(The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794 matched Ham...)
The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-1794 matched Hamilton and Madison in the first chapter of an enduring discussion about the proper roles of executive and legislative branches in the conduct of American foreign policy. Ignited by President Washington s Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, which annulled the eleventh article of America s Treaty with France of 1778, the debate addressed whether Washington had the authority to declare America neutral, despite an early alliance treaty with France. Hamilton argued that Washington s actions were constitutional and that friction between the two branches was an unavoidable, but not harmful, consequence of the separation of powers. Madison countered that Washington s proclamation would introduce new principles and new constructions into the Constitution and contended that the power to declare war and make treaties can never fall within the definition of executive powers. In the introduction, Morton Frisch asserts that the debate between Hamilton and Madison helped to clarify certain constitutional principles that we now associate with executive power generally such as that foreign policy is essentially an executive function. Yet it is the open-ended character of our Constitution that has continued to allow different interpretations of the limits of the powers of government, a debate that continues to this day. Frisch writes in the introduction, The open-ended character of some of the constitutional provisions afforded opportunities for extending the powers of government beyond their specified limits. Although not given prior sanction by the Constitutional Convention, such additions served to provide a more complete definition of powers without actually changing the ends of government.
The Liberty Fund edition brings together for the first time all the relevant original documents of this controversy: Washington s Neutrality Proclamation, the full text of the Pacificus and Helvidius letters, Jefferson s letter to Madison imploring him to answer Hamilton s arguments, and Hamilton s Americanus letters, intended as his final response to Madison s rebuttal. This edition is supplemented with an introduction by Frisch, which places the work in historical context.
Morton J. Frisch (1923-2006) was Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northern Illinois University.
(America's most controversial founderin his own words
A ...)
America's most controversial founderin his own words
A brash immigrant who rose to become George Washingtons right-hand man. A fierce partisan whose nationalist vision made him Thomas Jeffersons bitter rival. An unfaithful husband whose commitment to personal honor brought his life to a tragic early end. The amazing success of Lin-Manuel Mirandas musical Hamilton has stoked an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Alexander Hamilton, the brilliant and divisive founder who profoundly shaped the American republic. Now, Library of America presents an unrivaled portrait of Hamilton in his own words, charting his meteoric rise, his controversial tenure as treasury secretary, and his scandalous final years, culminating in his infamous duel with Aaron Burr. Selected and introduced by acclaimed historian Joanne B. Freeman, here is a readers edition of Hamiltons essential public writings and private letters, plus the correspondence between Burr and Hamilton that led to their duel and two conflicting eyewitness accounts of their fatal encounter.
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As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Ha...)
As one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Hamilton occupies an eccentric, even flamboyant, position compared with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and Marshall. Hamiltons genius, forged during his service in the Continental Army in the Revolution, brought him not only admiration but also suspicion. As the country he helped to found grew and changed, so did his thinking.
Consistency with earlier positions was never a hallmark of Hamiltons thought, which changed as the country changed from thirteen breakaway British colonies to a single independent nation. Alexander Hamiltons thought has, for over two hundred years, been noted for its deviations from American revolutionary Whig orthodoxy. From a conventional Whig at the beginning of his career, Hamilton developed a Federalist viewpoint that liberty depended above all on the creation of a powerful central government.
In this collection, we find the seeds of this development, as Hamiltons early optimistic confidence in the triumph of American Whig principles begins to give way, under the influence of his experience during the Revolution, to his mature Federalism. Hamiltons political philosophy reflected his vision of the central government as the protector of individual liberties, in sharp contrast to the popular democratic sentiments of his archrival Jefferson.
This comprehensive collection of his early writings, from the period before and during the Revolutionary War, provides a fuller understanding of the development of his thinking.
Hamilton wrote to persuade, and he had the ability to clarify the complex issues of his time without oversimplifying them. From the basic core values established in his earlier writings to the more assertive vision of government in his mature work, we see how Hamiltons thought responded to the emerging nation and how the nation was shaped by his ideas.
Alexander Hamilton (1755?1804) was a trusted military aide and secretary to General George Washington during the American Revolution and was later appointed inspector general of the army, with the rank of major general. He was an attorney and politician, a member of the Continental Congress in the 1780s, and a representative of New York at the Annapolis Convention and the Constitutional Convention. He supported the new Constitution in The Federalist, with Madison and Jay. As the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was an advocate of sound public credit, development of natural resources and trade, and establishment of the first national Bank of the United States. The opposition to his policies led to the factional divisions from which developed the system of political parties.
Richard B. Vernier is an Adjunct Professor of American History at Purdue University at Calumet and a specialist in the field of Anglo-American ideas of political economy. He obtained his doctorate from St. Catherine's College, Oxford.
Joyce Appleby is Professor Emerita of History at UCLA. She obtained her doctorate from Claremont University.
The Fate of Major Andre: A Letter from Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens
(John André (1750 1780) was a British Army officer hange...)
John André (1750 1780) was a British Army officer hanged as a spy by the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War for assisting Benedict Arnold's attempted surrender of the fort at West Point, New York to the British. The character and the last moments of Andre are well depicted by Colonel Hamilton, aide-de-camp to Washington, in a letter to John Laurens, and is considered one of Hamilton's best known productions. Of Hamilton's numerous historical sketches, the most celebrated is this letter to Colonel Laurens giving an account of the fate of Major André, in which refinement of feeling and inflexible impartiality of view are alike conspicuous. Hamilton was with Washington when he was first apprized of the flight of that traitor Benedict Arnold and the arrest of Andre. In reference to the fall of the British officer who was thus involved in the punishment which Arnold deserved, Hamilton, moved by a generous sympathy for the fate of one so young, so chivalrous, and so promising, exerted his utmost efforts to discover some legal and honorable expedient to save him. When all proved unavailing, he felt deeply for the unfortunate officer, and published a narrative of the facts in the case, in a letter to his friend Laurens, which reflects equal credit, both upon his intellect and his heart. It was a model of elegance, clearness, simplicity and force in the art of narration. The fate of Major Andre made a profound sensation in England, though as little as possible was said about it publicly. The King made such poor amends as he could; he conferred a baronetcy on Andre's brother, and erected a monument to him in Westminster Abbey, with an inscription in which the nature of the service in which Andre perished, and the fate which befell him, are alike concealed beneath a decent veil of words. It was many a long year before the question of whether or no he came under the description of a spy could be approached with even the appearance of calmness, and many more before his death ceased to be called "the only blot on Washington's fame." His enemies had wept for him; his friends might be excused if they found it hard to be just. Many of us have stood before his monument in the Abbey. As one stands there and thinks of Andre's story, those great words, Duty, Glory, and Honour, take a more solemn meaning, and treachery and infidelity are seen in all their hideous nakedness. It is said that Benedict Arnold was once seen standing there. Hamilton was against the harsh decision, and it is well known that a majority of these officers themselves, catching the wide-spread sympathy of the hour, were inclined to revoke the sentence, had it not been for the counter and too ascendant influence of Greene and Lafayette.
Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Background
Alexander Hamilton was born out of wedlock in Charlestown, the capital of the island of Nevis, in British West Indies. His father, James Hamilton, was a Scottish trader and his mother, Rachel Fawcett Lavien, was a married woman of British and French Huguenot descent. There is an ambiguity about the year of Alexander’s birth. Although he himself listed his birthday as January 11, 1757 a probate paper drafted after his mother’s death in 1768, listed him as 13 years old, making 1755 the year of his birth.
In 1765, as Alexander turned eleven, the family moved to St. Croix. Very soon their father abandoned the family, ostensibly to save Rachel from a charge of bigamy. Living in the lowest rung of white society, Rachel began to run a store in Christiansted while Alexander took up a job. When Rachel died in 1768, Alexander became a ward of his mother’s relatives, and in 1772 his ability, industry, and engaging manners won him advancement from bookkeeper to manager.
Education
Friends sent Alexander to a preparatory school in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and in the autumn of 1773 he entered King’s College (later Columbia) in New York. Intensely ambitious, he became a serious and successful student, but his studies were interrupted by the brewing revolt against Great Britain.
Career
In March 1776, through the influence of friends in the New York legislature, Hamilton was commissioned a captain in the provincial artillery. He organized his own company and at the Battle of Trenton, when he and his men prevented the British under Lord Cornwallis from crossing the Raritan River and attacking George Washington’s main army, showed conspicuous bravery. In February 1777 Washington invited him to become an aide-de-camp with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In his four years on Washington’s staff he grew close to the general and was entrusted with his correspondence.
In November 1781, with the war virtually over, he moved to Albany, where he studied law and was admitted to practice in July 1782. A few months later the New York legislature elected him to the Continental Congress. He continued to argue in essays for a strong central government, and in Congress from November 1782 to July 1783 he worked for the same end, being convinced that the Articles of Confederation were the source of the country’s weakness and disunion.
When President Washington in 1789 appointed Hamilton the first secretary of the treasury, Congress asked him to draw up a plan for the “adequate support of the public credit.” Envisaging himself as something of a prime minister in Washington’s official family, Hamilton developed a bold and masterly program designed to build a strong union, one that would weave his political philosophy into the government. His immediate objectives were to establish credit at home and abroad and to strengthen the national government at the expense of the states. He outlined his program in four notable reports to Congress (1790–91).
In the first two, Reports on the Public Credit, which he submitted on January 14, 1790, and December 13, 1790, he urged the funding of the national debt at full value, the assumption in full by the federal government of debts incurred by the states during the Revolution, and a system of taxation to pay for the assumed debts. His motive was as much political as economic. Through payment by the central government of the states’ debts, he hoped to bind the men of wealth and influence, who had acquired most of the domestically held bonds, to the national government. But such powerful opposition arose to the funding and assumption scheme that Hamilton was able to push it through Congress only after he had made a bargain with Thomas Jefferson, who was then secretary of state, whereby he gained Southern votes in Congress for it in exchange for his own support in locating the future national capital on the banks of the Potomac.
Hamilton’s third report, the Report on a National Bank, which he submitted on December 14, 1790, advocated a national bank called the Bank of the United States and modeled after the Bank of England. With the bank, he wished to solidify the partnership between the government and the business classes who would benefit most from it and further advance his program to strengthen the national government. In the Report on Manufactures, the fourth, the longest, the most complex, and the most farsighted of his reports, submitted on December 5, 1791, he proposed to aid the growth of infant industries through various protective laws. Basic to it was his idea that the general welfare required the encouragement of manufacturers and that the federal government was obligated to direct the economy to that end.
Lashed by criticism, tired and anxious to repair his private fortune, Hamilton left the cabinet on January 31, 1795. His influence, as an unofficial adviser, however, continued as strong as ever. Washington and his cabinet consulted him on almost all matters of policy. When Washington decided to retire, he turned to Hamilton, asking his opinion as to the best time to publish his farewell.
Achievements
Alexander Hamilton is best remembered as the builder of national infrastructure under a very difficult condition. He not only worked hard to create a strong federal government, but as the first Secretary of Treasury, he also contributed significantly to improve the financial condition of his country.
During his tenure as the Secretary of Treasury, he submitted various financial reports to Congress. Among these, most significant are the First Report on the Public Credit, Operations of the Act Laying Duties on Imports, Report on a National Bank, On the Establishment of a Mint, Report on Manufactures, and the Report on a Plan for the Further Support of Public Credit.
As a youth in the West Indies, Hamilton was an orthodox and conventional Presbyterian of the "New Light" evangelical type (as opposed to the "Old Light" Calvinists); he was taught there by a student of John Witherspoon, a moderate of the New School. He wrote two or three hymns, which were published in the local newspaper. Robert Troup, his college roommate, noted that Hamilton was "in the habit of praying on his knees night and morning."
According to Gordon Wood, Hamilton dropped his youthful religiosity during the Revolution and became "a conventional liberal with theistic inclinations who was an irregular churchgoer at best"; however, he returned to religion in his last years.
Stories were circulated that Hamilton had made two quips about God at the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. During the French Revolution, he displayed a utilitarian approach to using religion for political ends, such as by maligning Jefferson as "the atheist, " and insisting that Christianity and Jeffersonian democracy were incompatible. After 1801, Hamilton further asserted the truth of Christianity; he proposed a Christian Constitutional Society in 1802, to take hold of "some strong feeling of the mind" to elect "fit men" to office, and he wrote of "Christian welfare societies" for the poor. After being shot, Hamilton spoke of his belief in God's mercy.
On his deathbed, Hamilton asked the Episcopal Bishop of New York, Benjamin Moore, to give him holy communion. Moore initially declined to do so, on two grounds: that to participate in a duel was a mortal sin, and that Hamilton, although undoubtedly sincere in his faith, was not a member of the Episcopalian denomination. After leaving, Moore was persuaded to return that afternoon by the urgent pleas of Hamilton's friends, and upon receiving Hamilton's solemn assurance that he repented for his part in the duel, Moore gave him communion. Bishop Moore returned the next morning, stayed with Hamilton for several hours until his death, and conducted the funeral service at Trinity Church.
Politics
A result of the struggle over Hamilton’s program and over issues of foreign policy was the emergence of national political parties. Like Washington, Hamilton had deplored parties, equating them with disorder and instability. He had hoped to establish a government of superior persons who would be above party. Yet he became the leader of the Federalist Party, a political organization in large part dedicated to the support of his policies. Hamilton placed himself at the head of that party because he needed organized political support and strong leadership in the executive branch to get his program through Congress. The political organization that challenged the Hamiltonians was the Republican Party (later Democratic-Republican Party) created by James Madison, a member of the House of Representatives, and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson. In foreign affairs the Federalists favoured close ties with England, whereas the Republicans preferred to strengthen the old attachment to France. In attempting to carry out his program, Hamilton interfered in Jefferson’s domain of foreign affairs. Detesting the French Revolution and the egalitarian doctrines it spawned, he tried to thwart Jefferson’s policies that might aid France or injure England and to induce Washington to follow his own ideas in foreign policy. Hamilton went so far as to warn British officials of Jefferson’s attachment to France and to suggest that they bypass the secretary of state and instead work through himself and the president in matters of foreign policy. This and other parts of Hamilton’s program led to a feud with Jefferson in which the two men attempted to drive each other from the cabinet.
Membership
In 1791, Alexander Hamilton was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Connections
On December 14, 1780, Alexander Hamilton married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of Revolutionary War general, Philip Schuyler. They enjoyed a very close relationship, and had eight children; Philip, Angelica, Alexander, James, John, William, Eliza and Philip.
In the summer of 1791, Hamilton met Maria Reynolds, married to some James Reynolds. Eventually the two began an illicit affair that lasted until June 1792. The incident did not have any impact upon his marriage; but many believe it robbed him his chance to become the next US President.
Father:
James Hamilton
He was a Scottish trader.
Mother:
Rachel Fawcett Lavien
She was a married woman of British and French Huguenot descent.
