The peace treaty had made New York the port of entry for the whole region east of the Delaware, and into its coffers poured a revenue so marvellous as to excite hopes of a prospective wealth which a century, remarkable as was its…

If any State, therefore, could survive without a union with other Colonies, it was New York, and it is not surprising that many, perhaps a majority of its people, under the leadership of George Clinton, settled into a policy unfriendly to…

In the history of war nothing is more beautiful than the friendship existing between the acknowledged leader of his country and this brave young officer, spirited and impulsive, brilliant and able, yet frank and candid, without ostentation…

Hamilton, on the other hand, became an early advocate of amnesty and oblivion, and, although public sentiment and the Legislature were against him, he finally succeeded in modifying the one and changing the other.

If the Legislature can disfranchise at pleasure, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe.

The next year, Hamilton, although not a member of the Legislature, persuaded it to adopt resolutions written by him, declaring that the powers of the central government should be extended, and that it should be authorised to provide…

Let us meet public opinion, and hope the progress of sentiment will make future arrangements.

He suggested a scheme continuing a President and Senate during good behaviour, and giving the federal government power to appoint governors of States and to veto state legislation.

If he had never done anything else, it was glory enough to have subscribed his name to that immortal record.

It is a fact that should strike us with shame, that we are obliged to borrow money in order to pay the interest of our debt.

They disliked the idea of a far-off government, with many officers drawing large salaries, administering the army, the navy, and the diplomatic relations with nations of the Old World.

Time has demonstrated the wisdom of some of these suggestions; but commendable as they now appear after the lapse of more than a century, they were of trifling importance compared to the necessity for a closer, stronger union of the States…

To Washington and Hamilton, however, his conduct seemed like a cold and selfish desertion of his country at the moment of its utmost peril.

The march of events has so clearly proved the wisdom of Hamilton and the unwisdom of Clinton, that the name of one, joined inseparably with that of Washington, has grown with the century, until it is as much a part of the history of the…

Doubtless Clinton derived some advantage from the control of appointments, which multiplied in number and increased in influence as term succeeded term, but his popularity drew its inspiration from sources other than patronage.

It is well known that the inhabitants of this city are, with few exceptions, strongly attached to the new Constitution.

And, though his opposition to the new Constitution was such as his friends cannot but disapprove, yet, since the period of its adoption, his conduct has been tempered with a degree of moderation, and seems to point him out as a man likely…

After the ratification of the Constitution, however, Robert Yates charged the grand jury that it would be little short of treason against the Republic to disobey it.

He abated the intemperate zeal of patriotic juries, and he refused to convict men suspected of disloyalty, without proof.

All that we know of Yates would seem to deny his surrender of principle, or his condescension to any act of baseness, to obtain office.

The new government, soon to be placed on trial, needed the help of sympathetic governors and legislatures, and Clinton and his supporters, forced to accept the Constitution, could hardly be regarded as its wisest and safest guardians.

From Hamilton's standpoint, therefore, it was more principle than men.

However agreeable to him it might be to defeat and humiliate Clinton, greater satisfaction must spring from the consciousness that while in its leading-strings, at least, the general government would have the hearty support of New York.

He was not, like Smith, a great debater, but his ready eloquence classed him among the orators who were destined to live in the memory of a later generation.

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.