Like! Exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I’m definitely going to check that book out!
In other words Hamilton was first in a line of Americans who advocated the usurpation of power from the people (the sovereigns in the American system). The un-American American heroes if you will. Hamilton was a crony capitalist at it’s finest. Historical sentimentalists can look at a fellow like Tim Geithner and catch feelings of whimsy of a bygone era. Hamilton established the First National Bank to give more power to business. It has been a failure in its many iterations since. Jefferson said it would be a tool for the banks and entrenched interests. Imagine the surprise when in 2012 it is a tool for the banks and entrenched interests ( not to mention the initiator of the boom-bust cycle.)
Both modern parties are parties of Hamilton. The Jeffersonians had their day during the early 1800s, the Jacksonian era to a certain extent, and a short time around the time of the Cleveland administrations. A lot of modern Republican rhetoric is based on Jeffersonian ideals, but their governing style is Hamiltonian. In other words our present mess is very much due to the influence of Hamilton and his torch-bearers Lincoln, TR, Wilson and FDR.
If our elected officials understood Jefferson we would have rising real wages, shorter less intense recessions, and less wars while maintaining the rule of law and individual liberties.
Quite true. To a reactionary monarchist like me, the very idea of American conservatism is a joke.
Arguable, as it’s arguable we’d also have a primarily agriculture based economy and would actively encourage large-scale publicly funded education.
As other posters have noted, applying modern political labels to men dead for nearly 2 centuries is an exercise in futility.
While some of Hamilton’s mercantilist ideas are outdated, he is far better on economic issues than Jefferson who largely thought America could be an agarian nation largely consisting of small farmers.
And slaves. Don’t forget the slaves.
Meh, they both sucked. John Adams for the win!
Hey, of all the Founding Fathers, he was IIRC the only one who actually picked up a gun and actively shot at British soldiers (or marines, actually), was involved in all elements of the nation-building from developing the army, building support for actual independence, assisting in writing the Declaration, dtrying find an accomodation with the British, leading in the war effort, serving as ambassador to France, chief negotiator in achieving a peace treaty ending the war, creating the basic theretical ideas which eld to the Constitution, wrote the basic example for the Constitution in the form of a Constitution for Massachusetts, led a historic mission by serving as Ambassador to England, became Vice President, then president, and sacrificed his popularity for the sake of avoiding an unneccessary and pointless war. Adams rocks harder than Jerry Garcia’s ghost.
And on that point, it’s interesting note that he was politically torn to peices by Jefferson and Hamilton from different directions. He was opposed more to Jefferson’s policies, but liked the man better.
Hamilton’s main contribution to the US economy was the bank. It was a bad idea then and it’s a bad idea now.
Whether or not America was to be an agrarian society or industrialized, it makes no difference. Government should have the same role in both scenarios.
How could we possibly have a U.S. economy with no banks? And we never have had a stable one without some kind of national bank. Don’t bring that braindead Fed-bashing crankery around here.
That must be the stupidest thing you’ve ever posted here. Different economies require different governmental policies.
No arguments here, but he doesn’t fit into our modern conservative/liberal divide, either.
He was for an explicitly Christian nation and Constitutionally guaranteed publicly funded education. Also for stronger executive power and stronger federal government than many of his contemporaries.
I love Hamilton. Love him.
And I hate Jefferson. Hate him. I think he’s an over-emphasized disaster of a president who massacred our economy with the Embargo Act, and then violated his mantra of small government to try and enforce it, instead of accepting it as a mistake. Then, after that failed, tried his equally-ill-fated Non-Intercourse Act, and called people names when they ignored that too, because he lost re-election. Pretty much the only major good thing he did to deserve his reputation is the Louisiana Purchase, and I fail to see how anyone else in his position wouldn’t have done the same thing. All that leading, in my opinion, to being sort of muddled left-wing in the “I know better, why aren’t you people listening to me?” type of sense. In short, he was just lucky.
Hamilton was economically conservative, but he himself was an immigrant (Born in British Nevis), his father left the family shortly after Hamilton’s birth, and spent most of his youth as an accountant for a shipping company. Not exactly the high brow aristocrat type, and he was mocked for a while because of it by political opponents. He always wanted to prove to everyone that he was “good enough”, so to speak, which put him in danger plenty of times. All that led to him being quite socially liberal, which would ultimately make him something of a libertarian in modern parlance.
However: Hamilton was something of a monarchist (partly why he distrusted the French revolution) and Jefferson was a crazy hippie. So ultimately they’re not solidly of either party, ending up quite human, in the middle ground.
Since you asked for book rec’s too, this is a pretty good, albeit sort of roundabout, take on early American political history.
Seriously though, screw Jefferson.
Considering the disastrous Articles of Confederation and its near lack of power to collect taxes to fund everything because people just didn’t wanna, I don’t hold it against him that he believed democracy breeds ochlocracy.
Hamilton was an artillery officer, before becoming one of Washington’s Aides-de-Camp. He also fought in the Whiskey rebellion, and trained troops in the later Quasi-War.
You should read the linked book too, he did a lot behind the scenes, since he didn’t have the ability to really introduce any legislation on his own.
Before anyone points it out: Yeah, I’m biased, I freely admit it. Jefferson and Hamilton were at odds for most of their lives, and I favor Hamilton’s economic and social principles. But from my reading of their biographies and policies etc, I honestly do think Jefferson was a hack.
From a British perspective, I think Hamilton’s vision is more akin to the British constitution (of democratic centralism, if you will - although without the Leninist connotations!), and favouring a strong central government authorised through the will of the majority, as opposed to the Jeffersonian concept of weakening central government.
Jefferson’s concept allows for deeper conservatism, in my view - both now and then.
So, to say this another way, the America that you claim used to exist (every man for himself, Federal government with virtually no power, which embraced your libertarian ideas) actually never existed, even from the earliest days of this country.
That would tend to indicate that the Founding Fathers never envisioned libertarianism for the United States, as opposed to the frequent libertarian talking point that we have “gotten away from the way our nation was designed to be” or whatever.
Does Washington himself not count as one of the Founding Fathers? All respect to John Adams, Jefferson and Adams, but Washington did almost all that. He was The Man. None other than George III remarked him to be “the greatest man in the world.”
As for Hamilton, I think he might ultimately have come down in favor of gun control.
Aye, but I’d say that makes him conservative, not liberal.
Look, let’s just admit that, in the Hamilton vs. Jefferson analysis, we’re dealing with several independent axes of political alignment that were relevant in the 18th Century:
Centralist vs. Decentralist.
Elitist vs. Populist.
Authoritarian vs. Libertarian.
Traditionalist vs. Rationalist.
Etc.
– And that, WRT to each of these axes, it is not always clear or noncontrovesial which end/side is the “conservative” end/side. E.g., both Authoritarians and Libertarians can make a fair claim to be the real “conservatives.” For that matter, Libertarians nowadays often claim to be the real “liberals.” (Haven’t seen Liberal post here in a while, but he just wouldn’t shut up on that point.)
This doesn’t seem a particularly useful question. Since the modern liberal/conservative paradigm didn’t exist yet there is no exact way to apply it to Hamilton and Jefferson. Overall I’d say that Jefferson was less conservative since he was more willing to break with tradition.
Jefferson went to France in 1784. At that point the federalists were still hopeful that an amendment to the Articles of Confederation might pass authorizing Congress to tax imports to raise revenue. The Constitution wasn’t in the works. Even the Mount Vernon Conference hadn’t happened yet.
Actually all of the major founders got it wrong when it came to the future economics of America. Hamilton’s focus was on commerce rather than industry. Manufacturing received short shrift compared to trade (and land speculation). He wanted to promote income equality so that the upper class would have the wealth to differentiate themselves and demand deference from their social inferiors and legitimize their control of commerce. Jefferson’s focus on agriculture likewise seems misguided today. Neither realized that the business of America was business. Both discounted the businessman as merely incidental to their favored class: “disinterested” gentlemen or planters and farmers.
This is backwards. Hamilton and Federalism fell from favor and all subsequent political parties are descended from Jeffersonian Republicanism. That the Republicans came to favor a national bank during the War of 1812 is not an indication of their falling into Hamiltonism but a reflection of their growing fiscal maturity. They came to understand the utility of a national bank in financing governmental debt and in regulating the money supply. While it must have been humiliating to have to echo Hamilton’s constitutional arguments their bank was far different from his.
Hamilton provided for a bank that lent large sums for short periods of time to a select clientele. This served his focus on land speculation and desire to restrict credit to those he considered gentlemen. The 2nd Bank lent smaller sums for longer periods to more people. It wasn’t an egalitarian institution by any means but it did provide economic benefits to a far more people. Also the overall banking situation was far different for these institutions. Both national banks regulated the currency by redeeming notes from state-chartered banks to prevent them from overextending themselves. There just weren’t enough banks in the 1790s to fill the economic demand. After the demise of the First Bank credit expanded and the decades of endemic agrarian unrest that preceded the Revolution finally came to an end. The proliferation of state banks after that changed things and the restrictions by the 2nd Bank on floating bank notes was sorely missed when it was killed in turn.
Hamilton helped found the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures and proposed government “bounties” (subsidies) to give nascent American industry a jump-start.
Jefferson opposed consolidated big government, but that didn’t stop him from taking the extra-Constitutional, big-government step of signing the Louisiana Purchase, thereby doubling the size of the country.
True enough but he didn’t transcend the society he adopted when he came to America. Manufacturers were artisans and couldn’t be gentlemen. As such he didn’t promote extending credit to them nor, despite the advice of his epic report on the matter, did he direct his supporters in Congress to pursue protective tariffs or otherwise subsidize industry and thus missed a chance to firm up support in economically diverse areas. This lack of foresight would cost the Federalists dearly. Had they remained competitive in the middle states they wouldn’t have faded into irrelevance.
I don’t think advocating a strong central government, or not, is a liberal or conservative position. The Green Party lists decentralization as one of its main planks, for example.