Pork with a little change of the sauce?
Old Abe is through with his next four years, we will put him [i.e., Grant]
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...
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...
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...
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.
The same day, Hamilton wrote to James McHenry
The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future the dividing line will not...
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...
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...
Since critics found it hard to defeat him on intellectual grounds, they stooped to personal attacks.
Rawlins let loose a stemwinder of a speech that lasted forty-five minutes. His voice throbbing with emotion, he thundered, I have been a Democrat all my life; but this is no longer a question of polit...
Nevertheless, it frustrated him that after this exhaustive investigation his opponents still rehashed the stale charges of misconduct. He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused we...
Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was...
Many mickles make a muckle.
Let it be remembered that there are no large plains for the two armies to meet in and decide the conquest. . . . The circumstances of our country put it in our power to evade a pitched battle. It will...
In the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.
In the report’s final section, Hamilton reiterated that a well-funded debt would be a national blessing that would protect American prosperity. He feared this statement would be misconstrued as a call...