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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 27b42ce | And in the Senate, Oliver Ellsworth took the lead in drafting a judiciary act that provided for a six-member Supreme Court, buttressed by federal district and circuit courts. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 31dd1a4 | On May 19, Representative Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, Hamilton's old patron from Elizabethtown, proposed that Congress establish a department of finance. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3d3b6e5 | starters, it would be more efficient, since there would be one overarching scheme for settling debt instead of many small, competing schemes. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 02073d2 | It also reflected a profound political logic. Hamilton knew that bondholders would feel a stake in preserving any government that owed them money. If the federal government, not the states, was owed the money, creditors would shift their main allegiance to the central government. | Ron Chernow | ||
| b02fed7 | to be an essential ingredient in its structure that it shall be under a private not a public direction, under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy."18" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 01e2161 | I must say tonight my greatest hope is to die in my bed, at peace with the world, as an old man. | Philippa Gregory | ||
| d79e471 | To make good on payments, Hamilton knew he would have to raise a substantial loan abroad and boost domestic taxes beyond the import duties now at his disposal. He proposed taxes on wines and spirits distilled within the United States as well as on tea and coffee. Of these first "sin taxes," the secretary observed that the products taxed are "all of them in reality luxuries, the greatest part of them foreign luxuries; some of them, in the ex.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4141233 | A sinking fund is a repository, set up apart from the general budget, for revenues to pay off debt.) It would sequester revenues from the sudden whims of grasping politicians who might want to raid the Treasury for short-term gain. The sinking fund would retire about 5 percent of the debt each year until it was paid off. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 065ae96 | Because the Constitution made no mention of a cabinet, Washington had to invent it. At first, this executive council consisted of just three men: Hamilton as secretary of the treasury, Jefferson as secretary of state, and Henry Knox as secretary of war. The first attorney general, thirty-six-year-old Edmund Randolph of Virginia, had no department and received an annual retainer of $1,500 for an essentially consultative role. Viewed as the g.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| cbeddc0 | Perhaps the main reason that Washington and Hamilton functioned so well together was that both men longed to see the thirteen states welded into a single, respected American nation. At the close of the war, Washington had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors, outlining four things America would need to attain greatness: consolidation of the states under a strong federal government, timely payment of its debts, creation of an army a.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0b7ef1e | Such outings were rare during Hamilton's harried first days in office. He had to create a customs service on the spot, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7b638a2 | During his second day in office, he issued a circular to all customs collectors, demanding exact figures of the duties accumulated in each state. When they sent back suspiciously low numbers, Hamilton, who knew something about smuggling from St. Croix, suspected that it must be rife along the eastern seaboard, leading him to the next logical step. "I have under consideration the business of establishing guard boats," he told one corresponde.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| f0bf7fc | In a significant decision, he decided that customs revenues could be paid not just in gold and silver but with notes from the Bank of New York and the Bank of North America, an innovation that began to steer the country away from use of coins and toward an efficient system of paper money. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 848745c | Even later, as a private citizen, he said that his own "scrupulousness" had prevented him from "being concerned in what is termed speculation."9 This made his blindness to Duer's shameless machinations the more bewildering. Hamilton was an extremely perceptive judge of character, and William Duer was one of the few cases in which his acute vision seems to have been blinkered." | Ron Chernow | ||
| d471fad | Far from being a pro-British lackey, much less a high-level spy, Hamilton stubbornly defended U.S. interests at every turn. He was bargaining with Beckwith, not groveling. He insisted that the United States should be able to trade with the British West Indies. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 972805e | wanted England to heed the peace treaty and relinquish its western forts in the Ohio River valley. The one place where Hamilton deviated from official policy was in applauding Britain's refusal to hand over slaves who had defected during the Revolution. "To have given up these men to their masters, after the assurances of protection held out to them, was impossible," Hamilton told Beckwith." | Ron Chernow | ||
| fd2eeaa | What mattered was that people trusted the government to make good on repayment: "In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it and this is affected by appearances as well as realities." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 04479a3 | Hamilton stole the moral high ground from opponents and established the legal and moral basis for securities trading in America: the notion that securities are freely transferable and that buyers assume all rights to profit or loss in transactions. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 72514b6 | The government would have to track them down, ascertain their sale prices, then trace all intermediate investors who had held the debt before it was bought by the current owners--an administrative nightmare. Hamilton could have left it at that, ducking the political issue and taking refuge in technical jargon. Instead, he shifted the terms of the debate. He said that the first holders were not simply noble victims, nor were the current buye.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6f21cbd | Reproaching his slave carpenters, he said, "There is not to be found so idle a set of rascals."28 Of a slave named Betty who worked as a spinner in the mansion, he complained that "a more lazy, deceitful and impudent hussy is not to be found in the United States."29 He" -- | Ron Chernow | ||
| 50784a0 | How to remedy this want of confidence? Hamilton submitted a twelve-point program, a fully realized vision of a financial system that reflected sustained thinking. Congress should create a central bank, owned half by the government and half by private individuals, that could issue money and make public and private loans. Drawing on European precedents, Hamilton cited the Bank of England and the French Council of Commerce as possible models. .. | Ron Chernow | ||
| caff0d0 | May 1780, he had fresh cause to meditate on the failings of Congress when news came of a calamitous defeat: the British had taken Charleston, capturing an American garrison of 5,400 soldiers, including John Laurens. The year 1780 was to be a dismal one for the patriots. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 6d0eb66 | adumbrate a plan that did not reflect popular opinion. | Ron Chernow | ||
| fa28f0b | He now subjected the Articles of Confederation to a searching critique. He thought the sovereignty of the states only enfeebled the union. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 964816e | He favored granting Congress supreme power in war, peace, trade, finance, and foreign affairs. | Ron Chernow | ||
| b3de8ff | strong executives and endorsed single ministers for war, foreign affairs, finance, and the navy: | Ron Chernow | ||
| 31ac9a0 | respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation. | Ron Chernow | ||
| c59fbbc | He said that the first holders were not simply noble victims, nor were the current buyers simply predatory speculators. The original investors had gotten cash when they wanted it and had shown little faith in the country's future. Speculators, meanwhile, had hazarded their money and should be rewarded for the risk. | Ron Chernow | ||
| d10624f | The next incendiary issue was that some debt was owed by the thirteen states, some by the federal government. Hamilton decided to consolidate all the debt into a single form: federal debt. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0e4a430 | Born in a Cellar, * * * and living in a Garret. | Ancestors | ||
| b939f7b | A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing. It will be powerful cement of our union."12" | Ron Chernow | ||
| bb55240 | The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness."7" | Ron Chernow | ||
| dc13bf6 | For that reason, historian Clinton Rossiter insisted that Hamilton's "works and words have been more consequential than those of any other American in shaping the Constitution under which we live."40" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 14008ae | emissary to England to continue talks about the matters discussed. On October 7, Washington discussed such an appointment with Hamilton and Jay and accepted Hamilton's suggestion that Gouverneur Morris go to England. Within weeks of his confirmation as treasury secretary, Hamilton had already staked out a position as the administration's most influential figure on foreign policy. | Ron Chernow | ||
| efb0328 | proper handling of government debt would permit America to borrow at affordable interest rates and would also act as a tonic to the economy. Used as loan collateral, government bonds could function as money--and it was the scarcity of money, Hamilton observed, that had crippled the economy and resulted in severe deflation in the value of land. America was a young country rich in opportunity. It lacked only liquid capital, and government deb.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0a1065a | For Hamilton the American Revolution was a practical workshop of economic and political theory, providing critical object lessons and cautionary tales that charted the course for his career. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 065bad0 | 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." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 7d87d53 | subscribed | Ron Chernow | ||
| c31d92d | This was the great paradox of his career: his optimistic view of America's potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His faith in Americans never quite matched his faith in America itself. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 66674d1 | Revenge, greed, resentment, envy, and patriotism made for an inflammatory mix. | Ron Chernow | ||
| effc04c | Hamilton articulated fundamental concepts that he later expanded upon in The Federalist Papers, concepts central to the future of American jurisprudence. In renting the property to Waddington, he declared, the British had abided by the law of nations, which allowed for the wartime use of property in occupied territory. New York's Trespass Act violated both the law of nations and the 1783 peace treaty with England, which had been ratified by.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 30b4726 | Would a treaty ratified by Congress trump state law? Could the judiciary override the legislature? And would America function as a true country or a loose federation of states? Hamilton left no doubt that states should bow to a central government: "It must be conceded that the legislature of one state cannot repeal the law of the United States." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 73411d4 | If Rutgers v. Waddington made Hamilton a controversial figure in city politics in 1784, the founding of the Bank of New York cast him in a more conciliatory role. The creation of New York's first bank was a formative moment in the city's rise as a world financial center. Banking was still a new phenomenon in America. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3444f76 | Congress adopted the dollar as the official monetary unit in 1785, but for many years New York shopkeepers still quoted prices in pounds, shillings, and pence. | Ron Chernow |