Posted on 05/28/2012 3:36:36 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
How many things are in a person's pocket that they don't even know about?
We take money for granted -- most people can't tell us which way George Washington is facing on the quarter. They can tell us that Ben Franklin is on the front of the hundred, but they can't tell us that Independence Hall (where he helped draft the Constitution) is on the back.
One might think that as denominations get smaller and more common, the pictures on them would become more famous and well-known. The ten-dollar bill features Alexander Hamilton on the front. Since he was never a president himself, one wonders how many Americans could explain how he got on the note. A hint is on the back, where there is a picture of the U.S. Treasury. In short, Alexander Hamilton was the first secretary of the Treasury.
But it was how he handled that position that garnered him immortality on our money.
A lot of people living in the United States in 1790 believed (as a lot of people do today) that the debts incurred during the American Revolution should just be ignored. What modern people would think of as the United States didn't begin until 1789. The debts run up before that time were under a different government, so why should the new government be responsible for that debt?
Alexander Hamilton argued against this.
He believed that the new nation needed a good reputation on the international scene. If the United States was known to honor its debts, it would find it easier to get loans. Hamilton pointed out that this would be especially useful in a national emergency. Moreover, Hamilton wanted the federal government to take up all the state debt as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
But getting back to TJ and Alex for a moment, the former clearly disliked the northern finance-types, hated NYC when he had to live there (and, for those interested, if you go to Google Maps, plug in "59 Maiden Lane, NYC" and then click and drag on the little yellow guy in the satellite view, then put him in front of that address, it will give you a street view. As you look at the big "59" on the building, pan left and you will see a guy sitting on a bench and a plaque on the building wall in front of him: that plaque commemorates Jefferson's apartment).
At any rate, TJ did not like these city-types and really hated the speculators (interesting how BHO attacks the 'oil speculators' today, don't you think?). How much of the First and/or Second Bank were bad examples of crony capitalism I cannot say (although I'm sure there was some of that), but I also believe that just like Madison (an anti-Federalist cum Democrat-Republican), Hamilton's primary motive was to stabilize the currency and form a foundation for a solid economic footing for the early Republic.
Those are all good points. And I try to implement them in my life. Nothing I have said here has intentionally flouted any of these precepts.
Jefferson was making two major statements: the first was to condemn the King and his associates for underwriting and coercing the colonies to import slaves. The second was an effort to condemn the trade and gain support for the cessation of the trade.
Before their separation from England, many of the colonies wanted a cessation of the slave trade due to the fact that there was no adequate employment at that time for the Negro population. The British Crown refused.
When the separation took place, from that moment the New England States assumed the position, in regard to slavery, which Great Britain had previously occupied.
The evil of this traffic had become apparent to many of the people of the South, and when the DOI was being outlined, some in the South openly spoke for ways that would inhibit this traffic of importing human beings from Africa.
The New England slave-traders resisted the South. The New England States owned the shipping and distilleries, and were profiting greatly from the slave trade. They accumulated much capital in both.
As seen, Thomas Jefferson had developed his anti-slavery clause in the first draft of the Declaration. The clause was removed by John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (MA), Robert R. Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT).
Thomas Jefferson had thus, as a Southern legislator and later President, introduced a scathing denunciation of, and protest against, the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence, but had no choice but to withdraw it upon the insistence of Adams and other New Englanders, and two southern states.
His personal notes from the debates included the following commentary:
"Congress proceeded the same day to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported and lain on the table the Friday preceding, and on Monday referred to a committee of the whole. The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with still haunted the minds of many.
"For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England were struck out, lest they should give them offense. The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it.
"Our Northern brethren, also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.
Just as a point of reference, the number of slaves imported annually had dropped to approximate average of 18,000 during the decade 1770-1780. However, for the decade of 1780-1790, the yearly average increased to 55,000.
It is important to keep in mind that this trade was conducted in Northern ships.
That would have forbidden slavery in the Northwest Territories. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 did just that, after Jefferson had left for France. There's no indication that he supported abolishing slavery in the states or in the nation as a whole.
Thomas Jefferson developed an anti-slavery clause in the first draft of the Declaration. The clause was removed by John Adams (MA), Benjamin Franklin (MA), Robert R. Livingston (NY), and Roger Sherman (CT). The parasites were living in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut.
That was more an anti-slave trade clause than an anti-slavery clause as such. And it's pretty bizarre, blaming George III for slavery and for "exciting" the slaves to revolt and murder the people he had "obtruded" tham on.
According to Jefferson himself, it was delegates from South Carolina and Georgia who wanted the clause deleted. He also blamed Northerners who voted with them. Roger Sherman was probably who he had in mind. I see no evidence that John Adams had anything to do with killing the clause. Is that something you got from the musical?
In later years Jefferson became a determined opponent of substantive anti-slavery efforts, seeing them as Northern aggression against Virginia, and caring more about slights to Southern honor than about human freedom.
The point surely is that none of the Founders was perfect. None of their ideologies was perfect in all things. The thinking of Hamilton or Jefferson or Adams or Madison can't be translated directly into a political program today without a lot of adapting and tinkering.
We can learn from them and be inspired by them, but ought to be aware of the differences between their day and our own. I guess the reverse is true as well. What seems to us now to be right might not have been possible in their era either.
Your claim that Jefferson attempted to outlaw the slave trade via the DOI was indeed nonsense. The DOI was a rhetorical instrument, it was not anything resembling legislation. Had his anti-slave trade clause been left in, it still would not have had any legal effect on the trade one way or another.
Thanks for admitting that deep south states wanted to keep importing slaves. Now if you will just agree that one reason some Virginians wanted to abolish the trade was partially to raise the value of their own “livestock,” by limiting supply, we’ll be more or less in agreement. The deep south states, of course, who were the market for the VA slaves, wanted to keep the trade going for exactly the opposite reason. They wanted to keep the price down.
I see that you are not a student of Adam Smith as annotated by your comment: “Arguing against ‘mercantilism’ seems to me to be arguing against capitalism.”
What you seem not to know is that Smith's entire work was devoted to free markets, enterprise, and his dedication to the laissez-faire economy.
In simple terms, Smith was a free market capitalist. His work was in direct opposition to mercantilism.
The fundamental assertions of mercantilism, a term that I think he developed, were that national wealth will come through the import and accumulation of gold or other precious metals such as silver, and that trade should be based strictly on hard metals accumulation.
Smith was highly critical of this theory of wealth and he clearly understood the class bias and loss of personal liberty in the merchant system that supported it. In fact, Smith expressed great concern about colonialism, as seen in his home country, and the early history of the United States; and the monopoly trade routes instituted by the merchant class, which often worked against the economic interests of the citizenry.
So, let's examine the two.
On the issue of slavery, here is Thomas Jefferson's record.
Beginning with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jefferson introduced strong wording in the initial draft condemning the practices and processes of the slave trade.
In the Virginia Assembly, in the 1788, legislator Jefferson supported a bill to prohibit the state from importing slaves.
Next, in the 1784 Congress, Jefferson proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the Northwest.
As President in 1807 he signed a bill prohibiting the US from participating in the international slave trade.
And now Hamilton's actions:............
But let's look at who Hamilton was, and from the beginning:
May of 1867 finds that a convention was organized in Philadelphia to take up the issue of a united colonies constitution.
The delegates fell into three factions. There were Democratics, demonstrating constant dread of Federal encroachments, and advocating keeping the power of the Federal government at a minimum level.
The Democratic Republican faction wanted to invest the Federal Government with just enough power to make it effective.
Finally came the Monarchists, later the Federalists, who repudiated a Republican form of government.
Hamilton was strongly in favor of a government patterned after the European monarchies. He was totally against democracy, especially a republican form of government. He was the arch-Federalist who “hated Republican Government, and never failed on every occasion to advocate the excellence of and avow his attachment to a Monarchic form of Government, was so enamored with the British system of government that he called for the annihilation of the several State governments.”
How did this manifest itself in his actions?
Alexander Hamilton dreamed of an alliance between a strong central government and the wealthiest businessmen. In 1791 when he first proposed the national bank, as the proposal was written, it was openly a Federal monopoly over the money supply, with government subsidies to businesses that were aligned with his party. His rationalizations for this relationship were based on more than loose interpretations of the Constitution that he used to justify his proposals.
Hamilton's proposals were resented and received immediate resistance. The Virginia House of Delegates declared that “in an agricultural country like this, to erect a large monied interest in opposition to the landed interests, is a measure which must, in the course of human events, produce one other of two evils: the prostration of agriculture at the feet of Commerce, or a change in the present form of Federal Government fatal to the existence of American liberty.”
He also advocated the appointment of Senators and a President for life as well as the creation of a subservient House of Commons in order ‘check the imprudence of democracy,’
In addition to this, he suggested that the ‘rich and well born’ should have ‘a distinct, permanent share in the government’ because ‘the mass of the people... seldom judge or determine right.’
During a speech delivered in New York, he exclaimed, “The People! Gentlemen, I tell you the people are a great Beast!”
Alexander Hamilton foisted the argument that the government should undertake activities designed to make the nation more prosperous.
Others, such as Thomas Jefferson, saw that his ideas would consolidate power in the hands of the few, and argued for a more limited government that would not use its power to meddle in the lives of the citizens, thus respecting the concept of liberty.
You said this: “Tom sure didn't practice what he preached.”
Not so.
You said this: “In his private life he was quite profligate. Always had to have the finest wines, books, furniture and scientific instruments from Europe. As a result he went deeply into debt, thus being unable to free any of his slaves since he had had mortgaged them.”
And you know that how?
You said this: “Difficult to imagine a better description of a slave owner. A parasite indeed.”
Those were all negative, mostly supposition, and pejorative. Not very honest comments.
He did not even free them at his death. Yes: do as I say but not as I do.
And Hamilton did nothing? He was a founding member of the NY Manumission Society (abolition of slavery). Here is the entire section on Hamilton and slavery from Wiki (they use much from the latest biography of Hamilton by Chernoff):
Hamilton's first polemic against King George's ministers contains a paragraph that speaks of the evils that "slavery" to the British would bring upon the Americans. McDonald sees this as an attack on the institution of slavery, David Hackett Fisher believes the term is used in a symbolic way at that time.[97]
During the Revolutionary War, Hamilton took the lead in proposals to arm slaves, free them, and compensate their masters. In 1779, Hamilton worked closely with his friend John Laurens of South Carolina to propose that such a unit be formed, under Laurens' command. Hamilton proposed to the Continental Congress to create up to four battalions of slaves for combat duty, and free them. Congress recommended that South Carolina (and Georgia) acquire up to three thousand slaves for service, if they saw fit. Although the South Carolina governor and Congressional delegation had supported the plan in Philadelphia, they did not implement it.[98]
Letter from Alexander Hamilton, 1779 Hamilton argued that blacks' natural faculties were as good as those of free whites, and he warned that the British would arm the slaves if the patriots did not. In his 21st-century biography, Chernow cites this incident as evidence that Hamilton and Laurens saw the Revolution and the struggle against slavery as inseparable.[99] Hamilton attacked his political opponents as demanding freedom for themselves and refusing to allow it to blacks.[100]
Hamilton, often in close association with his friend John Jay, was a leader in the anti-slavery movement in New York City following the Revolutionary War. They founded the New York Manumission Society to abolish the city's role in the international slave trade, and to pass legislation that would permanently end slavery in New York State. Both goals were accomplished by 1799.[101]
In January 1785, he attended the second meeting of the New York Manumission Society (NYMS). Jay was president and Hamilton was the first secretary and later became president.[102] Chernow notes how the membership soon included many of Hamilton's friends and associates. He was a member of the committee of the society that petitioned the legislature to end the slave trade, and that succeeded in passing legislation banning the export of slaves from New York.[103] In the same period, Hamilton returned a fugitive slave to Henry Laurens of South Carolina.[104]
Hamilton never supported forced emigration for freed slaves. Horton has argued from this that he would be comfortable with a multiracial society, and that this distinguished him from his contemporaries.[105] In international affairs, he supported Toussaint L'Ouverture's black government in Haiti after the revolt that overthrew French control, as he had supported aid to the slaveowners in 1791—both measures hurt France.[106]
Hamilton may have owned household slaves, as did many wealthy New Yorkers (the evidence for this is indirect; McDonald interprets it as referring to paid employees).[107]
He supported a gag rule to keep divisive discussions of slavery out of Congress. He opposed the compromise at the 1787 Constitutional Convention by which the federal government could not abolish the slave trade for 20 years, and was disappointed when he lost that argument.[108]
End of wiki section.
Now tell me again: what did Jefferson do re slavery?
You blow smoke very well.
As I read your post, I was reminded of something from a book I am reading:
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”
Since you are arriving late to the discussion, let me bring you up to date. We were discussing Hamilton's opinion and his ideas on banking. The issue of Jefferson was a misdirection executed by Sherman Logan when he used a personal insult of Jefferson to redirect the conversation away from Hamilton's monarchical ideas. I think he used the word parasite.
Nothing like a good ad hominem to stir up the pot, as I know you can appreciate.
So, your contentions have been already answered, and if you will look backward, you will see where you were wrong.
With regard to Jefferson's slavery clause, if you remember there were four others on the writing group, and many said a “sub group” consisted of Adams and one other. The clause removal has alternately been attributed to either the convention as a whole or those two. Most seem to think it was Adams.
“Your claim that Jefferson attempted to outlaw the slave trade via the DOI was indeed nonsense.”
That is purely from your imagination. I stated clearly that he had included a clause condemning slavery in the DOI to show the canard in your characterization of Jefferson as a slave owner and “parasite”.
I have no problem in the truth that there were some states, north and south, that wanted to keep importing slaves. I think you still do.
Beginning with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, Jefferson introduced strong wording in the initial draft condemning the practices and processes of the slave trade.
In the Virginia Assembly, in the 1788, legislator Jefferson supported a bill to prohibit the state from importing slaves.
Next, in the 1784 Congress, Jefferson proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the Northwest.
As President in 1807 he signed a bill prohibiting the US from participating in the international slave trade.
Sounds like a request for sources. What are your concerns?
Let me get back to you on that.
Perhaps you somehow missed what I said to you in my previous post, so allow me to repeat it: Jefferson had slaves on his plantation throughout his life, and lived well off their labor. Further, he did not free them at his death as did Washington (except for two of Sally Hemming's family); nor did he educate them--as did Washington. And here are a few more of his deeds (from Wiki, well-referenced):
In 1798 his friend Tadeusz Kościuszko, a hero of the Revolution, entrusted Jefferson with his American estate and will, by which he intended slaves to be purchased for freedom, as he strongly supported abolitionism. He died in 1817, but Jefferson never executed his will, although he could have freed all his own slaves with the money, at no cost to himself.[8]
And then there's this:
As governor of Virginia for two years during the Revolution, Jefferson signed a bill to promote military enlistment by giving white men land, "a healthy sound Negro...or £60 in gold or silver."[37]
While president, he refused to recognize the new nation of Haiti--because there had been a slave revolt there. Liberty for me but not for thee.
What a phony your hero was.
From what I've been able to find out, the "anti-slavery clause" wasn't deleted by the drafting committee but later, after the Declaration had been presented by the committee to the Congress as a whole. Jefferson blamed the South Carolina and Georgia delegations and some of the "Northern brethren" who benefited from the slave trade.
One source (R.B. Bernstein) says that Adams fought the deletions, and the timid Jefferson didn't really express his reaction to the deletions. Another (Gary B. Nash) says that Adams particularly approved of the language in the anti-slavery clause. I don't find anyone saying that Adams killed or tried to kill the passage either in the committee or in the Congress.
The Constitution that Hamilton worked to implement saved the Union. By it, Hamilton and other able men set us on a course that paid our debt without crippling taxation. Because of them, the world watched a largely subsistence agricultural nation develop into a second tier industrial powerhouse in a little over a hundred years.
Your cheap shots directed at such men are disgusting.
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