Alexander Hamilton was the most brilliant of the Founders and has been one of the most unjustly vilified for his herculean efforts at establishing a strong, free United States. He was the first to call for a new constitution and was one of the most prolific political writers of his generation. A Man of the Ages whom his deadly enemy, Thomas Jefferson, called “A host within himself”. The Democrat-Republican party was created to thwart his influence as he shaped a modern financial structure to empower the nation. This is today’s loathsome Democrat Party.
ping
Ive been to Nevis...little island..St Kitt is the bigger neighbor
After all of the Hamilton hate posts to FR, it is good to read a straightforward bio of the man and his essential contributions to a struggling nation.
Sorry - channeling John Adams there. What I like most about the Founders was their tender restraint in print and spoken word. Not. Hamilton, in reply:
...he [Adams] is a man of an imagination sublimated and eccentric; propitious neither to the regular display of sound judgment, nor to steady perseverance in a systematic plan of conduct; and I began to perceive what has been since too manifest, that to this defect are added the unfortunate foibles of a vanity without bounds, and a jealousy capable of discoloring every object.
Well then. Internet flame wars seem pallid in comparison. It comes as no real surprise that Hamilton finally did meet a duelist's bullet at the hands of his former law partner Aaron Burr, a fellow who managed to excite the unrelenting hatred of the normally mild-mannered Jefferson, who was certainly no ally of Hamilton's. One can say a good deal about these men's personal character but one cannot deny that they devoured life in very large bites.
A mild corrective: Hamilton was not in charge of "half the army" at Yorktown, but half of the assault force, a billet he had torn from Washington by threatening to resign if he did not get one combat command before the war's end. The difficulty was that he actually was a brilliant staff officer that Washington felt rightly that he could ill afford to lose. Nevertheless, he relented, and Hamilton was nearly killed taking a British redoubt. He and La Fayette were 24. Our country was given to us by children.
Well, not all, of course. There was the brilliant and avuncular Franklin, the most famous scientist of the time who stood tall over his contemporary Lavoisier in the end by virtue of the fact that the French cut their fellow's head off with a guillotine. Ah, Franklin, “His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency.” - sorry, that was Adams again. Probably jealous that the 70-year-old Franklin had had sexual congress with half the ladies of the French court. I would have been, anyway.
OUTSTANDING post; OUTSTANDING link; OUTSTANDING thread. WOW.
Thanks for the ping, Publius. History/education/republic BUMP!