… What? The Federalists became the Whig party, and that was a major plank of the Whigs for decades. Meanwhile, they stayed competitive in every national contest and all the states until about 1850. The Federalists didn’t “fade”. The tensions over the Civil War destroyed that party, but it destroyed all the parties. And this was a significant potion of the program he suggested.
More to the point, Hamilton wasn’t particularly a gentleman in the classic sense and he knew it. He certainly adopted many of the traits of that class, but he never considered himself an aristocratic type unlike the comparable southern elite, and in fact opposed Democrats on those very grounds. In any event, neither artisans nor the nascent merchant-capitalists were particularly aristocratic, and he wasn’t all that interested in subsidizing small producers. Even in his day, it was becoming clear that the future beloned to increasingly rationalized production in manufactories, which at the time used water-power.
And, once again, one could take “strong central government” at least two ways or along at least two axes: Centralist vs. Decentralist, and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. E.g., a highly centralized government could also be a very libertarian one, that routinely makes it its business to keep state and local governments out of everybody’s business; in fact, it’s hard to see how anything else could ever effectively enforce a libertarian agenda in this country.
…What? Hamilton may not have precisely envisioned how industry would change America, but was crystal clear about the need for increased commerce, promotion of transportation, and the need to organize finance so as to ensure adequate capital flow. Moreover, what the hell are you talking about with this nonsense about him “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.” First, that makes no rational sense even as a sentence. Second, even if we change it to “income inqeuality,” he lived in a not-terribly-aristocratic sosciety where income inquality already existed, and where he wasn’t exactly respected as a gentleman anyway.
… The hell? Where in God’s name did you study history? This is totally wrong. Federalists became the Whig party, as more of a name-change than anything else. They long favored a national bank - in fact, they were the major group pushing it, while the Jefferson-descended Democrats wanted to destroy it and eventually did so.
More to the point, the Republican party (A) Didn’t exist in 1812, (B) in no way, shape, or form is descended from Jefferson’s Democrat-Republicans, and (C) was most definitely inspired by Hamilton, as well as Henry Clay’s American System. At no point did they significantly look to Jeffersonianism as a significant source for what they wanted to do or why.
Let me clarify something: the initial genesis of the Whig party was of former Democrat-Republicans who opposed Jackson. However, the party’s major programme, were almost right down the line taken from the Federalists, and it tended to attract the same groups who had once supported the Federalists. The key issue dooming the old Federalist party was that they never adapted to the wider pool of suffrage as it expanded; the Whigs believed many of the Federalist ideas would work for the broad middle of skilled artisans and increasingly-affluent factory workers as well as the financier and commercial class. And certainly vothe Whig and later Republican party drew much more inspiration from Hamilton than Jefferson, who remained a leading intellectual light mostly for Southern Democrats.
Jefferson distrusted both the church and corporations. He wanted the latter’s charter to legally expire after 30 years and its proceeds distributed to shareholders in an effort to cut down on entrenched rent seekers like the East India Company.
Well, the Whigs’ program was the “American System” – national bank, insdustry-protective tariff, federal funding for internal infrastructure improvements. Overall, not very conservative by today’s standards.
I would mostly agree with this. As Gordon Wood put it, “Hamilton’s insensitivity to the entrepreneurial needs of these ordinary farmers and businessmen suggests how little he and other Federalists appreciated the real sources of the capitalistic future of America.” (Wood, Empire of Liberty, 99) The one caveat that I would add to your explanation would be that by “adequate capital flow” to Hamilton meant not only was enough money getting to people but that it was getting to the right people. That is, those trustworthy individuals who upheld the social ideals of the gentry.
My apologies. I did intend to write “inequality”. And I mean exactly what I meant to say. Hamilton wanted to increase the wealth gap so that the upper class would have the necessary power and prestige to keep the lower orders from getting uppity. For this argument see Shankman, Crucible of American Democracy, 31. Hamilton’s own status as a gentleman, despite his fatal insecurity about it, was secure. His wife was a Van Courtland and a Van Rensselaer, after all. Basic information like this can be found pretty much anywhere. The index of the Chernow’s recent biography of Hamilton, cited earlier in the thread, for instance gives the following references for his social advancement: pages 43-46, 72, 85-86, 87, 91-92, 97, 129-30, 134-37, 146, 149, 207, 312, 345.
The use of the term “Democratic-Republican” to describe the political party founded by Jefferson and Madison is problematic. In the beginning not only were these men and their followers denying that they were a party in the first place but the term “democrat” in polite circles was synonymous with “anarchist”. It’s akin to labeling contemporary Democrats as Socialists or Republicans as Nazis. The term became more and more acceptable to them as society became more democratic (and as they saw how toxic the aristocratic pretensions of the Federalists were to voters) and as the idea of political parties likewise became more acceptable they were content to call themselves the Republican Party. The main split among them during the misnamed “Era of Good Feelings” was between the regular Republicans (Madison, Monroe, John Q. Adams) and the Old Republicans (John Randolph, John Taylor of Caroline). When Jackson came along the regular Republicans became known as the National Republicans and his followers the Democratic Republicans and then just the Democrats. So the term properly describes not the party of Jefferson but the party of Jackson. The term remains in use despite it’s inaccuracy because it helps prevent confusion with the modern Republican Party.
While the National Republicans did come to adopt many of the old Federalist political positions they never shared the goal of a stratified society. Thus they considered themselves republicans rather than aristocrats and were the political descendants of Jefferson and not Hamilton. The Whig Party was a vehicle for opponents of Jackson to come together whether or not they shared the national outlook of the former National Republicans. Thus states-righters like John Tyler found room in their ranks. When the Whig Party was rent apart by the turbulent political winds of the late antebellum period it’s Northern members used the appeal and label of simple republicanism to form fusion tickets. So there were Jeffersonian legislators and even governors elected as Republicans before the modern Republican Party was formed early in 1856. Thus, as I said, the parties come from Jefferson and not Hamilton. There is a nice pictorial representation from 1880 that provides a quick guide. See here.
Favoring a national bank isn’t a product of “fiscal maturity”, it’s a product of favoring centralized power, plain and simple. Hamilton fought for centralized power in the form of a national bank, therefore it was his ideas that gained favor within the democratic-republican party. As I stated earlier, the principle Jeffersonian ideal of decentralized economic power gained prominence in the Jacksonian era and later with the Bourbon democrats.
When I say that today’s parties are both parties of Hamilton it isn’t because you can trace their lineage to the federalists (doing so is pointless because the parties have changed drastically several times). It is because they both favor a strong, active federal government and centralized economic power in the hands of the few.
It’s not that simple. One can oppose centralized power in general but support a central bank knowing the positive good that come from them. I would argue that the opponents of Hamilton’s bank knew little about banking. There were only four banks in the whole country by 1790 after all. As they began to govern the nation with a central bank they came to understand the benefits as well as the costs to having one. For this reason I say they had fiscal maturity, not because of their position in favor or against the national bank. Andrew Jackson hated banks but had no fiscal maturity. His destruction of the 2nd Bank and his Specie Circular set the stage for the Panic of 1837.
Exactly. And the real conservatives today want to “End the Fed!” and pare down federal spending and functions to their “constitutional” limits until the USG can be drowned in a bathtub.
That last sentence is wrong but it’s beyond the scope of the thread.
Of course there are benefits to having a central bank for the government, but it centralizes economic power. There is no way someone can oppose centralized power and also support a central bank. This person would be inconsistent on a very important issue.
Because the only people who are saying this is some Tea Party people and Ron Paul not Romney or Bush II.