Quotes from Ron Chernow

On July 5, the Second Continental Congress made one final feeble effort to ward off further hostilities when it endorsed the Olive Branch Petition, urging a negotiated solution to the conflict with England. The document professed loyalty to the king and tactfully blamed his "artful and cruel" ministers.

Hamilton's crowded years as treasury secretary scarcely exhaust the epic story of his short life, which was stuffed with high drama. From his illegitimate birth on Nevis to his bloody downfall in Weehawken, Hamilton's life was so tumultuous that only an audacious novelist could have dreamed it up. He embodied an enduring archetype: the obscure immigrant who comes to America, re-creates himself, and succeeds despite a lack of proper birth and breeding.

To mark their new financial status

We cannot tell when Rockefeller first felt shame about his father, but this emotion was so consequential for his entire development that we must pause briefly to consider it.

For Rockefeller, the arrangement promised multiple advantages, for he not only received preferential rates from Erie but could also chart the oil movements of competitors across the country.

For Hamilton the American Revolution was a practical workshop of economic and political theory, providing critical object lessons and cautionary tales that charted the course for his career.

Rockefeller was notably suspicious when it came to the medical profession.

Washington contrived a statesmanlike compromise between Hamilton's truculence and Randolph's civility. He issued a proclamation telling the insurgents to desist by September 1, or the government would send in a militia. At the same time, he announced that a three-man commission would confer with citizens

Washington, unfazed, sent this screed to Hamilton, who replied that "it is long since I have learnt to hold popular opinion of no value."37

BY the 1880s, as his health was fading

Pierpont feared a replication of the railroad chaos, with overbuilding and price wars.

Rockefeller was embraced no less warmly by the New York Central, which was controlled by the Vanderbilt family.

He had to bide his time, though, because he first had to dispose of two legal challenges that dogged his footsteps throughout 1879.

Seizing the moment, he had the courage to say, " Ã¢â'¬ËœThank you' is not enough, Mr. Rockefeller.

Both Jefferson and Adams detested people who earned a living shuffling financial paper, and when Adams launched a bitter tirade in later years against the iniquitous banking system, Jefferson agreed that the business was "an infinity of successive felonious larcenies." 9 That banks could serve any economic purpose—that they could generate prosperity that might enrich the few but also lubricate the wheels of commerce—seemed alien to both men.

Whatever his health problems, he gave an impression of rock-solid durability;

England exerted much the same influence over American economic policy as Japan would nearly a century later, when it financed much of the U.S. budget deficit in the 1980s.

He learned to cultivate a secretive style and a defiant attitude toward strangers.

Rockefeller worked by subtle hints, doling out praise sparingly to employees and nudging them along.

Forced to reconsider, Rockefeller evidently came up with a large enough bonus, although Gates never revealed the exact amount.

Hamilton opposed the vogue for state banks that proliferated in the 1790s, less from narrow political motives than from a fear that competition among banks would dilute credit standards and invite imprudent lending practices as bankers vied for clients.

Is it possible that is not known?

Rockefeller devoted a great deal of his spare time to religion.

There is no road to despotism more sure or more to be dreaded than that which begins at anarchy.