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HAMILTON, ALEXANDER (1757-1804)
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See also: Arriving in the autumn of 1772, he prepared for See also:college at Elizabethtown, N.J., and in 1774 entered See also: 274) has said, " There are displayed in these papers a See also:power of reasoning and See also:sarcasm, a knowledge of the principles of See also:government and of the English constitution, and a grasp of the merits of the whole controversy, that would have done See also:honour to any See also:man at any See also:age. To say that they evince precocity of See also:intellect gives no See also:idea of their See also:main characteristics. They show great maturity—a more remarkable maturity than has ever been exhibited by any other See also:person, at so early an age, in the same See also:department of thought."
'George See also:Bancroft was the first to point out that there is small See also:evidence that Hamilton ever really appreciated Washington's great qualities; but on the See also:score of persohal and Federalist indebtedness he left explicit recognition.
'For Hamilton's See also:letter to See also:General See also:Schuyler on this See also:episode—one of the most important letters, in some ways, that he ever wrote —see the See also:Works, ix. 232 (8 : 35).
final See also:assault on the British works. In 178o he married Elizabeth, daughter of General See also: In this he held up the British government as the best See also:model in the See also:world.3 Though fully conscious that See also:monarchy in See also:America was impossible, he wished to obtain the next best See also:solution in an aristocratic, strongly centralized, coercive, but representative See also:union, with devices to give See also:weight to the See also:influence of class and See also:property.4 His See also:plan had no See also:chance of success; but though unable to obtain what he wished, he used his great talents to secure the See also:adoption of the Constitution. To this struggle was due the greatest of his writings, and the greatest individual contribution to the adoption of the new government, The Federalist, which remains a classic commentary on American constitutional See also:law and the principles of government, and of which See also:Guizot said that " in the application of elementary principles of government to See also:practical See also:administration " it was the greatest See also:work known to him. Its inception, and much more than See also:half its contents were Hamilton's (the See also:rest Madison's and Jay's).5 Sheer will and reasoning could hardly be more See also:bril- Especially the letter of See also:September 178o to James Duane, Works, i. 213 (1: 203) ; also the " Continentalist " papers of 1781. 2 His most famous See also:case at this time (Rutgers v. See also:Waddington) was one that well illustrated his moral courage. Under a " Trespass Law " of New York, Elizabeth Rutgers, a widow, brought suit against one See also:Joshua Waddington, a Loyalist, who during the war of American Independence, while New York was occupied by the British, had made use of some of her property. In See also:face of popular clamour, Hamilton, who advocated a conciliatory treatment of the See also:Loyalists, represented Waddington, who won the case, decided in 1784. , As Mr See also:Oliver points out (Alexander Hamilton, p. 156), Hamilton's idea of the British constitution was not a correct picture of the British constitution in 1787, and still less of that of the loth See also:century. " What he had in mind was the British constitution as George III. had tried to make it." Hamilton's ideal was an elective monarchy, and his guiding principle a proper See also:balance of authority. ', Briefly, he proposed a See also:governor and two See also:chambers—an See also:Assembly elected by the See also:people for three years, and a See also:Senate—the governor and senate holding See also:office for life or during good behaviour, and chosen, through See also:electors, by voters qualified by property; the governor to have an unqualified See also:veto on federal legislation; state See also:governors to have a similar veto on state legislation, and to be appointed by the federal government; the federal government to See also:control all See also:militia. See Works, i. 347 (I: 331); and cf. his correspondence, which is scanty, passim in later years, notably x. 446, 431, 329 (8: 6o6, 596, 517), and references below. 5 Nearly all the papers in The Federalist first appeared (between See also:October 1787 and See also:April 1788) in New York See also:journals, over the See also:signature " Publius." Jay wrote only five. The authorship of twelve of them is uncertain, and has been the subject of much controversy between partisans of Hamilton and Madison. Concerning The Federalist See also:Chancellor James See also:Kent (Commentaries, i. 241) said: " There is no work on the subject of the Constitution, and on re-publican and federal government generally, that deserves to be more thoroughly studied. I know not indeed of any work on the principles of See also:free government that is to be compared, in instruction and See also:intrinsic value, to this small and unpretending See also:volume. . It is equally admirable in the See also:depth of its See also:wisdom, the comprehensiveness of its views, the sagacity of its reflections, and the fearlessness, patriotism,liantly and effectively exhibited than they were by Hamilton in the New York convention of 1788, whose vote he won, against the greatest odds, for the ratification of the Constitution. It was the See also:judgment of Chancellor James Kent, the See also:justice of which can hardly be disputed, that " all the documentary See also:proof and the current observation of the time See also:lead us to the conclusion that he surpassed all his contemporaries in his exertions to create, recommend, adopt and defend the Constitution of the United States." When the new government was inaugurated, Hamilton became secretary of the See also:treasury in Washington's See also:cabinet.' Congress immediately referred to him a See also:press of queries and problems, and there came from his See also:pen a See also:succession of papers that have left the strongest imprint on the administrative organization of the See also:national government—two reports on public See also:credit, upholding an ideal of national honour higher than the prevalent popular principles; a See also:report on manufactures, advocating their encouragement (e.g. by bounties paid from surplus revenues amassed by See also:tariff duties)—a famous report that has served ever since as a storehouse of arguments for a national protective policy;' a report favouring the See also:establishment of a national See also:bank, the See also:argument being based on the See also:doctrine of " implied powers " in the Constitution, and on the application that Congress may do anything that can be made, through the See also:medium of See also:money, to subserve the " general welfare " of the United States—doctrines that, through judicial See also:interpretation, have revolutionized' the Constitution; and, finally, a vast See also:mass of detailed work by which See also:order and efficiency were given to the national finances. In 1793 he put to confusion his opponents who had brought about a congressional investigation of his See also:official accounts. The success of his See also:financial measures was ir_Is mediate and remarkable. They did not, as is often but loosely said, create economic prosperity; but they did prop it, in an all-important field, with order, See also:hope and confidence. His ultimate purpose was always the strengthening of the union; but before particularizing his political theories, and the political import of his financial measures, the remaining events of his life may be traced.
His activity in the cabinet was by no means confined to the finances. He regarded himself, apparently, as premier, and sometimes overstepped the limits of his office in interfering with other departments. The heterogeneous character of the duties placed upon his department by Congress seemed in fact to reflect the English idea of its primacy. Hamilton's influence was in fact predominant with Washington (so far as any man could have predominant influence). Thus it happens that in See also:foreign affairs, whatever credit properly belongs to the Federalists as a party (see also the article FEDERALIST PARTY) for the adoption of that principle of See also:neutrality which became the traditional policy of the United States must be regarded as largely due to Hamilton. But See also:allowance must be made for the See also:mere See also:advantage of initiative which belonged to any party that organized the government—the See also:differences between Hamilton and See also:Jefferson, in this question of neutrality, being almost purely factitious.' On domestic policy their differences were vital,
candour, simplicity, and elegance, with which its truths are uttered and recommended."
'The position was offered first to See also:Robert See also:Morris, who declined it, expressing the See also:opinion that Hamilton was the man best fitted to meet its problems.
7 Hamilton's Report on Manufactures (1791) by itself entitles him to the place of an See also:epoch-maker in See also:economics. It was the first great revolt from See also:Adam See also: 3 That is, while Jefferson hated British See also:aristocracy and sympathized with French See also:democracy, Hamilton hated French democracy and sympathized with British aristocracy and order; but
and in their conflicts over Hamilton's financial measures they organized, on the basis of varying tenets and ideals which have never ceased to conflict in American politics, the two great parties of Federalists and Democrats (or Democratic-Republicans). On the 31st of January 1795 Hamilton resigned his position as secretary of the treasury and returned to the practice of law in New York, leaving it for public service only in 1798–1800, when he was the active See also:head, under Washington (who insisted that Hamilton should be second only to himself), of the See also:army organized for war against See also:France. But though in private life he remained the continual and See also:chief adviser of Washington—notably in the serious crisis of the Jay Treaty, of which Hamilton approved. Washington's Farewell Address (1796) was written for him by Hamilton.
After Washington's See also:death the Federalist leadership was divided (and disputed) between John See also: He read Burr's character correctly from the beginning; deemed it a patriotic See also:duty to thwart him in his ambitions; defeated his hopes successively of a foreign See also:mission, the See also:presidency, and the governorship of New York; and in his conversations and letters repeatedly and unsparingly denounced him. If these denunciations were known to Burr they were ignored by him until his last defeat. After that he forced a quarrel on a trivial See also:bit of hearsay (that Hamilton had said he had a " despicable " opinion of Burr); and Hamilton, believing as he explained in a letter he left before going to his death—that a compliance with the duelling prejudices of the time was inseparable from the ability to be in future
neither wanted war; and indeed Jefferson, throughout life, was the more peaceful of the two. Neutrality was in the See also:line of common-place American thinking of that time, as may be seen in the writings of all the leading men of the day. The cry of " British Hamilton " had no good excuse whatever.
' e.g. his prediction in 1789 of the course of the French Revolution; his judgments of Burr from 1792 onward, and of Burr and Jefferson in 1800.
' After the Democrats won New York in 1799, Hamilton proposed to Governor John Jay to call together the out-going Federalist legislature, in order to choose Federalist presidential electors, a See also:suggestion which Jay simply endorsed: " Proposing a measure for party purposes which it would not become me to adopt."—Works, x. 371 (8 : 549). Compare also with later developments of See also: Hamilton himself did not intend to fire, but his See also:pistol went off as he fell. The tragic See also:close of his career appeased for the moment the fierce hatred of politics, and his death was very generally deplored as a national calamity 1 No emphasis, however strong, upon the mere consecutive personal successes of Hamilton's life is sufficient to show the measure of his importance in American history. That importance lies, to a large extent, in the political ideas for which he stood. His mind was eminently " legal." He was the unrivalled controversialist of the time. His writings, which are distinguished by clarity, vigour and rigid reasoning, rather than by any show of scholarship—in the extent of which, however solid in character Hamilton's might have been, he was surpassed by several of his contemporaries—are in general strikingly empirical in basis. He See also:drew his theories from his experiences of the Revolutionary See also:period, and he modified them hardly at all through life. In his earliest pamphlets (1774–1775) he started out with the ordinary pre-Revolutionary Whig doctrines of natural rights and See also:liberty; but the first experience of semi-anarchic states'-rights and See also:individualism ended his fervour for ideas so essentially See also:alien to his practical, logical mind, and they have no place in his later writings. The feeble inadequacy of conception, infirmity of power, factional See also:jealousy, disintegrating particularism, and vicious See also:finance of the Confederation were realized by many others; but none other saw so clearly the See also:concrete nationalistic remedies for these concrete ills, or pursued remedial ends so constantly, so ably, and so consistently. An immigrant, Hamilton had no particularistic ties; he was by See also:instinct a " continentalist " or federalist. He wanted a strong union and energetic government that should " rest as much as possible on the shoulders of the people and as little as possible on those of the state legislatures "; that should have the support of wealth and class; and that should curb the states to such an " entire subordination " as nowise to be hindered by those bodies. At these ends he aimed with extraordinary skill in all his financial measures. As early as 1776 he urged the See also:direct collection of federal taxes by federal agents. From 1779 onward we trace the idea of supporting government by the interest of the propertied classes; from 1781 onward the idea that a not-excessive public See also:debt would be a blessing 4 in giving cohesiveness to the union: hence his See also:device by which the federal government, assuming the war debts of the states, secured greater resources, based itself on a high ideal of nationalism, strengthened its hold on the individual See also:citizen, and gained the support of property. In his report on manufactures his chief avowed See also:motive was to strengthen the union. To the same end he conceived the constitutional doctrines of liberal construction, " implied powers," and the " general welfare," which were later embodied in the decisions of John See also:Marshall. The idea of nationalism pervaded and quickened all his life and works. With one great exception, the dictum of Guizot is hardly an exaggeration, that " there is not in the Constitution of the United States an See also:element of order, of force; of duration, which he did not powerfully contribute to introduce into it and to cause to predominate." ' Hamilton's widow, who survived him for half a century, dying at the age of ninety-seven, was left with four sons and four daughters. He had been an affectionate husband and father, though his devotion to his wife had been consistent with occasional lapses from strict marital fidelity. One intrigue into which he drifted in 1791, with a Mrs See also:Reynolds, led to the blackmailing of Hamilton by her husband; and when this See also:rascal, shortly afterwards, got into trouble for See also:fraud, his relations with Hamilton were unscrupulously misrepresented for political purposes by some of Hamilton's opponents. But Hamilton faced the necessity of revealing the true state of things with conspicuous courage, and the See also:scandal only reacted on his accusers. One of them was See also:Monroe, whose reputation comes very badly out of this unsavoury affair. '' In later years he said no debt should be incurred without providing simultaneously for its See also:payment. The exception, as American history showed, was American democracy. The loose and barren See also:rule of the Confederation seemed to conservative minds such as Hamilton's to presage, in its strengthening of individualism, a fatal looseness of social restraints, and led him on to a dread of democracy that he never overcame. Liberty, he reminded his See also:fellows, in the New York Convention of 1788, seemed to be alone considered in government, but there was another thing equally important: " a principle of strength and stability in the organization . . . and of vigour in its operation." But Hamilton's governmental system was in fact repressive.' He wanted a system strong enough, he would have said, to overcome the anarchic tendencies loosed by war, and represented by those notions of natural rights which he had himself once championed; strong enough to overbear all See also:local, state and sectional prejudices, powers or influence, and to control—not, as Jefferson would have it, to be controlled by—the people. Confidence in the integrity, the self-control, and the good judgment of the people, which was the content of Jefferson's political faith, had almost no place in Hamilton's theories. " Men," said he, " are reasoning rather than reasonable animals." The charge that he laboured to introduce monarchy by intrigue is an under-estimate of his good sense.' I-lamilton's thinking, however, did carry him foul of current democratic See also:philosophy; as he said, he presented his plan in 1787 " not as attainable, but as a model to which we ought to approach as far as possible "; moreover, he held through life his belief in its principles, and in its superiority over the government actually created; and though its inconsistency with American tendencies was yearly more apparent, he never ceased to avow on all occasions his aristocratic-monarchical partialities. Moreover, his preferences for at least an aristocratic See also:republic were shared by many other men of See also:talent. When it is added that Jefferson's assertions, alike as regards Hamilton's talk' and the See also:intent and tendency of his political measures, were, to the extent of the underlying basic fact—but discounting Jefferson's somewhat intemperate interpretations—unquestionably true,' it cannot be accounted See also:strange that Hamilton's Democratic opponents mistook his theoretic predilections for See also:positive designs. Nor would it be a strained inference from much that he said, to believe that he hoped and expected that in the " crisis " he foresaw, when democracy should have caused the ruin of the country, a new government might be formed that should approximate to his own ideals.' From the beginning of the excesses of the French Revolution he was possessed by the persuasion that American democracy, likewise, might at any moment crush the restraints of the Constitution to enter on a career of See also:licence and anarchy. To this obsession he sacri- 1 He warmly supported the Alien and See also:Sedition See also:Laws of 1798 (in their final See also:form). ' The idea, he wrote to Washington, was " one of those visionary things none but madmen could undertake, and that no See also:wise man will believe " (1792). And see his comments on Burr's ambitions, Works, x. 417, 450 (8:585, 61o). We may accept as just, and applicable to his entire career, the statement made by himself in 1803 of his principles in 1787: " (I) That the political powers of the people of this See also:continent would endure nothing but a representative form of government. (2) That, in the actual situation of the country, it was itself right and proper that the representative system should have a full and See also:fair trial. (3) That to such a trial it was essential that the government should be so constructed as to give it all the See also:energy and the stability reconcilable with the principles of that theory." ' Cf. Gouverneur Morris, See also:Diary and Letters, ii. 455, 526, 531. ' Cf. even Mr Lodge's judgments, pp. 90-92, 115-I16, 122, 130, 140. When he says (p. 140) that " In Hamilton's successful policy there were certainly germs of an aristocratic republic, there were certainly limitations and possibly dangers to pure democracy," this is practically Jefferson's assertion (1792) that " His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty "; but Jefferson goes on to add: " and was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic." As to the intent of Hamilton to secure through his financial measures the political support of property, his own words are honest and clear; and in fact he succeeded. Jefferson merely had exaggerated fears of a moneyed political See also:engine, and seeing that Hamilton's measures of funding and See also:assumption did make the national debt politically useful to the Federalists in the beginning he concluded that they would seek to fasten the debt on the country for ever. Cf. Gouv. Morris, op. cit. ii. 474.ficed his life.' After the Democratic victory of 'Soo, his letters, full of retrospective judgments and interesting outlooks, are but rarely relieved in their sombre See also:pessimism by flashes of hope and courage. His last letter on politics, written two days before his death, illustrates the two sides of his thinking already emphasized: in this letter he warns his New England friends against dismemberment of the union as " a clear See also:sacrifice of great positive advantages, without any counterbalancing good; administering no See also:relief to our real disease, which is democracy, the See also:poison of which, by a subdivision, will only be more concentrated in each part, and consequently the more virulent." To the end he never lost his fear of the states, nor gained faith in the future of the country. He laboured still, in mingled hope and See also:apprehension, "to prop the frail and worthless fabric,"7 but for its spiritual content of democracy he had no under-See also:standing, and even in its nationalism he had little hope. Yet probably to no one man, except perhaps to Washington, does American nationalism owe so much as to Hamilton. In the development of the United States the influence of Hamiltonian nationalism and Jeffersonian democracy has been a reactive union; but changed conditions since Hamilton's time, and particularly since the See also:Civil War, are likely to create misconceptions as to Hamilton's position in his own day. Great constructive statesman as he was, he was also, from the American point of view, essentially a reactionary. He was the leader of reactionary forces—constructive forces, as it happened—in the See also:critical period after the War of American Independence, and in the period of Federalist supremacy. He was in sympathy with the dominant forces of public life only while they took, during the war, the predominant impress of an imperfect nationalism." Jeffersonian democracy carne into power in 'boo in direct line with colonial development; Hamiltonian Federalism was a break in that development; and this alone can explain how Jefferson could organize the Democratic Party in face of the brilliant success of the Federalists in constructing the government. Hamilton stigmatized his great opponent as a political fanatic; but actualist as he claimed to be,' Hamilton could not see, or would not concede, the predominating forces in American life, and would uncompromisingly have minimized the two great political conquests of the colonial period—local self-government and democracy. Few Americans have received higher tributes from foreign authorities. Talleyrand, personally impressed when in America with Hamilton's brilliant qualities, declared that he had the power of See also:divining without reasoning, and compared him to See also:Fox and See also:Napoleon because he had " See also:devil-J.6 1'See also:Europe." Of the judgments rendered by his countrymen, Washington's confidence in his ability and integrity is perhaps the most significant. Chancellor James Kent, and others only less competent, paid remarkable testimony to his legal abilities. Chief-justice Marshall ranked him second to Washington alone. No judgment ' He dreamed of saving the country with an army in this crisis of See also:blood and See also:iron, and wished to preserve unweakened the public confidence in his personal bravery. 7 His own words in 1802. In See also:justification of the above statements see the correspondence of 1800–18o4 passim—Works, vol. ix.-x. (or 7-8) ; especially x. 363, 425, 434, 440, 445 (or 8 :543, 591, 596, 602, 6o5). Cf. See also:Anson D. See also:Morse, article cited below, pp. 4, 18-21. 9 Chancellor Kent tells us (See also:Memoirs and Letters, p. 32) that in 1804 Hamilton was planning a co-operative Federalist work on the history and See also:science of government on an inductive basis. Kent always speaks of Hamilton's legal thinking as deductive, however (ibid, p. 290, 329), and such seems to have been in fact all his political reasoning: i.e. underlying them were such See also:maxims as that of See also:Hume, that in erecting a See also:stable government every citizen must be assumed a See also:knave, and be See also:bound by self-interest to co-operation for the public good. Hamilton always seems to be reasoning deductively from such principles. He went too far and fast for even such a Federalist disbeliever in democracy as Gouverneur Morris; who, to Hamilton's assertion that democracy must be cast out to See also:save the country, replied that " such necessity cannot be shown by a political ratiocination. Luckily, or, to speak with a reverence proper to the occasion, providentially, mankind are not disposed to embark the blessings they enjoy on a voyage of syllogistic See also:adventure to obtain something more beautiful in See also:exchange. They must feel before they will See also:act' (op. cit. ii. 531). auditors. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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