Founding Brothers (2003)
“One day in mid-June of 1790, he encountered Alexander Hamilton by chance as the two members of President Washington’s cabinet—Jefferson was secretary of state and Hamilton was secretary of treasury—waited outside the presidential office.
Hamilton was not his customarily confident and resplendent self. Jefferson thought he looked “sombre, haggard, and dejected beyond comparison.” Even his manner of dress appeared “uncouth and neglected.” He was, at least as Jefferson described him, a beaten man....While they stood in the street outside Washington’s residence, Hamilton confided that his entire financial plan for the recovery of public credit, which he had submitted to Congress in January, was trapped within a congressional gridlock. Southern congressmen, led by James Madison, had managed to block approval of one key provision of the Hamilton proposal, the assumption of state debts by the federal government, thereby scuttling the whole Hamiltonian scheme for fiscal reform. Hamilton was simultaneously fatalistic and melodramatic.MoreLess
Hamilton was not his customarily confident and resplendent self. Jefferson thought he looked “sombre, haggard, and dejected beyond comparison.” Even his manner of dress appeared “uncouth and neglected.” He was, at least as Jefferson described him, a beaten man....While they stood in the street outside Washington’s residence, Hamilton confided that his entire financial plan for the recovery of public credit, which he had submitted to Congress in January, was trapped within a congressional gridlock. Southern congressmen, led by James Madison, had managed to block approval of one key provision of the Hamilton proposal, the assumption of state debts by the federal government, thereby scuttling the whole Hamiltonian scheme for fiscal reform. Hamilton was simultaneously fatalistic and melodramatic.MoreLess
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