Quotes from Ron Chernow

proper handling of government debt would permit America to borrow at affordable interest rates and would also act as a tonic to the economy. Used as loan collateral, government bonds could function as money—and it was the scarcity of money, Hamilton observed, that had crippled the economy and resulted in severe deflation in the value of land. America was a young country rich in opportunity. It lacked only liquid capital, and government debt could supply that gaping deficiency.

truth is so enveloped in mist and false representations that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it.

Standard Oil was not content to advance its own interest; it worked actively to damage the business interests of its adversaries.

Despite the chronic friction between them, Big Bill continued to borrow money from his son and by the end of the century still had a $64,000 loan outstanding—more than $1 million in today's money.

What mattered was that people trusted the government to make good on repayment: "In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it and this is affected by appearances as well as realities.

Unable to compromise on business principles, Rockefeller chose to jeopardize family relations instead.

he elaborated the fashionable argument that the colonies owed their allegiance to the British king, not to Parliament. The point was critical, for if the colonies were linked only to the king, they could, theoretically, wriggle free from parliamentary control while creating some form of commonwealth status in the British empire.

Now Jefferson and Madison lent their imprimatur to an outmoded theory in which the Constitution became a compact of the states, not of their citizens. By this logic, states could refrain from complying with federal legislation they considered unconstitutional.

Human affairs are always checkered and vicissitudes in this life are rather to be expected than wondered at." 18

She exerted a strong influence upon the rest of us.

He was a man who always acted on Flagler's business motto of favoring "sharp, vigorous and decisive measures.

Will I write a check or would you prefer payment in Standard Oil shares?

Neither Junior nor Senior held such baldly racist sentiments, but they agreed that the board had to accommodate retrograde southern views in order to function.

I've talked too long, I'm afraid. There are others here who wished to talk.

Breathtakingly generous in his philanthropy, Rockefeller could also be stingy—appallingly so.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the ambiguous signals from the White House reflected more than duplicity on Roosevelt's part

The influence of the doctrine of states' rights, especially in the version promulgated by Jefferson, reverberated right up to the Civil War and beyond. At the close of that war, James Garfield of Ohio, the future president, wrote that the Kentucky Resolutions "contained the germ of nullification and secession, and we are today reaping the fruits.

I shudder to think of what I should have been if I had remained in Richford all my life," he later confided.

He later exhibited an unacknowledged dread of death, and Eliza was perhaps the first to intuit it.

where there is no occasion for expressing an opinion, 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.

Coolheaded in the face of such hysteria, Rockefeller saw that he could convert this chaos to advantage.

the two J. P. Morgans even walked and talked alike.

Hamilton stole the moral high ground from opponents and established the legal and moral basis for securities trading in America: the notion that securities are freely transferable and that buyers assume all rights to profit or loss in transactions.

It is interesting to note in this context that Standard Oil of Ohio did not hire its first permanent black employee until 1906.