The period in which Hamilton lived was an era of great men, but probably no other statesman had a bolder and more constructive imagination. Many of our current institutions are, in the words of the author, "the lengthened shadow of one man, Alexander Hamilton."

"Knott observes that Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and, later, Andrew Jackson and his adherents, tended to view Hamilton and his principles as "un-American." While his policies generated mistrust in the South and the West, where he is still seen as the founding plutocrat, Hamilton was revered in New England and parts of the mid-Atlantic states. Hamilton's image as a champion of American nationalism caused his reputation to soar during the Civil War, at least in the North. However, in the wake of Gilded Age excesses, progressive and populist political leaders branded Hamilton as the patron saint of Wall Street, and his reputation began to disintegrate."--BOOK JACKET.

Of all of the Founding Fathers of the American republic none, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson, has evoked more passions and aroused more controversy than Alexander Hamilton. In this absorbing new biography, eminent historian Lawrence Kaplan examines Hamilton's conception of America's role in the world and the foreign policies that followed from his vision. Kaplan looks at how Hamilton acted upon his views in shaping the course of American foreign relations. The author provides a focused, accessible biography of Hamilton and a nuanced assessment of his impact on Federalist Era foreign policy. In the Jefferson-Jackson era Hamilton's persona as an elitist urban aristocrat condemned him as an enemy of an expanding democratic America-an Anglophile at a time when Great Britain was the major adversary. Such was his reputation as an enemy of the common man that his deep-seated opposition to the institution of slavery won little recognition from northern abolitionists. This book will fascinate readers with its insights into Hamilton and the formative years of the United States of America.

Annotation Alexander Hamilton has been the focus of debate from his day to ours. On the one hand, Hamilton was the quintessential Founding Father, playing a central role in every key debate and event in the Revolutionary and Early Republic eras. Who was he really and what is his legacy? Was Hamilton a closet monarchist or a sincere republican?

Alexander Hamilton is one of the least understood, most important, and most impassioned and inspiring of the founding fathers. At last Hamilton has found a modern biographer who can bring him to full-blooded life; Richard Brookhiser. In these pages, Alexander Hamilton sheds his skewed image as the "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," sex scandal survivor, and notoriously doomed dueling partner of Aaron Burr. Examined up close, throughout his meteoric and ever-fascinating (if tragically brief) life, Hamilton can at last be seen as one of the most crucial of the founders. Here, thanks to Brookhiser's accustomed wit and grace, this quintessential American lives again.

In 1798, the federal government levied its first direct tax on American citizens, one that seemed to favor land speculators over farmers. In eastern Pennsylvania, the tax assessors were largely Quakers and Moravians who had abstained from Revolutionary participation and were recruited by the administration of John Adams to levy taxes against their patriot German Reformed and Lutheran neighbors. Led by local Revolutionary hero John Fries, the farmers drew on the rituals of crowd action and stopped the assessment. Following the Shays and Whiskey rebellions, Fries's Rebellion was the last in a trilogy of popular uprisings against federal authority in the early republic. But in contrast to the previous armed insurrections, the Fries rebels used nonviolent methods while simultaneously exercising their rights to petition Congress for the repeal of the tax law as well as the Alien and Sedition Acts. In doing so, they sought to manifest the principle of popular sovereignty and to expand the role of local people within the emerging national political system rather than attacking it from without. After some resisters were liberated from the custody of a federal marshal, the Adams administration used military force to suppress the insurrection. The resisters were charged with sedition and treason. Fries himself was sentenced to death but was pardoned at the eleventh hour by President Adams. The pardon fractured the presidential cabinet and splintered the party, just before Thomas Jefferson's and the Republican Party's "Revolution of 1800." The first book-length treatment of this significant eighteenth-century uprising, Fries's Rebellion shows us that the participants of the rebellion reengaged Revolutionary ideals in an enduring struggle to further democratize their country.