Jefferson and Hamilton (2 page)

Nevertheless, Hamilton never eclipsed Jefferson in popularity in early-twentieth-century America, and admiration of the nation’s first Treasury secretary vanished almost entirely during the Great Depression. In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt governed through a New Deal coalition of farmers and urban industrial workers seeking relief from the economic collapse and eager for social and economic reforms, and he openly embraced the legacy of Jefferson. Indeed, FDR was sometimes called the “new Jefferson.” FDR saw the battle waged by the New Deal against “the moneyed class” as similar to Jefferson’s struggle against Hamiltonianism. “Hamiltonians we have today,” FDR said, pointing to them as his implacable adversaries. Time and again, FDR decried these Hamiltonians as exponents of dominion by Wall Street and America’s economic elite. New Dealers characterized their programs as built on a Jeffersonian template of opposition to oppression. They were kindred spirits of Jefferson, they said, with the similar design “to promote the interests and opportunities of the people.” In hyperbole seldom matched by an occupant of the White House, FDR even labeled Jefferson the “great commoner.” New Dealers willfully styled Hamilton as a “fascist” as well as “a great beast” who had evinced only loathing for ordinary citizens.

Admiration for Jefferson peaked during those years. The Jefferson postage stamp and nickel appeared in 1938, the latter with his profile on one side and an image of Monticello on the other. In 1943, on the chilly, windy bicentennial of his birth, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington was officially dedicated to America’s “Apostle of Freedom” who had “sworn … eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the minds of men.” Merrill Peterson, a Jefferson biographer, remarked that the memorial was “the most important thing to happen to Jefferson” since his death in 1826 and proclaimed Jefferson as “the heroic voice of imperishable freedoms,” standing in the “radiant center” of the American ideal.
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In the past half century Hamilton’s reputation has been on the uptick while Jefferson’s has plunged once more. As the shroud of the Cold War fell over America, Hamilton was venerated as a foreign policy wizard who had
championed a firm hand in the conduct of diplomacy. Furthermore, with the first signs in the 1960s of the resurrection of conservatism from its Great Depression near-death experience, Hamilton reemerged to become what one magazine called the “patron saint” of the political right wing. His service on behalf of the financial sector and his commitment to a free market economy were applauded. The bicentennial of Hamilton’s birth was widely celebrated in 1957, and five years later Congress approved a bill making the Grange a national memorial.

Meanwhile, Jefferson’s reputation suffered during the civil rights era. He came to be viewed in many quarters as a hypocrite who had posed as an exponent of human rights while owning slaves and espousing racist sentiments. In the wake of DNA testing in 1998 that appeared to confirm long-standing charges that he had fathered at least one child by one of his slaves, Jefferson’s reputation sank further. Many thought of him as the lecherous exploiter of a helpless woman that he owned. In some circles, Jefferson came to be seen with such contempt that movements arose to rename schools that bore his name. In 2012, an opinion essay by a prominent scholar in the normally sober
New York Times
called Jefferson the “monster of Monticello.”
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Before President Clinton, John F. Kennedy was the last Democratic chief executive to speak often of Jefferson. Kennedy supposedly reread Jefferson’s first inaugural address on the evening prior to his own inauguration and pronounced it “better than mine.” At a 1962 dinner to honor Nobel Prize winners, Kennedy famously remarked that the honorees were the “most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
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By 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected to the presidency, nearly every vestige of Jefferson’s America had disappeared. Cities had swelled. The number of farmers had shrunk to less than 5 percent of the nation’s population. Jefferson’s America seemed as remote as powdered wigs and silk stockings. Moreover, with Reagan’s presidency, and the accompanying triumph of neo-conservatism, adulation of Hamilton soared to heights nearly as lofty as reverence for Jefferson had been half a century earlier. Reagan spoke of the “wisdom of Hamilton’s insight” and the “ever perspicacious Hamilton.” Another wave of admiring biographies appeared, most proclaiming that the America of the late twentieth century was Hamilton’s legacy. Modern-day Hamiltonians maintained that the United States’ emergence as the world’s greatest industrial power and the global center of high finance and central banking was due to Hamilton’s creative genius and the forces he had set in motion. A PBS documentary in 2004 christened Hamilton the “forgotten father” of America. That same year the New-York Historical Society unveiled
an exhibit on Hamilton’s life and work. Conceived by an editor of the
National Review
, a leading conservative magazine, the show was titled “The Man Who Made Modern America.” George Will, the conservative columnist, had enunciated a similar view years earlier, writing that there was “an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton’s monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country.”
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If history is a guide, the lofty ascent of Hamilton’s reputation and Jefferson’s corresponding decline will not last forever. But one thing seems certain. Politics in its broadest framework is likely to witness continuing divisions over the competing ideas that set Jefferson and Hamilton at odds.

This book about Jefferson and Hamilton explores what shaped the thinking and behavior of each man. It inquires into their activities during the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it, their hopes for the new American nation, and the political warfare that each waged against the ideas of the other. But the book is about more than ideology and political confrontations. It aims to discover what shaped these men’s temperament, to understand the character of each, and to explain the role of character in the choices that each made. It also seeks to answer not only what made each a leader but also how each met the hard tests of leadership. Finally, the book seeks to peel away their public personae to discover the private sides of Jefferson and Hamilton.

When I began this book some three years ago, I held Jefferson in higher esteem than I did Hamilton. I had not always had such a high opinion of Jefferson, but I had grown more positive toward him in the course of working on several books on the early Republic. My admiration grew as I followed the thread of his social and political thought through decade after decade. I wasn’t surprised by that, but what I did find a bit startling was that I grew far more appreciative of Hamilton. I saw much that was noble in his sacrifices and valor as a soldier, much that was praiseworthy in his political and polemical skills, and much that was especially laudable in his vision for the nation and the nation’s economy.

As I was beginning this project, Don Wagner, a political scientist and longtime friend, remarked to me that it would not be easy to get inside the heads of Jefferson and Hamilton. “Men like that think differently than you and me,” Don said. He was correct. It was never easy, but the challenge to come to grips with men of such soaring ambition and legendary objectives, men who played for the highest stakes, made working on the book all the more exciting.

Another challenge was that Jefferson and Hamilton lived in a strikingly different period. I have sought to understand each man in the context of the time in which he lived and acted. Intriguingly, however, I found much that was surprisingly familiar, especially the ways of politics and politicians, not to mention the attraction of power and what some will do to acquire it, and keep it.

As this book took shape, I realized how much my life and thought had been shaped by Jefferson and Hamilton. My maternal ancestors had followed Jefferson’s dream, one generation after another marching westward through Virginia, into Pennsylvania, and finally just across the border into West Virginia, always owning their farms and carving out for themselves the very sort of independent life that Jefferson had cherished. A third of the way into the twentieth century, my grandfather’s children—including my mother—received college educations. The Ferling side of my family, which arrived in America only in the 1870s, faced a hardscrabble future, but they made their way along the path prepared by Hamilton, working in industry. My father, the son of a glass cutter, was a hard hat who worked for a large petrochemical company. I was a member of the fourth generation of the paternal side of my family in America, and the first to attend college. In the course of writing this book, I came to think that the educational opportunities that had fallen into my lap—and the laps of a great many others like me—was one of the things that Hamilton envisaged in his plans for the American economy.

A word about the book’s mechanics. First, the numbered endnotes are preceded by a list of secondary sources that were especially valuable and pertinent. See the Select Bibliography—and also the “Abbreviations” section—for the full citation of each of these works. These particular sources are not otherwise cited in the numbered notes unless the author is quoted. Unfortunately, these lists of helpful secondary works do not include Jon Meacham’s
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
(New York, 2012), an insightful biography that appeared a few weeks after the submission of this manuscript.

Second, in the hope of conveying as much as possible about my subjects, I have preserved the original spelling in quotations from Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s writings.

Debts accumulate in the course of writing any book. I am particularly grateful to Matt deLesdernier and James Sefcik for reading the manuscript, pointing out errors, and offering guidance. Four good friends, Edith Gelles, Michael deNie, Keith Pacholl, and Arthur Lefkowitz, answered many questions that I posed. Lorene Flanders, who has graciously supported my research and
writing, provided an office that I used daily while working on the book. Angela Mehaffey and Margot Davis in the Interlibrary Loan Office of the Irvine Sullivan Ingram Library at the University of West Georgia graciously met my frequent requests for books and articles, and Gail Smith in Acquisitions saw to the purchase of some items that were important to my work. Charlie Sicignano helped with the accession of digital copies of newspapers. Elmira Eidson and Julie Dobbs helped me out of numerous scrapes with my computer and word processing program. I owe so many debts of gratitude to Catherine Hendricks that to list them would double the length of this book.

Pete Beatty helped in many ways to bring the book to completion, all the while listening to my tales of woe about the Pittsburgh Pirates. This is my second book with Maureen Klier, who has no equal as a copyeditor, and my first with Nikki Baldauf, an excellent production editor. Geri Thoma, my literary agent, played a crucial role in the conceptualization and conception of this book. This is my seventh book with Peter Ginna, a masterful editor who, along with criticism, provides encouragement and a storehouse of wonderful ideas.

I don’t think Sammy Grace, Simon, Katie, and Clementine care much one way or another about Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton, but they enrich my life, which makes the often-trying work of writing a book a bit easier.

And there is Carol, my wife, who has always been supportive of my writing, not to mention understanding and patient.

Chronology