After all, the devil’s work was now sprinkled with holy water.
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...
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 group of Wall Street admirers created for Grant a $250,000 Presidential Retiring Fund, which would not only yield $15,000 in annual interest but reinforce his image as overly beholden to the rich. T...
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...
55 This thirty-five-page essay had been written in two or three weeks by Hamilton, as he entered the fray with all the grandiloquence and learning at his disposal. He showed himself proficient at eleg...
1783, General Henry Knox proposed creation of the Society of the
1755, Knox decided to propagate the gospel and was sent
A sinking fund is a repository, set up apart from the general budget, for revenues to pay off debt.) It would sequester revenues from the sudden whims of grasping politicians who might want to raid th...
Task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.
Shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now; let me not defer it nor neglect it, for I shall not pass t...
Scion of a blue-ribbon Scottish family: The
Livelihood.58 Grant promised to send the Oglala Sioux large herds of sheep and cattle for raising stock and to build schools that would teach them English. For the Indians, however, this didn’t mean s...
[Philip's death was] beyond comparison the most afflicting of my life.... He was truly a fine youth. But why should I repine? It was the will of heaven and he is now out of the reach of the seductions...
With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works than by my expressions.
Walt Whitman, who ardently followed the Overland Campaign: When did [Grant] ever turn back? He was not that sort; he could no more turn back than time! . . . Grant was one of the inevitables; he alway...
Unfortunately, Greene’s personal finances were in no less disorderly a state than those of the country at large: he had accumulated such heavy debts guaranteeing contracts for the southern army that i...
To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules.
Thus, Hamilton triumphed posthumously over Burr, converting the latter’s victory at Weehawken into his political coup de grâce. Burr’s reputation perished along with Hamilton, exactly as Hamilton had...
Throughout his life, Rockefeller was wounded deeply by accusations that he was a cold, malignant personality.