In his early days in business, Rockefeller often suffered from severe neck pains that might have indicated stress on the job, and he turned to horses as a therapeutic diversion. I would leave my offic...
In constructing the Coast Guard, Hamilton insisted on rigorous professionalism and irreproachable conduct. He knew that if revenue-cutter captains searched vessels in an overbearing fashion, this high...
In 1807, Burr was arrested for treason and for trying to incite a war against Spain. He was acquitted by Chief Justice John Marshall, who applied a strict definition of treason. The acquittal only sha...
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...
I do think we are and shall be great consumers.
He immediately had Rawlins summon stretcher bearers, but was dismayed when they removed the Union officer and overlooked the Confederate private. Take this Confederate, too, he said. Take them both to...
Hamilton, using the pen name Civis in a newspaper piece of February 23, 1791, penned the following telling sarcasm to Madison and Jefferson: As to the negroes, you must be tender upon that subject. . ...
Hamilton said, A nation without a national government is, in my view, an awful spectacle. The establishment of a constitution in [a] time of profound peace by the voluntary consent of a whole people i...
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...
For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington. By settling all outstanding issues left over from the Revolution, the treaty removed the last impediments...
Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession.
Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a bespectacled Republican with a grizzled beard, who was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and attended Harvard College and Law School. A former member of the Free-Soil Party, an...
Congress adopted the dollar as the official monetary unit in 1785, but for many years New York shopkeepers still quoted prices in pounds, shillings, and pence.
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
Addison’s Cato,
A journalist named C. E. Meade, a nephew of George Gordon Meade, claimed Grant puffed on his last cigar while visiting a horse farm in Goshen, New York. Gentlemen, Grant announced to his companions, t...
We really haven't had very much experience with people funding their retirement out of the stock market, and we don't know, frankly, how it would work under every scenario.
Valerian,
Optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His
Its chief draftsman, Morris shrank the original twenty-three articles to seven and wrote the great preamble with its ringing opening, We the People of the United States. Paying tribute to Morris’s cra...