by John Ferling
However, it would be a mistake to undermine Hamilton’s legacy. Next to Washington, Hamilton was the most important figure in the establishment of the American Republic. He played a key role in the Nationalists’ campaign to overthrow the Articles of Confederation, and his Herculean efforts helped secure the ratification of the Constitution. The consolidation he championed, the funding system he introduced, and the bank he fathered were pivotal in restoring the nation’s tattered credit, unfettering commercial activity, and returning prosperity to a new nation that had long endured a languid economy. Much of the capital that helped create the mills and factories that sprang up in the early nineteenth century was available because of Hamilton’s economic programs, as was the financial underpinning for the Erie Canal, which officially opened in 1825, linking the East and the West, the dream that Washington had cherished. There were perils in Hamilton’s vision, as Jefferson never tired of pointing out, but his financial system proved to be an amazing vehicle for the spread of wealth and opportunity, for enabling sons and daughters to achieve more than their parents had, and for the facilitation of the arts, philanthropy, inventiveness, and education on a scale that would have been unimaginable in Jefferson’s Arcadia.
That Hamilton achieved these ends was all the more remarkable in that his recommendations flew in the face of the accepted economic wisdom of his day, and that he espoused innovative commercial and industrial programs in a thoroughly agrarian country. He succeeded through nearly unmatched political aplomb and adeptness. However, with time his reactionary bent was more visible, and by the end of the 1790s his political instincts failed him in the wake of his support of the Alien and Sedition Acts, his lust for military glory, and his egregiously misguided attack on the president during the election of 1800. Even so, his successes as treasury secretary were decisive in bonding powerful northern merchants and financiers to the new national government with a glue that was indissoluble. Their attachment to the Union was crucial in overcoming northern separatist movements that sprang to life up in the face of Jefferson’s election. What is more, his commitment to rapprochement with Great Britain was central to opening the West and preserving the peace, and both were absolutely critical to the preservation of the Union. Jefferson once called Hamilton “a colossus” to his party. It could be said that he was a colossus in the founding, shaping, and survival of the early Republic.
Jefferson was the more revolutionary of the two. He was drawn to the resistance movement against Great Britain at least in part by the hope of bringing fundamental political, social, and economic change to his native America. Sensing a historical significance in the revolutionary fervor in the colonies, Jefferson came to see the American Revolution as the dawning of a new era symbolized by fresh ways of thinking and the remodeling of the world. His Declaration of Independence was an eloquent expression of his revolutionary outlook. In a very few rhapsodic words, his majestic composition provided Americans with a sense of identity as would nothing else framed by any of his contemporaries or by leaders in succeeding generations, save perhaps for the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. Jefferson also saw his presidency as a voyage into new waters. He was looking forward, not backward, he declared, and on taking office he proclaimed the advent of a new era launched by the “mighty wave of public opinion,” a notion that would not have resonated with his predecessors.41
Jefferson may have been forward-looking, but it was Hamilton who sought to construct what later generations would see as the modern nation state. Jefferson resisted that trend, preferring a loose, decentralized union of states, sufficient for mutual protection against foreign predators and for the facilitation of commerce, and with just enough military clout to see to the opening of the West.
Jefferson saw Hamilton as a counterrevolutionary, which was neither entirely correct nor totally incorrect. More than any other figure in the early years of Washington’s presidency, Jefferson mobilized the resistance and provided the ideology against the darker things for which Hamilton stood. With his unsurpassed grasp of political reality, Jefferson was instrumental in stopping Hamiltonianism. No one knows what the United States might have become by the fiftieth anniversary of independence had Hamilton and the High Federalists had their way. What we do know is that the sweeping democracy and propulsive egalitarianism of 1826 America owed more to Jefferson than to any other Founder.
While Hamilton’s focus was on a strong and independent United States, Jefferson dreamed of making the world a better place. He divined that what he called the “corrupt squadrons of stockjobbers” were the inevitable handmaidens of Hamiltonianism, and he understood that once such forces were unleashed, it would be doubtful at best that those who governed would act to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Empathetic toward those who faced the miseries wrought by manufacturing, ambitious entrepreneurs, and capricious market forces, Jefferson also feared that, in time, the world Hamilton sought would consist of a prosperous few who lived sumptuously while the great majority remained propertyless and mired in squalor. Jefferson’s agrarian idyll, the polar opposite of Hamiltoniansim, envisaged a promised land of virtuous, republican, property-owing farmers who had little need of a powerful centralized government, who would never yearn for the rule of “angels, in the form of kings,” and who would be independent of the long and awesome clout of the social and economic elite. Such a society, overseen by republican governance, was the “world’s best hope,” he said in his inaugural address.42 It was a dream, and dreams do not always come true, but for most members of the several generations following Jefferson’s death, America more closely resembled Jefferson’s dream than it did the reveries of Hamilton.
Today’s America is more Hamilton’s America. Jefferson may never have fully understood Hamilton’s funding and banking systems, but better than most he gleaned the potential dangers that awaited future generations living in the nation state that Hamilton wished to bring into being. Presciently, and with foreboding, Jefferson saw that Hamiltonianism would concentrate power in the hands of the business leaders and financiers that it primarily served, leading inevitably to an American plutocracy every bit as dominant as monarchs and titled aristocrats had once been. Jefferson’s fears were not misplaced. In modern America, concentrated wealth controls politics and government, leading even the extremely conservative Senator John McCain to remark that “both parties conspire to stay in office by selling the country to the highest bidder.”43 The American nation, with its incredibly powerful chief executive, gargantuan military, repeated intervention in the affairs of foreign states, and political system in the thrall of great wealth, is the very world that Jefferson abhorred.
Hamilton and Jefferson had their champions and detractors in their lifetimes, and both have been lionized and criticized by politicians and scholars ever since. The exaltation of Hamilton began immediately after his shocking demise. Two days later, as bells pealed throughout Manhattan, Hamilton’s body was conveyed to Trinity Church along city streets lined with the grieving and the curious. Mourners streamed in for two hours to pay their respects, after which the doors to the church were closed for a formal service attended by those with whom Hamilton had most closely associated. His family was present, of course, and so too were officers from the Continental army and the New Army, and several Manhattan lawyers, merchants, and bankers. Columbia’s faculty and students were also admitted. The ubiquitous Gouverneur Morris delivered an extended, sorrowful eulogy. Morris ignored Hamilton’s years in the West Indies and omitted mentioning what he had recently confided to his own diary: Hamilton not only was “indiscreet, vain and opinionated,” but he was also “on Principle opposed to republican and attached to monarchical Government.” Morris hit his stride when he spoke of Washington taking Hamilton as an aide: “It seemed as if God had called him suddenly into existence that he might assist to save a world!” The “single error” of Hamilton’s life had been his belief that the Constitutional Convention h
ad not created a sufficiently powerful national government. Calling Hamilton the most “splendid” member of Washington’s cabinet, Morris attributed the nation’s “rapid advance in power and prosperity” to Hamilton’s economic policies. Morris admonished the audience, when faced with difficult choices, to ask: “Would Hamilton have done this thing?” He closed with an appeal: “I CHARGE YOU TO PROTECT HIS FAME—It is all he has left.”44
In Charlottesville, Virginia, bells rang when Jefferson died. The students at the university, and many residents of the village, donned black crepe armbands. All businesses in town remained closed on July 5, the day of the funeral. Though it rained, the service was held outdoors at the family burial plot at Monticello. Students and faculty from the university, many neighbors and residents of Charlottesville, and some who had been Jefferson’s slaves attended. All stood in the wet, emerald green grass listening to the rector of the local Episcopal church. When he was done, the coffin was lowered into a freshly dug grave next to that of Jefferson’s wife. A month or so later, a six-foot obelisk headstone was placed atop a three-foot-square slab that rested on the grave.45 The gravestone bore an inscription composed by Jefferson:
HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON
AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
& FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
His coffin had been made by John Hemings, the fifty-year-old half-brother of Sally.
No one knows where Sally Hemings is buried.
Plate Section
The Wren Building, one of the three buildings at the College of William and Mary when Jefferson attended the institution beginning in 1760. (Photograph by Jrcla2 via Wikimedia Commons.)
Nassau Hall at King’s College (later Columbia University), where Hamilton enrolled in 1773 or 1774. (Encyclopedia Britannica/UIG/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Jefferson’s drawing of the original Monticello. He began construction in 1768, but demolished the dwelling in 1794 and began work on the mansion that is familiar today. (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Thomas Jefferson in 1776 at age thirty-three. Charles Willson Peale was the artist. (The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
The Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall. Congress met here while Jefferson was a member from 1775–76 and during most of Hamilton’s brief stint in Congress from 1782–83. It was home to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)
Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804) in the Uniform of the New York Artillery, a mid-nineteenth-century painting by Alonzo Chappel. A Continental soldier who observed Hamilton during the 1776 retreat across New Jersey described him as “a youth, a mere stripling, small, slender, almost delicate in frame, marching … with a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes, apparently lost in thought, with his hand resting on a cannon, and every now and then patting it as [if] it were a favorite horse or a pet plaything.” (The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, painted by Ralph Earl. She met Hamilton in 1777. They were married on December 14, 1780, in Albany. (Museum of the City of New York/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Philip Schuyler, Revolutionary War general, father of Hamilton’s wife, and a powerful figure in New York politics. In 1791, Schuyler lost a reelection bid in the U.S. Senate to Aaron Burr. (New-York Historical Society/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
A French engraving of the British surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, by John Trumbull. Hamilton can be seen in the front row of American soldiers, the figure closest to the horse at the far right. Washington sits on the dark horse in the background. Colonel John Laurens stands next to Hamilton. General Benjamin Lincoln, astride the white horse, is accepting the British surrender. (Hangs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol.)
Robert Morris, who as superintendent of Finance in the early 1780s advocated many of the economic policies sought by Hamilton a decade later. Painting by Charles Willson Peale. (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
An engraving from a portrait of Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart, who began work on the painting in 1800 when Abigail was the First Lady. She first met Jefferson in 1785 and Hamilton some five years later. (Library of Congress.)
Thomas Jefferson sat for this portrait by Mather Brown in 1786 while in England to conduct diplomacy and to visit John and Abigail Adams. (Private collection/Peter Newark Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Maria Cosway, a miniature painted by her husband, Richard Cosway. (© The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.)
Bust of Thomas Jefferson by Jean-Antoine Houdon. The bust was made in 1789, the year that Jefferson returned from France to the United States. (Private collection/Philip Mould Ltd., London/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
George Washington, by Charles Willson Peale. The painting shows the president in 1795, the year he signed the Jay Treaty. (New-York Historical Society/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
James Madison, Jefferson’s close friend and once Hamilton’s as well. (Private collection/Peter Newark Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
Bird’s-eye View of Federal Hall, New York, home of the U.S. Congress from March 1789 through the summer of 1790, where Hamilton’s funding, assumption, and Bank bills were passed. (Painting by William Hindley (fl.1936)/New-York Historical Society/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
“What Think Ye of Congress Now.” A 1790 cartoon expressing unhappiness with the deal made to move the capital and Congress to the Potomac. Congress would quit New York for Philadelphia that summer. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)
A mezzotint after a portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. The painting was done in 1792, Hamilton’s third year as Secretary of the Treasury. He was thirty-seven years old at the time. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographic Division.)
Edmond-Charles Edouard Genêt, the flawed French diplomat who arrived in Philadelphia in 1793 and in the briefest time angered both Hamilton and Jefferson. (Harper’s Encyclopaedia of United States History, vol. IV, 1905.)
“A Peep into the Antifederal Club.” The earliest known Federalist cartoon attacking Jefferson, it shows Republicans as dissolute and takes some swipes at the French Revolution. (Library Company of Philadelphia.)
The bust of Hamilton done by Giuseppe Ceracchi in 1793, the year of Genêt’s troubled embassy. The bust was Betsey Hamilton’s favorite of all the works of art on her husband. (New-York Historical Society.)
John Adams, by Mather Brown. The painting was completed in 1788 while Adams was the U.S. minister to the Court of St. James. He was fifty-three years old. (Boston Athenaeum/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
“Cinque-tetes, or the Paris Monster.” A 1797 cartoon satirizing France’s misguided actions in the XYZ Affair. (Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
“The Providential Detection.” Dating to the presidential election of 1800, this Federalist cartoon depicts the federal eagle preventing Jefferson from destroying the Constitution at the altar of French despotism. (American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
An 1800 election banner that celebrates Jefferson’s victory. The incoming chief executive is surrounded by the words “T. JEFFERSON President of the United States of America” and “JOHN ADAMS is no MORE.” (National Museum of American History.)
Jefferson in 1800, by Rembrandt Peale. About to become president, Jefferson was fifty-seven years old. (Private collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/ The Bridgeman Art Library.)
(Left) Monticello. Jefferson demolished the original dwelling in 1794 and began construction of this mansion. I
t likely looked more or less like this during his final retirement years, 1809 to 1826. (© Christopher Hollis/Wdwic Pictures, used under a Creative Commons 2.5 License.)
(Right) The Grange, Hamilton’s home which he had constructed shortly after the election of 1800. The photograph shows the Grange as it looks in 2012, after its second relocation to St. Nicholas Park in upper Manhattan. (Photograph by Flickr user Jack and Dianne, used under a Creative Commons 2.0 License.)
Aaron Burr, by John Vanderlyn. One of many Vanderlyn paintings of Burr, this one was completed near the time of the duel. (Private collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
The English-made, smooth-bore, flintlock pistols used by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in their July 1804 duel. The pistols were the same used by Hamilton’s son Philip in his tragic duel three years earlier. (New-York Historical Society.)
(Left) Before his death, Jefferson left explicit instructions regarding the monument to be erected over his grave, and he supplied this sketch of the marker and epitaph to be inscribed—the sketch of the marker can be seen at upper left. (Library of Congress.)
(Right) Jefferson in 1821, from a portrait painted at Monticello by Thomas Sully (this is a replica painted by Sully in 1856). The artist visited Jefferson at the behest of the faculty of the United States Military Academy, which wished to obtain a portrait of the third president. (Private collection/Photo Christie’s Images/The Bridgeman Art Library.)
