Sublime

Shortly before the Hammonds’ arrival the building’s East Portico had been the scene of an assassination attempt against President Andrew Jackson. The assailant was named Richard Lawrence, who believed himself to be England’s long-dead King Richard III and claimed that Jackson had interfered with the delivery of payments long owed to him by the colo

Harriman was a truly remarkable man, one of the most brilliant railroaders and formidable capitalists in American history, whose genius has been somewhat masked behind a partially deserved reputation for shady dealing.

In this, as in so many other ways, he was without peer, the preeminent builder of the frontier economy of the Northwest. By controlling the transportation structure of the region—a near-monopoly railroad that, at the time of his death, was only beginning to feel the competition of automobiles and public highways—he exercised more sweeping economic

longtime Clinton foe Jeff Gerth. He’s the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist

Shortly before the Hammonds’ arrival the building’s East Portico had been the scene of an assassination attempt against President Andrew Jackson. The assailant was named Richard Lawrence, who believed himself to be England’s long-dead King Richard III and claimed that Jackson had interfered with the delivery of payments long owed to him by the colo

The practical methodologies evolved over many years, and were largely the work of John Hall, a gunsmith from Portland, Maine, and inventor of the “Hall carbine” that became notorious when muckrakers dug into the youthful Pierpont Morgan’s dealings with Civil War procurement authorities.

More pointedly, he told Kennedy: “I have in my possession the names and amounts paid by him [Hill] to bribe the Minnesota legislature.” However, he never produced any such list. Barnes commented in June 1879, “I think the old man has gone crazy with jealousy and spite.” It is unclear what the associates had actually promised Farley. Promising him a