Every president “ought to be personally responsible for his behaviour in office.
The truth is I am an unlucky honest man that speaks my sentiments to all and with emphasis.
In Venice, Grant let slip a remark that would provide fodder for many satirists: he told a young woman what a fine city it would be if only the canals were drained. Henry Adams adduced this as damning evidence of Grant’s philistine nature, but he may only have meant that the canals should be cleansed of sewage.
Madison did not want a long-term government debt, fearing that such securities would fall into foreign hands: “As they have more money than the Americans and less productive ways of laying it out, they can and will pretty generally buy out the Americans.
One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen “conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!” 16.
Having prospered as a merchant, Jesse was now worth $100,000 – equivalent to nearly $3 million today – and employed about fifty people. When he reached sixty in 1854, he had begun to withdraw from active management of his business interests. His holdings included several tanneries near Portsmouth, Ohio, and leather goods stores in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Galena, Illinois.
If Washington was the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.
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.
The world of politics was filled with duplicitous people and Grant was poorly equipped to spot them, remaining an easy victim for crooked men. “They studied Grant, some of them, as the shoemaker measures the foot of his customer,” wrote George Hoar.
In a country riven by quarrels, Hamilton produced a vision of harmonious parts. Agriculture and commerce were mutually beneficial. North and south, the western frontier and the eastern seaboard, enjoyed complementary economies. The only thing needed to capitalize on these strengths was national unity.
Clinton represented what would become a staple of American political folklore: the local populist boss, not overly punctilious or savory yet embraced warmly by the masses as one of their own.
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.
The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people,” he told Morris. “In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.”15.
As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that “every hour misspent is lost forever” and that “future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life.”15.
The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends. 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.
Sensing an abandonment of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass wondered what good abolition had been for the black man if “having been freed from the slaveholder’s lash, he is to be subject to the slaveholder’s shotgun?
In May, when a Senate committee took up the explosive issue of titles, Adams suggested that Washington be addressed as “His Highness, the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.”34 Adams provided fodder for contemporary wags and was promptly dubbed “His Rotundity” or the “Duke of Braintree.
They profess to aim only at a reform of the constitution and of certain abuses in the public administration, but an abolition of debts public and private and a new division of property are strongly suspected in contemplation.
The rancor ushered in a golden age of literary assassination in American politics. No etiquette had yet evolved to define the legitimate boundaries of dissent. Poison-pen artists on both sides wrote vitriolic essays that were overly partisan, often paid scant heed to accuracy, and sought visceral impact.
Such is my opinion of your abilities as a critic,” Hamilton addressed him directly, “that I very much prefer your disapprobation to your applause.