One of the more bizarre orthodoxies quickly emerging among an entire generation of young conservatives and libertarians over the past decade or so is that Alexander Hamilton represents the beginning of the end of republican liberty in America. Amazingly enough, for a whole set of folks in their early to late twenties, the demonization of Hamilton has simply become a fact of history.
While I fully admit to disagreeing with much of what Hamilton advocated—especially his promotion of nearly unhindered executive power and his numerous proposals for the gross intrusion of politics into economics, industry, and banking—he was and is not the devil.
In the larger scheme of eternity, he probably even would not rate as a minor demon.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we have to embrace the absurdity of proclaiming Alexander Hamilton as one of the six vital founders who cunningly manipulated the consent of the innumerable “pious dupes” around them.
Continentalist
In reality, we must transcend the demonization as well as the apotheosis offered by the two extreme Thomases of our present day, each Gnostic in his own particular way: DiLorenzo and Pangle.
A real man—neither demon nor angel—Alexander Hamilton served as one of the most interesting men of one of the most interesting generations in all of history.
A bastard from the West Indies who rose the ranks of society through intelligence, personality, and an unwavering commitment to excellence, Hamilton came to the American colonies courtesy of the charity of a number of prominent West Indian businessmen, all of whom respected the young man profoundly. Earning an education in the liberal arts, Hamilton served effectively and heroically in the War for Independence under Washington.
As his many published writings indicate (all demonstrating his brilliance, whatever one thinks of his politics), he was fully a classical republican, desiring a commonwealth based on virtue and not, primarily, on self-interest. Nowhere was this more clear than in his attempts to root out corruption from the early federal government.
Through an alliance with Charles Carroll of Carrollton and several others, Hamilton led the crusade against those who would use their political positions to secure economic advantage.
Taking the name Publius, he wrote on October 19, 1778:
I mean that tribe who, taking advantage of the times, have carried the spirit of monopoly and extortion to an excess which scarcely admits of a parallel. Emboldened by the success of progressive impositions, it has extended to all the necessaries of life. The exorbitant price of every article, and the depreciation upon our currency, are evils derived essentially from this source. When avarice takes the lead in a state, it is commonly the forerunner to its fall. How shocking is it to discover among ourselves, even at this early period, the strongest symptoms of this fatal disease… But when a man, appointed to be the guardian of the state and the depositary of the happiness and morals of the people, forgetful of the solemn relation in which he stands, descends to the dishonest artifices of a mercantile projector, and sacrifices his conscience and his trust to pecuniary motives, there is no strain of abhorrence of which the human mind is capable, no punishment the vengeance of the people can inflict, which may not be applied to him with justice. If it should have happened that a member of Congress has been this degenerate character, and has been known to turn the knowledge of secrets to which his office gave him access to the purposes of private profit, by employing emissaries to engross an article of immediate necessity to the public service, he ought to feel the utmost rigor of public resentment, and be detested as a traitor of the worst and most dangerous kind. [Source: [Pp. 157-158] Publius, October 19, 1778, to The Printer of the New York Journal, reprinted in Richard B. Vernier, ed., The Revolutionary Writings of Alexander Hamilton (Indianapolis, IN: LibertyFund, 2008)]
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