Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

“Cato” wanted a stronger Congress, more members in the House of Representatives, and a weak president restricted to one term.

men of property closed ranks to stop “the depredations which the democratic spirit is apt to make on property.”

Publius Valerius had toppled the last Roman king and set up the republican foundations of government.

prolixity,

They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities.

Madison’s most famous essay, Federalist number 10,

In the next essay, he defended the small, elite Senate against charges that it would grow into “a tyrannical aristocracy”

In number 78, Hamilton introduced an essential concept, never made explicit in the Constitution: that the Supreme Court should be able to review and overturn legislation as unconstitutional.

Ann Venton Mitchell.

Like their New York counterparts, antifederalists there posed as plucky populists,

Patrick Henry, the leading antifederalist, warned delegates who supported the Constitution, “They’ll free your niggers.”

Nicholas Cruger, his old employer from St. Croix, donned a farmer’s costume and escorted a plow drawn by six oxen.

apotheosized

Bayard’s Tavern.

Hamilton had never courted the masses, and never again was he to enjoy their favor to this extent.

John Adams, a man with an encyclopedic memory for slights.

the sometimes irascible Adams

Bardin’s Tavern on Broad Street,

Hamilton wanted New York to continue as the nation’s capital, as it had been since January 1785.

That Hamilton could be so sensitive to criticisms of himself and so insensitive to the effect his words had on others was a central mystery of his psyche.

nadir

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, author of The School for Scandal, who once refused to satisfy his creditors on the grounds that “paying only encourages them.”

bibulous,

parvenu

Taken aback, Washington replied, “I always knew Colonel Hamilton to be a man of superior talents, but never supposed that he had any knowledge of finance.” “He knows everything, sir,” Morris replied. “To a mind like his nothing comes amiss.”

Why else had he ploughed through dry economic texts during the war or perused the three-volume memoir of Jacques Necker, the French finance minister?

everything that Hamilton planned to create to transform America into a powerful, modern nation-state—a central bank, a funded debt, a mint, a customs service, manufacturing subsidies, and so on—was to strike critics as a slavish imitation of the British model.

Hamilton knew the symbolic value of rapid decision making and phenomenal energy.

As master of Mount Vernon, George Washington presided over a larger staff than he did as president.

He had to create a customs service on the spot, for customs duties were to be the main source of government revenue.

Unfortunately, William Duer suffered from a severe case of moral myopia

Hamilton was an extremely perceptive judge of character, and William Duer was one of the few cases in which his acute vision seems to have been blinkered.

He had inordinate admiration for Jacques Necker, the French finance minister who had argued that government borrowing could strengthen military prowess,

Back in the 1690s, the British had set up the Bank of England, enacted an excise tax on spirits, and funded its public debt—that is, pledged specific revenues to insure repayment of its debt.

Hamilton wanted to use British methods to defeat Britain economically.

He had clearly plumbed David Hume’s Political Discourses, which admitted that public debt could vitalize business activity.

During the Revolution, Hamilton had stuffed Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce into his satchel, and now he used it once again.

Inviolable property rights lay at the heart of the capitalist culture that Hamilton wished to enshrine in America.

Madison did not want a long-term government debt, fearing that such securities would fall into foreign hands: “As they have more money than the Americans and less productive ways of laying it out, they can and will pretty generally buy out the Americans.”

Had Hamilton stuck to dry financial matters, his Report on Public Credit would never have attained such historic renown.

America was a young country rich in opportunity. It lacked only liquid capital, and government debt could supply that gaping deficiency.

“In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit.

“The Secretary, after mature reflection on this point, entertains a full conviction that an assumption of the debts of the particular states by the union and a like provision for them as for those of the union will be a measure of sound policy and substantial justice.”26 The repercussions of this decision were as pervasive as anything Alexander Hamilton ever did to fortify the U.S. government.

Hamilton knew that bondholders would feel a stake in preserving any government that owed them money.

His opponents, he claimed, neglected a critical passage of his report in which he wrote that he “ardently wishes to see it incorporated as a fundamental maxim in the system of public credit of the United States that the creation of debt should always be accompanied with the means of extinguishment.”

Indeed, in Hamilton’s writings his warnings about oppressive debt vastly outnumber his paeans to public debt as a source of liquid capital.

jobbers—or wealthy dealers in securities—swarmed

Daniel Webster rhapsodized about Hamilton’s report as follows: “The fabled birth of Minerva from the brain of Jove was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system of the United States as it burst forth from the conception of Alexander Hamilton.”

Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit had an electrifying effect.

the “Publius” team of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay had seen the supreme threat to liberty coming at the state level,