Quotes from Ron Chernow

Washington presented a rare case of a revolutionary leader who, instead of being blinded by political fervor, recognized that fallible human beings couldn't always live up to the high standards he set for them.

If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

The president of a democracy, he averred, had to show himself to the people, and some danger was an inescapable hazard of office. "To be absolutely safe," he told John Nicolay resignedly, "I should lock myself up in a box.

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.

Daring in design, cautious in execution—it was a formula he made his own throughout his career.

A lifelong Methodist, he had always viewed religious excess with a certain irony, having once told a clutch of ministers that America boasted three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and Methodists.

For Washington, parties weren't so much expressions of popular politics as their negation, denying the true will of the people as expressed through their chosen representatives.

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.

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.

He also saw human nature as insatiably curious and reserved his highest praise for minds that created "schemes or systems of truth."11

If Hamilton had shot first, he had wasted his fire, exactly as foretold. And if Burr had fired first, as Pendleton alleged, then Hamilton seems to have squeezed the trigger in a reflexive spasm of agony and shot involuntarily into the trees. In neither scenario did Hamilton aim his gun at Aaron Burr.

In "the general course of things, the popular views and even prejudices will direct the action of the rulers.

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.

Reconstruction was a fine but ultimately doomed experiment in American life. The tragedy of this intractable issue was that there was finally no way for blacks to enjoy their rights without a prolonged military presence, and that became politically impossible.

After the French and Indian War, the British vacillated about whether to swap all of Canada for the island of Guadeloupe; in the event the French toasted their own diplomatic cunning in retaining the sugar island.

Clinton epitomized the flaws of the old confederation, and he denounced "the pernicious intrigues of a man high in office to preserve power and emolument to himself at the expense of the union, the peace, and the happiness of America.

he warned that progressive accumulation of debt "is perhaps the NATURAL DISEASE of all Governments. And it is not easy to conceive anything more likely than this to lead to great and convulsive revolutions of Empire.

America, he argued, did not need to triumph decisively over the heavily taxed British: a war of attrition that eroded British credit would nicely do the trick. All the patriots had to do was plant doubts among Britain's creditors about the war's outcome.

To those who feared oppressive taxes, Hamilton made an argument that anticipated "supply-side economics" of the late twentieth century, saying that officials "can have no temptation to abuse this power, because the motive of revenue will check its own extremes. Experience has shown that moderate duties are more productive than high ones."10

As to why God had singled out John D. Rockefeller for such spectacular bounty, Rockefeller always adverted to his own adherence to the doctrine of stewardship—the notion of the wealthy man as a mere instrument of God, a temporary trustee of his money, who devoted it to good causes. "It has seemed as if I was favored and got increase because the Lord knew that I was going to turn around and give it back."73

In another message he wrote, "I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.

Tis with governments as with individuals, first impressions and early habits give a lasting bias to the temper and character.

Public infamy must restrain what the laws cannot.

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.