Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place...

During the winter encampments, Hamilton constantly educated himself, as if equipping his mind for the larger tasks ahead. "Force of intellect and force of will were the sources of his success." Henry Cabot Lodge later wrote. From his days as an artillery captain, Hamilton had kept a pay book with blank pages in the back; while on Washington's staff, he filled up 112 pages with notes from his extracurricular reading. Hamilton fit the type of the self-improving autodidact, empl

During the war the media was brutal on Lincoln, after his death, these same papers praised him as the savior of America:

Pericles,