Quotes from Ron Chernow

Had Napoleon been thoroughly unselfish, Grant suggested, he would have been the greatest man in history, such was his military genius. When a young woman on board asked Grant to name the two figures he detested most in history, he shot back, "Napoleon and Robespierre."114

Washington has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts, but by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp

With a soil and climate scarcely equaled in the world," he protested, Mexico "has more poor and starving subjects who are willing and able to work than any country in the world. The rich keep down the poor with a hardness of heart that is incredible.

Could the fractious tendencies engendered by years of fighting be channeled in constructive directions? The Revolution had unified sharply disparate groups. Without the bonds of wartime comradeship, would the divisive pulls of class, region, and ideology tear the new country apart?

It turned out that before he had stalked Garfield, Charles Guiteau had stalked Grant.

Everyone found Grant modest and retiring, an altogether likable fellow. "His only dissipation was in owning a fast horse," said a regimental colleague. "He always liked to have a fine nag, and he paid high prices to get one."Grant enjoyed playing chess and checkers, attending parties with Julia, and worshipping with her at the Methodist church.

Washington and other founders entertained the fanciful hope that America would be spared the bane of political parties, which they called "factions" and associated with parochial self-interest.

Washington dwelt upon the transcendent importance of education underscores the stigma that he felt about having missed college. As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years cannot compensate for lost days at this period of your life.

The young man who had worked so hard to ingratiate himself with his superiors in the British Army was suddenly breathing fire. Washington was always reluctant to sign on to any cause, because when he did so, his commitment was total.

To survive, he continued to hawk firewood on the St. Louis streets and the time thus spent destroyed any chance of prospering as a farmer: "I regard every load of wood taken, when the services of both myself and team are required on the farm, is a direct loss of more than the value of the load."114

A group of Wall Street admirers created for Grant a $250,000 Presidential Retiring Fund, which would not only yield $15,000 in annual interest but reinforce his image as overly beholden to the rich. To supplement his income, Grant returned to his

They promulgated a view of the Civil War as a righteous cause that had nothing to do with slavery but only states' rights—to which an incredulous James Longstreet once replied, "I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery.

Hamilton alone seemed resigned as the end neared. At one point, speaking of politics, he said, "If they break this union, they will break my heart."69 He could have left no more fitting political epitaph.

As his life steadily unraveled, he pawned his gold watch and chain for $20 on December 23, 1857, to purchase Christmas presents for his children—perhaps the symbolic nadir of his life.

He dabbled in watercolors, attended the theater, and quoted liberally from Shakespeare and Dickens.

Despite Grant's best efforts at Appomattox, the breach of the Civil War never healed but became deeply embedded in American political culture.

task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.

It was not an assembly of dogmatic extremists who sat in Windsor chairs for six weeks in the red-and-black brick structure known as Carpenters' Hall. Far from being bent on fighting for independence, these law-abiding delegates offered up a public prayer that war might be averted.

such conduct in a man high in office argues greater attachment to his own power than to the public good and furnishes strong reason to suspect a dangerous predetermination to oppose whatever may tend to diminish the former, however it may promote the latter.

A whirlwind of energy, Madison would seem omnipresent in the early days of Washington's administration. He drafted not only the inaugural address but also the official response by Congress and then Washington's response to Congress, completing the circle.

the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.

It is unclear how closely Grant followed current affairs as the national debate over slavery broadened and intensified. Through the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state while other territories wrested from Mexico were left free to adopt slavery or not. In exchange, the North appeased the South by submitting to a strict new fugitive slave law that made many northerners feel like accomplices in the hated institution of their southern brethren.

Around this time, Mark Twain belonged to a small, irregular Confederate company and later claimed for comic effect that he had been pursued by Grant's troops. As he said facetiously, "I did not know that this was the future General Grant or I would have turned and attacked him. I supposed it was just some ordinary Colonel of no particular consequence, so I let him go."35 In fact, Twain had been in the vicinity weeks earlier.

Hamilton, wanting the bank to remain predominantly in private hands, advanced a theory that became a truism of central banking—that monetary policy was so liable to abuse that it needed some insulation from interfering politicians: "To attach full confidence to an institution of this nature, it appears to be an essential ingredient in its structure that it shall be under a private not a public direction, under the guidance of individual interest, not of public policy." 18 At