A journalist named C. E. Meade, a nephew of George Gordon Meade, claimed Grant puffed on his last cigar while visiting a horse farm in Goshen, New York. “Gentlemen,” Grant announced to his companions, “this is the last cigar I shall ever smoke.
In one glowing passage, Hamilton invoked the colonists’ natural rights: “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
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.
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.
Whoever considers the nature of our government with discernment will see that though obstacles and delays will frequently stand in the way of the adoption of good measures, yet when once adopted, they are likely to be stable and permanent. It will be far more difficult to undo than to do.” 93.
If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.
On September 3, an especially hostile audience baited Johnson in Cleveland, where his behavior flirted with new lows. When a heckler yelled that Johnson should “hang Jeff Davis,” the president rejoined, “Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?”62 When someone in the crowd hollered, “Is this dignified?” Johnson shot back: “I care not for dignity.
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.
An essential difference between the American and French revolutions was that the American version allowed a search for many truths, while French zealots tried to impose a single sacred truth that allowed no deviation. ” page 714.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One story, perhaps apocryphal, claims that when Hamilton was asked why the framers omitted the word God from the Constitution, he replied, “We forgot.
It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.
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.
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.
George Washington noted the hypocrisy of the many slaveholding antifederalists: “It is a little strange that the men of large property in the South should be more afraid that the Constitution will produce an aristocracy or a monarchy than the genuine, democratical people of the East.
To survive, he continued to hawk firewood on the St. Louis streets and the time thus spent destroyed any chance of prospering as a farmer: “I regard every load of wood taken, when the services of both myself and team are required on the farm, is a direct loss of more than the value of the load.”114.
A group of Wall Street admirers created for Grant a $250,000 Presidential Retiring Fund, which would not only yield $15,000 in annual interest but reinforce his image as overly beholden to the rich. To supplement his income, Grant returned to his.