Quotes About Hamilton

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

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.

That Hamilton adhered to a code of gentlemanly honor was confirmed in yet another sideshow of the Benedict Arnold affair: the arrest of Major John André, adjutant general of the British Army and Arnold's contact, traveling under the nom de guerre John Anderson. As he awaited a hearing to decide his fate, he was confined at a tavern in Tappan, New York. Though seven years younger than André, Hamilton developed a sympathy for the prisoner

early July 1792, it was clear that George Washington would not have the option of silence or inaction in stemming the feud between Hamilton and Jefferson. He had probably waited too long to assert control. His fine, nonpartisan stance may have only intensified the partisan mischief between his two appointees.

Few, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton—a fact that belies the historical stereotype that he cared only for the rich and privileged.

Hamilton was an exuberant genius who performed at a fiendish pace and must have produced the maximum number of words that a human being can scratch out in forty-nine years.

Hamilton seemed unhinged by the dispute. In the still secret Reynolds affair, he had shown a lack of private restraint. Now something compulsive and uncontrollable appeared in his public behavior. A captive of his emotions, he revealed an irrepressible need to respond to attacks. Whenever he tried to suppress these emotions, they burst out and overwhelmed him.

It may be that Hamilton's preference for a diversified economy of manufacturing and agriculture originated in his youthful reflections on the avoidable poverty he had witnessed in the Caribbean.

When Franklin suggested on June 28th that each session start with a prayer for heavenly help, Hamilton countered that this might foster a public impression that embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure. According to legend, Hamilton also rebutted Franklin with the jest that the convention didn't need foreign aid.

On July 6, while Captain Hamilton wandered about trying to find a purse with money that he had lost—he sometimes had a touch of the absentminded genius—the local press announced independence.

Thomas Jefferson's resignation as secretary of state on December 31, 1793. The Virginian had failed to eject Hamilton from the cabinet and had lost the contest for Washington's favor.

Hamilton now believed that his great opportunities lay behind him. On December 1, 1794, the day he returned to Philadelphia, he told Washington that he would surrender his Treasury post in late January.

As always, Hamilton cited constitutional grounds for his program, invoking the clause that gave Congress authority to "provide for the common defence and general welfare."59 Owing in part to Hamilton's generous construction of this clause, it was to acquire enormous significance, allowing the government to enact programs to advance social welfare.

December 14, 1790, one day after he jolted Congress with his call for an excise tax on liquor, Alexander Hamilton submitted another trailblazing report, this one a clarion call to charter America's first central bank.

Hamilton supervised the entire Federalist project. He dreamed up the idea, enlisted the participants, wrote the overwhelming bulk of the essays, and oversaw the publication.

Hamilton and his men ran so fast that they almost overtook the sappers, who were snapping off the edges of the sharpened tree branches and opening a breach through which the infantry rushed. Hamilton, hopping on the shoulder of a kneeling soldier, sprang onto the enemy parapet and summoned his men to follow. Their password was "Rochambeau"—"a good one," said one American, because it "sounds like 'Rush-on-boys' when pronounced quick.

After Hamilton and his family left Philadelphia in mid-February 1795, they rented lodgings in New York City for several days before proceeding to the Schuyler residence in Albany for a long-overdue rest.

Hamilton could not have been stupid enough to pay hush money for sex, Callender alleged, so the money paid to James Reynolds had to involve illicit speculation.

The Federalist Papers ran to eighty-five essays, with fifty-one attributed to Hamilton, twenty-nine to Madison, and only five to Jay.

With the Neutrality Proclamation, Hamilton continued to define his views on American foreign policy: that it should be based on self-interest, not emotional attachment; that the supposed altruism of nations often masked baser motives; that individuals sometimes acted benevolently, but nations seldom did. This austere, hardheaded view of human affairs likely dated to Hamilton's earliest observations of the European powers in the West Indies.

Hamilton's first act in Philadelphia paid homage to Franklin. The sage had opposed salaries for executive-branch officers, hoping such a measure would produce civic-minded leaders, not government officials feeding at the public trough. Others

He was especially intent that the federal judiciary check any legislative abuses. In number 78, Hamilton introduced an essential concept, never made explicit in the Constitution: that the Supreme Court should be able to review and overturn legislation as unconstitutional.

His grandson wrote that Hamilton's personality was "a mixture of aggressive force and infinite tenderness and amiability.