Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

Hamilton continued to define his views on American foreign policy: that it should be based on self-interest, not emotional attachment;

Hamilton, the human word machine,

this inspired windbag.

It irked John Adams that Republicans considered Jefferson’s resignation to be the sign of a pure, self-effacing man: “Jefferson thinks by this step to get the reputation as an humble, modest, meek man, wholly without ambition or vanity. . . . But if the prospect opens, the world will see and he will feel that he is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell.”

he wrote to Abigail, “Jefferson went off yesterday and a good riddance of bad ware.”23

“no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.”

Long before Napoleon came on the scene, he predicted that after “wading through seas of blood . . . France may find herself at length the slave of some victorious . . . Caesar.”

Hamilton has often been extolled as the exponent of a rational foreign policy based on cool calculations of national self-interest.

Hamilton and Talleyrand were both hardheaded men, disgusted with the utopian dreams of their more fanciful, radical compatriots. As one Talleyrand biographer put it, “They were both passionately interested in politics and both of them looked at politics from a realistic standpoint and despised sentimental twaddle whether it poured from the lips of a Robespierre or of a Jefferson.”

Talleyrand confessed to only one complaint about Hamilton: that he was overly enamored of the grand personages of the day and took too little notice of Eliza’s beauty.

Captain William Faulkner,

The mostly Scotch-Irish frontiersmen of western Pennsylvania, who regarded liquor as a beloved refreshment,

When it came to law enforcement, Hamilton believed that an overwhelming show of force often obviated the need to employ it:

Boudinot.

douceur

Never a martinet, Hamilton did insist on discipline and condoned no lapses.

Hamilton then picked up a slim volume on the table and turned it over in his hands. “Ah, this is the constitution,” he said. “Now, mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare, and mutual happiness. But when we become old and corrupt, it will bind us no longer.”

Angelica?

perspicacious

“It linked American security and economic development to the British fleet, which provided a protective shield of incalculable value throughout the nineteenth century.”

The Jay Treaty

“No international treaty was ever more passionately denounced in the United States,” Elkins and McKitrick have written, “though the benefits which flowed from it were actually considerable.”

For Hamilton, these protests confirmed his premonition that Jeffersonians were really Jacobin fanatics in disguise.

with his encyclopedic knowledge of trade and other issues, Hamilton was not easily replaced.

After Alexander Hamilton left the Treasury Department, he lost the strong, restraining hand of George Washington and the invaluable sense of tact and proportion that went with it.

Republicans could swallow such nonsense as gospel truth

They have not changed much.

Hamilton took up a position on the stoop of an old Dutch building on the west side of Broad Street, right across from City Hall.

“The Defence.”

“If we suppose them sincere, we must often pity their ignorance; if insincere, we must abhor the spirit of deception which it betrays.”

Jefferson gave voice to the sheer terror that Hamilton’s intellect inspired in him

For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington.

affairs are certainly in a critical

Washington’s second generation of cabinet members was decidedly inferior to the first.

stressed public credit and the need to control deficits;

Hamilton told a correspondent that his one overriding goal was to stop Thomas Jefferson from becoming president:

prolix,

Abigail Smith, a smart, sharp-tongued minister’s daughter with a passion for politics and books.

Adams

He was a born gadfly,

He always had a vivid sense of how easily righteous causes could degenerate into mob excess.

In addition, Franklin’s blithe hedonism offended the austere New England soul of John Adams. “His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency,” Adams complained.

pyorrhea,

He even bemoaned the “impious idolatry” of Washington, dubbing him Old Muttonhead,

He thought Washington better at striking heroic poses than providing leadership.

bumptious

two brilliant and unstoppable windbags, Adams and Hamilton,

Both were hasty, erratic, impulsive men and capable of atrocious judgment.

volume is usually referred to as “the Reynolds pamphlet,” but the full title was Observations on Certain Documents Contained in No. V & VI of “The History of the United States for the Year 1796,” In Which the Charge of Speculation Against Alexander Hamilton, Late Secretary of the Treasury, Is Fully Refuted. Written by Himself.

Jacobinism.”

Then he got to the nub of the matter in the frankest confession yet uttered by an American public official: “The charge against me is a connection with one James Reynolds for purposes of improper pecuniary speculation. My real crime is an amorous connection with his wife, for a considerable time with his privity and connivance, if not originally brought on by a combination between the husband and wife with the design to extort money from me.”