BACKGROUND |
THREE GREAT REPORTS |
THE CORPORATE EXAMPLE |
THE DUEL
Alexander Hamilton
Sculpture of Alexander Hamilton,
in Paterson, NJ's Great Falls Park
The quarter-century from the American Revolution to 1800
was an extraordinary political era. The immediate task of defining the newly
independent United States of America called for the creative energies of the
nation. The best talents produced remarkable intellectual activity in reasoning
out solutions and helping to give them effect. Alexander Hamilton was one of the
most influential men of this time. He and the other "Founding
Fathers" created a representative government based on the principle of
popular rule and a market economy fueled by the energies of individual
citizens. These have become the commonly accepted elements for national
success. As the oldest enduring republic in world history, the United
States government has stood the test of time.
Hamilton was a prolific, persuasive writer, explaining to
his fellow citizens what he thought was right for America and why. His
moral, political and economic principles became integrated into the great
documents that established the new nation. He made the strongest case in support
of the Constitution, an important foundation of our federal government ensuring
the inherent rights of men. Long after he was dead, many of his arguments were
included in the opinions of the influential Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,
John Marshall.
Hamilton's transformation of America's finances and economy
in its first years of independence was extremely successful. As the nation's
first Secretary of the Treasury, he put into effect an interlocking system of
law, finance and incentives that put the new nation on firm financial footing.
By setting the public finances in order, the federal government was
strengthened. This promoted national prosperity and a stimulation of economic
development in the country. It enabled a new way of life for America's citizens.
Hamilton’s mission was to widen man’s possibilities, to work for oneself
through the marketplace. Each individual could prosper if he proved energetic
and hard working. He gave Americans a chance to become self-made, just as he
himself became.
BACKGROUND:
Hamilton was born in 1757 out of wedlock in the sugar
islands of the West Indies (the Caribbean) on the British island of Nevis, where
the slaves outnumbered their white masters twenty to one. His father, James
Hamilton, the son of a Scottish laird had come to the West Indies to make his
fortune as a merchant. However, James abandoned his family when Alexander was
about 8 or 9 years old. Then tragically, Hamilton's mother, Rachel Faucett
Lavien, died of fever when he was about 12 or 13 years old.
Hamilton's guardian, the merchant Nicholas Cruger, employed
Hamilton in his trading business in which he exchanged the island's sugar for
staples that were not produced locally. Cruger recognized young
Hamilton's exceptional business abilities and sent him to America in 1772 to
continue his education in finance. When refused permission at the College of New
Jersey at Princeton to accelerate his program of studies, he enrolled instead at
King's College (now Columbia University). When he was not yet 20, he joined in
the growing dispute between the American colonies and the British government. He
then enlisted in the militia where he fought in the battles around New York City
in 1775 and 1776. His zeal and organizing ability brought him to George
Washington's attention and led to a commission as lieutenant colonel in the
Continental Army. He became aide-de-camp to General Washington for four years.
During his service, Hamilton became aware of the need for a stronger central
government. State legislatures held the real power in the country at that time
and getting money from the states to keep the army together proved very
difficult. In his later career, this concern became an important component of
his policies.
In December 1780, Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the
daughter of a wealthy and influential upstate New York land owner, Philip
Schuyler. This connection placed Hamilton in the center of New York society.
Visit the website of the Schuyler-Hamilton Museum of Morristown, New Jersey
Seeking to be reassigned to field command in the war,
Hamilton was given an infantry brigade by Washington. He led an important night
assault and capture of the British Reboubt #10 during the siege of Yorktown. On
October 19, 1781, the British surrendered and the independence of a new nation
was secured.
Promotion of Freedom for Slaves:
Hamilton's early life in the West Indies allowed him to see
the cruel business of slave trade first hand. Hamilton became a friend to
America's slaves, whom he wanted to be free. During the Revolutionary War, he
advocated arming freed slaves to fight against the British. He founded with 31
other New Yorkers the Society for the Manumission of Slaves, in which he
encouraged slave owners to grant their slaves freedom. The society successfully
pressed to make slavery illegal in New York. He also produced a practical plan
for the government of Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti and encouraged the
successful slave revolt there against the French. When he advised President
Washington not to return men that had been liberated by the British during the
war back to slavery, he said "The abandonment of Negroes …. to fall again
under the yoke of their masters, and into slavery, is as odious and immoral a
thing as can be conceived."
The Federalist Papers:
American politics grew out of English ideas, institutions
and customs. "Liberty under law" expressed in English common law was
central to the colonists. However, men of varied nationalities and social
origins came to a vast, wild, and isolated country and needed a fuller
expression of liberty and equality in politics and society.
The colonists were influenced by the rise of
"Enlightenment" thought. According to this ideology, once the
processes of nature had been started by God, He no longer interfered but let
these natural processes follow the laws He had given them. These laws were the
natural laws that men of the Enlightenment dreamed of discovering through reason
and experiment. And, understanding these natural laws would lead to the
improvement of the human condition. They recognized the importance of ideas such
as equal natural rights to life, liberty and property and of limited government
based on the consent of the governed, not government as master of society. This
translated into the toleration of dissenting religious sects and the insistence
upon taxation only by consent of a representative legislature.
Americans overwhelmingly committed themselves to a
republican system of government, in which liberty and justice were better served
by passing popular choice through filters of representation. It was agreed that
the source of political authority was the consent of the people and the end was
the safety and happiness of the people, to be realized by securing their
inherent rights to life, liberty and property. However, hard fights were fought
over the issues of centralized or decentralized power and of agrarian or
commercial-industrial predominance.
Extreme loyalty to the states came naturally for some men
who had long thought of themselves as Virginians, Yorkers, Yankees and the like.
They wanted the strength of a union, as in a confederation of states, without
the risk of raising a new oppressive power that would be equal to the English
monarchy they had just fought for independence. There arose a heated and bitter
controversy over ratification of the Constitution of the United States,
especially in the state of New York. The Constitution, as written, would
create a consolidated federal government with powers sufficient to coerce
obedience to national laws. Hamilton believed these laws were necessary to
govern such a large and promising national enterprise.
Hamilton was elected a member of the Continental Congress
in 1782 from New York and became a leading proponent of a strong national
government. He, along with James Madison and John Jay, wrote a series of
newspaper essays explaining and justifying the specific provisions of the
Constitution. The Federalist, as these essays were called, appeared two to four
times a week in the New York newspapers. Hamilton wrote the first piece in
October 1787 on a sloop returning from Albany down the Hudson River. When the
series was finished in May 1788, it had grown from Hamilton's planned series of
25 papers to 85. Jay fell ill early on, and wrote only a few pieces. Madison
wrote over twenty; Hamilton over fifty, or two-thirds of the total.
At the Poughkeepsie convention for ratifying the
Constitution, Hamilton's speeches convinced the anti-federal delegates to change
their votes to ratification. The Constitution proved a tough and flexible
instrument, which could be adapted to political changes in the face of changing
times. It created a national government with direct authority over vital
concerns to citizens such as life, liberty, and property as well as the
authority "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity." Other
powers not assigned remained with the states. Government was divided into
executive, legislative and judicial branches, creating a complex system of
checks and balances.
Today, The Federalist has permanent value as the
fundamental commentary on the meaning of the Constitution. The efforts for
ratification of the Constitution is one of the greatest events in the history of
the United States because the relatively small number of great political talents
who all knew each other held together the American republic throughout the
volatile and vulnerable early years of the nation.
See PBS's The American Experience, "Hamilton and the U.S. Constitution"
BACKGROUND |
THREE GREAT REPORTS |
THE CORPORATE EXAMPLE |
THE DUEL
|