Quotes About Hamilton

On April 30, 1781, Hamilton sent a marathon letter to Morris—it runs to thirty-one printed pages—that set forth a full-fledged system for shoring up American credit and creating a national bank.

Jefferson inwardly reviled Hamilton as a traitor to republican government. "What a fatal stroke at the cause of liberty; et tu Brute," he wrote in his diary.

What a world of scarred emotion and secret grief Alexander Hamilton bore with him on the boat to Boston. He took his unhappy boyhood, tucked it away in a mental closet, and never opened the door again.

In mid-February 1804, Hamilton journeyed to Albany and pleaded for a new trial before the state supreme court.

Hamilton's achievements were never matched because he was present at the government's inception, when he could draw freely on a blank slate. If Washington was the father of the country and Madison the father of the Constitution, then Alexander Hamilton was surely the father of the American government.

On May 19, Representative Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, Hamilton's old patron from Elizabethtown, proposed that Congress establish a department of finance.

On October 15, Adams yielded grudgingly to the appointment of Hamilton as inspector general. Knox refused to serve under him, but Charles Cotesworth Pinckney agreed and praised Hamilton. "I knew that his talents in war were great," he told McHenry, "that he had a genius capable of forming an extensive military plan, and a spirit courageous and enterprizing, equal to the execution of it.

This was Alexander Hamilton's recurring nightmare: an electoral deal struck between Virginia and New York Republicans.

By spotlighting the issue of intent, Hamilton identified the criteria for libel that still hold sway in America today: that the writing in question must be false, defamatory, and malicious.

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.

Kitty] was the type of woman Hamilton found irresistible: pretty, coquettish, somewhat spoiled, and always ready for flirtatious banter.

By midnight on May 1, 1800, the local political world learned the result of this fierce election, one that portended a fundamental realignment in American politics: the Republican slate had swept New York City, converting Hamilton's own home turf from a Federalist to a Republican stronghold. This meant that Jefferson could now count on twelve electoral votes where he had received none in 1796.

How had Hamilton justified this disgraceful action to himself? He believed that Jefferson's support for the Constitution had always been lukewarm and that, once in office, he would dismantle the federal government and return America to the chaos of the Articles of Confederation. This was not entirely paranoid thinking on Hamilton's part, for Jefferson made statements that sounded as if he wanted an annulment or radical recasting of the Constitution.

Hamilton seemed to spark controversy at every turn. At the time of his July Fourth oration, New York still had not selected its first two senators. Under the Constitution, this decision fell to state legislatures, insuring that local mandarins would have a disproportionate say in the matter.

The next incendiary issue was that some debt was owed by the thirteen states, some by the federal government. Hamilton decided to consolidate all the debt into a single form: federal debt.

In writing an intemperate indictment of John Adams, Hamilton committed a form of political suicide that blighted the rest of his career. As shown with "The Reynolds Pamphlet," he had a genius for the self-inflicted wound and was capable of marching blindly off a cliff—traits most pronounced in the late 1790s. Gouverneur Morris once commented that one of Hamilton's chief characteristics was "the pertinacious adherence to opinions he had once formed.

In "The Reynolds Pamphlet," Hamilton had exposed only his own folly. In the Adams pamphlet, he displayed both his own errant judgment and Adams's instability.

Hamilton induced Philip Schuyler to renege on his pledged support for Duane in favor of King.

In 1787, then, when Alexander Hamilton asked "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force," that was the kind of question a scientist asks before beginning an experiment.

What built America's called the American system, from Hamilton to Polk to Henry Clay to Lincoln to the Roosevelts. A system of protection of our manufacturing, financial system that lends to manufacturers, OK, and the control of our borders.

I didn't know anything about Eliza when I first got the call about 'Hamilton.' Tommy Kail, the director, asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. I knew what he was talking about because I'd seen the video of Lin performing it at the White House for Barack and Michelle Obama.

'Hamilton' is, of course, closely tied to the Obamas because Lin first performed the opening number at a White House poetry jam.

Coming out of 'Hamilton,' my patriotic spirit and love for my country is renewed. I think that's the case for a lot of people. It instills a newly revitalized spirit in terms of learning about the formation of our country.

Then, on Friday, September 11, 1789, thirty-four-year-old Alexander Hamilton was officially nominated for the job. The appointment was confirmed by the Senate the same day.