Alexander Hamilton (84 page)

The two faces of Thomas Jefferson. These portraits chart Jefferson’s metamorphosis from the foppish aristocrat of his Parisian years to the seemingly more austere republican vice president under John Adams.

Philip Freneau. A celebrated poet and firebrand recruited by Jefferson and Madison to edit the
National Gazette,
Freneau baited both Hamilton and Washington with anti-administration polemics.

William Branch Giles, then a fervent young congressman from Virginia, harried Treasury Secretary Hamilton at every turn with resolutions and investigations.

James Monroe as American minister to France. Alexander and Eliza Hamilton devoutly believed that after the Federalists demanded Monroe’s recall from Paris, he conspired to expose Hamilton’s adulterous trysts with Maria Reynolds.

The flamboyant diplomacy of Citizen Genêt in America precipitated both frenzied support and opposition and split a nation already deeply torn about the French Revolution.

The wily Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord thought that Hamilton was arguably the greatest political figure of the age, while Hamilton found the French statesman brilliant but unprincipled.

This portrait of John Adams as vice president suggests formidable reserves of strength but also hints at his unyielding pugnacity.

The title page of Hamilton’s 1800 pamphlet denouncing President Adams. Its publication was one of Hamilton’s least inspired ideas and only hastened his political decline.

Members of John Adams’s cabinet, allegedly under the treacherous control of Alexander Hamilton:
Left:
Timothy Pickering, secretary of state.

Bottom left:
Oliver Wolcott, Jr., secretary of the treasury.

Bottom right:
James McHenry, secretary of war.

Three stages in the protean career of Aaron Burr:
Left:
As a young senator from New York, circa 1792, having replaced Philip Schuyler.