McKean of Pennsylvania swore
Madison wrote, If men were angels, no government would be necessary.32 The two shared a grim vision of the human condition, even if Hamilton’s had the blacker tinge. They both wanted to erect barriers...
Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.
Klan violence was unquestionably the worst outbreak of domestic terrorism in American history and Grant dealt with it aggressively, using all the instruments at his disposal. To strengthen the federal...
Jefferson recorded the story of Hamilton and Adams singing the praises of the British constitution; of Hamilton supposedly raising a toast to George III at a St. Andrew’s Society dinner in New York; a...
Jefferson must have regretted having arrived so late. He had no doubt that the original holders of government paper had been cheated of rightful gains by speculators who were fraudulent purchasers of...
Jefferson inwardly reviled Hamilton as a traitor to republican government. What a fatal stroke at the cause of liberty; et tu Brute, he wrote in his diary.
It was testimony to the political genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that they diverted attention from the grisly realities of southern slavery by casting a lurid spotlight on Hamilton’s sys...
It was not an assembly of dogmatic extremists who sat in Windsor chairs for six weeks in the red-and-black brick structure known as Carpenters’ Hall. Far from being bent on fighting for independence,...
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...
In writing an intemperate indictment of John Adams, Hamilton committed a form of political suicide that blighted the rest of his career. As shown with The Reynolds Pamphlet, he had a genius for the se...
In this hierarchical world, skittish planters lived in constant dread of slave revolts and fortified their garrison state to avert them. Even when he left for America, Hamilton carried a heavy dread o...
In retrospect, it was clear that he had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior who excelled in bare-knuckled controversy.
In other words, Julia still believed in the beneficial effects of tobacco long after her husband had likely died from it. Even grimacing with pain, Grant tracked presidential politics intently.
In his superb account of Senate impeachment powers in number 65, Hamilton visualized, with exceptional prescience, the problems that would occur when passions inflamed the country
In his final months, Grant showed exceptional kindness to Terrell, furnishing him with a glowing recommendation letter for use after his death so he could find employment as a War Department messenger...
In May, when a Senate committee took up the explosive issue of titles, Adams suggested that Washington be addressed as His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of thei...
In January 1803, a grand jury in Columbia County, New York, indicted Harry Croswell for seditious libel against President Jefferson.
If forced to choose, Hamilton preferred a man with wrong principles to one devoid of any. There is no circumstance which has occurred in the course of our political affairs that has given me so much p...
If Rutgers v. Waddington made Hamilton a controversial figure in city politics in 1784, the founding of the Bank of New York cast him in a more conciliatory role. The creation of New York’s first bank...