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So much can happen in 200 years that books and articles like this are nonsense. If Hamilton were Attila the Hun, there might be some sense is portraying him as pure evil 200 years after he died. But he wasn't. There was a legitimate debate about what policies would be necessary for us to survive and prosper as a nation. It's by no means clear that Hamilton was wrong.

You live in a country that is a wealthy and powerful superpower thanks in part to "Hamiltonian" policies. If you want to run him down, you ought to say whether you'd prefer to do without that national power and prosperity and take your chances with something else. I'd go further: you live in a country that is wealthy, powerful, united, and free, a country that managed not only to get rid of slavery, but also to put slavery and segregation substantially the past. All that could have been very different if things had gone differently 150 years ago.

Latin America ended up differently. The former Spanish colonies couldn't overcome natural barriers and unite with each other. Local elites retained control and could be ruthless in applying it. Racial divisions created tensions. For the most part Latin American countries didn't industrialize in the 19th and early 20th century. If they were lucky they provided raw materials for richer countries. If they didn't, they didn't have much of anything. If they'd had a Hamilton, things might have been different for them.

If there were farmers who lost their land because of industrialization, that's a bad thing (though it was largely the increasing productivity of agriculture that forced prices down and farmers out), but if slave owners got a little less return on their investment in order to promote domestic industry, was that really unjust? The government taxes alcohol and tobacco more heavily than other products because it judges them to be harmful. I can't see charging 10 bucks for something that costs 10 cents to make, but the general principle is valid. Why wouldn't it apply to slavery?