[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 135 (Thursday, October 1, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H9209-H9210]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




FOUNDING FATHERS SAW BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUBLIC SERVICE AND PRIVATE 
                                CONDUCT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, this morning on National Public Radio, 
author and historian Richard Rosenfeld made some comments which I would 
now like to share with the Members of the House. These are the words of 
Mr. Rosenfeld:

       The right of the people to elect their President, and the 
     right of Congress to remove him are competing rights. 
     America's founding fathers knew this. They worried out loud 
     at the Constitutional Convention that if they didn't 
     carefully limit the idea of an impeachable offense, Congress, 
     not Presidential elections, would be deciding who sits in the 
     White House. So on the day the founders defined an 
     impeachable offense, they declared their unanimous intention 
     to limit high crimes and misdemeanors to be actions against 
     the United States. Not private misconduct, unrelated to the 
     operation of government, not sexual misconduct or even lies 
     to cover it up.
       If there can be any doubt about the founders' intentions, 
     they gave us plenty of proof during George Washington's first 
     term as President when Congress was investigating the 
     financial affairs of his Treasury Secretary, Alexander 
     Hamilton. Three Members of Congress, including future 
     President James Monroe, confronted Hamilton about payments he 
     had been secretly making to James Reynolds, a convicted 
     securities swindler. Hamilton was forced to admit the 
     payments, but explained them as hush money to avoid public 
     disclosure of adultery he had been committing with James 
     Reynolds' wife. Hamilton had repeated sexual relations with 
     Mrs. Reynolds and the hush money was only part of the 
     coverup. Hamilton got Mrs. Reynolds to burn some 
     incriminating letters and he offered to pay travel expenses 
     if the Reynolds would get out of town.
       When Monroe and the others heard Hamilton's confession they 
     decided the matter was private, not public, and that no 
     impeachable

[[Page H9210]]

     offense had occurred. They kept the adultery, and the 
     coverup, a secret among themselves, and Washington, John 
     Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other founding 
     fathers apparently went along. Congress held no hearings, 
     Congress released nothing to the public, and Hamilton's 
     misconduct remained a secret for 5 long years, until Hamilton 
     was long out of office. Then in 1797, a disgruntled former 
     clerk of the House of Representatives leaked Hamilton's 
     secrets to a muckraking journalist and the whole country 
     learned of Hamilton's adultery and the bribe to cover it up. 
     And what happened?
       The following year, in 1798, then President John Adams and 
     former President George Washington nominated Alexander 
     Hamilton to be second in command of the new Federal Army. 
     Second in command to only Washington himself. With Monroe, 
     Madison, Jefferson and other founding fathers maintaining 
     their respectful silence, the United States Senate quickly 
     confirmed this confessed adulterer and liar to occupy for a 
     second time one of the highest offices in the government of 
     the United States.
       The founding fathers saw a big difference between public 
     service and private conduct, and on the question of 
     impeachment they warned Congress to do the same. They weren't 
     giving Congress a right to decide who's President, they gave 
     us Presidential elections for that.

  These, then, are the words of author and historian Richard Rosenfeld 
on this morning, October 1st, 1998.

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