Mentor for a Hegemon.

AuthorHarper, John L.
PositionAlexander Hamilton

The Rising Fortune of Alexander Hamilton

THE twentieth century belonged to Thomas Jefferson. No historically conscious person can fail to note that, while one of Washington's most prominent memorials is dedicated to the Sage of Monticello, there is nothing similar--only a run-of-the-mill statue on the south side of the Treasury Department--dedicated to his great adversary, Alexander Hamilton. If the point were to commemorate their respective contributions to the building of this country, Hamilton, surely, would have the memorial and Jefferson would have to content himself with a mere statue. Despite the suggestion on his tombstone, Jefferson was not the sole author of the Declaration of Independence. He contributed little or nothing to the Revolutionary War effort or to the writing of the Constitution. He resigned in frustration and near nervous exhaustion as secretary of state. True, he was in the right place at the right time when French Louisiana landed on his lap.

For his part, Hamilton was as responsible as anyone for the establishment of the American state: the consolidation and funding of the national debt, the tax system, the customs service, the first Bank of the United States. He was instrumental in the launching of the navy in 1794. He promoted the protection of infant industry for national security purposes and to develop a domestic market for American products. Meanwhile, Jefferson and his sidekick James Madison did all they could to sabotage Hamilton's program of developing the sinews of national strength.

No historically conscious observer can fail to be struck, moreover, by the fact that one hundred years ago, at the dawn of the "American century", the standing of the two men was more or less the reverse of what it is now. Hamilton's reputation was high; Jefferson's was low. One explanation of the current odd state of affairs is that Hamilton needs no beatification. Manhattan and the Pentagon are his monuments. He won the basic argument with Jefferson about the kind of country we were going to be. But such a claim begs the question of his low standing in the eyes of both the intelligentsia and ordinary citizens.

The key to Jefferson's popularity is not what he did but what he stood for: above all, individual liberty. Jefferson embodies the values that Americans like to think they hold most dear. Of course, there has also been a great deal of conscious manipulation. Someone had to put Jefferson's face on the nickel and to build his memorial--and that someone was Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt wrapped himself in Jefferson's mantle and made him the patron saint of the New Deal and modern liberalism. Even as he accumulated power for the central government with Hamiltonian relish, Roosevelt cast his fellow New Yorker as the villain.

By the same token, American conservatives, with some prominent exceptions, do not esteem or even know Hamilton. That is because postwar American conservatism has been, generally speaking, either libertarian or else hostile to a secularized industrial society, while Hamilton was neither of these. George Will picked Jefferson as "Person of the Millennium", while Hamilton was not even in the running. An influential traditional conservative, Russell Kirk, wrote,

Alexander Hamilton, the financier, the party-manager, the empire-builder, fascinates those numerous Americans among whom the acquisitive instinct is confounded with the conservative tendency, and they, in turn, have convinced the public that the 'first American businessman' was the first eminent American conservative.

Hamilton, in other words, was a sorcerer s apprentice whose program of economic development undermined the kind of conservative order he supposedly desired.

Not even academic realists revere Hamilton. Kenneth Waltz, when reminded that Hamilton's writings are a gold mine for realists, acknowledged (with some regret) that today's students of international relations theory do not read much of anything written before the 1950s. In fact, there is only one group in recent memory that has looked on Hamilton as a genuine hero: Progressive Republicans like Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Croly, who believed in activist government, a meritocratic elite and an assertive foreign policy. Along with Jefferson's prominence, the sad demise of Progressive Republicanism is the main reason for the decline of Hamilton's reputation in the public eye.

Return to Grace?

IF THE twentieth century has not been kind to Hamilton, what about the twenty-first? More than one observer has noted a recent swing of the pendulum in his favor. National Review's Richard Brookhiser has declared his "return to grace." For The Economist Hamilton has been "making a comeback." At least ten books dealing with him have appeared in the past three years, compared with three or four in the previous decade. These offerings include Brookhiser's own Alexander Hamilton: American and Michael Lind's Hamilton's Republic: Readings in the American Democratic Nationalist Tradition. Lind's collection is a deliberate attempt to breathe life into a dormant tendency of thought and to apply its lessons to the contemporary political and cultural debate.

Aside from the enduring fascination of a life story that would require a Stendhal to do it justice, there appear to be...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT