Jim

“FORMER CONGRESSMAN ALBERT Sidney Burleson of Texas had landed in Wilson’s cabinet thanks to his longtime patron, Colonel House. Burleson “has been called the worst postmaster general in American history,” writes the historian G. J. Meyer, “but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and improved rural service. It is fair to say, however, that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general.”
― Adam Hochschild, American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis – A Gripping Historical Account of 20th Century America

“Partisanship had grown so fierce even treatments for the disease became politicized. There were now “Republican” and “Federalist” cures. Jeffersonian Benjamin Rush, acknowledged the finest doctor in town if not the country, used the time-honored if incorrect practices of bleeding and purging. Alexander Hamilton and his family were stricken just when an old friend from Nevis, Dr. Edward Stevens, was visiting. A veteran of “Yellow Jack” outbreaks in the Caribbean, Stevens administered large doses of “Peruvian bark”—quinine—laced with burnt cinnamon and a nightcap of laudanum. The treatment worked, but Rush, an ardent Republican, dismissed it and went right on bleeding patients, which Stevens believed medieval. Rush’s backyard was soon so drenched with blood that he indirectly began to breed countless flies, while his property gave off a “sickening sweet stench” to passersby.”
― Tim McGrath, James Monroe: A Life

“In the end, the only peril he could not survive was the greatest of all: himself.”
― Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

“What a beautiful, what a happy land this is! Without kings, without high priests, without idle barons. Here everyone is happy.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780