Patriotism and Profit
Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler & the Rivalry for America's Capital City
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
The untold story of how America’s beloved first president, George Washington, borrowed, leveraged, and coerced his way into masterminding the key land purchase of the American era: the creation of the nation’s capital city.
Contrary to the popular historical record, Thomas Jefferson was not even a minor player at The Dinner Table Bargain, now known as The Compromise of 1790. The real protagonists of the Dinner Table Bargain were President George Washington and New York Senator Philip Schuyler, who engaged in the battle that would separate our financial capital from our political seat of power. Washington and Schuyler’s dueling ambitions provoked an intense decades-long rivalry and a protracted crusade for the location of the new empire city. Alexander Hamilton, son-in-law to Schuyler and surrogate son to George Washington, was helplessly caught in the middle.
This invigorating narrative vividly depicts New York City when it was the nation’s seat of government. Susan Nagel captures the spirit, speech, and sensibility of the era in full and entertaining form—and readers will get to know the city’s eighteenth-century movers, shakers, and power brokers, who are as colorful and fascinating as their counterparts today. Delicious political intrigue and scandalous gossip between the three competing alpha personalities—George Washington, Philip Schuyler, and Alexander Hamilton—make this a powerful and resonant history, reminding us that our Founding Fathers were brilliant but often flawed human beings.
They were avaricious, passionate, and visionary. They loved, hated, sacrificed, and aspired. Even their most vicious qualities are part of the reason why, for better or worse, the United States became the premier modern empire, born from figures carving their legacies into history.
Not only the dramatic story of how America’s beloved first president George Washington created the nation’s capital city, Patriotism & Profit serves as timely exposé on issues facing America today, revealing the origins behind some of our nation’s most pressing problems.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Nagel (Marie-Therese, Child of Terror) delivers an overstuffed yet underwhelming account of the development of Washington, D.C., as America's capital in the 1790s. After prolonged surveys of European expeditions to the New World and England's colonization of America, Nagel focuses on U.S. president George Washington and New York senator Philip Schuyler, "whose parallel dreams, analogous visions, and similar skills provoked an intense, decades-long rivalry and protracted crusade for the location of the new empire city." Schuyler advocated for New York City, then operating as the temporary home of the federal government, to be permanently made the nation's capital, while Washington pushed for a site along the Potomac River near his Mount Vernon estate. Washington eventually won passage of the 1790 Residence Act, which authorized him to select and supervise the location and design of the capital. Nagel dubs Washington "the first real estate developer president," and notes that he was the largest single shareholder in the Potomac River Canal Company, which stood to benefit from the development of D.C. But her claim that Washington "misled, coerced, and otherwise cheated his way to creating the nation's capital city" will strike many readers as unfair, given the other players and issues involved, including the federal government's assumption of states' wartime debts. This sensationalist history overstates its case.
