Let’s say there was no duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton was only 49 when he died in 1804. He was one of the youngest of the Founding Fathers and could have reasonably been expected to outlast all the others. What would have happened if he had lived a long life? Let’s say he lived until he was 80 and died in 1835.
Hamilton was politically isolated by the time he died. Would that have continued or could he have rebuilt his influence? His opponents from earlier would have been dying off and Hamilton might have come to be seen as the last remaining member of the original founders. Could he have become a kingmaker, returned to political office, or even become President himself?
Hamilton was one of the strongest advocates of central government power. How would his presence have changed the way the government developed in the early nineteenth century. He was also a strong advocate for a national bank and might have kept that institution alive.
The Federalists had a bit of a resurgence in the 1808 elections using the Embargo Act in much the same way Republicans used Obamacare in 2010. Like the GOP the Federalists didn’t have the leadership or charisma needed to make a full recovery. Perhaps someone like Hamilton could have given the Federalists the gravitas needed to retake power (and possibly avoid the War of 1812).
I think Hamilton could well have become President.* He had an established record as George Washington’s de facto Prime Minister (an achievement denied to all later Treasury Secretaries, AFAIK), he was (part of) Publius, he was on the scene at every scene as the country was put together.
And, despite having been born in the West Indies, would have been constitutionally eligible. Article Two, Section 1: “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Nobody would have denied one of the Founding Fathers was a citizen-at-the-time, and he certainly had more than 14 years’ residency.
More importantly, Hamilton was an early advocate for industrialization, even if it should require federal “bounties” (subsidies) to infant industries. See his Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. Hamiltonian-industrial economic policies (so sharply contrasted with Jeffersonian-agrarian) can be seen as a forerunner of the Whigs’ later American System (though the latter scrapped “bounties” in favor of a protective tariff). With Hamilton as POTUS, the American industrial revolution might have gotten started decades sooner. And, with a sound national-banking system, “Not Worth a Continental” might have been a phrase too-soon forgotten to figure in “A Christmas Carol.”
I think he would have had a shot in 1816. Historically, the Federalist party had pretty much collapsed at this point and didn’t even bother to officially nominate a candidate. Those Federalists who were still around mostly voted for Senator Rufus King because he had been the Vice Presidential nominee in previous election. (This was still better than 1820 when nobody besides Monroe decided to run and he was re-elected without any opposition.)
If Hamilton had been around, he could have been building up the Federalist Party during the Jefferson and Madison administrations rather than letting it slide into decline. He would have run a real campaign against Monroe.
Although his political star was waning at the time of his death because of a sex scandal and some ill-chosen meddling in New York politics, I think he was smart enough, resourceful enough and rich enough to have staged a comeback. It wouldn’t have been easy, but I think the Presidency might actually have been within his grasp.
I encourage anyone interested in the man to read Ron Chernow’s bio Alexander Hamilton. It’s outstanding.
If he had lived nothing important would have changed. Federalist ideas wouldn’t have magically had electoral appeal early enough for him to have made a difference. British style mercantilism was a tough sell, apparently. His spirit lived on through Clay and later Lincoln, unfortunately.
His ideas were the old ones at the time when compared to Jefferson. This is what people don’t understand. People make Jefferson out to be a backwoods hick, but his economics were far more advanced. People like Hamilton now because his (repackaged) ideas have been repackaged over and over since then. The public and economists alike fall for it every time.
Jefferson was in debt most of his life and always had to be borrowing from other people to stay afloat. Jefferson had theories about how he thought the economy should work but they kept failing when he tried to apply them to the real world. The reason the country returned to Hamilton’s ideas was because they actually worked.
Is that a smear or just a non sequitur? Jefferson’s personal finances have nothing to do with his favored economic theories. Are we to take economic advice from rich people only? In any case, as I said before Hamiltons ideas were old European style mercantilism repackaged. Nothing more. Jefferson was more advanced.
No, sir, it is not. When I say, “If he’d had his way, this would still be an agricultural country with negligible industry,” I mean that was exactly and expressly what Thomas Jefferson wanted the U.S. to be for all time – and, pace Williams Jennings Bryan, that is never the way. The agrarian way, when opposed to the industrial way, is always wrong.
I lean towards free trade and am skeptical of bounties. That said, I can’t think offhand of a single major OECD country that industrialized using Laissez Faire principles. That’s always been more of a talking point than an actual policy outcome.
The US industrialized behind large tarriff barriers. The Koreans and Japanese had a high degree of state intervention. And, to be clear, many third world countries did much better when they decided to lower tarriffs, invest in education and intervene in the economy with a weak currency policy.
William Jennings Bryan was a soft money guy. Grover Cleveland was the Jeffersonian in that battle. Hamilton was a crony capitalist who sought to enrich the monied elites of New England at the expense of exporters in the South.
No, sir. Bryan was the agrarian in that battle, and Cleveland was the industrialist in that battle, and Cleveland was right, Bryan wrong. You won’t find any reputable modern economist defending Bryan (or Jefferson) in that battle. As for the money thing . . . that curiously seems to change over time. Nowadays, those in the ideological tradition of Bryan tend not to be soft-money inflationist cranks like Bryan was, but deflationist hard-money goldbugs, i.e., even worse cranks. The common Jeffersonian/Jacksonian/Bryanian error there is the economic fallacy of producerism.