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Washington appointed Hamilton, George Wythe, and Charles Pinckney to a small committee that drew up rules and procedures for the convention.
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton wanted the votes of individual members recorded. Instead, the convention chose to proceed on a one-state, one-vote basis, which meant that Hamilton's vote would likely be nullified by his two fellow delegates.
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Ron Chernow |
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Who were these solons rhapsodized by Benjamin Franklin as "the most august and respectable assembly he was ever in in his life"?44 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. A majority were lawyers and hence sensitive to precedent. Princeton graduates (nine) trump..
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Ron Chernow |
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During one ghastly period in 1779, the continental dollar shed half its value in three weeks.
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Ron Chernow |
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In March 1780, Congress tried to restore monetary order by issuing one new dollar in exchange for forty old ones, a move that wiped out the savings of many Americans.
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Ron Chernow |
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beginning
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Ron Chernow |
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When Grant read this, he was outraged at the shocking suggestion that he had subverted justice. He handed the letter to Bristow with a passionate admonition scrawled across it: "Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided--Be specially vigilant--or instruct those engaged in the prosecutions of fraud to be--against all who insinuate that they have high influence . . . to protect them."
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Ron Chernow |
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In theory, the convention had a mandate only to revise the Articles of Confederation. Any delegates who took this circumscribed mission at face value were soon rudely disabused. On May 30, Edmund Randolph presented a plan, formulated chiefly by Madison, that sought to scuttle the articles altogether and create a strong central government. This "Virginia Plan" made a clean break with the past and contained the basic design of the future U.S...
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Ron Chernow |
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While Hamilton's Senate would be chosen for life by electors, his House of Representatives, by contrast, was exceedingly democratic, chosen directly by universal male suffrage every three years.
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Ron Chernow |
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To curb further abuse, Hamilton recommended a Supreme Court that would consist of twelve judges holding lifetime offices on good behavior. In this manner, each branch would maintain a salutary distance from popular passions.
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Ron Chernow |
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078d2a9
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On July 16, the thick gloom finally lifted at Philadelphia when delegates agreed to a grand bargain, the so-called Connecticut Compromise, proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut and others. The major conflicts at the convention had perhaps hinged less on the question of federal versus state power than on how federal representation was apportioned among the states.
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Ron Chernow |
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The delegates solved this baffling riddle by deciding that all states would enjoy equal representation in the Senate (a sop to small states) while representation in the House of Representatives would be proportionate to each state's population (a sop to large states). This broke the deadlock, though the Senate's composition introduced a lasting political bias in American life in favor of smaller states.
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Ron Chernow |
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Slaveholding states wondered how their human property would be counted for congressional-apportionment purposes. Northern states finally agreed that five slaves would be counted as equivalent to three free whites, the infamous "federal ratio" that survived for another eighty years. The formula richly rewarded the southern states, artificially inflating their House seats and electoral votes and helping to explain why four of the first five p..
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Ron Chernow |
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Without the federal ratio, Hamilton glumly concluded, "no union could possibly have been formed."87 Indeed, the whole superstructure erected in Philadelphia rested on that unstable, undemocratic foundation."
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton showed that, for all his misgivings about the Constitution, he could be cooperative and play a serviceable part. The convention showed good judgment in choosing him, given his literary gifts and rapid pen. It is hard to believe that the Committee of Style and Arrangement took only four days to burnish syllables that were to be painstakingly explicated by future generations. The objective was to make the document short and flexible,..
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Ron Chernow |
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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 craftsmanship, Madison wrote, "The finish given to the style and arrangement fairly belongs to the pen of Mr. Morris."
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Ron Chernow |
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On September 17, 1787, after almost four months of hard-fought battles, the convention ended when thirty-nine delegates from twelve states signed the Constitution
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Ron Chernow |
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After signing, the delegates adjourned to the City Tavern, which John Adams described as the "most genteel tavern in America," for a farewell dinner.103 Behind the conviviality lurked unspoken fears, and Washington, for one, doubted that the new federal government would survive twenty years. The delegates decided that the Constitution would take effect when nine state conventions approved it. For tactical and philosophical reasons, state le..
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Ron Chernow |
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Hamilton alone seemed resigned as the end neared. At one point, speaking of politics, he said, "If they break this union, they will break my heart."69 He could have left no more fitting political epitaph."
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Ron Chernow |
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His faculties stayed intact until about fifteen minutes before the end. Then, at 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, July 12, 1804, thirty-one hours after the duel, forty-nine-year-old Alexander Hamilton died gently, quietly, almost noiselessly.
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Ron Chernow |
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The evening of Hamilton's death, New York's leading merchants exhorted one another to shutter their shops for a state funeral hastily arranged for Saturday, July 14. "The corpse is already putrid," Gouverneur Morris wrote that Friday, "and the funeral procession must take place tomorrow morning."5 Mourners assembled on Saturday morning in front of 25 Robinson Street (today Park Place), the home of John and Angelica Church. The New York Comm..
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Ron Chernow |
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Once Morris had finished his speech, the casket was transferred to a grave site in the Trinity churchyard, not far from where Hamilton had studied and lived, practiced law and served his country.
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Ron Chernow |
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ce7a0c4
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The paper currency was depreciating rapidly. Hence, for the first time, Hamilton began to fiddle with ideas for creating a national bank, through a mixture of foreign loans and private subscriptions.
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Ron Chernow |
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On February 2, 1780, hard on the heels of Cornelia and Polly, Elizabeth Schuyler arrived in Morristown, accompanied by a military escort, to stay with relatives.
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Ron Chernow |
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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 sharpened Jefferson's contempt for "the original error of establishing a judiciary independent of the nation"
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Ron Chernow |
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Editing a Federalist newspaper in Richmond, he revealed that Jefferson, while vice president, had subsidized him to malign Adams and Hamilton. When Jefferson denied this, Callender published documents showing that Jefferson had sent him money in 1799 and 1800 to assist with publication of The Prospect Before Us, in which Hamilton had been denigrated as "the son of a camp-girl."35 The embarrassed Jefferson lamely described these payments as ..
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Ron Chernow |
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Then, on September 1, 1802, Callender broke a story that he had learned about in jail and that was to reverberate down through American history: Jefferson's scandalous romance with Sally Hemings: "It is well known that the man whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally. . . . By this wench Sally, our President has had several children."
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Ron Chernow |
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No longer regarded as the Federalist leader, he had acquired the uncomfortable status of a glorified has-been. He still had a law office in lower Manhattan--in 1803, he moved it from 69 Stone Street to 12 Garden Street--and maintained a pied-a-terre at 58 Partition Street (now Fulton Street),
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Ron Chernow |
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Congress was chased like a covey of partridges from Philadelphia to Trenton, from Trenton to Lancaster," Adams wrote with his usual gift for evocative language."
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Ron Chernow |
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the last analysis, the durable bond formed between Hamilton and Washington during the Revolution was based less on personal intimacy than on shared experiences of danger and despair and common hopes for America's future. From the same situation, they had drawn the same conclusions: the need for a national army, for centralized power over the states, for a strong executive, and for national unity. Their political views, forged in the crucibl..
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Ron Chernow |
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On April 30, 1781, Hamilton sent a marathon letter to Morris--it runs to thirty-one printed pages--that set forth a full-fledged system for shoring up American credit and creating a national bank.
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Ron Chernow |
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In mid-February 1804, Hamilton journeyed to Albany and pleaded for a new trial before the state supreme court.
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Ron Chernow |
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The lawmakers were drawn to the courtroom by more than curiosity: they had under consideration a bill that would allow truth as a defense in libel trials.
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Ron Chernow |
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arguing for a new trial, Hamilton highlighted the principle at stake, the protection of a free press: "The liberty of the press consists, in my idea, in publishing the truth from good motives and for justifiable ends, [even] though it reflect on the government, on magistrates, or individuals."18 As a victim of repeated press abuse, Hamilton did not endorse a completely unfettered press: "I consider this spirit of abuse and calumny as the pe..
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Ron Chernow |
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After being exculpated by the House investigating committee in late May 1794, Hamilton had informed George Washington that he would not resign after all, citing the prospect of war. In the end, he did go to war, not against European powers but against American frontier settlers. The Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania that year was an armed protest against the excise tax on domestic distilled spirits--the "whiskey tax," in common ling..
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Ron Chernow |
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the tax constituted the second largest source of federal revenues and was indispensable to Hamilton. If deprived of that crucial tax, he would have to raise tariffs, which would encourage more smuggling and tax evasion and spur commercial retaliation abroad. The government also needed money to finance military expeditions against the Indians--expeditions that were especially popular in the affected frontier communities, such as those of wes..
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Ron Chernow |
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In January 1803, a grand jury in Columbia County, New York, indicted Harry Croswell for seditious libel against President Jefferson.
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Ron Chernow |
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The gist of Hamilton's argument was that the truth of the claims made by an author should be admissible evidence for the defense in a libel case. The standard heretofore had been that plaintiffs in libel cases needed to prove only that statements made against them were defamatory, not that they were false.
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Ron Chernow |
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By spotlighting the issue of intent, Hamilton identified the criteria for libel that still hold sway in America today: that the writing in question must be false, defamatory, and malicious.
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Ron Chernow |
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His whole soul was enlisted in the cause and in contending for the rights of the jury and a free press, he considered that he was establishing the surest refuge against oppression.
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Ron Chernow |
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In April 1803, President Jefferson reached the zenith of his popularity with the Louisiana Purchase. For a mere pittance of fifteen million dollars, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, doubling American territory
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Ron Chernow |
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When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.
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Ron Chernow |
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many Federalists emerged as strict constructionists and denied that the Constitution permitted the purchase. Beyond legal reservations, they worried that this new American territory would weaken Federalist power, sealing their doom. The new western terrain would be preponderantly Republican and agricultural, and slavery might flourish there. In fact, every state that entered the Union between 1803 and 1845 as a result of the purchase turned..
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Ron Chernow |
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Fearful of being overshadowed by an expanding Republican slave empire in the west, some New England Federalists began to talk of secession from the union. Such plans formed part of the context for the Hamilton-Burr duel.
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Ron Chernow |