Alexander Hamilton, Modern America’s Founding Father

City Journal ^ | Winter 2009 | Myron Magnet

[neverdem]

How New York’s opportunity society became America’s

We New Yorkers imagine our city’s history begins in earnest with the Gilded Age and the Great Migration that brought many of our forebears sailing under the Statue of Liberty’s torch to supercharge a nascent metropolis with a jolt of new energy. But this summer, when a handful of square-bearded, antique-garbed Pennsylvania German Baptists jacked a yellow clapboard house up over a Harlem church and wheeled it around the corner to a new site in St. Nicholas Park, we recalled that more than a century earlier Gotham took center stage as the nation’s first capital. For the house belonged to Alexander Hamilton—not only one of the greatest Founding Fathers but the one who stamped the infant republic forever with the unique spirit of New York City.

The other Founders were Americans of a century’s standing, who fought the Revolution to defend liberties their families had claimed for generations. Washington and Jefferson, landed grandees, descended from seventeenth-century Virginians; Harvard-educated John Adams’s forebears settled in Massachusetts Bay in 1638. Such men were rooted Americans, living on land inherited from their fathers. Hamilton, by contrast, was a penniless immigrant from the West Indies; like so many New Yorkers, he had come here from elsewhere, seeking his fortune.

And he wasn’t just penniless. “My birth,” as he delicately put it, “is the subject of the most humiliating criticism”—for he was, in John Adams’s acidulous taunt, “the bastard brat of a Scotch pedlar.” Nevertheless, as a prime exemplar of that American opportunity and enterprise he so fervently promoted, he rose to be the country’s second most powerful man. As Ron Chernow puts it in his indispensable biography, he served in effect as George Washington’s prime minister and head of government, directing his administration’s policy and molding the enduring institutions...

[neverdem]

National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource, NY
Alexander Hamilton’s family thought James Sharples’s pastel profile, drawn just after Hamilton stepped down as Treasury secretary, the most accurate of all the many portraits of him.

[NonValueAdded]

FF ping

[neverdem]

Alexander Hamilton An American Statesman and Artilleryman

Fort George, New York

[Carry_Okie]

I have no respect for Hamilton. He was so obsessed with raising money that he helped facilitate acceptance of the Constitution's poison pill.

[Who is John Galt?]

Alexander Hamilton, Modern America’s Founding Father

That may be true, but the man was a sh!t head (which says a lot about "Modern America"). Consider Mr. Hamilton's proposed plan of government:

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_618.asp

"In his [Mr. Hamilton's] private opinion he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinions of so many of the wise & good, that the British Govt. was the best in the world [one must ask - what was he doing in America?]: and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America...As to the [proposed federal] Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on Republican principles [Hamilton was obviously a RINO]. Was not this giving up the merits of the question: for can there be a good Govt. without a good Executive. The English model was the only good one on this subject [RINO!]. The Hereditary interest of the King was so interwoven with that of the Nation, and his personal emoluments so great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad [oh, you betcha]-and at the same time was both sufficiently independent and sufficiently controuled, to answer the purpose of the institution at home...Let one branch of the [federal] Legislature [the Senate] hold their places for life [picture "Dingy" Reid & "Chuck You" Schumer serving for life] or at least during good behaviour. Let the Executive also be for life [please note - Carter is still alive]...[a federal] Executive for life... will therefore be a safer depository of power. It will be objected probably, that such [a federal] Executive will be an elective Monarch, and will give birth to the tumults which characterize that form of Govt. He wd. reply that Monarch is an indefinite term [how Clintonian]..."

[Dan Middleton]

Er, which poison pill?

[Carry_Okie]

Er, which poison pill?

This one.

[fella]

Didn't he believe that the Governments accounts should be so convoluted so as to be incapable of making sense of? If so he has succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams.

[Henchster]

Thank the Lord for Aaron Burr.

[Talisker]

Hamilton was an insidious traitor who did everything he could to undermine the power of the new Constitution. He fought the limitation of the power of the federal government, he fought against the creation of the Bill of Rights, and he fought against staying debt-free. He was a subversive monarchist, and he did incredible damage to our country literally at the moment it was being born. And he did it with thoroughly modern spin techniques - every shred of his efforts was done in the name of freedom (a tactic that continues to allow his name to be protected today). Because of this he was literally reviled by some of the other Founders, and has continued to be reviled by many through history, up to and including today. In fact, he can be directly blamed for establishing the philosophical underpinnings of the legalisms which enable all federal overreaching, as well as the creation of the Federal Reserve. Burr was a hero.

/rant (but I’m not apologizing for it - he was a bastard in more ways than mere birth)

[Tailgunner Joe]

Burr was the real traitor, and was charged with treason by Thomas Jefferson himself.

Hamilton was a hero.

[rmlew]

But for Hamilton, the Constitution would probably not have been written, and we would have been a failed state. Even if it were to have continued and not broken up into warring states under the the correctly mocked Article of Confederation, it would have been an insolvent banana republic(actually third world countries would be called Pine Tree republics or some such), which would have fallen to the British in 1812.
Hamilton devoted his life to this nation and died for it. And half the people on this thread are not worthy to clean his grave.
The left ignores Hamilton's actual writings to lay claim to him. The anti-elitists on the right despise him because they lack the intelligence to read his works. And the grievance mongers calling themselves paleocons despise him, except when they decide they love tariff, only because neocons don't.

[rmlew]

The cultists of Ayn Rand follow an ideology foreign to America. Put down the philandering russian and pick up a collection of Hamilton’s works.

You don’t get it either because have not read Hamilton (and selective quoting from a google search doesn’t count) or because sacrifice is unimaginable to you. Hamilton was taking an extreme monarchist position to try to balance the lunacy of the Ant-Federalists and parochial mobs. He was willing to become a pariah to create a stable government.

[stevie_d_64]

Yep, its ALLLLLL about NY...Like this republic would not have existed with their undying support and sacrifice to the Union...

(Steve rolls his eyes)

It took a lot of politicking and fake hair pulling to get NY to get with the program, and it was not because they had some great principle dissagreement...There were too many Torrey’s in NY society that weren’t willing to give up their loyalty to the crown...It took everyone at that convention to agree to split, before NY would join in...Such courage...

So yeah, give us your Alexander Hamilton...

I would prefer John Adams and even Thomas Jefferson over AH anyday...

[stevie_d_64]

Well hang on a sec...

I think it is a tragedy that dueling has gone out of style today...

Burr was a pill nonetheless, and Hamilton had his deficiencies, yet we all know why there were problems with both sides of that equation...

Thats why it would be neat to sit back and watch liberals dissagree, and take the dissagreement out on the steps (and capitol ground) and duke it out...Or at least shoot at each other...

Quite entertaining in these times...

[Copernicus]

To understand Hamilton's role in modern society study the Whiskey Rebellion, an uproar he created almost singlehandedly with polices to penalize small time whiskey producers and reward big producers. The Whiskey Tax was to be administered by a bureaucracy almost indistinguishable from the modern IRS and in colonial terms, at least as large, if not larger.

Hamilton may be dead but his legacy lives on in ObamaNation.

Best regards,

[rmlew]

Yep, its ALLLLLL about NY...Like this republic would not have existed with their undying support and sacrifice to the Union...
(Steve rolls his eyes)
And like the teenagers he is imitating, Steve is ignorant. There were 120 battles in New York State or the territories later annexed by New York for a reason; we were the linchpin of empire. Had the British captured the state, we would have been cut in half. Had we lost Saratoga, there would be no United States. The deep water harbors or New York, and the later Erie canal were vital to our later growth.

[stevie_d_64]

Maybe you should be careful about the slurs you use, and the selective clipping and pasting you do before you start throwing “ignorance” and “teenager” around...

Obviously you stopped short of how much it took NY to agree to get into the ground floor of this experiment called these United States of America...

Sure, you must think I do not know the trials and tribulations every single state went thru to gain our overall independence from England...How ignorant of an opinion you must have...

So go right ahead and assume some more...I’m sure you’ll not lose sleep over your interpretation of U.S. history...WE could all learn something from you, but that is beside the point...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. A second ping to Pharmboy. A ping to Perdogg.

...as a prime exemplar of that American opportunity and enterprise he so fervently promoted, he rose to be the country's second most powerful man. As Ron Chernow puts it in his indispensable biography, he served in effect as George Washington's prime minister and head of government, directing his administration's policy and molding the enduring institutions...

Alexander Hamilton drafted George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796.

Google

[Who is John Galt?]

The cultists of Ayn Rand follow an ideology foreign to America. Put down the philandering russian and pick up a collection of Hamilton’s works.

You don’t get it either because have not read Hamilton (and selective quoting from a google search doesn’t count) or because sacrifice is unimaginable to you. Hamilton was taking an extreme monarchist position to try to balance the lunacy of the Ant-Federalists and parochial mobs. He was willing to become a pariah to create a stable government.

The reference I cited ( http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_618.asp ) was Mr. Hamilton's 'high water mark.' He could have discussed absolutely anything in the world, regarding government, and he elected to suggest that "the British Govt. was the best in the world." You may wish to rationalize his statements - that is obviously your right. But if the convention had actually adopted his 'plan of government' (with a President & the entire Senate serving for life), I doubt he would have complained - no matter what you & your fellow Hamiltonian-big-government "cultists," who obviously "follow an ideology foreign to America," may think...

;>)

[rmlew]

Go read the Federalist Papers and get back to me.

[Who is John Galt?]

Go read the Federalist Papers and get back to me.

(Truth hurts, eh? ;>)

[Avoiding_Sulla]

I think Carry_okie rather than say "poison pill," he meant to "Trojan Horse" as he did in that link to which he sent you. Let me try and shorten the answer you'll get from the link as I think C_O has an important point. 1. Our Constitution allows for treaties to override all other laws, the constitution included. No sh!t.

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” -- Article VI, Clause 2

2. Our Constitution grants the president the power to treaty provided he gets 2/3 agreement from "the senators present." No sh!t again.

“He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;” -- Article II, Section 2, Clause 2

See? An unscrupulous president and his star chamber ("senate committee" of his careful caling together at some prearranged time when others are gone) may alone ratify treaties that override Constitutional limits on presidential, legislative, and judicial power where the treaty so ratified requires those limits be ignored.

Now isn't that one helluva Trojan Horse. You may think this is too fantastic to have been in our Constitution all this time not to have made waves, but C_O makes the case that it has been misused already (but carefully when our politicians were not as shameless as they are today) in that much longer link that I just whittled down for you.

IN SHORT: A president and a group of senatorial cronies who want power to override the constitution merely have to ratify a treaty drawn up by fellow travelers at the UN, and they have no choice but to comply with the treaty (they're really and truly sorry, but that's the way it is).

[Carry_Okie]

You've misinterpreted one aspect of the case.

any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

That clause refers to treaties superseding State Constitutions; the Constitution for the United States is in fact mute on whether treaty power can exert supremacy over the Constitution. One could rightly make the case that unconstitutional treaties are void because the government did not possess the legal power to negotiate particular terms and it has been in fact so stated in the Supreme Court, but in addition to the fact that said principle has never specifically voided a treaty despite hordes of legitimate opportunities, they have a cute little reality to deal with that wishful premise.

It won't matter if a treaty supersedes the Constitutional or not in the pure sense, if it is assigned as authority in a court and if the administrative branch can get away with enforcing the judgment, then it is a de facto supremacy over the Constitution, hierarchies of principle notwithstanding.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Misinterpreted? Maybe the way the contrary argument COULD be presented were the executive branch ever to argue on behalf of its obligation to defend the Constitution rather than fall prey to its desires for more power — or even simply to leave such options and avenues available.

My interpretation of the factual (and current) situation? I thought I got your message loud and clear and passed it on relatively intact. Certainly there are no lack of devils abounding to aid an ambitious president. You have identified one whose machinations has been laying about for more than two hundred years awaiting for a brigand.

[Who is John Galt?]

Care to offer up any quotes from Timothy 'Alexander Hamilton' Geithner - citing our beloved President's recent statements?

(Frankly, it would trouble me more than just a bit, as a small 'r' republican, if our socialist president cited me as some sort of support for his Stalinist agenda - but that's just me... ;>)