Cettie was equally vigilant. When the children clamored for bicycles, John suggested buying one for each child. No, said Cettie, we will buy just one for all of them. But, my dear, John protested, tri...
Callender denied the authenticity of Maria Reynolds’s billets-doux to Hamilton and conjectured that Hamilton had forged them, filling them with spelling errors to make them seem plausible. Quite under...
By the time the three Americans showed up in Paris, Napoleon had crushed the Austrian army in Italy. Then, in early September, the Directory staged a veritable coup d’état, arresting and deporting sco...
By the summer of 1791, after his victories in his skirmishes with Jefferson and Madison over public credit, assumption, and a central bank, Hamilton had attained the summit of his power. Such stellar...
By now, monarchy and aristocracy were standard code words for Hamilton and the Federalists.
Both Hamilton and Madison were rational men who assumed that people often acted irrationally because of ambition and avarice. Madison wrote, If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Beckley had an unslakable thirst for political intelligence. Benjamin Rush said of Beckley that he possesses a fund of information about men and things and, what is more in favor of his principles, he...
Bankrupt when Hamilton took office, the United States now enjoyed a credit rating equal to that of any European nation. He had laid the groundwork for both liberal democracy and capitalism and helped...
At the time, Charles Sumner still chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and made preposterous demands upon the English. Not only did he want all of Canada but a total British withdrawal from...
At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made a cold chill run down his spine, Rockefeller late...
As a West Point graduate, Grant had enjoyed an insider’s knowledge of military personnel during the war, but as a Washington outsider, he needed the valuable advice of seasoned professionals about app...
Around this time, a young man named Samuel Slater slipped through the tight protective net thrown by British authorities around their textile business. As a former apprentice to Sir Richard Arkwright,...
Around this time, Mark Twain belonged to a small, irregular Confederate company and later claimed for comic effect that he had been pursued by Grant’s troops. As he said facetiously, I did not know th...
Around this time he performed a ceremony that he had contemplated for some time. He asked Fred to compose a letter requesting a future president of the United States to appoint his grandson Ulysses (F...
Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant’s presidency. It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia. The Klan’s ruthless reign is a dark, buried cha...
America. During the war, the New York legislature had passed a series of laws that stripped Tories of their properties and privileges. The 1779 Confiscation Act provided for the seizure of Tory estate...
Also, by having autonomous conventions approve the Constitution, the new republic would derive its legitimacy not from the statehouses but directly from the citizenry, enabling federal law to supersed...
All the patriots had to do was plant doubts among Britain’s creditors about the war’s outcome. By stopping the progress of their conquests and reducing them to an unmeaning and disgraceful defensive,...
Alexander McDougall, Nathanael Greene, Lord Stirling, and Washington
Alexander Hamilton may have been musing upon his mother's marriage to Lavien when he later observed, 'Tis a very good thing when their stars unite two people who are fit for each other, who have souls...