“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
After Congress passed a bill to establish the first national bank in early 1791, President George Washington asked Attorney General Edmund Randolph to prepare an opinion on the bill’s constitutionality. Randolph came down firmly against the measure, arguing that the...
During the ratification debates, supporters of the Constitution insisted that the new general government would only exercise the powers explicitly enumerated in the document. But less than three years after ratification, Alexander Hamilton did a complete 180, suddenly...
I don’t think anybody is surprised when politicians flip-flop. George H.W. Bush with his “no new taxes” pledge provides a great modern example. But Alexander Hamilton arguably gave us the most damaging, if not the biggest, flip-flop ever when he did a complete 180 on...
The First Bank of the United States was chartered for a period of 20 years by Congress on Feb. 25, 1791. Alexander Hamilton championed the bank, but it wasn’t without its detractors. One of the most vocal opponents of the bank was Thomas Jefferson who argued...
More than anything, Andrew Jackson was a true American enigma. Jackson, who Davy Crockett famously mocked as “the great man in the White House,” occupies an entire epoch in American history. In almost every conceivable way, he was a classic paradox – a benevolent...