Joseph J. Ellis

"One-year enlistment had proven problematic since the troops were scheduled to rotate out of the army just when they had begun to internalize the discipline of military service and became reliable soldiers."

"I am not a Federalist,” he declared in 1789, “because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever.… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

"Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed 'his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy."