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Washington's decision to forgo a third term was momentous. He wasn't bound by term limits, and many Americans expected him to serve for life. He surrendered power in a world where leaders had always grabbed for more. Stepping down was the most majestic democratic response he could have flung at his Republican critics. Toward the end of his first term, he had asked James Madison to draft a farewell address and then stashed it away when he de..
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Ron Chernow |
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Where Jefferson dismissed these wholesale killings as regrettable but necessary sacrifices to freedom, Hamilton was traumatized by them. The burgeoning atheism of the French Revolution reawakened in him religious feelings that had lain dormant since King's College days.
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Ron Chernow |
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McDougall was a certified revolutionary hero, while the Scottish-born cashier, the punctilious and corpulent William Seton, was a Loyalist who had spent the war in the city. In a striking show of bipartisan unity, the most vociferous Sons of Liberty--Marinus Willett, Isaac Sears, and John Lamb--appended their names to the bank's petition for a state charter. As a triple power at the new bank--a director, the author of its constitution, and ..
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Ron Chernow |
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Washington's hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later life.
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Ron Chernow |
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ad3d83b
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The mystery of why Callender and his cronies disclosed the Reynolds scandal that summer is a tantalizing one. Callender mentioned the recall of James Monroe, but there were other reasons as well. The infamous expose might never have been published if Washington had still been in office. For Republican pamphleteers, it was now open season on the Federalists. Callender wanted to prevent Hamilton from exercising the same influence over Adams t..
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Ron Chernow |
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Noah Webster contended that Hamilton's "ambition, pride, and overbearing temper" had destined him "to be the evil genius of this country."
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Ron Chernow |
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Robert Troup said that Hamilton rejected fees if they were larger than he thought warranted and generally favored arbitration or amicable settlements in lieu of lawsuits.
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Ron Chernow |
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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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Errors once discovered are more than half amended,
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Ron Chernow |
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Nothing alarmed the white South more than black power at the polls, which was why most terror was directed there.
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Ron Chernow |
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For this boy destined to be the world's greatest heir, money was so omnipresent as to be invisible--something "there, like air or food or any other element," he later said--yet it was never easily attainable.11 As if he were a poor, rural boy, he earned pocket change by mending vases and broken fountain pens or by sharpening pencils. Aware of the rich children spoiled by their parents, Senior seized every opportunity to teach his son the va..
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Ron Chernow |
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have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances.
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Ron Chernow |
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His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, "I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness."
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Ron Chernow |
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Rockefeller was sensitive about adults who behaved in a high-handed fashion toward him. Having assumed so much responsibility at home, he now thought of himself as a mature person.
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Ron Chernow |
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His eloquence . . . seemed to require opposition to give it its full force.
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Ron Chernow |
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In December 1790, with other options foreclosed, Hamilton revived a proposal he had floated in his Report on Public Credit: an excise tax on whiskey and other domestic spirits. He knew the measure would be loathed in rural areas that thrived on moonshine, but he thought this might be more palatable to farmers than a land tax. Hamilton confessed to Washington an ulterior political motive for this liquor tax: he wanted to lay "hold of so valu..
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Ron Chernow |
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On July 11, Lincoln appeared at Fort Stevens, north of Washington, which was under fire from Early's men. To soothe an alarmed populace, Lincoln and Stanton rode there in an open carriage. The tall, angular president, peeping over the fort's parapet, made a prime target for Confederate marksmen, and one Union soldier (possibly Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.), unaware it was Lincoln, shouted, "Get down, you fool."13 It was the only time i..
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Ron Chernow |
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avoid. A rump group of rebel soldiers formed a colony west of Vera Cruz called Carlota, which soon burgeoned into a community of five thousand people. Among southern generals flocking to sanctuary in Mexico were Jubal Early, Edmund Kirby Smith, Sterling Price, J. B. Magruder, and Joseph Shelby as well as governors of three southern states and members of the Confederate cabinet. With Maximilian's connivance, these refugees began to advertise..
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Ron Chernow |
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This was a powerful argument for Washington, who had gone to Philadelphia feeling that the war would be incomplete without a new Constitution; now, he knew, the Constitution would be incomplete without an effective new government.
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Ron Chernow |
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Nothing in all history," William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled "this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot box."92 Grant termed it "the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life."93 George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that "its ratification w..
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Ron Chernow |
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Both as a matter of temperament and policy, Washington was taciturn, once advising his adopted grandson, "It is best to be silent, for there is nothing more certain than that it is at all times more easy to make enemies than friends."
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Ron Chernow |
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Washington has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts, but by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp
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Ron Chernow |
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One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, "We forgot."
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Ron Chernow |
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It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.
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Ron Chernow |
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Everyone found Grant modest and retiring, an altogether likable fellow. "His only dissipation was in owning a fast horse," said a regimental colleague. "He always liked to have a fine nag, and he paid high prices to get one."21 Grant enjoyed playing chess and checkers, attending parties with Julia, and worshipping with her at the Methodist church."
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Ron Chernow |
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Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called "factions" and associated with parochial self-interest."
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Ron Chernow |
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55 This thirty-five-page essay had been written in two or three weeks by Hamilton, as he entered the fray with all the grandiloquence and learning at his disposal. He showed himself proficient at elegant insults, an essential literary talent at the time, and possessing a precocious knowledge of history, philosophy, politics, economics, and law. In retrospect, it was clear that he had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectu..
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Ron Chernow |
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The truth is I am an unlucky honest man that speaks my sentiments to all and with emphasis.
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Ron Chernow |
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greed can corrupt a state and that a public official who betrays his trust "ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind."
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Ron Chernow |
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It was probably at this point that a pregnant Eliza first smiled and shook hands with her husband's future executioner.
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Ron Chernow |
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the government must degenerate either into an absolute and despotic monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy.
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Ron Chernow |
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The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
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Ron Chernow |
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In a moment of acute anxiety a year earlier, John Adams had wondered what would happen if "the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble" maintained such open defiance of authority. 13"
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Ron Chernow |
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Rawlins was soon sidetracked from the war effort, however, by word from his wife, Emily, staying with her family in Goshen, New York, that she suffered from consumption; Rawlins would shortly leave to join her.
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Ron Chernow |
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Another female observer found Madison entertaining in private but "mute, cold, and repulsive" in company."
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Ron Chernow |
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Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o'clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day--six days a week for six consecutive weeks--until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed some..
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Ron Chernow |
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He had a great general's ability to focus on his goals and brush aside obstacles as petty distractions. "You can abuse me, you can strike me," Rockefeller said, "so long as you let me have my own way."
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Ron Chernow |
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the Ku Klux Klan Act. He had planned a California trip that spring, but canceled it in the belief that he couldn't sidestep this historic moment. The strong new measure laid down criminal penalties for depriving citizens of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, including holding office, sitting on a jury, or casting a vote. The federal government could prosecute such cases when state governments refused to act. The law also endowed G..
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Ron Chernow |
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By 1872, under Grant's leadership, the Ku Klux Klan had been smashed in the South. (Its later twentieth-century incarnation had no connection to the earlier group other than a common style and ideology.)
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Ron Chernow |
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In closing, Washington referred to the character of Jesus, "the Divine author of our blessed religion."32"
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Ron Chernow |
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say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, 'Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.'"57"
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Ron Chernow |
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Growing up as a miniature adult, burdened with duties, he developed an exaggerated sense of responsibility that would be evident throughout his life.
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Ron Chernow |
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One of Rockefeller's favorite stories reveals her coolheaded response to danger: Mother had whooping cough and was staying in her room so that we should not catch it. When she heard thieves trying to get at the back of the house and remembered that there was no man to protect us, she softly opened the window and began to sing some old Negro melody, just as if the family were up and about. The robbers turned away from the house, crossed the ..
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Ron Chernow |
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Like most people, Hamilton and Adams were preternaturally sensitive to flaws in the other that they themselves possessed.
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Ron Chernow |