I recently finished Jefferson and Hamilton: The Struggle for Democracy in America by Claude G. Bowers. This was published in the 1920s and I read this because it came from the library of my ex-father-in-law and was one of the books I was offered for helping deal with his estate.  It had admittedly collected quite a bit of dust waiting for me to crack it open. I’ll eventually pass this along to his grandson, as the book had been passed to Sam from another member of his family tree. My last evening’s read was accompanied by some fine Pennsylvania-style rye (Rittenhouse Bottled in Bond) with a few drops of water (well, not branch).

Reading something written in a vernacular and style that is now long out of fashion is a wonderful tonic for the sour discourse that dominates our contemporary life. The book opens with the start of the new federal government meeting in New York City (quaintly described as a bustling city of 35,000 souls where Broad Street was only paved for several blocks and then turned to mud). Bowers was a partisan historian, and mostly a journalist by trade, so he’s strong on the story and characterizations if a bit slanted and weak on analysis. His companion volume to this book is Jefferson in Power, dealing with obviously enough Jefferson’s Presidency which I’ll be reading next. Bowers is perhaps better known as FDR’s ambassador to Spain (during the Spanish Civil War) and then to Chile (a post he would hold until 1955). So Bowers partisan slant was ardently Democratic, though it appears he was more Jeffersonian/Jacksonian than progressive. He also wrote one additional book, which largely serves to discredit him in many respects but is utterly understandable for who he was (and when), The Tragic Era: The Revolution after Lincoln. Wikipedia notes this book is found as part of neo-Confederate reading lists; the gist being – not woke, not in the slightest.

I’ve long been fascinated with Jefferson and Hamilton as they so fundamentally represent a stereoscopic view of the American experience. Each is such a contrast and complement to the other, both in their genius and their flaws. Each represented the others view of the best kind of man to be involved in public affairs, while they themselves contradicted their own ideal. Jefferson, the wealthy land (and slave) owner through marriage and inheritance – stands as champion of those not born to power and fortune. Hamilton, the self-made man (and so unbelievably so that Horatio Alger wouldn’t have dared to invent him) or in Jefferson’s own terms for the type, a “natural aristocrat” – is the great proponent of those born to privilege. In the case of Jefferson, his sympathy with the more common man is easier to reconcile to his support amongst them even as he was far from common. That Hamilton would be accepted socially in the circles for whom he advocated is curious indeed as they were everything he himself was not, and that would ordinarily have shut him out as a striver out of his element. This is the kind of great irony that I find so enjoyable.

In the opening half-decade of the American federal government, Hamilton was the ascendant star, and eclipsed Jefferson’s own considerable career. Nominally the Treasury Secretary, Hamilton operated more as a Prime Minister with a great tendency to direct outside of his own portfolio. This was tolerated, possibly even appreciated by Washington – if not so much by others in the Cabinet let alone the House. The Senate seems to have been, under Adams leadership, strongly slanted to Federalist policy and well content with Hamilton’s actions. The Jay Treaty was less controversial during Senate ratification then it would be when the House was obliged to enact funding to fulfill it. The Constitutional authority of the House to author spending bills was not of Hamilton’s design nor to his liking; he preferred acquiescence to debate. Allow me a brief digression to the antecedent period and the Constitutional Convention.

I was unfamiliar with Hamilton’s role in the opening of the Constitutional Convention – where he proposed a President-for-life to be elected (though subject to impeachment) as well as Senators elected for life (also subject to recall for malfeasance) and diminishment of the role of the States themselves as sovereign entities. My unfamiliarity is easily explained by how limited an influence Hamilton was – his proposal carried no weight in the rest of the Convention or structuring of the federal government. His assignment from the state of New York and been counterbalanced by two fellow delegates far more comfortable with the Articles of Confederation, and jealous of New York’s prerogatives. Ultimately they left before the final draft was produced and only Hamilton was present to sign for New York, which he did even though the plan was to him a great disappointment.

So having failed to inform the architecture of the overall government, he did his best to subvert that design while serving in it. The National Bank and the doctrine of implied powers, so utterly at odds with what had been written under the aegis of The Federalist, was Hamilton proving how vacuous his rhetoric had been in arguing against a Bill of Rights – that no federal government could possibly intrude on those rights being so limited in its power. This would of course be expressed in even worse terms as his party would craft the Alien and Sedition Acts and push the country to the brink of war with revolutionary France. If Hamilton was influential, as he was, even outside of government service (having resigned from the Treasury a little more than a year after Jefferson had left State), that would ultimately be to the detriment of the Federalists. This descent would be matched by the return of Jefferson to prominence, first as Vice President to Adams and then in the election of 1800. In the instance of the first, Hamilton’s machinations turned to ruin as Jefferson placed second in the Presidential vote which in those edenic pre-political ticket days meant he became Vice President. In another act of supreme irony, Hamilton helped secure Jefferson the Presidency in 1800 over Burr.  One of Hamilton’s great flaws is that he was always a bit too clever in political scheming. The Federalists were all but shattered as a political faction and Hamilton had only a few more years of unhappy life.

Jefferson’s administration would undo a good deal of what Hamilton had wrought, though the National Bank survived (primarily due to Albert Gallatin) for a time. However, Jefferson would himself do a rather Hamiltonian thing in the negotiation and execution of the Louisiana Purchase, and having sneered at Hamilton’s construction of “necessary and proper”, find it a useful device. Jefferson’s own native flaws would also manifest in his Presidency. But whereas over-reliance on Hamilton lead the Federalists to perdition, Jefferson built a party that didn’t so inordinately depend on himself and was able to transition to successive administrations.

Down through the years we have lived in the tension of Jefferson’s rhetoric – which inspires the best of us and all people, and his view of this land as the province of the common man – against the harsh reality that Hamilton better foresaw our future in commerce, as an international power, and with a larger, more ‘energetic’ government. It is as though you can conceive of Jefferson and Hamilton as the DNA and RNA of our body politic, inseparable and essential to the function, growth and survival of the organism. What is strange is following these respective strands and discerning amongst who and how they manifest.

The Civil War would have some interesting inversions of the respective themes. It would be the common man of the North that Hamilton would have had little use for that would carry the Federal cause to victory; under the leadership of the most common of men, not some greats of refined breeding and wealth. The radical Republicans would’ve been generally repugnant to Hamilton, yet they held to his view of federal supremacy.  Lincoln’s rhetoric very clearly tended to Jefferson, particularly in the Gettysburg address. The South would eschew Jeffersonian equality in favor of the property interests and quasi-aristocracy more characteristic of Hamilton. These were not the Democrats of Jefferson (slave owner though he was).  Further, finer threads of interest could be teased out, but the key point being that although considered nearly Manichean in their conflicting vision in life, their legacies twisted across American life in interesting and unpredictable ways.

The modern Democratic party has transformed into something far more familiar to Hamilton than Jefferson – political elite and bureaucratic expertise is nothing but a modernized nobless obligé, barely tinged at all by Jefferson’s words. It eschews the Jeffersonian bent that up until Wilson and FDR dominated. Progressivism is Hamiltonian to the core, as dismissive of the deplorables as Hamilton was of the mob. That Progressivism was once fairly Republican is no shock – the Republican party arose as a Federal cause. It was only as the Jeffersonian hold on the Democrats loosened that the Republicans at all latched onto it; though that Jeffersonian influence is far weaker in the Republicans today than it was through the Reagan years.

The tidal pull between Jefferson and Hamilton is a constant in American political culture. Even though Jeffersonian influence seems at a low now, it is all but certain that it will rise again. We can no more divorce one from their joint legacy than the other, nor unravel their enduring effects.