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c5830e9
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General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway's mouth that came out the back of his head.
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Ron Chernow |
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7f53349
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Hamilton dreaded parties as "the most fatal disease" of popular governments and hoped America could dispense with such groups.7 James Kent later wrote, "Hamilton said in The Federalist, in his speeches, and a hundred times to me that factions would ruin us and our government had not sufficient energy and balance to resist the propensity to them and to control their tyranny and their profligacy."8"
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Ron Chernow |
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061047b
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Hamilton opposed the vogue for state banks that proliferated in the 1790s, less from narrow political motives than from a fear that competition among banks would dilute credit standards and invite imprudent lending practices as bankers vied for clients.
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Ron Chernow |
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135ad78
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He applauded a belated decision to evacuate Garfield from the White House in early September and bring him by train to Long Branch. "During the months of August and September the White House is one of the most unhealthy places in the world," Grant told the press. "He should have been taken from there long ago."20" --
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Ron Chernow |
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a432660
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April 1776, Benjamin Franklin expressed pleasure "with the ease and affability with which we were treated and the lively behaviour of the young ladies." 9"
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Ron Chernow |
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1c897ad
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Their strategy was to make clients feel accepted into a private club, as if a Morgan account were a membership card to the aristocracy.
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Ron Chernow |
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adc9391
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Other reasons account for Hamilton's failure to snatch the prize. Though blessed with a great executive mind and a consummate policy maker, Hamilton could never master the smooth restraint of a mature politician. His conception of leadership was noble but limiting: the true statesman defied the wishes of the people, if necessary, and shook them from wishful thinking and complacency. Hamilton lived in a world of moral absolutes and was not e..
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Ron Chernow |
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3e02881
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In general, however, their two voices blended admirably together.
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Ron Chernow |
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60cee8d
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The changes in the human condition are uncertain and frequent. Many, on whom fortune has bestowed her favours, may trace their family to a more unprosperous station; and many who are now in obscurity, may look back upon the affluence and exalted rank of their ancestors.
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Ron Chernow |
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6bd2649
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To understand Hamiliton's productivity, it is important to note that virtually all of his important work was journalism, prompted by topical issues and written in the midst of controversy.
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Ron Chernow |
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9fb32bd
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From the First Philippic of Demosthenes, he plucked a passage that summed up his conception of a leader as someone who would not pander to popular whims. "As a general marches at the head of his troops," so should wise politicians "march at the head of affairs, insomuch that they ought not to wait the event to know what measures to take, but the measures which they have taken ought to produce the event."
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Ron Chernow |
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682f1c5
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The day after the Manhattan Company inaugurated business on Wall Street, two of its directors, Aaron Burr and John Barker Church, celebrated the event in idiosyncratic fashion: with a duel.
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Ron Chernow |
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2ef34bc
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McKean of Pennsylvania swore
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Ron Chernow |
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0d4ab06
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In time, the government redefined the rules of the capitalist game to tame trusts and preserve competition, but as John D. Rockefeller set about building his fortune, the absence of clear-cut rules probably aided, at first, the creative vigor of the new industrial economy.
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Ron Chernow |
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8efae32
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Throughout his life, Rockefeller was wounded deeply by accusations that he was a cold, malignant personality.
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Ron Chernow |
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1a82a8d
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Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it.... As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money."25"
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Ron Chernow |
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2332e25
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His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but also the most controversial campaign of his career.
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Ron Chernow |
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ba3a1a3
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As a team, they were unbeatable and far more than the sum of their parts.
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Ron Chernow |
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b221792
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In fact, Washington wasn't nonchalant and could be exacting and quick to take offense.
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Ron Chernow |
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ff494b6
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The self-control was something achieved, not inherited, and often masked combustible emotions that could explode in fury.
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Ron Chernow |
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d59c8a0
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Morristown,
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Ron Chernow |
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367fa00
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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. At
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Ron Chernow |
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164a5c2
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too
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Ron Chernow |
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6af84d5
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Hamilton's crowded years as treasury secretary scarcely exhaust the epic story of his short life, which was stuffed with high drama. From his illegitimate birth on Nevis to his bloody downfall in Weehawken, Hamilton's life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth an..
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Ron Chernow |
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60ffb97
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He made a cryptic statement to Hewitt that entered into Rockefeller folklore: "I have ways of making money you know nothing about."
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Ron Chernow |
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43e6993
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politics. A prominent antifederalist had already warned him that "rather than to adopt the Constitution, I would risk a government of Jew, Turk or infidel."83"
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Ron Chernow |
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170647f
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To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules.
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Ron Chernow |
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be8beb9
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chaste and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness),
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Ron Chernow |
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ac26dad
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It may be that Hamilton's preference for a diversified economy of manufacturing and agriculture originated in his youthful reflections on the avoidable poverty he had witnessed in the Caribbean.
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Ron Chernow |
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33337f8
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In politics, I am indifferent what side she may be of; I think I have arguments that will easily convert her to mine.
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Ron Chernow |
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0d0a61e
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Perhaps the true legacy of his boyhood was an equivocal one: he came to detest the tyranny embodied by the planters and their authoritarian rule, while also fearing the potential uprisings of the disaffected slaves. The twin specters of despotism and anarchy were to haunt him for the rest of his life.
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Ron Chernow |
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5b7a086
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On July 6, while Captain Hamilton wandered about trying to find a purse with money that he had lost--he sometimes had a touch of the absentminded genius--the local press announced independence.
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Ron Chernow |
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077d696
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The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.
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Ron Chernow |
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d4f9914
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Thinking the move suicidal, Grant believed the South would stop short of the "awful leap" of secession.41"
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Ron Chernow |
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1d41469
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In retrospect, it was clear that he had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior who excelled in bare-knuckled controversy.
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Ron Chernow |
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15b6b5d
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D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one's resolve in the face of enemies.
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Ron Chernow |
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cf38363
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Grant had overwhelmingly won the electoral vote, and had garnered the largest popular majority of the century, nearly 56 percent of the vote, the biggest percentage between Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt.
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Ron Chernow |
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e184379
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Once Hamilton was initiated into the cause of American liberty, his life acquired an even more headlong pace that never slackened.
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Ron Chernow |
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43408fd
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In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes. The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority. The due medium is hardly to be found among the more inte..
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Ron Chernow |
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b400b99
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The fifty-five delegates representing twelve states--the renegade Rhode Island boycotted the convention--scarcely constituted a cross section of America. They were white, educated males and mostly affluent property owners.
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Ron Chernow |
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72703eb
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The most damning and hypocritical critiques of his allegedly aristocratic economic system emanated from the most aristocratic southern slaveholders, who deflected attention from their own nefarious deeds by posing as populist champions and assailing the northern financial and mercantile interests aligned with Hamilton.
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Ron Chernow |
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daee068
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The winning candidate needed 379 votes. On the first ballot, Grant drew a narrow lead of 304 votes versus 284 for Blaine, 93 for Sherman, 34 for George F. Edmunds of Vermont and--confirming Grant's worst fears--30 for Washburne. These last votes, the unkindest cut for Grant, denied him an insuperable lead. The convention then wore on through many wearisome ballots, marked by trifling changes in the vote count. On the third ballot, two new n..
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Ron Chernow |
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bf1d7cd
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fillip
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Ron Chernow |
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69d70aa
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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 politics. It is simply country or no country. I have favored every honorable compromise; but the day for compromise is passed."
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Ron Chernow |