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 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 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...
Its couplets included these lines: Before no mortal ever knew / A love like mine so tender, true…No joy unmixed my bosom warms / But when my angel’s in my arms.
January 25, 1785, nineteen people gathered at the home of innkeeper John Simmons to form a society that would safeguard blacks who had already secured their freedom and try to win freedom for those st...
Jefferson arrived in New York in the thick of the debate raging over assumption—Hamilton’s plan to have the federal government assume the twenty-five million dollars of state debt.
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.
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 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...
July 10, 1790, the House approved the Residence Act, designating Philadelphia as the temporary capital and a ten-mile-square site on the Potomac as the permanent site.
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...
Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind.
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...
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...
McKean of Pennsylvania swore
Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by their passion,
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...
Mirabeau, the French revolutionary politician, once observed of Talleyrand that he would sell his soul for money and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold.32 Napoleon expressed t...
Mocking Hancock as an inexperienced political lightweight, Republicans printed up a pamphlet entitled Hancock’s Political Achievements, a work that contained nothing but blank pages.79
Months after leaving office, he wrote to the Bank of the United States and admitted that he did not know his account balance because he had lost his bank book—this from the man who had created the ban...
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