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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 21ce38c | Hamilton believed that the United States should preemptively seize Spanish Florida and Louisiana, lest they fall into hostile French hands. To accomplish this, he directed General James Wilkinson to assemble an armada of seventy-five riverboats. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 9fe1b48 | Hamilton never carried out his plans for Louisiana or Florida, much less for Spanish America. As the original rationale for his army--defense against a French invasion--was increasingly undercut by peace negotiations, such plans seemed increasingly pointless, preposterous, and irrelevant. Still, the episode went down as one of the most flagrant instances of poor judgment in Hamilton's career. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 0b3b131 | Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted. And | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| fa2140f | The low point of his presidency came in June and July 1798. While Adams wrestled with Hamilton over the ranking of Washington's major generals, Congress enacted four infamous laws designed to muzzle dissent and browbeat the Republicans into submission. They were known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act, passed on June 18, lengthened from five to fourteen years the period necessary to become a naturalized citizen with ful.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4a41b7d | The Alien Act of June 25 gave the president the power to deport, without a hearing or even a reasonable explanation, any foreign-born residents deemed dangerous to the peace. The Alien Enemies Act of July 6 granted the president the power to label as enemy aliens any residents who were citizens of a country at war with America, prompting an outflow of French emigres. Then came the capstone of these horrendous measures: the Sedition Act of J.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 8e8d420 | The Federalist-controlled Congress was maneuvering for partisan advantage and betraying an unbecoming nativist streak. Federalists wanted to curb an influx of Irish immigrants, who were usually pro-French and thus natural adherents to the Republican cause. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 1c037ed | Hamilton and others had argued that the Constitution transcended state governments and directly expressed the will of the American people. Hence, the Constitution began "We the People of the United States" and was ratified by special conventions, not state legislatures." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 135d706 | Now Jefferson and Madison lent their imprimatur to an outmoded theory in which the Constitution became a compact of the states, not of their citizens. By this logic, states could refrain from complying with federal legislation they considered unconstitutional. | Ron Chernow | ||
| b6996ec | The influence of the doctrine of states' rights, especially in the version promulgated by Jefferson, reverberated right up to the Civil War and beyond. At the close of that war, James Garfield of Ohio, the future president, wrote that the Kentucky Resolutions "contained the germ of nullification and secession, and we are today reaping the fruits." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3be4d72 | The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics--the electorate's tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 99e9863 | Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4c86f98 | Both Hamilton and Jefferson believed in democracy, but Hamilton tended to be more suspicious of the governed and Jefferson of the governors. A strange blend of dreamy idealist and manipulative politician, Jefferson was a virtuoso of the sunny phrases and hopeful themes that became staples of American politics. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ef16347 | The three terms of Federalist rule had been full of dazzling accomplishments that Republicans, with their extreme apprehension of federal power, could never have achieved. Under the tutelage of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, the Federalists had bequeathed to American history a sound federal government with a central bank, a funded debt, a high credit rating, a tax system, a customs service, a coast guard, a navy, and many other institutio.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| d2d13f5 | The 1800 triumph of Republicanism also meant the ascendancy of the slaveholding south. Three Virginia slaveholders--Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe--were to control the White House for the next twenty-four years. These aristocratic exponents of "democracy" not only owned hundreds of human beings but profited from the Constitution's least democratic features: the legality of slavery and the ability of southern states to count three-fifths of .. | Ron Chernow | ||
| ed54f55 | Right before Adams left office, Congress had enacted the Judiciary Act, which created new courts and twenty-three new federal judgeships so as to spare Supreme Court justices the onerous task of riding the circuit. | Ron Chernow | ||
| f07c21b | After reading through George Washington's papers, Marshall pronounced Hamilton "the greatest man (or one of the greatest men) that had ever appeared in the United States."31 Marshall considered Hamilton and Washington the two indispensable founders, and it therefore came as no surprise that Jefferson looked askance at the chief justice as "the Federalist serpent in the democratic Eden of our administration."32" | Ron Chernow | ||
| c309199 | At the start of 1799, both of the banks in New York City happened to be the brainchildren of Alexander Hamilton: the Bank of New York and the local branch of the Bank of the United States. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2030500 | Not only had Burr's plan failed to provide pure water but it had thwarted other sound plans afoot, including those for a municipal water company. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 746a942 | With John Adams certain to run strongly in New England and Thomas Jefferson equally so in the south, the election would hinge on pivotal votes in the mid-Atlantic states, particularly New York, which had twelve electoral votes. | Ron Chernow | ||
| f8c440a | This was Alexander Hamilton's recurring nightmare: an electoral deal struck between Virginia and New York Republicans. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 3c81939 | By midnight on May 1, 1800, the local political world learned the result of this fierce election, one that portended a fundamental realignment in American politics: the Republican slate had swept New York City, converting Hamilton's own home turf from a Federalist to a Republican stronghold. This meant that Jefferson could now count on twelve electoral votes where he had received none in 1796. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 563d7ae | How had Hamilton justified this disgraceful action to himself? He believed that Jefferson's support for the Constitution had always been lukewarm and that, once in office, he would dismantle the federal government and return America to the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. This was not entirely paranoid thinking on Hamilton's part, for Jefferson made statements that sounded as if he wanted an annulment or radical recasting of the Cons.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 74f4227 | In writing an intemperate indictment of John Adams, Hamilton committed a form of political suicide that blighted the rest of his career. As shown with "The Reynolds Pamphlet," he had a genius for the self-inflicted wound and was capable of marching blindly off a cliff--traits most pronounced in the late 1790s. Gouverneur Morris once commented that one of Hamilton's chief characteristics was "the pertinacious adherence to opinions he had onc.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 1f8a30e | In "The Reynolds Pamphlet," Hamilton had exposed only his own folly. In the Adams pamphlet, he displayed both his own errant judgment and Adams's instability." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 25fee97 | For all their fratricidal warfare, the Federalists ran a surprisingly close race for the presidency. Jefferson and Burr tied with seventy-three electoral votes apiece, while Adams and Pinckney trailed with sixty-five and sixty-four votes respectively. As expected, New England unanimously backed Adams, while Jefferson captured virtually the entire south. The New York City elections in April 1800, which had pitted Hamilton against Burr in riv.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| b0ca888 | Self-sufficiency and a contempt of the science and experience of others are too prevailing traits of character in this country," he wailed to John Jay." -- | Ron Chernow | ||
| 550e7a3 | we know that he read a considerable amount of philosophy, including Bacon, Hobbes, Montaigne, and Cicero. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2d1241c | If forced to choose, Hamilton preferred a man with wrong principles to one devoid of any. "There is no circumstance which has occurred in the course of our political affairs that has given me so much pain as the idea that Mr. Burr might be elevated to the Presidency by the means of the Federalists," | Ron Chernow | ||
| 706eed4 | It was not until February 11, 1801, that votes cast by presidential electors in the various states were actually opened in the Senate chamber, confirming what was already common knowledge: that Jefferson and Burr had tied with seventy-three votes apiece. | Ron Chernow | ||
| d6c27ce | Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by their passion, | Ron Chernow | ||
| 488a0e2 | Hamilton wanted logical proofs of religion, not revelation, and amply annotated his copy of A View of the Evidences of Christianity, by William Paley. "I have examined carefully the evidence of the Christian religion," he told one friend, "and if I was sitting as a juror upon its authenticity, I should rather abruptly give my verdict in its favor."13 To" | Ron Chernow | ||
| cbb30bd | Once Jefferson became president, Hamilton, forty-six, began to fade from public view, an abrupt fall for a man whose rise had been so spectacular, so incandescent. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 2593e52 | As to the love of liberty and country, you have given no stronger proofs of being actuated by it than I have done. Cease then to arrogate to yourself and to your party all the patriotism and virtue of the country."70" | Ron Chernow | ||
| 03c74f2 | Hamilton had always regarded the judiciary as the final fortress of liberty and the most vulnerable branch of government. John Marshall remedied that deficiency, and many of the great Supreme Court decisions he handed down were based on concepts articulated by Hamilton. In writing the decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Marshall established the principle of judicial review--the court's authority to declare acts of Congress unconstitution.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 937c216 | For Hamilton, Jefferson's desire to overturn the Judiciary Act was an insidious first step toward destroying the Constitution: "Who is so blind as not to see that the right of the legislature to abolish the judges at pleasure destroys the independence of the judicial department and swallows it up in the impetuous vortex of legislative influence?"34 Without an independent judiciary, the Constitution was a worthless document." | Ron Chernow | ||
| b945a12 | Thanks to Washington and Hamilton, the American economy flourished; thanks to Adams, the Quasi-War with France had receded to a memory. Inheriting domestic prosperity and international peace, Jefferson benefited from exceptional good fortune as America settled down for the first time since the Revolution. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 8179e31 | The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation." With an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish, he affirmed that in the near future "the dividing line will not be Mason & Dixons but between patriotism, & intelligence on the one side & superstition, ambition & ignorance on the other."75 He wound up with an eloquent appeal for separating church and state: "Encourage free schools and resolve that not o.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 06ac88b | Frederick Douglass paired Grant with Lincoln as the two people who had done most to secure African American advances: | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4a2232e | In 1870 he oversaw creation of the Justice Department, its first duty to bring thousands of anti-Klan indictments. By 1872 the monster had been slain, although its spirit resurfaced as the nation retreated from Reconstruction's lofty aims. Grant presided over the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, and landmark civil rights legislation, including the 1875 act outlawing racial discrimination in public accommodations. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 51dbc42 | Few sons attain the praise of their great sires, and most their sires disgrace. | Ancestors | ||
| 42c3998 | While drinking almost never interfered with his official duties, it haunted his career and trailed him everywhere, an infuriating, ever-present ghost he could not shake. It influenced how people perceived him and deserves close attention. As with so many problems in his life, Grant managed to attain mastery over alcohol in the long haul, a feat as impressive as any of his wartime victories. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 5e006fd | Without Washington's guidance or public responsibility, he had again revealed a blazing, ungovernable temper that was unworthy of him and rendered him less effective. He also revealed anew that the man who had helped to forge a new structure of law and justice for American society remained mired in the old-fashioned world of blood feuds. When it came to intensely personal conflicts, New York's most famous lawyer still turned instinctively n.. | Ron Chernow | ||
| 640d109 | Julia would gladly have stayed for one more term and had no qualms about scrapping George Washington's precedent. "Oh, Ulys! was that kind to me?" she protested. "Was it just to me?" "Well," he replied, "I do not want to be here another four years. I do not think I could stand it." Rather than feel sympathy for her husband's plight as a profoundly overburdened president, Julia chose to feel "deeply injured." | Ron Chernow | ||
| 4425297 | These same banks, ironically, would shortly be hauled before the Pujo Committee as the abominable Money Trust. What the public wouldn't know was that the Money Trust had been forged, in part, by Washington itself in its quest for foreign influence. | Ron Chernow |