“All my life I have troubled myself with problems and am always – as on the first day – inspired by the fact that cognition in the scientific and artistic sense is the best thing we possess…If one hears the angels singing a couple of times during one’s life, one can give the world something and one is a particularly fortunate and blessed individual.”

“I am telling you in confidence that Weizmann, who wants to distance himself from politics, hopes to become the academic leader of the university.”

“I was quite touched by the two well thought out gifts that you sent for my birthday via Bucky’s. I am especially fond of the kaleidoscope, to the point where [I] can’t help but look again and again at the changing star patterns.”

Einstein, who generally disliked being the center of attention, was relatively uncomfortable celebrating his birthday. In 1944, in a New York Times interview, he asked, “What is there to celebrate? Birthdays are automatic things. Anyway, birthdays are for children.” He described his 75^th birthday as “a natural disaster, a shower of paper full of flattery under which one almost drowned.” Despite that, Mrs. Damann clearly had a knack for giving perfect meaningful gifts.

“our eternal unsolvable problem...is a sickness of the others, and not our own, meaning that the most important thing is not to catch it and to keep our balance—as long as they don’t beat us to death.”

“I am willing to join the federation for the introduction of an international auxiliary language to promote understanding, peace, and cooperation among nations.”

Einstein was a lifelong champion of efforts to eliminate of the nationalist divisions that leaders erected between peoples, often to deadly effect. Esperanto, the “international auxiliary language,” was an easy to learn, politically neutral language invented by L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist, in the 1870s-1880s. His goals, to transcend nationalism and create harmony and peace in the world community, were certainly shared by Einstein — and pilloried as a Jewish conspiracy by Adolf Hitler. Considering the date of the pledge, Einstein was taking an early stand against the Fascist future into which Europe was about to descend.

“I hardly think old Lee will show fight. During this Campain without he is forced, we may have a brush with him when we get down the Rappahanock.”

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

“It is manifestly the interest of the parties concerned to avail themselves of this act. They are now intirely at the discretion of the Government....”

New York adhered to the common-law prohibition against foreigners owning land. If a citizen purchased property in his own name but the money came from a foreigner, the purchaser was considered a trustee, and the State could seize the property. But Dutch investors, second only to France in their aid to America during the Revolution, invested heavily in American stocks, bonds, and western lands, working largely through their agent Théophile Cazenove.

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

“There was also a prior Judgment against David Reynolds & his son James … but did not return the Execution nor sell till Wednesday the 2^d of November, when James Reynolds about 6 Months ago came forward to claim these lands in virtue of a deed from his father prior to Sands mortgage.”

In July 1783, James Reynolds married Maria Lewis. From mid-1791 to mid-1792, Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds had an affair. In November 1792, James Reynolds was imprisoned for forgery in a scheme to purchase the pensions and pay claims of Revolutionary War soldiers. Ironically, in May 1793, Maria (represented by Aaron Burr) filed for divorce from James on the grounds of adultery; the court granted the divorce two years later. Here, after Hamilton’s affair was known to James Monroe and very few others, Hamilton was somehow involved in a legal case having to do with James Reynolds just months before news of the scandal exploded.

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

“it is far less important, who of many men that may be named shall be the person, than that it shall not be Jefferson.”

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

“you have made me disrelish every thing that used to please me, and have rendered me as restless and unsatisfied with all about me, as if I was the inhabitant of another world. ... I would go on, but the General summons me to ride....”

In the middle of their whirlwind courtship, Hamilton emphasizes his profound fascination with Eliza Schuyler. Hamilton both complains that she is distracting him from important military duties, while pleading with her for more distraction. Few of Hamilton’s letters to Eliza survive from this period.

As Hamilton was writing, tactical intelligence was being communicated at a frantic pace up and down the Hudson. On July 21, Washington had received intelligence from the Culper spy ring on British General Clinton’s planned attack on Rochambeau’s French squadron at Newport, and the massing of British troops on Long Island for an intensified invasion of New York. Hamilton now was in the middle of authoring a detailed “Plan for an Attack on New York” to recapture Manhattan and Brooklyn from the British. He mentions at the end of this letter his position at Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small town on the Hudson where the army was encamped. Hamilton ends when he is summoned by General Washington.

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

A previously unrecorded partial draft of Hamilton’s famous letter to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris. Hamilton discusses the “situation and temper” of New York, and its tax plan, which was intended to be based on a fair assessment of her citizens’ circumstances and abilities to pay.

“perhaps the true reason was a desire to discriminate between the whigs and tories. This chimerical attempt at perfect equality has resulted in total inequality”

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

As “Phocion,” Hamilton articulates an early incarnation of the Federalist creed, including compliance with the 1783 peace treaty with Britain, an end to attacks on Tories and Tory property, and the submission of the states to the central authority of the United States. This essay was only Hamilton’s third political tract, and the first of his mature writings on policy.

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

Following the punishing battles at Paoli and Germantown, which left Philadelphia vulnerable to British control for the winter, the Continental Army under Washington spent two weeks recovering at Whitpain, Pennsylvania.

Alexander Hamilton was then Washington’s chief staff aide, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, a position he would hold for four years. He played a crucial role in handling much of the General’s correspondence with Congress, state governors, and other military officers.

Available as part of The Alexander Hamilton Collection

“Justice and the support of the public credit require, that provision should be made for fulfilling the engagements of the United States, in respect to their foreign debt, and for funding their domestic debt upon equitable and satisfactory terms.”

Alexander Hamilton understood the necessity of placing the new nation on firm financial ground.

On January 9, 1790, Hamilton delivered to Congress his First Report on Public Credit, a strategy for achieving seven key goals for America’s financial system. One of his primary recommendations was the federal assumption of all states’ war debts, amounting to approximately $22 million in addition to foreign powers who were owed nearly $11 million, and American citizens who had sold food, horses, and supplies to the Army, who held $43 million in debt. Hamilton’s ambitious debt plan aimed to draw both creditors and debtors closer to the federal government by honoring all the Revolutionary War debts in full, paying off the resulting national debt over time from excise taxes and land sales.

Many Southerners opposed Hamilton’s plan, believing it would create a dangerous centralization of power, unfairly penalize the southern states who had already paid off more of their debts, and give the North too much financial control. Ultimately, in a deal between Hamilton, James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, southern legislators agreed to support the Plan in return for locating the permanent national capital (then temporarily in NY) on the banks of the Potomac River.

The Gazette of the United States, the semi-official newspaper of the federal government, published the acts that codified Hamilton’s Assumption Plan in four parts: “An Act Making Provision for the Debt of the United States” (passed Aug. 4, in the Aug. 7 issue); “An Act to Provide more Effectually for the Settlement of the Accounts between the United States and the Individual States” (passed Aug. 5, in the Aug. 14 issue); “An Act Making Further Provision for the Payment of the Debts of the United States” (padded Aug. 10, in the Aug 21 issue); “An Act making Provision for the Reduction of the Public Debt” (passed Aug 12, in the Aug. 28 issue).

“The events of S^t Domingo chagrine us… [T]he disappointment to your views in that quarter contributes to render us extremely sensible to the disasters of that Colony. When will this disagreeable business end? But when would our interrogations finish, if we should attempt to unravel the very intricate and extraordinary plots in which the affairs of the whole world are embroiled at the present inexplicable conjuncture? We have nothing for it but patience and resignation, and to make the best of what we have without being over solicitous to ameliorate our conditions. This is now completely my philosophy.”

Mary Palmer had lost a case against a trustee of her husband’s estate who sought to buy her interest in the estate. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston ruled against her. Hamilton handled the winning appeal. The decision found that a trustee with power over the estate could never be a purchaser, a principle “founded in indispensable necessity, to prevent that great inlet of fraud, and those dangerous consequences which would ensue” if trustees were allowed to pursue their own interests perhaps at the expense of the estate.

“Today is the ‘memorable 8th’ and the Party in Power chose this as the day to pass in the House the Bill to refund to Genl Jackson the fine imposed on him at New Orleans. I tried hard to get the floor to make a speech upon an amendment I had proposed – which was to pay the amount of the fine without reFlection [?] upon the judge – but the Locos would not let me. They ‘gagged’ all discussion and I was not permitted to say anything on my amendment. A more outrageous proceeding I hardly ever witnessed. I was the more anxious to make a speech…misstated by the Globe reporter.”