slavery

It was mid-October 1796 when Alexander Hamilton released the first in a string of scathing essays about political opponent Thomas Jefferson. By this point in early United States history, George Washington had announced his retirement, refusing to seek a third term as president, and the race of self-styled great men hoping to take his place was on… with none more loathsome to Hamilton than Jefferson, the loquacious, if remote, thinker on a hill in Virginia. In this first of 25 essays, Hamilton wrote under the nom de plume of Phocion about the many hypocrisies of Jefferson, depicting the supposed philosopher…