# What if Alexander Hamilton had lived? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 22, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443 "2013-04-22T23:27:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/1 "2013-04-22T23:27:17Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/2 "2013-04-23T00:22:50Z")
Then Burr, almost certainly, never would have become King of Mexico! ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/3 "2013-04-23T00:55:51Z")
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). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/4 "2013-04-23T01:00:25Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/5 "2013-04-23T01:06:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > 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. 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.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_System_(economic_plan)) (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.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/6 "2013-04-23T01:36:23Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/7 "2013-04-23T01:44:04Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/8 "2013-04-23T02:05:33Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I encourage anyone interested in the man to read Ron Chernow’s bio _Alexander Hamilton_. It’s outstanding. See also [_Hamilton’s Republic,_](http://www.amazon.com/Hamiltons-Republic-Democratic-Nationalist-Tradition/dp/0684831600) by Michael Lind (less about the man than what he stood for). ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/9 "2013-04-23T02:25:00Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/10 "2013-04-23T02:42:17Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/11 "2013-04-23T02:55:21Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/12 "2013-04-23T03:15:30Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > 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 . . . . . . depends on colonies, which the U.S. at that time had not, and bears no resemblance to Hamilton’s economics nor Clay’s. > [@WillFarnaby](#): > > 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. And always work better than Jefferson’s. If he’d had his way, this would still be an agricultural country with negligible industry. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/13 "2013-04-23T04:36:22Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > . . . depends on colonies, which the U.S. at that time had not, and bears no resemblance to Hamilton’s economics nor Clay’s.. Central bank, crony capitalism, protective tariffs. From [Wikipedia](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_on_Manufactures): > [@](#): > > Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” laid forth economic principles rooted in both the Mercantilist System of Elizabeth I’s England and the practices of Jean-Baptiste Colbert of France. The principal ideas of the “Report” would later be incorporated into the “American System” program by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and his Whig Party. Abraham Lincoln, who called himself a “Henry Clay tariff Whig” during his early years, would later make the principles outlined in the “Report” and furthered by Clay’s “American System” program cornerstones, together with opposition to the institution and expansion of slavery, of the fledgling Republican Party. > [@](#): > > And always work better than Jefferson’s. If he’d had his way, this would still be an agricultural country with negligible industry . Pure speculation. Sound money worked well with an industrialized economy many times in the 1800s. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/14 "2013-04-23T04:39:40Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Pure speculation. 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. Spoiler alert: Thomas Jefferson was wrong. Alexander Hamilton was right. **Always.** ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/15 "2013-04-23T04:43:42Z")
How about we don’t get sidetracked off topic by yet another discussion of imaginary economic and political theories? ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/16 "2013-04-23T04:46:18Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/17 "2013-04-23T04:51:48Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 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. > > Spoiler alert: > > Thomas Jefferson was wrong. > > Alexander Hamilton was right. > > **Always.** 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. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/18 "2013-04-23T05:09:12Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > How about we don’t get sidetracked off topic by yet another discussion of imaginary economic and political theories? They are not “imaginary.” Hamilton had his, and Jefferson had his, and Hamilton was right and Jefferson was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/19 "2013-04-23T05:11:04Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > 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](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Producerism). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443/20 "2013-04-23T05:22:01Z")
> [@](#): > > The Founders, particularly the Virginians, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al., equated property, as a moral force, with land. Their views were articulated by John Taylor (1753-1824), like them a Virginia landowner who served in the Senate and published in 1814 a monumental work of 700 pages, An Inquiry in the Principles and Policy of the United States. Taylor distinguished between ‘natural’ property. such as land, and ‘artificial property’ created by legal privilege, of which banking wealth was the outstanding example. He saw the right to issue paper money as indirect taxation on the people: ‘Taxation, direct or indirect, produced by a paper system in any form, will rob a nation of property without giving it liberty; and by creating and enriching a separate interest, will rob it of liberty without giving it property.’ Paper-money banking benefited an artificially created and parasitical financial aristocracy at the expense of the hard-working farmer, and this ‘property-transferring policy invariably impoverishes all laboring and productive classes.’ He compared this new financial power with the old feudal and ecclesiastical power, with the bankers using ‘force, faith and credit’ as the two others did religion and feudality. What particularly infuriated Taylor was the horrible slyness with which financiers had invested ‘fictitious’ property, such as bank-paper and stock, with all the prestige and virtues of ‘honest’ property. > > Taylor’s theory was an early version of what was to become known as **the ‘physical fallacy,’ a belief that only those who worked with their hands and brains to raise food or make goods were creating ‘real’ wealth and that all other forms of economic activity were essentially parasitical.** It was commonly held in the early 19th century, and Marx and all his followers fell victim to it. Indeed plenty of people hold it in one form or another today, and whenever its adherents acquire power, or seize it, and put their beliefs into practice, by oppressing the ‘parasitical middleman,’ poverty invariably follows. Taylor’s formulation of this theory fell on particularly rich soil because American farmers in general, and the Southerners and backwoodsmen in particular, already had a paranoid suspicion of the ‘money power’ dating from colonial times, as we have seen. So Taylor’s arguments, suitably vulgarized, became the common coin of the Jeffersonians, later of the Jacksonians and finally of silver-standard Democrats and populists of the late 19th century, who claimed that the American farmer was being ‘crucified on a cross of gold.’ The persistence of this fallacy in American politics refutes the common assumption that America is resistant to ideology, for if ever there were an ideology it is this farrago. – _A History of the American People,_ by Paul Johnson [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-alexander-hamilton-had-lived/656443.md?page=2)