Quotes About Washington

Hamilton and Madison were again pitted in a fundamental contest over whether the executive or legislative branch would run American foreign policy. Hamilton was relieved when Washington denied Congress the treaty instructions.

On December 5, 1792, members of the electoral college assembled in their respective states. The outcome gratified Hamilton and corresponded with his expectations. Washington was chosen unanimously as president. Adams received seventy-seven votes, enough to return him as vice president

To endure such suffering required stoicism reminiscent of the ancient Romans, so Washington had his favorite play, Addison's Cato, the story of a self-sacrificing Roman statesman, staged at Valley Forge to buck up his weary men.

In the late spring of 1777, Hamilton began the most intimate friendship of his life, with an elegant, blue-eyed young officer named John Laurens, who formally joined Washington's family in October.

With a second-string cabinet of Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry, Washington had purged it of apostasy but had also exchanged creative ferment for mediocrity; the numerous rejections had given him little choice.

This treasured gift retained a secret meaning for Eliza, for it had been a tacit gesture of solidarity from Washington when her husband was ensnared in the first major sex scandal in American history. The

Just before Hamilton returned to headquarters, Washington received a letter from Captain Lee announcing Hamilton's death in the Schuylkill. There were tears of jubilation, as well as considerable laughter, when the sodden corpse himself sauntered through the door.

This day, Gen. Washington, Gen. Mifflin and four others of the convention did us the honor of paying us a visit in order to see our vineyard and bee houses," said Peter Legaux, a French immigrant. "In this they found great delight, asked a number of questions, and testified their highest approbation with my manner of managing bees.

For some days past there has been little less than a famine in the camp," Washington said in mid-February. Before winter's end, some 2,500 men, almost a quarter of the army, perished from disease, famine, or the cold.

By the bye," he wrote to Washington, "in the melancholy situation to which the poor King of England has been reduced, there were, I am told, in relation to you, some whimsical circumstances." In a deranged fit, wrote Morris, the king had "conceived himself to be no less a personage than George Washington at the head of the American Army.

memories of Valley Forge and Morristown would powerfully affect the future political agendas of both Washington and Hamilton, who had to grapple with the defects of a weak central government

The painting also pinpointed an important quirk of Washington's face: the lazy right eye that slid off into the corner while the left eye stared straight ahead. To prepare for the equestrian

Washington was then unanimously elected president of the convention.

From boyhood, Washington had struggled to master and conceal his deep emotions. When the wife of the British ambassador later told him that his face showed pleasure at his forthcoming departure from the presidency, Washington grew indignant: "You are wrong. My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings!

Washington appointed Hamilton, George Wythe, and Charles Pinckney to a small committee that drew up rules and procedures for the convention.

Washington had become so accustomed to slavery that the bizarre began to seem normal.

After reading through George Washington's papers, Marshall pronounced Hamilton "the greatest man (or one of the greatest men) that had ever appeared in the United States."31 Marshall considered Hamilton and Washington the two indispensable founders, and it therefore came as no surprise that Jefferson looked askance at the chief justice as "the Federalist serpent in the democratic Eden of our administration."32

While Hamilton endeared himself to Washington in this first election, he also antagonized John Adams, a man with an encyclopedic memory for slights.

In the last analysis, the durable bond formed between Hamilton and Washington during the Revolution was based less on personal intimacy than on shared experiences of danger and despair and common hopes for America's future

He lay bedridden at a nearby farm when Washington decided to recross the Delaware on Christmas night and pounce on the besotted Hessians drowsing at Trenton.

Later on Washington's childless state helped him to assume the title of Father of His Country. That he wasn't a biological father made it easier for him to be the allegorical father of a nation. It also retired any fears, when he was president, that the nation might revert to a monarchy, because he could have no interest in a hereditary crown.

Before McHenry returned to Philadelphia, Washington slipped him a sheet naming the three men he wished to see as his major generals, listed in order: Alexander Hamilton, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and Henry Knox. Writing to Adams, Washington made the appointment of his general officers a precondition for accepting the commanding post.

Around this time, Hamilton chatted with Burr about an appointment. Aware of bad blood between him and Washington, Hamilton asked Burr whether he could serve faithfully under the general. Burr unhesitatingly replied that "he despised Washington as a man of no talents and one who could not spell a sentence of common English.

In retirement, Adams mused that if Burr had become a brigadier general in 1798, it might have tethered him to the Federalists and assured his own reelection in 1800. Indeed, Adams was right in one respect: Washington blundered by recruiting only Federalists to top military positions, while Adams had wished to include two Republicans—Burr and Frederick Muhlenberg—as brigadiers. Had the army taken on a more bipartisan complexion, it might well have been more popular.