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df4f961
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Grant's catatonic state didn't last. Soon he was devoting four or five hours daily to his memoirs,
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Ron Chernow |
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89b8d78
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whose
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Ron Chernow |
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42404ca
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From the outset, the young Hamilton had phenomenal stamina for sustained work: ambitious, orphaned boys do not enjoy the option of idleness.
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Ron Chernow |
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e76b7e4
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Whatever Hoar's injury, he departed in gentlemanly fashion, sending Grant a gracious farewell note. In private, however, he broadcast his anger and "wished the government might be destroyed."
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Ron Chernow |
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44a0eaf
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Hamilton hit the ground running: the very next day, he arranged a fifty-thousand-dollar loan for the federal government from the Bank of New York. The day after that, a Sunday, he worked all day at the Treasury's new office on Broadway, just south of Trinity Church. He dashed off a plea to the Bank of North America in Philadelphia, asking for another fifty thousand dollars.
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Ron Chernow |
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73d1983
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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 office, 13 in the comptroller's, 15 in the auditor's, 19 in the register's, 3 in the treasurer's, 14 in the office for settling accounts between the federal government and the states, and 21 in the customs office on Second Street, with an additiona..
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Ron Chernow |
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ea886c5
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Aware of the widespread prejudice against banks, Hamilton knew he needed to set out their advantages. Echoing Adam Smith, he showed how gold and silver, if locked up in a merchant's chest, were sterile. Deposit them in a bank, however, and these dead metals sprang to life as "nurseries of national wealth," forming a credit supply several times larger than the coins heaped in the bank's vaults.13"
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Ron Chernow |
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2236550
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Convinced that struggle was the crucible of character, Rockefeller faced a delicate task in raising his children. He wanted to accumulate wealth while inculcating in them the values of his threadbare boyhood. The first step in saving them from extravagance was keeping them ignorant of their father's affluence. Until they were adults, Rockefeller's children never visited his office or refineries, and even then they were accompanied by compan..
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Ron Chernow |
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ca5da69
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Few figures in American History have aroused such visceral love or loathing as Alexander Hamilton.
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Ron Chernow |
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790a7c3
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I shall conclude [by] saying I wish there was a war. Alex. Hamilton.
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Ron Chernow |
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ec41c39
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Hamilton did not know it, but he just wrote himself out of poverty.
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Ron Chernow |
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326391d
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What a world of scarred emotion and secret grief Alexander Hamilton bore with him on the boat to Boston. He took his unhappy boyhood, tucked it away in a mental closet, and never opened the door again.
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Ron Chernow |
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3239b71
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Kitty] was the type of woman Hamilton found irresistible: pretty, coquettish, somewhat spoiled, and always ready for flirtatious banter.
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Ron Chernow |
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0d5b73e
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From later descriptions, however, we know that [Alexander Hamilton] stood about five foot seven and had a fair complexion, auburn hair, rosy cheeks, and a wide, well-carved mouth. His nose, with its flaring nostrils and irregular line, was especially strong and striking, his jaw chiseled and combative. Slim and elegant, with thin shoulders and shapely legs, he walked with a buoyant lightness, and his observant, flashing eyes darted about wi..
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Ron Chernow |
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5ba7c0d
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After Seabury rebutted "A Full Vindication", Hamilton struck back with "The Farmer Refuted," an eighty page tour de force..."
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Ron Chernow |
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Earlier generations of biographers had to rely on only a meager portion of his voluminous output.
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Ron Chernow |
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65de0fa
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all show of decorum
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Ron Chernow |
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pork with a little change of the sauce?
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Ron Chernow |
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b74be1b
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For you know me well enough, my good Sir, to be persuaded that I am not guilty of affectation when I tell you it is my great and sole desire to live and die, in peace and retirement, on my own farm.
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Ron Chernow |
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07ebcf7
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scion of a blue-ribbon Scottish family: "The"
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Ron Chernow |
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5046a77
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adumbrate a plan
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Ron Chernow |
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8294824
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So grave were the interstate tensions over trade that Nathaniel Gorham, named president of Congress in 1786, feared that clashes between New York and its neighbors might degenerate into civil war. Similarly acrimonious trade disputes erupted between other states with major seaports and neighbors who imported goods through them. The states were arrogating a right that properly belonged to a central government: the right to formulate trade po..
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Ron Chernow |
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2622d2a
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The same day, Hamilton wrote to James McHenry
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Ron Chernow |
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4d75079
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All the patriots had to do was plant doubts among Britain's creditors about the war's outcome. "By stopping the progress of their conquests and reducing them to an unmeaning and disgraceful defensive, we destroy the national expectation of success from which the ministry draws their resources." 11 This was an extremely subtle, sophisticated analysis for a young man immersed in wartime details for four years: America could defeat the British..
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Ron Chernow |
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6b95f7c
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Hamilton continued to stew about the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified belatedly by the last state on February 27, 1781. Hamilton thought this loose framework a prescription for rigor mortis. There was no federal judiciary, no guiding executive, no national taxing power, and no direct power over people as individuals, only as citizens of the states. In Congress, each state had one vote, and nine of the thirteen states had t..
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Ron Chernow |
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9c0c12f
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equaled. If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraft.
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Ron Chernow |
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55bbeab
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dishclout
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Ron Chernow |
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9d03885
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manner.
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Ron Chernow |
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6edd2d5
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Gordian knot
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Ron Chernow |
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government.
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Ron Chernow |
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a428f65
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Both Jefferson and Adams detested people who earned a living shuffling financial paper, and when Adams launched a bitter tirade in later years against the iniquitous banking system, Jefferson agreed that the business was "an infinity of successive felonious larcenies." 9 That banks could serve any economic purpose--that they could generate prosperity that might enrich the few but also lubricate the wheels of commerce--seemed alien to both m..
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Ron Chernow |
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29d7619
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Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless.
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Ron Chernow |
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ff8629a
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Alexander Hamilton may have been musing upon his mother's marriage to Lavien when he later observed, 'Tis a very good thing when their stars unite two people who are fit for each other, who have souls capable of relishing the sweets of friendship and sensibilities...But it's a dog of [a] life when two dissonant tempers meet.
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Ron Chernow |
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03919c5
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Hamilton and his men ran so fast that they almost overtook the sappers, who were snapping off the edges of the sharpened tree branches and opening a breach through which the infantry rushed. Hamilton, hopping on the shoulder of a kneeling soldier, sprang onto the enemy parapet and summoned his men to follow. Their password was "Rochambeau"--"a good one," said one American, because it "sounds like 'Rush-on-boys' when pronounced quick." 36 On..
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Ron Chernow |
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eb4c3a4
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Mills lashed out at Barbot as "an impertinent puppy"--the sort of fighting words that prompted duels.35"
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Ron Chernow |
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cc65411
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In his final months, Grant showed exceptional kindness to Terrell, furnishing him with a glowing recommendation letter for use after his death so he could find employment as a War Department messenger. Terrell's son Robert had just graduated cum laude from Harvard. While he was there, Grant had provided him with a beautiful letter to obtain summer work in the Boston Custom House: "My special interest in him is from the fact that his father-..
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Ron Chernow |
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af0f5b3
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Hamilton said, he would follow the classic path of a populist demagogue: "I would mount the hobbyhorse of popularity, I would cry out usurpation, danger"
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Ron Chernow |
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52cbdb4
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At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn't find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made "a cold chill" run down his spine, Rockefeller later said.27 Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. "I was working every day at my business--the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day."
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Ron Chernow |
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a4525f4
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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." --
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Ron Chernow |
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82b5925
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religions.
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Ron Chernow |
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c2565cc
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To believe America able to withstand England is a dreadful infatuation.
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Ron Chernow |
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864dade
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Perhaps most problematic was the controversial bargain that Alexander Hamilton had struck with the Constitution, dedicating his life to what he deemed a flawed document.
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Ron Chernow |
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b088301
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panegyric
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Ron Chernow |
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bb8ef99
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bibulous,
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Ron Chernow |