Andrew Hamilton (lawyer)
Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676 – August 4, 1741) was a Scottish lawyer in the Thirteen Colonies, where he finally settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was best known for his legal victory on behalf of the printer and newspaper publisher John Peter Zenger. This 1735 decision in New York helped to establish that truth is a defense to an accusation of libel. His eloquent defense concluded with saying that the press has "a liberty both of exposing and opposing tyrannical power by speaking and writing truth."
His success in this case has been said to have inspired the term, "Philadelphia lawyer," meaning a particularly adept and clever attorney, as in "It would take a Philadelphia lawyer to get him off." His estate in Philadelphia, known as Bush Hill, was used for the vice-president's house during the years that the city was the temporary capital of the United States.
Read more about Andrew Hamilton (lawyer): Emigration To Virginia, Early Career, Philadelphia Lawyer, Independence Hall, Bush Hill, The Woodlands, and Lancaster County, PA, Later Life, Family and Immediate Descendants, Legacy, Honors
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“All the historians are Harvard people. It just isn’t fair. Poor old Hoover from West Branch, Iowa, had no chance with that crowd; nor did Andrew Jackson from Tennessee. Nor does Lyndon Johnson from Stonewall, Texas. It just isn’t fair.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest where all human things ... have their beginnings; but the seed never explains the flower.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)