Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

Hamilton began to meditate on the deeper causes of the surrounding misery.

he knew that the central weakness of the continental cause was political in nature.

The disillusioned Hamilton also struggled to fathom why a Congress that had once boasted such distinguished figures was now glutted with mediocrities.

martinet.

Frederick William August von Steuben

élan

“Force of intellect and force of will were the sources of his success,” Henry Cabot Lodge later wrote.

Thanks to his pay book we know that he read a considerable amount of philosophy, including Bacon, Hobbes, Montaigne, and Cicero. He also perused histories of Greece, Prussia, and France.

Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old.

Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce,

“Prague is the principal city of Bohemia,

poltroon,

America’s idolatry of George Washington may have truly begun at the battle of Monmouth.

This early lesson in Realpolitik—that countries follow their interests, not their sympathies—was engraved in Hamilton’s memory, and he often reminded Jeffersonians later on that the French had fought for their own selfish purposes. “The primary motives of France for the assistance which she gave us was obviously to enfeeble a hated and powerful rival by breaking in pieces the British Empire,” he wrote nearly two decades later. “He must be a fool who can be credulous enough to believe that a despotic court aided a popular revolution from regard to liberty or friendship to the principles of such a revolution.”54

both unwavering abolitionists who saw emancipation of the slaves as an inseparable part of the struggle for freedom as well as a source of badly needed manpower.

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?” Samuel Johnson protested from London.

iniquitous

termagant

Hamilton must have been struck by the coincidence that his paternal grandfather, Alexander Hamilton, had also married an Elizabeth who was the daughter of a rich, illustrious man.

patroon

He favored granting Congress supreme power in war, peace, trade, finance, and foreign affairs.

congressional control:

adjutant general

Hamilton’s dissent betrayed growing frustration with Washington’s inflexibility, frustration that was presently to flare into open rebellion.

his belief in meritocracy, not aristocracy, as the best system for government appointments.

Washington had generously offered to make amends, but the hypersensitive young man was determined to teach the commander in chief a stern lesson in the midst of the American Revolution.

folie de grandeur.

Washington remained unwaveringly loyal toward Hamilton, whom he saw as exceptionally able and intelligent,

With the collapse of the continental currency, Congress conquered its fears of the centralized power that might be wielded by a finance minister.

David Hume’s Political Discourses, tracts written by the English clergyman and polemicist Richard Price, and his all-purpose crib, Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce.

he asserted the need for financial reforms to complete the Revolution.

the Articles of Confederation, which had been ratified belatedly by the last state on February 27, 1781.

As soon as he left Washington’s staff, he began to convert his private opinions into cogently reasoned newspaper editorials.

He alluded to David Hume’s essays in endorsing government guidance of trade, which he denied was self-regulating and self-correcting.

“supply-side economics”

“Time is so precious to me that I could not put myself in the way of any interruptions unless for an object of consequence to the public or to myself,”

John Laurens was one of the last casualties of the American Revolution.

His death vindicated Washington’s judgment that the patriotic Laurens had only one serious fault: “intrepidity bordering on rashness.”

November 30, 1782, when American peace commissioners signed a provisional peace treaty with Great Britain,

Sam Adams in Massachusetts and Patrick Henry in Virginia eloquently asserted the sovereignty of the states.

The French minister rated Madison “the man of soundest judgment in Congress.

To galvanize the new country, Hamilton and Madison concentrated on the crying need for revenue—a need alleviated only partially when John Adams had arranged a large loan from Holland on June 11, 1782.

aegis

In early April, Congress named him chairman of the committee in charge of peace arrangements, equipped with a spacious mandate to investigate ways to “provide a system for foreign affairs, for Indian affairs, for military and naval peace establishments,” in Madison’s words.

The symbolism was especially troubling: a mob of drunken soldiers had besieged the people’s delegates in the building where the Declaration of Independence had been signed.

The Philadelphia mutiny had major repercussions in American history, for it gave rise to the notion that the national capital should be housed in a special federal district where it would never stand at the mercy of state governments.

Hamilton again questioned the doctrine of free trade when he argued for federal regulation of trade so that “injurious branches of commerce might be discouraged, favourable branches encouraged, [and] useful products and manufactures promoted.”

dragooned

For more than a century, November 25, 1783, was commemorated in New York City as Evacuation Day, the blessed end to seven years of British rule and martial law.

twenty-five thousand American military deaths