I once listened to a CLE given by a proud liberal democrat plaintiff's trial lawyer. In the course of his highly partisan remarks, with full southern twang, he made the comment that this nation has always been divided between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, that all of our arguments can be traced back to Hamilton and Jefferson, and that the Hamiltonians and the Jeffersonians are arguing still today.
In this view of history, Hamilton is the original conservative Republican, favoring the moneyed interests of business and commerce, whose Federalist faction morphed into the Whigs and then, eventually, the Republicans. Jefferson is the father of the Democratic party, whose Republican Democrats eventually became the modern Democratic party, looking out for the interests of the common man against the evils of corporate greed.
At first blush, there may be something to this view. Certainly, Hamilton, with his belief that banking, money, and commercial business endeavors should be promoted to allow the nation to prosper, his trust that free trade would allow for social mobility, and his advocacy of a strong military, sounds like a modern conservative Republican. Jefferson's unwillingness to fund the military, leaving the nation badly vulnerable when the War of 1812 commenced, makes him sound like a modern Democrat. Jefferson's adoration of the French Revolution, and his unwillingness to criticize the barbarity of the Terror, and his failure to foresee (as Federalists like Adams, Washington, and Hamilton, all did) that the French Revolution was likely to lead to a dictatorship, make him sound remarkably like a 20th Century leftist, cheerleading for Marxism and an apologist for its murderous tyrants. (Arguments over the meaning of the French Revolution are with us still. It was conservative Margaret Thatcher who refused to send congratulations to the French on the 200th Anniversary of their revolution, noting that it led to nothing better than "a pile of headless corpses with a dictator standing on top." And there seem to be some definite similarities between the ideology of Rousseau and the Jacobins and modern Marxists.)
But the idea that a direct line can be drawn from Hamilton and Jefferson to modern political identities can only be taken so far. Hamilton believed in a strong and independent judiciary, a stronger Federal government and correspondingly weaker State governments, all positions that are dissonant with modern conservatism. Jefferson distrusted the unchecked power of the independent judiciary, making him sound like a modern conservative. And no modern Democrat would ever warn, as Jefferson did, that what the government can do for you is in direct proportion to what it can do to you. There's a lot of history between us and the founders, and the political beliefs of many of their largest personalities now sit cross-wise to modern political concerns.
The ideological battle between Jefferson and Hamilton is at the heart of Ron Chernow's incredible page turner of a book. But Chernow isn't concerned with demonstrating which man was the father of which modern political ideas. Rather, Chernow argues that Hamilton is the more important figure because he turned out to be right about the future of America. We are living, Chernow demonstrates, in Hamilton's vision of a future America, not in Jefferson's. For better or worse, we are not a nation of farmers, as Jefferson had hoped. We are instead a socially mobile nation of businessmen and tradesmen, dependent on banking and commerce, with a strong military, a strong Federal government, a strong and independent judiciary, and a government which has abolished slavery, as Hamilton fervently hoped it would. We are still, as we were then, the kind of nation where a man like Hamilton, though of obscure and illegitimate background, can become successful on pure merit and relentless drive. We are no longer a nation with the kind of caste system that Jefferson enjoyed in the agrarian and slave-holding South, while accusing the self-made Hamilton of favoring an aristocracy. We have maintained strong ties with the English speaking peoples of the world, including Britain, and that relationship has been far more important to our history than our relationship with France. In all of this, we are much more of a Hamiltonian nation than a Jeffersonian one, whatever our personal politics.
Hamilton had a knack for making enemies, including among one-time friends and collaborators, and his early demise in a duel with Aaron Burr gave others the chance to downplay his significance to American history. This biography goes a long way toward rectifying that, and demonstrating the key role Hamilton played in the formation of our Constitution, and in many of the social and political values that, today, make America America.
A must read.
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