Posted on 04/08/2011 4:50:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
His face adorns the $10 bill, but as Richard Brookhiser, host of "Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton" (airing on PBS April 11), finds when conducting a quick street canvas -- many Americans cannot identify him.
"Washington has a monument," Brookhiser intones. "Jefferson has a memorial. It's often said that New York City is Hamilton's monument."
That would be more than enough for any man, yet, as this engrossing film from producer Michael Pack makes clear, it doesn't quite do justice to the genius of Hamilton. First secretary of the Treasury, a drafter of the Constitution, author of two-thirds of the Federalist Papers, and father of the U.S. economy, Hamilton was also the prototype of the self-made American success -- the original Horatio Alger hero, and then some.
Unlike the planters, wealthy merchants, and successful lawyers from established families who comprised the other founders, Hamilton was born in the Virgin Islands, "the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," as John Adams sneered in one of his less charitable moments. (To be fair, Hamilton could be lacerating about Adams, too.)
He was a bastard -- but some brat. At age 11, orphaned and penniless, Hamilton found work in a St. Croix counting house. There he learned that strong application could yield advancement. He was so gifted at administration that his boss was willing to leave the 14-year-old Alexander in full charge of the business when he left for four months.
Also in St. Croix, Hamilton saw the suffering of slaves, forced to work endless hours in the scorching sun harvesting sugar cane. The camera lingers on the lanky, bamboo-shaped stalks. Most slaves, Brookhiser notes, "died within seven years." Hamilton became a fervent and lifelong opponent of slavery.
So prodigious were his talents that a few of the merchants on St. Croix sponsored his emigration to the colonies to further his education. He was 16. Within the next two decades, he would serve as deputy to Gen. George Washington, achieve glory in battle himself, excel at the law, and, from nothing, create for his adopted country its first monetary system, its first fiscal system, its first accounting system, and its first central bank. He also founded the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, and the New York Post. In a touching moment, the film captures the ritual in which newly minted Coast Guard officers -- to this day -- salute the grave of the service's founder.
Historical documentarians face a problem -- no footage. Most resort to long pans of period paintings, or linger over photographs and sunsets, or throw in the occasional actors in period costume marching off to battle, along with talking heads. There's nothing wrong with that style (Ken Burns, the master of the genre, has a great new film on Prohibition coming in October). But this film takes a different approach, setting itself firmly in the contemporary world -- the world that Hamilton did so much to create.
Brookhiser travels from a prison in the Virgin Islands, where he chats with women who, like Hamilton's mother, are behind bars, to the People's Court for a re-enactment of one of Hamilton's famous law cases, to the hectic streets of New York City, pulsing with business. He and Bernard-Henri Levi play-act the meeting between Hamilton and Talleyrand. He chats with Larry Flynt about the sex scandal that nearly ended Hamilton's career, and with former gang members about the touchy matter of honor, which did end his life.
To appreciate Hamilton fully, it's necessary to set the stage, as Brookhiser and historian Ron Chernow do, explaining that after the Revolution, the United States was an economic cripple, deeply in debt, its currencies nearly worthless as a result of inflation.
"We were," says Chernow, "the deadbeat of world finance. We were like a Third World country." Hamilton steered the new republic toward solvency. (We could use him now!)
Unlike the other founders, Chernow notes, who had mainly "pre-capitalist worldviews" with a strong bias toward agriculture, and who tended to see commerce and manufacturing as "corrupting influences," Hamilton foresaw that the United States could become a great trading nation. From his earliest days in the St. Croix counting house, doing business with people from around the world speaking many languages, Hamilton understood that wealth is created by trade and commerce, not just from the soil.
Hamilton was an economic wizard, but also a profound political philosopher, a deep-dyed patriot, a gifted administrator who served as Washington's informal "prime minister" during the first president's term -- and also a human being with weaknesses and foibles. He spoke brilliantly, the film reminds us, but sometimes too much. He might have bitten his tongue a bit more on the subject of Vice President Aaron Burr. But he did not, and the film takes us, reluctantly but inexorably, to the dueling ground at Weehawken, N.J., where we feel anew that day's terrible toll.
He was also an arrogant, big-government bureaucrat who used Alinksy-like tactics and anonymous slurs against his political opponents.
Right. I think most conservatives would take a pretty dim view of Hamilton after reading extensively about his role in the events that led up to the Whiskey Rebellion in the early 1790s, too.
Mona Charen, the article’s author, is very fond of government, too, as long as it’s by the “right” people, not those tacky folks who live in big, square states and talk funny.
Alexander Hamilton, though, is far more interesting than most fictional characters.
That didn’t take long.
Perhaps but those were indeed different times. As far as Hamilton's principles...
"At age 11, orphaned and penniless, Hamilton found work in a St. Croix counting house. There he learned that strong application could yield advancement...Also in St. Croix, Hamilton saw the suffering of slaves, forced to work endless hours in the scorching sun harvesting sugar cane. Hamilton became a fervent and lifelong opponent of slavery."
Well I got no problem with those principles and wouldn't it have been a shame if the entire country fell apart because farmers in PA refused to support a federal Gov with a tax on their whiskey? Where would it end? I'd expect there might have been MANY wars between the states and who knows... maybe the Brits would have moved in again to "restore order". They easily could have kicked the young coutries butt especially a country who wouldn't support any kind of tax to support a Federal Gov. Who knows for sure but I respect Hamilton for his foresight.
What do you mean? Hamilton was the original big government guy. If he was alive today and in government, he would’ve been proudly standing up on that liberal podium alongside Frank and Dodd during the 2008 crash arguing for TARP and Porkulus. That’s why Jefferson couldn’t stand him.
Although considered one of the founding fathers, he would NEVER be able to run for President because he was not a Natural Born Citizen.
This qualification for President was very important to our Founders...just sayin’
To say the guy who put our bankrupt nation back on its feet would support our recent attempts at economic suicide is silly.
I know he had a lot of outstanding qualities and would likely put most of this nation's current elected "leaders" to shame, but the reality is that Alexander Hamilton was the first in a long line of "big-government Beltway conservatives."
Didn't they make an exception for their contemporaries?
In any case they shoulda made exception for bastard brats of Scottish peddlers and all other products of the Scottish Enlightenment. :o)
Ever read "Jefferson and Civil Liberties" by Leonard Levy? When Jefferson became president, it's a wonder he could stand himself!
Hamilton was instrumental in ruining what was great about the united States.
Yep. The more I read about Hamilton, the less I like him. He was the father of financial bailouts, and the one who created the idea of perpetual deficit-spending, all in order to increase the wealth and power of his home city of New York at the expense of the rest of the nation.
I still think you are making a huge jump about a completely different time in history but yes, I see your point... in some cases he supported federal power over state power. However, I must confess that in looking at America's long history, there were some times I can tell you that this conservative would NOT have supported states' rights at any cost which doesn't mean I don't support incresased states rights on some issues now.
The settlers who lived in that area were fighting off attacks from bands of British soldiers and their Indian allies for almost two years after the last "official" battle of the American Revolution at Yorktown -- with no help from anything representing a "Federal" military force. In my opinion, they rightly considered the imposition of an excise tax on whiskey -- whose burden fell disproportionately on those poor farmers in the Appalachians who distilled whiskey from their crops because of the high cost of transporting raw crops to market in the coastal cities -- by that same Federal government to be an 'effing outrage.
One interesting aspect of the whole thing is that the entire Appalacian region became a hotbed of simmering resentment against any imposition of Federal power. Strong traces of this can still be found today. Moonshining and stock car racing can trace their roots to this whole mindset.
Alexander Hamilton was a BASTARD and a First Class Scumbag!
Product Description
Two of the most influential figures in American history. Two opposing political philosophies. Two radically different visions for America.
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton were without question two of the most important Founding Fathers. They were also the fiercest of rivals. Of these two political titans, it is Jefferson—–the revered author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president—–who is better remembered today. But in fact it is Hamilton’s political legacy that has triumphed—–a legacy that has subverted the Constitution and transformed the federal government into the very leviathan state that our forefathers fought against in the American Revolution.
How did we go from the Jeffersonian ideal of limited government to the bloated imperialist system of Hamilton’s design? Acclaimed economic historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo provides the troubling answer in Hamilton’s Curse.
DiLorenzo reveals how Hamilton, first as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and later as the nation’s first and most influential treasury secretary, masterfully promoted an agenda of nationalist glory and interventionist economics—–core beliefs that did not die with Hamilton in his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. Carried on through his political heirs, the Hamiltonian legacy:
• Wrested control into the hands of the federal government by inventing the myth of the Constitution’s “implied powers”
• Established the imperial presidency (Hamilton himself proposed a permanent president—–in other words, a king)
• Devised a national banking system that imposes boom-and-bust cycles on the American economy
• Saddled Americans with a massive national debt and oppressive taxation
• Inflated the role of the federal courts in order to eviscerate individual liberties and state sovereignty
• Pushed economic policies that lined the pockets of the wealthy and created a government system built on graft, spoils, and patronage
• Transformed state governments from Jeffersonian bulwarks of liberty to beggars for federal crumbs
By debunking the Hamiltonian myths perpetuated in recent admiring biographies, DiLorenzo exposes an uncomfortable truth: The American people are no longer the masters of their government but its servants. Only by restoring a system based on Jeffersonian ideals can Hamilton’s curse be lifted, at last.
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