He railed against the baleful precedent that would be set if the legislature exiled an entire category of people without hearings or trials. If that happened, “no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.
Adams had spent most of his vice presidency exiled in the Senate, casting a record thirty-one tiebreaking votes. Of the number-two post, he said wearily but indelibly that it was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.
Since Hamilton’s abiding literary sin was prolixity, the time and length constraints imposed by The Federalist may have given a salutary concision to his writing. For.
Ah, this is the constitution,” he said. “Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind us no longer.”8.
In other words, Julia still believed in the beneficial effects of tobacco long after her husband had likely died from it. Even grimacing with pain, Grant tracked presidential politics intently.
Of the two policies that Hamilton wished to promote – the federal assumption of state debt and the selection of New York as the capital – assumption was incomparably more important to him. It was the most effective and irrevocable way to yoke the states together into a permanent union.
The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger,” he assured his men, hoping “that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.
The financial turmoil on Wall Street and the William Duer debacle pointed up a glaring defect in Hamilton’s political theory: the rich could put their own interests above the national interest.
Thomas Paine, who had arrived in Philadelphia two years earlier, provided Hamilton with a perfect model when he anonymously published Common Sense. The onetime corset maker and excise officer issued a resounding call for American independence that sold a stupendous 120,000 copies by year’s end.
After Seabury rebutted “A Full Vindication,” Hamilton struck back with “The Farmer Refuted,” an eighty-page tour de force that Rivington brought out on February 23, 1775.
His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, “I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness.
For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington. By settling all outstanding issues left over from the Revolution, the treaty removed the last impediments to improved relations with England and promised sustained prosperity.
In his essays on the need for executive-branch vigor, Hamilton continually invoked the king of England as an example of what should be avoided, especially the monarch’s lack of accountability. Every president “ought to be personally responsible for his behaviour in office.
Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession.
Out of the blue, a veteran named Charles Wood, manager of a brush factory in upstate New York, sent Grant a $500 check and offered him a $1,000 interest-free loan for a year, renewable if necessary. Grant accepted this charity with everlasting relief. In his note, Wood tipped his hat to Grant by saying the payment was “for services ending about April 1865.”77.
Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president. The.
Hamilton saw America’s essential nature being forged in the throes of battle, and that made honest action imperative.
To deal with the legions of dead, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs proposed the creation of a national military cemetery, surrounding the former Lee mansion at Arlington, and Stanton approved the measure the same day.
On September 20, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for ten days. Grant received emergency pleas for purchases of Treasury bonds to add liquidity to national banks, while Thomas Murphy, the former New York customs collector, wired: “Relief must come immediately or hundreds if not thousands of our best men will be ruined.”2 Not since 1837 had such a spasm of fear flashed through Wall Street.
While Grant was celebrated as a victorious wartime general and the president who had peacefully settled the Alabama claims, most gratifying to him was being honored as the protector of freed people. A delegation of painters marched by, hoisting a picture that depicted the shackles of slavery being struck off beside the words “Welcome to the Liberator.