De Alexander

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

This reduced the question to ratification or secession.

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…

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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…

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.

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.

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…

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…

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…

He stood in front of the courthouse at Kingston on top of the barrel from which the Constitution had been published in the preceding April, and in the uniform of his country, with sword in hand, he took the oath of office.

The result of the election proved a great surprise and something of a humiliation to the ruling classes.

He was a typical Irishman--intolerant, often domineering, sometimes petulant, and occasionally too quick to take offence, but he was magnetic and generous, easily putting himself in touch with those about him, and ready, without…

A patriot never lived who was more bitter in his hostility to English misrule, or more uncompromising in his opposition to toryism.

Indeed, it has been given to few men in New York to inspire more passionate personal attachment than George Clinton.

Young John, breathing the air of independence, scorned to let his life and property depend upon the pleasure of British lords and a British ministry, or to be excluded from the right of trial by a jury of his neighbours, or of taxation by…

Scott, no doubt, was sometimes mistaken in the proper course to pursue, but he was always right from his point of view, and his point of view was bitter hostility to English misrule.

By profession he was an able and wealthy lawyer; by occupation a patriotic agitator.

If they were indignant that Gates succeeded him, they did not want him to govern them, however much it may have been in his heart to serve them faithfully.

Although freeholders who could vote represented only a small part of the male population, patriots of every class rejoiced in the substitution of a neighbour for a lord across the sea.

Although a product of the Revolution, framed to meet the necessities growing out of that great event, its general provisions were decidedly conservative.