In the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.
In fact, Washington wasn’t nonchalant and could be exacting and quick to take offense.
I trust . . . that the good sense of our countrymen will guard the public weal against this and every other innovation and that, altho[ugh] we may be a little wrong now and then, we shall return to th...
Hamilton, back by August 13, dove into a debate that passionately engaged him: immigration. He opposed any attempt to restrict membership in Congress to native-born Americans or to stipulate a residen...
Hamilton was more persuasive than he realized, and a delegation of business leaders soon approached him to subscribe to a money-bank that would thwart Livingston’s land bank. I was a little embarrasse...
From modest origins, the Treasury offices proliferated until they occupied the entire block. The 1791 city directory gives an anatomy of this burgeoning department, with 8 employees in Hamilton’s offi...
Earlier generations of biographers had to rely on only a meager portion of his voluminous output.
By 1784, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had outlawed slavery or passed laws for its gradual extinction
As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that every hour misspent is lost forever and that future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life.15
Surcease
Optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His
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...
Whitney brought in his friends Edwin Webster, Chandler Hovey, and Albert H. Gordon to take over the company’s name and goodwill.
When you indulge in wine let [it] be sparingly—never go beyond three glasses—but by no means every day.
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...
There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy.
The trial wasn’t the finest hour of American justice as the treatment of the prisoners seemed medieval in its barbarism. Almost all of the male prisoners were dragged into the courtroom with linen mas...
The strident tone of The Stand reflects the polarization that had gripped America over the French crisis. Feelings ran so high that Jefferson told one correspondent, Men who have been intimate all the...
The residence law that passed Congress in July 1790, establishing Philadelphia as the interim capital, dictated that all government offices relocate there by early December.
The constant session of Congress cannot be necessary in times of peace, said Thomas Jefferson, who wanted to replace it with a committee.64 Slowly but inexorably, the future battle lines were being dr...