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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| c85aefc | In the standard telling of his life, Hamilton boards a ship in October 1772 and sails off to North America forever. | Ron Chernow | ||
| e7c9b2c | 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 | Ron Chernow | ||
| d1b7c21 | The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his. | Ron Chernow | ||
| a4355e8 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 42c36dc | 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.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 71737b4 | Like Ben Franklin, Hamilton was mostly self-taught and probably snatched every spare moment to read. The | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0d61762 | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 5ca4d9a | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| be8e716 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 03e759e | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| b7c1039 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ee77065 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| cea5421 | 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, | Ron Chernow | ||
| ffebbb5 | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| eaf56de | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 37d295c | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 70c9cdb | 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?" | Ron Chernow | ||
| a3589cd | 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 | Ron Chernow | ||
| fe6819a | 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.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| c33da91 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7f91cc4 | 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 .. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 85e6496 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0a716e7 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3fdf3cb | Great families of yesterday we show,And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who. | Ancestors | ||
| b551fcf | 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" | Ron Chernow | ||
| c2e4053 | 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.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0e52dab | 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? | Ron Chernow | ||
| f384962 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| a3b9452 | 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 | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7acee68 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| bf0890d | 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" | Ron Chernow | ||
| b48312f | Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. (Thomas Jefferson) | Ron Chernow | ||
| 9a72d57 | 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, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6b7b3af | Wherever our flag floats, it is the flag of slavery, | Ron Chernow | ||
| b155052 | Hamilton cast himself as "a warm advocate for limited monarchy and an unfeigned well-wisher to the present royal family." | Ron Chernow | ||
| eb40007 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 14f70a1 | 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 | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4a39694 | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 727804d | 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.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 5f3e009 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6b06db1 | 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. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3022cf8 | 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.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 26c074a | 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 | Ron Chernow | ||
| 00e5731 | Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, "They'll free your niggers." | Ron Chernow |