Quotes from Ron Chernow

that there was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency, and he

More than anyone else, the omnipresent Hamilton galvanized, inspired, and scandalized the newborn nation, serving as a flash point for pent-up conflicts of class, geography, race, religion, and ideology. His contemporaries often seemed defined by how they reacted to the political gauntlets that he threw down repeatedly with such defiant panache.

The four to six young aides usually slept in one room, often two to a bed, then worked long days in a single room with chairs crowded around small wooden tables. Washington typically kept a small office off to the side. During busy periods, the aides sometimes wrote and copied one hundred letters per day, an exhausting grind

Hamilton has often been extolled as the exponent of a rational foreign policy based on cool calculations of national self-interest. But his April 14 letter expressed his unswerving conviction that nations, transported by strong emotion, often miscalculate their interests: "Wars oftener proceed from angry and perverse passions than from cool calculations of interest.

Nevertheless, it frustrated him that after this exhaustive investigation his opponents still rehashed the stale charges of misconduct. He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that "no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false." If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end "that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.

The Federalists were allied with powerful banking and merchant interests in New England and on the Atlantic seaboard and were disproportionately Congregationalists and Episcopalians.

Hamilton lacked the temperament of a true-blue revolutionary. He saw too clearly that greater freedom could lead to greater disorder and, by a dangerous dialectic, back to a loss of freedom. Hamilton's lifelong task was to try to straddle and resolve this contradiction and to balance liberty and order.

Unlike Franklin or Jefferson, he never learned to subdue his opponents with a light touch or a sly, artful, understated turn of phrase.

At the same time, the mounting fear of Hamilton among Jefferson, Madison, and their supporters cohered into an organized opposition that began to call itself Republican. Alluding to the ancient Roman republic, this was also a clever label, insinuating that Federalists were not real republicans and hence must be monarchists. Often Baptists and Methodists, Republicans drew their strength from rich southern planters and small farmers.

Of the British prime minister, Lord North, he wrote with exceptional acuity: The Premier has advanced too far to recede with safety: he is deeply interested to execute his purpose, if possible…. In common life, to retract an error even in the beginning is no easy task. Perseverance confirms us in it and rivets the difficulty…. To this we may add that disappointment and opposition inflame the minds of men and attach them still more to their mistakes.

It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man's honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse."37 Washington

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.

This was a powerful argument for Washington, who had gone to Philadelphia feeling that the war would be incomplete without a new Constitution; now, he knew, the Constitution would be incomplete without an effective new government.

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.

Lafayette showed a courtier's love of compliments, was a master of flattery, and liked to hug people in the French manner. Perhaps Washington doted on the young man because he dared to express emotions that he himself stifled, thawing his frosty reserve and opening an outlet for his suppressed emotions.

D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one's resolve in the face of enemies.

Reared with Methodist modesty, he could never admit nakedly to the true depth of his ambition. In this way, he was strictly Hannah Grant's son, not Jesse's. Ethical and honorable, he wanted to receive jobs based squarely on his merits, a faith he held so unalterably he called it "one of my superstitions.

Simon Wolf wrote during Woodrow Wilson's tenure, "President Grant did more on behalf of American citizens of Jewish faith at home and abroad than all the Presidents of the United States prior thereto or since.

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.

In the words of Frederick Douglass, "That sturdy old Roman, Benjamin Butler, made the negro a contraband, Abraham Lincoln made him a freeman, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant made him a citizen.

People did not always realize how observant he was. "His eyes retire inward . . . and have nothing of fire or animation or openness in their expression," said Edward Thornton, a young British diplomat, who added that Washington "possesses the two great requisites of a statesman, the faculty of concealing his own sentiments, and of discovering those of other men.

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.

As a West Point graduate, Grant had enjoyed an insider's knowledge of military personnel during the war, but as a Washington outsider, he needed the valuable advice of seasoned professionals about appointments.