Word: hamilton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...simply refused to come. One, Virginia's Patrick Henry, said of the gathering in Philadelphia that he "smelt a rat." Others came and found the impassioned arguments profoundly dispiriting. "I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to the proceedings of the convention," George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton, who had already gone back to New York City, "and do | therefore repent having had any agency in the business...
...delegates from twelve states (Rhode Island refused to participate), more than half were lawyers and eight were judges; another quarter were large landowners. All of them had held public office, 42 as Congressmen and seven as Governors. And they were young. Madison, for example, was 36; Hamilton was 32. There were no women, of course, not to mention blacks or Indians. The new Republic that these men were to create was a republic in which slavery was still widely accepted and in which only about 10% of the inhabitants -- generally white male heads of households -- could vote...
...small states took the offensive on June 15, when Paterson presented the relatively cautious New Jersey plan. It called for a unicameral legislature of limited authority, with each state getting one vote. Others offered plans of their own. Hamilton, for example, declared that the new nation should have a kinglike executive to govern as long as he was on "good behavior." So they voted again, and the Virginians won again, by 7 to 3. And the struggle continued...
...European forces eager to recapture their lost lands. Bells rang and cannons fired for the public celebration of July 4, when many of these same men had met in this same statehouse to proclaim the Declaration of Independence eleven years earlier. But the secret debates, Washington wrote to Hamilton, "are now, if possible, in a worse train than ever; you will find but little ground on which the hope of a good establishment can be formed...
...gave Congress sole power to declare war. But they recognized that unity of command was essential, and so made the President Commander in Chief, thus giving him at least potential authority to order troops into situations where war might become inevitable. As early as 1801, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were disputing the division of power. President Jefferson told Congress that without a declaration of war, he could order only defensive action, even against enemy attack. No, said Hamilton, an attack on U.S. forces creates a state of war and makes "any declaration on the part of Congress . . . unnecessary...