Today's quote of the day comes from none other than Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804): "People sometimes attribute my success to my genius; all the genius I know anything about is hard work."  You may have heard of Hamilton , the smash Broadway musical his rags to riches story inspired. Or, you might know him as the guy on the $10 bill. Hamilton gave new meaning to the word "workhorse." As the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, he was essentially the architect of the American financial system. He wrote 51 of the 85 essays that comprise  The Federalist Papers . He pushed for the establishment of the first national bank. He wrote some 28 essays which were instrumental in securing the ratification of the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. He established the U.S. Coast Card and founded The New York Post, the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the U.S. And, to boot, he married into one of the wealthiest families in New York City, even though he neve...

Below are three fun facts regarding events in history that occurred on October 19, the most recent of which took place a little over 30 years ago: 1781: Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown On this day in 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis formally surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution and paving the way for American independence. Interestingly, as the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song "The World Upside Down." The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, formally recognized the United States as a free and independent nation. 1796: Editorial accuses Jefferson of affair with slave On October 19, 1796, an essay appears in the Gazette of the United States in which a writer by the name of "Phocion" craftily attacks presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, who was running against incumbent president John...

Yesterday, I finished reading "Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation" by John Ferling. If nothing else, the book demonstrates how the intense partisan battles we see today can be traced all the way back to the late 1700s, when the first political parties were formed. The Federalist Party, which pushed for a strong central government, assumption of war debts, and a national bank, was headed by the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson, who served as George Washington's first secretary of state (and went on to become the third U.S. president), started the Democratic-Republican Party, which favored states' rights and limited government. Jefferson and Hamilton clashed inexorably, from the moment they joined Washington's cabinet through the Elections of 1796 and 1800, the latter of which Jefferson won by a whisker. Most historians agree that Jefferson and Hamilton, for all their differences, rema...