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Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. (Thomas Jefferson)
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Ron Chernow |
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he elaborated the fashionable argument that the colonies owed their allegiance to the British king, not to Parliament. The point was critical, for if the colonies were linked only to the king, they could, theoretically, wriggle free from parliamentary control while creating some form of commonwealth status in the British empire. Indeed,
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Ron Chernow |
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Wherever our flag floats, it is the flag of slavery,
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton cast himself as "a warm advocate for limited monarchy and an unfeigned well-wisher to the present royal family."
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Ron Chernow |
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The task of government was not to stop selfish striving--a hopeless task--but to harness it for the public good. In starting to outline the contours of his own vision of government, Hamilton was spurred by Hume's dark vision of human nature, which corresponded to his own.
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Ron Chernow |
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A capitalist society requires certain preconditions. Among other things, it must establish a rule of law through enforceable contracts; respect private property; create a trustworthy bureaucracy to arbitrate legal disputes; and offer patents and other protections to promote invention
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Ron Chernow |
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He became known for breaking in wild horses for local farmers, a sight that drew admiring spectators to the village square. He tamed even the most refractory horses through a fine sensitivity to their nature rather than by his physical prowess. "If people knew how much more they could get out of a horse by gentleness than by harshness," Grant once observed, "they would save a great deal of trouble both to the horse and the man."
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Ron Chernow |
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something akin to chief of staff, he rode with the general in combat, cantered off on diplomatic missions, dealt with bullheaded generals, sorted through intelligence, interrogated deserters, and negotiated prisoner exchanges. This gave him a wide-angle view of economic, political, and military matters, further hastening his intellectual development. Washington was both military and political leader of the patriots, already something of a d..
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Ron Chernow |
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The Continental Army was a national institution and helped to make Hamilton the optimal person to articulate a vision of American nationalism, his vision sharpened by the immigrant's special love for his new country.
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Ron Chernow |
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day confirms me in the intention of renouncing public life and devoting myself wholly to you. Let others waste their time and their tranquillity in a vain pursuit of power and glory. Be it my object to be happy in a quiet retreat with my better angel.
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Ron Chernow |
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elite pedigree on both sides of his family, Jefferson was anything but common. His father, Peter, was a tobacco planter, a judge of the court of chancery, and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, while his mother, Jane Randolph, came from a prominent family. By the time Peter Jefferson died, he bequeathed to his children more than 60 slaves, 25 horses, 70 head of cattle, 200 hogs, and 7,500 acres; two-thirds of this bountiful legacy..
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Ron Chernow |
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At twenty-eight, he married a young widow, Martha Wayles Skelton, who inherited 135 slaves after her father's death. This loving ten-year marriage was marred by childhood mortality--only two of their six children reached maturity--and in September 1782 Martha herself died at thirty-four. Only thirty-nine at the time, Jefferson survived his wife
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Ron Chernow |
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Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, "They'll free your niggers."
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Ron Chernow |
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Days later, Melancton Smith finally broke the deadlock when he endorsed the Constitution if Congress would promise to consider some amendments. Paying indirect tribute to Hamilton, Smith credited "the reasonings of gentlemen" on the other side for his changed vote."
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Ron Chernow |
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July 10, 1790, the House approved the Residence Act, designating Philadelphia as the temporary capital and a ten-mile-square site on the Potomac as the permanent site.
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Ron Chernow |
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On July 26, the House narrowly passed the assumption bill.
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Ron Chernow |
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When the sixty-nine electors met on February 4, 1789, they voted unanimously for Washington, who became the first president, and cast only thirty-four ballots for Adams, who came in second and thus became vice president.
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Ron Chernow |
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The federal government had captured forever the bulk of American taxing power.
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Ron Chernow |
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that the retaliation would also be highly personal. That Hamilton could be so sensitive to criticisms of himself and so insensitive to the effect his words had on others was a central mystery of his psyche.
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Ron Chernow |
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On April 16, 1789, George Washington departed from Mount Vernon on an eight-day journey to New York that blossomed into a national celebration.
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Ron Chernow |
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In a blatant affront to the almighty Livingstons, Hamilton threw his weight behind his thirty-four-year-old friend Rufus King, a handsome, Harvard-educated lawyer from New England who had recently moved to New York.
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Ron Chernow |
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By the end of Grant's second term, white Democrats, through the "redeemer" movement, had reclaimed control of every southern state, winning in peacetime much of the power lost in combat. They promulgated a view of the Civil War as a righteous cause that had nothing to do with slavery but only states' rights--to which an incredulous James Longstreet once replied, "I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery."
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Ron Chernow |
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On September 3, an especially hostile audience baited Johnson in Cleveland, where his behavior flirted with new lows. When a heckler yelled that Johnson should "hang Jeff Davis," the president rejoined, "Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?"62 When someone in the crowd hollered, "Is this dignified?" Johnson shot back: "I care not for dignity."
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Ron Chernow |
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Jefferson must have regretted having arrived so late. He had no doubt that the original holders of government paper had been cheated of rightful gains by speculators who were "fraudulent purchasers of this paper. . . . Immense sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant and fortunes accumulated by those who had themselves been poor enough before."42 Jefferson's objections to Hamilton's plan had philosophical roots. In his view, the sm..
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Ron Chernow |
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for he had the attorney's ability to make the best case for an imperfect client. He was not alone in making this transition: all the delegates at Philadelphia had adopted the final document in a spirit of compromise. They approached it as a collective work and championed it as the best available solution. What Jefferson said of George Washington could easily have applied to Hamilton: "He has often declared to me that he considered our new c..
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton supervised the entire Federalist project. He dreamed up the idea, enlisted the participants, wrote the overwhelming bulk of the essays, and oversaw the publication.
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Ron Chernow |
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Each author was assigned an area corresponding to his expertise. Jay naturally handled foreign relations. Madison, versed in the history of republics and confederacies, covered much of that ground. As author of the Virginia Plan, he also undertook to explain the general anatomy of the new government. Hamilton took those branches of government most congenial to him: the executive, the judiciary, and some sections on the Senate. Previewing th..
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Ron Chernow |
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The Federalist Papers ran to eighty-five essays, with fifty-one attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and only five to Jay.
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Ron Chernow |
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Many people knew that Hamilton, Madison, and Jay were the authors, but the trio proclaimed their authorship to only a chosen few and then mostly after the first bound volume was published in March 1788.
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Ron Chernow |
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Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."32 The two shared a grim vision of the human condition, even if Hamilton's had the blacker tinge. They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities."
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Ron Chernow |
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Jefferson arrived in New York in the thick of the debate raging over assumption--Hamilton's plan to have the federal government assume the twenty-five million dollars of state debt.
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Ron Chernow |
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Some states, such as Massachusetts and South Carolina, struggled with heavy debts and were glad to be relieved by the central government. Others, such as Virginia and North Carolina, had settled most of their debts and saw no reason to help. Such differences threatened to explode the brittle consensus that had been so arduous to reach at the Constitutional Convention.
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Ron Chernow |
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In defending his plan, Hamilton did not speak just in arid technical terms. He talked of justice, equity, patriotism, and national honor. His funding system was premised upon a simple concept: that the debt had been generated by the Revolution, that all Americans had benefited equally from that revolution, and that they should assume collective responsibility for its debt. If state debts were unequal, so were the sacrifices made during the ..
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Ron Chernow |
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Some states, he noted, had paid their debts by ignoble means. New York, for instance, had reneged on interest payments to drive down the market value of its debt, making it cheaper for the state to buy it back. Hamilton also made a subtle, sophisticated argument that without assumption, indebted states would have to raise their taxes, while healthy states would lighten their tax loads. This would trigger a dangerous exodus of people from hi..
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Ron Chernow |
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April 12, 1790, the House voted down Hamilton's assumption plan, thirty-one to twenty-nine, and two weeks later voted to discontinue all debate on the issue. By early June, it looked as if the assumption plan was heading for oblivion. So Hamilton began to search for a compromise that would salvage the linchpin of his economic program.
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Ron Chernow |
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promote--the federal assumption of state debt and the selection of New York as the capital--assumption was incomparably more important to him. It was the most effective and irrevocable way to yoke the states together into a permanent union. So when he saw that Madison possessed the votes to block assumption, Hamilton considered bargaining away New York as the capital in exchange for southern support for assumption.
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Ron Chernow |
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On January 28, 1791,
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Ron Chernow |
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He endorsed the dollar as the basic currency, divided into smaller coins on a decimal basis. Because many Americans still bartered, Hamilton wanted to encourage the use of coins. As part of his campaign to foster a market economy, Hamilton suggested introducing a wide variety of coins, including gold and silver dollars, a ten-cent silver piece, and copper coins of a cent or half cent.
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Ron Chernow |
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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. Without knowing that history, it is easy to find fault with Grant's tough, courageous actions.
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Ron Chernow |
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It was already an age of scientific wonders that promised to reshape economies and boost productivity. From the first steam engine that James Watt built in Great Britain in the 1760s to the hot-air balloons that floated across French skies in the 1780s to Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin and the use of interchangeable parts in the 1790s, it was a time of technological marvels. No industry was being transformed more dramatically tha..
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Ron Chernow |
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Far more than just a technical document, the Report on Manufactures was a prescient statement of American nationalism.
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton's list of the advantages of manufacturing has a quintessentially American ring: "Additional employment to classes of the community not ordinarily engaged in the business. The promoting of emigration from foreign countries. The furnishing greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other. The affording a more ample and various field for enterprise."48 Manufacturers and laborers would ..
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Ron Chernow |
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For Hamilton, the federal government had a right to stimulate business and also, when necessary, to restrain it. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., has observed, "Hamilton's enthusiasm over the dynamics of individual acquisition was always tempered by a belief in government regulation and control."54 In arguing, for instance, that government inspection of manufactured articles could reassure consumers and galvanize sales, he anticipated regulatory..
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Ron Chernow |
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Endorsing still another form of government activism, Hamilton claimed that nothing had assisted Britain's industry more than its network of public roads and canals. He therefore touted internal improvements--what we would today call public infrastructure--to meld America's scattered regional markets into a single unified economy.
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Ron Chernow |