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surcease
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Ron Chernow |
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8ba25fc
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Neither he nor anyone else could have predicted that this overweight, rheumatic, vain, pompous, gluttonous inebriate would be so ardent in battle." 62"
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Ron Chernow |
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1548433
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As Madison conceded, the specter of slavery haunted the convention, and he argued that "the states were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but principally from their having or not having slaves. . . . [The conflict] did not lie between the large and small states. It lay between the northern and southern."
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Ron Chernow |
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0390f44
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In a question of veracity between U.S. Grant and Andrew Johnson, between a soldier whose honor is as untarnished as the sun, and a President who has betrayed every friend, and broken every promise, the country will not hesitate," wrote the New York Tribune.60"
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Ron Chernow |
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00609e2
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Whatever his disappointments, Hamilton, forty, must have left Philadelphia with an immense feeling of accomplishment. The Whiskey Rebellion had been suppressed, the country's finances flourished, and the investigation into his affairs had ended with a ringing exoneration. He had prevailed in almost every major program he had sponsored--whether the bank, assumption, funding the public debt, the tax system, the Customs Service, or the Coast G..
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Ron Chernow |
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53cacc0
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noisome
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Ron Chernow |
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ed0e9a7
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peroration,
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Ron Chernow |
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e6f6893
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Even as a raw country boy, he allowed himself no oath stronger than "Thunder and Lightning"
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Ron Chernow |
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a2a6577
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Conforming to tradition, the convention sent a delegation to Grant with official notice of his nomination. In return, he scratched out a statement that mostly dealt in standard rhetoric, concluding with four words that formed the slogan of his campaign and remained irreversibly associated with him: "Let us have peace."
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Ron Chernow |
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67f7540
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For some, the credo sounded blandly vacuous and Henry Adams wisecracked that "Let Us Have Peace" meant only "Leave Me Alone."16"
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Ron Chernow |
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49b84f0
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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 upright gentleman of starchy integrity, he had served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court where he used sarcasm to savage lesser mortals. "When on the bench," wrote an observer, "he was said to be unhappy because he could not decide ag..
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Ron Chernow |
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05cf665
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Grant roomed with Fred Dent, who also singled out Grant as "the clearest headed young man I ever saw . . . He always wanted to do what was right, and we all had great respect for him. He was a singed cat--a great deal better than he looked."
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Ron Chernow |
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0f4b0be
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In Julia's view, the Dent slaves were all "very happy. At least they were in mamma's time, though the young ones became somewhat demoralized about the beginning of the Rebellion, when all the comforts of slavery passed away forever."49 It is not surprising that Julia Dent grew up seeing her girlhood in these storybook terms. It is surprising that when she wrote her memoirs as an elderly woman, the Civil War and Reconstruction had done so li..
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Ron Chernow |
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489d0ca
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The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side--and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.
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public-schools
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Ron Chernow |
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c85aefc
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In the standard telling of his life, Hamilton boards a ship in October 1772 and sails off to North America forever.
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Ron Chernow |
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e7c9b2c
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As the sole clergyman, Knox resided in a settlement known as the Bottom, sunk in the elevated crater of an extinct volcano; it could be reached only by climbing up a stony path. Knox
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Ron Chernow |
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d1b7c21
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The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his.
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Ron Chernow |
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a4355e8
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Washington possessed the outstanding judgment, sterling character, and clear sense of purpose needed to guide his sometimes wayward protege; he saw that the volatile Hamilton needed a steadying hand.
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Ron Chernow |
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42c36dc
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Since Ulysses S. Grant's spelling could border on the eccentric, I have taken the liberty of correcting that and his punctuation and capitalization throughout the book for the sake of smoother reading and easier comprehension. I have done the same with private letters of other figures in the book, except in those cases where I think that defective writing tells a significant tale about the author. INTRODUCTION -- The Sphinx Talks EVEN AS OT..
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Ron Chernow |
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71737b4
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Like Ben Franklin, Hamilton was mostly self-taught and probably snatched every spare moment to read. The
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Ron Chernow |
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0d61762
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Washington replied, "I always knew Colonel Hamilton to be a man of superior talents, but never supposed that he had any knowledge of finance." "He knows everything, sir," Morris replied. "To a mind like his nothing comes amiss."
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Ron Chernow |
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5ca4d9a
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if a white man kills a black, he cannot be tried for his life for the murder. . . . If a negro strikes a white man, he is punished with the loss of his hand and, if he should draw blood, with death.
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Ron Chernow |
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be8e716
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In a little more than two years, they had suffered their father's disappearance and their mother's death, reducing them to orphans and throwing them upon the mercy of friends, family, and community.
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Ron Chernow |
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03e759e
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echo John Dickinson, who had written that the essential rights to happiness are bestowed by God, not man. "They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals."64 Hamilton added beauty and rhythm to the expression."
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Ron Chernow |
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b7c1039
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On the night of April 18, 1775, eight hundred British troops marched out of Boston to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seize a stockpile of patriot munitions in Concord.
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Ron Chernow |
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ee77065
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The Second Continental Congress lacked many of the prerequisites of an authentic government--an army, a currency, taxing power--yet it evolved in pell-mell fashion into the first government of the United States.
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Ron Chernow |
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cea5421
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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,
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Ron Chernow |
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ffebbb5
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On July 5, the Second Continental Congress made one final feeble effort to ward off further hostilities when it endorsed the Olive Branch Petition, urging a negotiated solution to the conflict with England. The document professed loyalty to the king and tactfully blamed his "artful and cruel" ministers."
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Ron Chernow |
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eaf56de
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Hamilton argued that the security of liberty and property were inseparable and that governments should honor their debts because contracts formed the basis of public and private morality: "States, like individuals, who observe their engagements are respected and trusted, while the reverse is the fate of those who pursue an opposite conduct."
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Ron Chernow |
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37d295c
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It was testimony to the political genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that they diverted attention from the grisly realities of southern slavery by casting a lurid spotlight on Hamilton's system as the paramount embodiment of evil. They inveighed against the concentrated wealth of northern merchants when southern slave plantations clearly represented the most heinous form of concentrated wealth.
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Ron Chernow |
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70c9cdb
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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. . . . Who talk most about liberty and equality . . . ? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?"
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Ron Chernow |
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a3589cd
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Since Hamilton had at least one sibling who had died in infancy or childhood, the poem may have summoned up memories of his own mother's hardships: For the sweet babe, my doting heart Did all a mother's fondness feel; Careful to act each tender part And guard from every threatening ill. But what alas! availed my care? The unrelenting hand of death, Regardless of a parent's prayer Has stopped my lovely infant's breath
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Ron Chernow |
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fe6819a
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In a mood of mounting anger, Grant was not content to chastise Jewish traders: he wanted to banish all Jews. On December 17, he issued the most egregious decision of his career. "General Orders No. 11" stipulated that "the Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order by..
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Ron Chernow |
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c33da91
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In the late spring of 1777, Hamilton began the most intimate friendship of his life, with an elegant, blue-eyed young officer named John Laurens, who formally joined Washington's family in October.
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Ron Chernow |
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7f91cc4
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In early July 1777, Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York fell to the British, prompting King George III to clap his hands and exclaim, "I have beat them! Beat all the Americans."58 It was a potential calamity for the patriots, since it opened a corridor for General John Burgoyne and his invading army from Canada to push south to New York City, slicing the rebel army in half and isolating New England--an overarching objective of British war ..
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Ron Chernow |
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85e6496
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For Hamilton, his encounters with the two obdurate generals strengthened his preference for strict hierarchy and centralized command as the only way to accomplish things--a view that was to find its political equivalent in his preference for concentrated federal power instead of authority dispersed among the states.
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Ron Chernow |
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0a716e7
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Hamilton probably spent little more than two years at King's and never formally graduated due to the outbreak of the Revolution. By April 6, 1776, King's College, tarred by its earlier association with Myles Cooper, was commandeered by patriot forces and put to use as a military hospital.
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Ron Chernow |
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b551fcf
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For some days past there has been little less than a famine in the camp," Washington said in mid-February. Before winter's end, some 2,500 men, almost a quarter of the army, perished from disease, famine, or the cold.1 To endure such"
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Ron Chernow |
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c2e4053
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IN APRIL 1860, Ulysses S. Grant, cloaked in his old blue army cape, arrived in Galena aboard the Mississippi steamer Itasca. Clasping in each hand chairs that had served the family as deck seats, Grant, along with Julia and the four children, stepped ashore into what they hoped would be a new, more secure life. As Julia recalled, "The atmosphere was so cool and dry, the sun shone so brightly, that it gave us the impression of a smiling welc..
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Ron Chernow |
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0e52dab
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Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool, a romantic Quixote, or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind?
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Ron Chernow |
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f384962
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The comment smacked of aristocratic disdain for the self-made man. In fact, no immigrant in American history has ever made a larger contribution than Alexander Hamilton.
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Ron Chernow |
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a3b9452
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In his superb account of Senate impeachment powers in number 65, Hamilton visualized, with exceptional prescience, the problems that would occur when passions inflamed the country
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Ron Chernow |
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7acee68
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Americans today know little about the terrorism that engulfed the South during Grant's presidency. It has been suppressed by a strange national amnesia. The Klan's ruthless reign is a dark, buried chapter in American history. The Civil War is far better known than its brutal aftermath.
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Ron Chernow |
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bf0890d
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He downplayed the significance of technical knowledge in business. "I never felt the need of scientific knowledge, have never felt it. A young man who wants to succeed in business does not require chemistry or physics. He can always hire scientists."32"
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Ron Chernow |