It is NOT, however, to make patently counterfactual claims about his record. The guy was a protectionist Anglophile with little regard for any authority but his own. He openly stated his protectionist beliefs at several points across his lifetime, and he made no secret of his support for the favoritism that the Jay Treaty gave to a U.S.-British partnership in the West Indies trade. Britain got concessions that no other trading partner received, and they were plainly intended to exclude American commerce from those trading partners...even to the point of provoking a wholly unnecessary war.
Since I was born and raised in the South I was educated to believe Jefferson was almost perfect and Hamilton was the Devil’s own hand in American politics. It was only about ten years ago that I decided to look deeply into the era of the Founding.
What I found was that the truth had been turned on its head and that the sins attributed to Hamilton were actually those things necessary to bring this nation to a position of strength and allow its survival. Jefferson’s virtues were wildly overstated and often would have been a disaster if implemented at the beginning. He was as big a fraud and phony as his namesake Billy Jefferson Clinton though a much better furniture maker.
Hamilton favored NO COUNTRY for any reason other than its usefulness to the US. It was HE would warned (through Washington’s lips) about the danger of permanent attachments to any nation.
His “protectionism” was merely an accompaniment unavoidable in a revenue tariff or to build up defense industries.
There was certainly no “provoking” war with France although it did believe our foreign policy should be an adjunct to its own and it attempted to manipulate (with the Democrats help) our policies. Jay’s treaty was a nice “fork you” to the terrorists.