with warring governments—South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—filed one set of election certi...
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me de...
In urging the court to invalidate the Trespass Act, Hamilton expounded the all-important doctrine of judicial review—the notion that high courts had a right to scrutinize laws and if necessary declare...
In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes. The same state of the passions which fits the multitud...
In theory, the convention had a mandate only to revise the Articles of Confederation. Any delegates who took this circumscribed mission at face value were soon rudely disabused. On May 30, Edmund Rand...
In retrospect, it was clear that he had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior who excelled in bare-knuckled controversy.
In retirement, Adams mused that if Burr had become a brigadier general in 1798, it might have tethered him to the Federalists and assured his own reelection in 1800. Indeed, Adams was right in one res...