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Book: Alexander Hamilton
Quotes of Book: Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Cornwallis had grown so desperate that he infected blacks with smallpox and forced them to wander toward enemy lines in an attempt to sicken the opposing forces.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Washington quibbled with Hamilton on one or two points but otherwise stood in perfect agreement. His letter to Hamilton again corroborates what the Jeffersonians found difficult to credit: that Washington never shied away from differing with the redoubtable Hamilton but agreed with him on the vast majority of issues.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
avowed preference for an elite based on merit was misconstrued by enemies into a secret adoration of aristocracy.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
In theory, Jefferson could have fathered all of Sally Hemings's children. Fawn M. Brodie has written, "Jefferson was not only not 'distant' from Sally Hemings but in the same house nine months before the births of each of her seven children and she conceived no children when he was not there."54 Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime and another five in his will, and all belonged to the Hemings family, though he excluded Sally. On her deathbed, Sally Hemings told her son Madison that he and his siblings were Jefferson's children. In 1998, DNA tests confirmed that Jefferson {or some male in his family} had likely fathered at least one of Sally Hemings's children, Eston. Reading between the lines of "Phocion," one surmises that Hamilton knew all about Sally Hemings, quite possibly from Angelica Church.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Since both Eliza and Angelica were pregnant, sister Peggy crept downstairs to retrieve the endangered child. The leader of the raiding party barred her way with a musket. "Wench, wench! Where is your master?" he demanded. "Gone to alarm the town," the coolheaded Peggy said.24 The intruder, fearing that Schuyler would return with troops, fled in alarm.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton's critics seriously underrated his superhuman stamina. He enjoyed beating his enemies at their own game, and the resolutions roused his fighting spirit. By February 19, in a staggering display of diligence, he delivered to the House several copious reports, garlanded with tables, lists, and statistics that gave a comprehensive overview of his work as treasury secretary. In the finale of one twenty-thousand-word report, Hamilton intimated that he had risked a physical breakdown to complete this heroic labor: "It is certain that I have made every exertion in my power, at the hazard of my health, to comply with the requisitions of the House as early as possible.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
The intellectual spoilsport among the founding fathers, Hamilton never believed in the perfectibility of human nature and regularly violated what became the first commandment of American politics: thou shalt always be optimistic when addressing the electorate. He shrank from the campaign rhetoric that flattered Americans as the most wonderful, enlightened people on earth and denied that they had anything to learn from European societies. He was incapable of the resolutely uplifting themes that were to become mandatory in American politics. The first great skeptic of American exceptionalism, he refused to believe that the country was exempt from the sober lessons of history.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
I think that we Americans, at least in the Southern col{onie}s, cannot contend with a good grace for liberty until we shall have enfranchised our slaves," Laurens told a friend right before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.64
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Clearly, this ambivalent twenty-year-old favored the Revolution but also worried about the long-term effect of habitual disorder, especially among the uneducated masses. Hamilton lacked the temperament of a true-blue revolutionary. He saw too clearly that greater freedom could lead to greater disorder and, by a dangerous dialectic, back to a loss of freedom. Hamilton's lifelong task was to try to straddle and resolve this contradiction and to balance liberty and order.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people."
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Because Conway persisted in maligning Washington, he was summoned to the dueling ground by General John Cadwalader, who fired a ball through Conway's mouth that came out the back of his head. Cadwalader showed no regret. "I have stopped the damned rascal's lying tongue at any rate," he observed as his opponent lay in agony on the ground.
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Ron Chernow _ Alexander Hamilton
Abigail Adams, who did not set sail until November, seemed miffed by the enforced southward shift, swearing that she would try to enjoy Philadelphia but that "when all is done it will not be Broadway.
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