[conimbricenses]

Obviously Hamilton understood the relation between the quantity of specie and the health of the domestic economy.

Obviously he did not. Otherwise he would not have openly espoused policies intended to hoard specie ala mercantilism. As to the "virtue" of debt, just wondering. Have you seen where Hamilton's little "gift" stands today?

Hamilton’s goal was strengthening the Union and making possible the survival of the new nation not refutation of Adam Smith.

Except...

1. His policies did not "strengthen" the nation - they sowed the seeds of sectional discord over the tariff issue, which continued to be a source of irritation for the next 150+ years, and

2. Early drafts of the reports in Tench Coxe's papers conclusively prove that he was indeed going after Smith.

Oh, and there's also this:

3. Even if we assume Hamilton wanted to strengthen the union, protectionism doesn't work so he picked a bad policy to do it.

Hamilton undertook an extensive and in depth study of the US economy and received reports from all over the nation as a part of that, the first such attempt ever made.

False. Lord Sheffield, a member of the British Parliament, published the first comprehensive report of the new United States' economy in 1784. It had more statistical data on the state of American commerce on a single attached foldout chart than all of Hamilton's data-void Treasury reports combined.

Of course, that data was not IN THE REPORT. What a ridiculous idea that would have been.

Why not include it? Almost all of Hamilton's successors did. In fact, the Treasury Department has published a report on "Commerce and Navigation" detailing every last penny of every last good to clear the American border in every year from 1821 to the present. And they sent them sporadically from 1816-1820. The same type of stats were also kept by Parliament up until 1781, and then by the states that had individual state tariffs under the Articles of Confederation from 1781-1789. That leaves one huge gap from 1790-1820 - the "dark age" of statistical data for the early United States. And it began under Alexander Hamilton.

Besides, if Hamilton collected all the data you claim, then WHERE THE HELL IS IT? Historians would love to get their hands on that sort of thing. And don't give me the old "they were moving capitals" excuse. Tench Coxe's rough drafts of Hamilton's rough draft of the final draft of the Reports on Credit and Manufactures survived all those moves just fine and dandy. So did all the records of Congress.

No, the real answer is we don't have complete data for those years because Hamilton never assembled it. And neither did he make any thorough and grandiose "first-ever" economic analysis of the brand new United States seeing as (1) Sheffield beat him to the punch on that by at least 6 years, and (2) if it was ever done, it is nowhere to be found in any of his published reports and no other record of it exists!

[arrogantsob]

It is rather amusing to listen to your preachments about my “man-crush” and bias only to encounter your ability to swallow the most absurd Jeffersonian versions of reality IN EVERY CASE of controversy.

There is no way to blame Hamilton for the out of control federal spending executed under the party of Jefferson which Hamilton had warned about for over a decade. You know that party created to destroy Hamilton and thwart his efforts.

And it was not his policies which led to disunion but the ludicrous and dangerous constitutional theories of Jefferson. Hamilton’s program certainly ran up against the petty local interests which had crippled the Confederation and it eventually neutered their power and was not designed to coddle the democrats. His program without doubt strengthened the Union and laid the foundations for the great economic success following independence. Had his opponents’ programs been installed our survival would have been very doubtful.

Of the features which this policy exhibited it was the certainty that it WOULD strength the Union which was the element which generated the most opposition. His enemies did not WANT a strengthened Union and they KNEW Hamilton’s program would do just that weakening their influence.

It is interesting that AS IT STOOD Hamilton’s opponents complained that the Report on Public Credit was so “intricate and complicated it appears to require some time and attention to understand...” I’m sure the opponents would have welcomed even MORE intricacy and complication.

Perhaps the most significant economic theory held by Hamilton was the critical need to get rid of slavery in this nation. He knew it was a millstone around the Union’s neck and worked outside of the government to get rid of it as a founder of the New York Society for the Manumission of Slavery. It was this which declared Hamilton’s enmity to the Jeffersonians in all their hypocrisy and which provoked their blind hatred of the man and his ideas. It was this which cemented their determination to destroy him by any means necessary.

It has been said by experts on the subject that Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit marked a watershed in American history and was one of the great state papers on economics and finance. “It marks the end of an era of American bankruptcy and repudiation of debt and the beginning of a long era during which the public credit of the United States would be as sound as that of any other nation.”
That is one hell of an achievement. Hamilton himself commented “it is a curious phenomenon in political history (not easy to be paralleled), that a measure which has elevated the credit of the country from a state of absolute prostration to a state of exalted preeminence, should bring upon the authors of it reprobation and censure.” Thanks to Jefferson’s propagandists.