Because Conway persisted in maligning Washington, he was summoned to the dueling ground by General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway’s mouth that came out the back of his head. Cadwalad...
This was the great paradox of his career: his optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His faith in Americans never quite matched his fait...
Washington quibbled with Hamilton on one or two points but otherwise stood in perfect agreement. His letter to Hamilton again corroborates what the Jeffersonians found difficult to credit: that Washin...
Optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His
Wars oftener proceed from angry and perverse passions than from cool calculations of interest.
Unlike Franklin or Jefferson, he never learned to subdue his opponents with a light touch or a sly, artful, understated turn of phrase.
In the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.
Yellow-fever epidemic of 1798 that had claimed the lives of Benjamin Franklin Bache and John Fenno had also given fresh urgency to the work of the Widows Society, as many women lost their family bread...
Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds...
In April 1803, President Jefferson reached the zenith of his popularity with the Louisiana Purchase. For a mere pittance of fifteen million dollars, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles bet...
Earlier generations of biographers had to rely on only a meager portion of his voluminous output.
This fierce defender of private property—this man for whom contracts were to be sacred covenants—expressly denied the sanctity of any agreement that stripped people of their freedom.
Explaining that he did so from a desire of testifying
Hamilton wanted logical proofs of religion, not revelation, and amply annotated his copy of A View of the Evidences of Christianity, by William Paley. I have examined carefully the evidence of the Chr...
Philadelphia was a cosmopolitan city, praised by a highborn British visitor as one of the wonders of the world, the first town in America, and one that bids fair to rival almost any in Europe. 27 Larg...
Valerian,
Without the federal ratio, Hamilton glumly concluded, no union could possibly have been formed.87 Indeed, the whole superstructure erected in Philadelphia rested on that unstable, undemocratic foundat...
A full-blooded Seneca Iroquois sachem, Ely S. Parker, who grew up on an Indian reservation in upstate New York and was a chief of the Six Nations. Trained as a civil engineer, he was a man of giant gi...
Unable to curtail his free-handed spending and with his crops faring poorly, he started out 1786 with a paltry eighty-six pounds in cash.
The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends. In a moment of acute anxi...
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