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a striking example of political gaucheness, Adams then nominated Washington to command the new army before he had a chance to register an opinion. On July 3, the Senate hastily approved the choice.
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Ron Chernow |
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ea094fb
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Sometime in March 1804, Hamilton dined in Albany at the home of Judge John Tayler, a Republican merchant and former state assemblyman who was working for the election of Morgan Lewis. Both Judge Tayler and Hamilton expressed their dread at having Aaron Burr as governor. "You can have no conception of the exertions that are [being made] for Burr," Tayler had told De Witt Clinton. "Every artifice that can be devised is used to promote his cau..
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Ron Chernow |
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5559f92
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Both Hamilton and Madison were rational men who assumed that people often acted irrationally because of ambition and avarice. Madison wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
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Ron Chernow |
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32f4b95
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early July 1792, it was clear that George Washington would not have the option of silence or inaction in stemming the feud between Hamilton and Jefferson. He had probably waited too long to assert control. His fine, nonpartisan stance may have only intensified the partisan mischief between his two appointees.
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Ron Chernow |
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367a95e
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Hamilton seemed unhinged by the dispute. In the still secret Reynolds affair, he had shown a lack of private restraint. Now something compulsive and uncontrollable appeared in his public behavior. A captive of his emotions, he revealed an irrepressible need to respond to attacks. Whenever he tried to suppress these emotions, they burst out and overwhelmed him.
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Ron Chernow |
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4ce0353
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Thomas Jefferson's resignation as secretary of state on December 31, 1793. The Virginian had failed to eject Hamilton from the cabinet and had lost the contest for Washington's favor.
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Ron Chernow |
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He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that "no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false." If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent."
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Ron Chernow |
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0d1ac46
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England refused to acknowledge the traditional doctrine "free ships make free goods"--i.e., that neutral vessels had a right to carry all cargo save munitions and enter the ports of belligerent countries. On November 6, 1793, William Pitt's ministry had decreed that British ships could intercept neutral vessels hauling produce to or from the French West Indies."
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Ron Chernow |
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a360d39
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When Hamilton heard about British depredations, he did not behave like a pawn of British interests. Rather, he drew up for Washington contingency plans to raise a twenty-thousand-man army to defend coastal cities and impose a partial trade embargo. "The pains taken to preserve peace," he told Washington, "include a proportional responsibility that equal pains be taken to be prepared for war."4 Once again, Hamilton and Washington agreed that..
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Ron Chernow |
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e263e4c
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On May 12, a thousand New Yorkers cheered from the docks as Jay sailed to England, hoping to avert war.
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Ron Chernow |
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828e521
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Washington gave orders to construct six frigates--the birth of the U.S. Navy--and Hamilton negotiated contracts for many naval components: cannon, shot and shells, iron ballast, sailcloth, live oak and cedar, and saltpeter for gunpowder.
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Ron Chernow |
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cd584a4
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Hamilton and Madison were again pitted in a fundamental contest over whether the executive or legislative branch would run American foreign policy. Hamilton was relieved when Washington denied Congress the treaty instructions.
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Ron Chernow |
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5d17da9
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On April 30, 1796, Federalists eked out a razor-thin victory of fifty-one to forty-eight in the House to make money available for the Jay Treaty.
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Ron Chernow |
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c52bd47
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The court approved Hamilton's argument that this excise tax was legal and that Congress had power "over every species of taxable property, except exports."5 The decision in Hylton v. United States not only endorsed Hamilton's broad view of federal taxing power but represented the first time the Supreme Court ever ruled on the constitutionality of an act of Congress."
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Ron Chernow |
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47d7a6b
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On December 5, 1792, members of the electoral college assembled in their respective states. The outcome gratified Hamilton and corresponded with his expectations. Washington was chosen unanimously as president. Adams received seventy-seven votes, enough to return him as vice president,
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Ron Chernow |
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99f81a7
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Washington told Pickering that it would be "political suicide" to recruit anyone into his administration who was not prepared to support his programs wholeheartedly.18 He had learned his lesson with Jefferson and discarded the naive belief that he could straddle both political factions. He was now more solidly aligned with the Federalists,"
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Ron Chernow |
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97576e8
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John Adams was sworn in as the second president on March 4, 1797,
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Ron Chernow |
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812ac1a
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On March 4, 1793, George Washington was sworn in for his second term as president
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Ron Chernow |
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1303135
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Fisher Ames, always a shrewd observer of the scene, mused that "a spirit of faction . . . must soon come to a crisis." He foresaw that congressional Republicans would discard their comparatively decorous criticism of Washington's first term:"
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Ron Chernow |
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879b23d
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The American Revolution had succeeded because it was "a free, regular and deliberate act of the nation" and had been conducted with "a spirit of justice and humanity."22 It was, in fact, a revolution written in parchment and defined by documents, petitions, and other forms of law."
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Ron Chernow |
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fa608ae
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Hamilton seldom published under his own name and drew on a bewildering array of pseudonyms. Such pen names were sometimes transparent masks through which the public readily identified prominent politicians. The fashion of allowing anonymous attacks permitted extraordinary bile to seep into political discourse, and savage remarks that might not otherwise have surfaced appeared regularly in the press.
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Ron Chernow |
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dcb65ed
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By now, monarchy and aristocracy were standard code words for Hamilton and the Federalists.
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Ron Chernow |
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c18faee
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Adams made baldly partisan selections for a judiciary already packed with Federalists. His appointment of the so-called midnight judges rubbed old Republican wounds.
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Ron Chernow |
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59312a6
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These horror stories about Hamilton have been regurgitated for two centuries and are now engraved on the memories of historians and readers alike. Unfortunately, these vignettes often cruelly misrepresent Hamilton and have done no small damage to his reputation. Jefferson understood very well the power of laying down a paper trail.
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Ron Chernow |
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3e910dd
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Jefferson recorded the story of Hamilton and Adams singing the praises of the British constitution; of Hamilton supposedly raising a toast to George III at a St. Andrew's Society dinner in New York; and of Hamilton declaring at a dinner party that "there was no stability, no security in any kind of government but a monarchy."
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Ron Chernow |
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aa6f6c9
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A master legislative tactician, Madison was now recognized as the first opposition leader in House history and had most of the south lined up solidly behind him.
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Ron Chernow |
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e422167
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By 1792, both political parties saw their opponents as mortal threats to the heritage of the Revolution. But the special mixture of idealism and vituperation also stemmed from the experiences of the founders themselves. These selfless warriors of the Revolution and sages of the Constitutional Convention had been forced to descend from their Olympian heights and adjust to a rougher world of everyday politics, where they cultivated their own ..
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Ron Chernow |
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99fe90d
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cannot doubt, from the evidence that I possess[,] that the National Gazette was instituted by him [Jefferson] for political purposes and that one leading object of it has been to render me and all the measures connected with my department as odious as possible.
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Ron Chernow |
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d7ec0aa
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man who felt no need to placate Thomas Jefferson or James Madison had to grovel before the raffish James Reynolds, whom he later described bitterly as "an obscure, unimportant, and profligate man."
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Ron Chernow |
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67ae02f
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You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet in 1793," Adams chided Jefferson years later, "when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England."
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Ron Chernow |
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114ce18
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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 Guard--despite years of complaints and bitter smears.
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Ron Chernow |
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bba5ef5
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In the first essay, Hamilton dealt with the objection that only Congress could issue a neutrality proclamation, since it alone had the power to declare war. Hamilton pointed out that if "the legislature have a right to make war, on the one hand, it is, on the other, the duty of the executive to preserve peace till war is declared."50 Once again, Hamilton broadened the authority of the executive branch in diplomacy, especially during emergen..
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Ron Chernow |
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8575b1a
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A central tenet of the American Revolution had been that a corrupt British ministry had suborned Parliament through patronage and pensions and used the resulting excessive influence to tax the colonists and deprive them of their ancient English liberties
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Ron Chernow |
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19450ad
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After years of frustrating delays, the Churches at last moved to New York in May 1797. John Barker Church soon established himself as a personage of staggering wealth and New York's foremost insurance underwriter. "His equipage and style of living are several degrees beyond those of any other man amongst us," Robert Troup marveled.14 Angelica began to throw extravagant parties at which guests dined on plates of polished silver. She usually ..
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Ron Chernow |
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b43e860
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As many Republicans had predicted, the French had retaliated against the Jay Treaty by allowing their privateers to prey on American ships carrying contraband cargo bound for British ports. With Napoleon emerging as the new French military strongman, Hamilton had little doubt that his troops would spread despotism across Europe.
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Ron Chernow |
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5cce3af
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Soon after being sworn in as president, John Adams learned that the Directory, the five-member council now ruling France, had expelled the new American minister, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and promulgated belligerent new orders against America's merchant marine. By spring, the French had seized more than three hundred American vessels.
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Ron Chernow |
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0e77542
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Mr. Adams is vain, suspicious, and stubborn, of an excessive self-regard, taking counsel with nobody."9 Jefferson predicted to Letombe that Adams would last only one term and urged the French to invade England."
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Ron Chernow |
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bc808be
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On May 16, 1797, President Adams delivered a bellicose message to Congress, denouncing the French for ejecting Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and stalking American ships and chiding them for having "inflicted a wound in the American breast."
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Ron Chernow |
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20a8408
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Adams made a conciliatory overture and announced plans to dispatch a diplomatic mission to Paris. The three-man delegation was to include two southern Federalists, John Marshall and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and a northern Republican, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who had been a partisan of the French Revolution. "The French are no more capable of a republican government," Adams advised Gerry, "than a snowball can exist a whole week i..
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Ron Chernow |
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702cf6d
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By the time the three Americans showed up in Paris, Napoleon had crushed the Austrian army in Italy. Then, in early September, the Directory staged a veritable coup d'etat, arresting and deporting scores of deputies and shutting down more than forty newspapers in a wholesale purge of moderate elements.
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Ron Chernow |
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3a2605b
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When the XYZ papers were published, they proved a bonanza for the Federalists, and John Adams attained the zenith of his popularity as president.
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Ron Chernow |
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060457d
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A spirit of warm and high resentment against the rulers of France has suddenly burst forth in every part of the United States."26 Congress rushed through a program for fortifying eastern seaports and augmenting the army and navy."
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Ron Chernow |
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a81f4cf
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Before McHenry returned to Philadelphia, Washington slipped him a sheet naming the three men he wished to see as his major generals, listed in order: Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. Writing to Adams, Washington made the appointment of his general officers
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Ron Chernow |
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862bc94
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Before McHenry returned to Philadelphia, Washington slipped him a sheet naming the three men he wished to see as his major generals, listed in order: Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. Writing to Adams, Washington made the appointment of his general officers a precondition for accepting the commanding post.
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Ron Chernow |