Top Highlights

• Noah Webster contended that Hamilton’s “ambition, pride, and overbearing temper” had destined him “to be the evil genius of this country.”
• One feels here the vastly accelerated tempo of Hamilton’s life, which was likely due to the chronic impatience fostered by his belated start in life.
• Hamilton approached this daily routine with the same perfectionist ardor that he exhibited in his studies.
• It showed that he could separate personal honor from political convictions and presaged a recurring theme of his career: the superiority of forgiveness over revolutionary vengeance.
• The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends.