Quotes from Ron Chernow

the government must degenerate either into an absolute and despotic monarchy or a tyrannical aristocracy.

He railed against the baleful precedent that would be set if the legislature exiled an entire category of people without hearings or trials. If that happened, "no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.

Since Hamilton's abiding literary sin was prolixity, the time and length constraints imposed by The Federalist may have given a salutary concision to his writing.

In other words, Julia still believed in the beneficial effects of tobacco long after her husband had likely died from it. Even grimacing with pain, Grant tracked presidential politics intently.

The blessings and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary, but especially so in times of public distress and danger," he assured his men, hoping "that every officer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

his optimistic view of America's potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature.

short order, Grant had established his independence and taken full responsibility for the war's course. At the same time, he established a warm, cordial relationship with Lincoln, whose "affable and gracious manners" and humorous powers of mimicry pleased him.

His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, "I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness.

He would smile at times, but I never heard him laugh aloud," said Louisa Boggs. "He was a sad man . . . he seemed almost in despair."124 Grant seemed to be staring into an abyss. "I don't think he saw a light ahead—not a particle. I don't think he had any ambition further than to educate and take care of his family.

Out of the blue, a veteran named Charles Wood, manager of a brush factory in upstate New York, sent Grant a $500 check and offered him a $1,000 interest-free loan for a year, renewable if necessary. Grant accepted this charity with everlasting relief. In his note, Wood tipped his hat to Grant by saying the payment was "for services ending about April 1865.

his view that in framing a government "every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end in all his actions but private interests." The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.

Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president.

To deal with the legions of dead, Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs proposed the creation of a national military cemetery, surrounding the former Lee mansion at Arlington, and Stanton approved the measure the same day.

Grant later boasted, with some justice, that Hamilton Fish was the best secretary of state in fifty years. While historians have tended to mock Grant's cabinet as a bunch of mediocrities—and Borie certainly qualified as such—it was actually weighted with former congressmen, senators, governors, and judges. It had figures of real distinction (Fish), Radical Republicans (Boutwell, Creswell), men of exceptional intellect (Hoar)

polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity

The New York Times foresaw that in future generations "if a great soldier is indomitable in purpose and exhaustless in courage, endurance, and equanimity; if he is free from vanity and pettiness, if he is unpretentious, truthful, frank, constant, generous to friends, magnanimous to foes, and patriotic to the core, of him it will be said, 'He is like Grant.

FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR, Abraham Lincoln recognized the pivotal role of Kentucky, a centrally located buffer state between North and South. "I hope to have God on my side," he admonished colleagues, "but I must have Kentucky.

On September 20, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading for ten days. Grant received emergency pleas for purchases of Treasury bonds to add liquidity to national banks, while Thomas Murphy, the former New York customs collector, wired: "Relief must come immediately or hundreds if not thousands of our best men will be ruined." Not since 1837 had such a spasm of fear flashed through Wall Street.

While Grant was celebrated as a victorious wartime general and the president who had peacefully settled the Alabama claims, most gratifying to him was being honored as the protector of freed people. A delegation of painters marched by, hoisting a picture that depicted the shackles of slavery being struck off beside the words "Welcome to the Liberator.

Many observers were disturbed by all the uniformed men striding the White House corridors. In a broad-brush indictment, Charles Sumner disapproved of the way the White House "assumed the character of military head-quarters. To the dishonor of the civil service and in total disregard of precedent, the President surrounded himself with officers of the army, and substituted military forms for those of civil life.

In February 1878, Grant braved rain, wind, and snow to become the first American president to visit Jerusalem. He met with a delegation of American Jews who distributed relief to their suffering brethren in the Holy Land and he promised to carry their message to Jewish leaders at home. As they entered religious sites, Julia was susceptible to powerful emotions, her active imagination a perfect foil for her husband's skeptical, deadpan humor.

In a moment of acute anxiety a year earlier, John Adams had wondered what would happen if "the multitude, the vulgar, the herd, the rabble" maintained such open defiance of authority.

Mirabeau, the French revolutionary politician, once observed of Talleyrand that he "would sell his soul for money and he would be right, for he would be exchanging dung for gold."32 Napoleon expressed this sentiment more concisely, calling Talleyrand "a pile of shit in a silk stocking.

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the former. There's far less competition. (Dwight Morrow)