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In this part of focus 580 we will be exploring the life of a man who many would consider to be one of the most overlooked perhaps the most overlooked of all of the founding fathers and also considering everything that he did and achieved during his lifetime. Perhaps one of the greatest Americans never to have served as the president of the United States. The man we're talking about here is Alexander Hamilton. He was born in the West Indies and he came to New York just as a teenager from rather disadvantaged circumstances. But he rose quickly at 22. He acted as essentially as chief of staff to George Washington during the American Revolution. At 32 he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention at 34. He founded the Treasury Department and died when he was only forty nine killed in a duel with Aaron Burr that's perhaps one of the few things that most Americans could tell you about Alexander Hamilton other than perhaps that he was the first secretary of the Treasury this morning in this part of the program we'll be talking with the author of a new biography which is titled Alexander Hamilton Our guest is Ron Chernow. He is the author
of several other biographies and has won a number of awards for his work his first book The House of Morgan won the National Book Award in 1990. His other books include the warbirds. He has authored a biography of John D Rockefeller and titled Titan. It was a bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His new book Alexander Hamilton is published by the Penguin Press. You should certainly be able to find it in the bookstore Now if you want to read it. And the questions here are welcome. All we ask of people who call in is just that they're brief. So then we can keep the program moving but of course anyone who is interested in calling can do that. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Mr. Stern a hollow pleasure to be here with you. Well we appreciate you giving us some of your time. You know I think that when you look at what Alexander Hamilton managed to achieve in his life his contributions to
America certainly significant in and of themselves. I guess though that I think to me it looms even even larger when you look at the circumstances of his birth and his childhood the fact that when he was young his father left the family not long after that his mother died. He didn't have other relatives to turn to. He was he was extremely disadvantaged when he started out. And when you look at what it is he managed to achieve. To me that he that makes it even more. I know you're a very bright I mean this was a nightmarish to Kens in childhood it is as you pointed out his father abandoned the family when he was 11 his mother dies suddenly when he's 13 and then in fact he's he's farmed out to this first cousin who. It's suicide. A year later and then he's toiling away at this trading firm on St. Croix in the Caribbean today part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. And so the idea that this illegitimate orphaned
kid would end up as one of the founding fathers of the United States is a trucker a novelist and I had invented this. People would find it incredible. So obviously he was both very bright and also you can see from the course that his life took that he was a very ambitious man as a as a young man he was and that was something that continued to ambition continued to drive him and may in fact have been his own doing ultimately you know. Well you know I mean he lacked what in the 18th century they called the birth breeding certainly money just the story of how he is. Gave from the Caribbean I think tells a lot because this visit and Norfolk who had to live by his wits and there was a monster hurricane last synchro and he sat down he wrote a description of such a precocious force in eloquence that the local merchants banded together to finance his education in North America which is how he ends up going you know as an adolescent from the
Caribbean to New York and he Studies at King's College where it was later renamed Colombian already as an undergraduate because he becomes an undergraduate around the time the Boston Tea Party. He's delivering spellbinding speeches to large crowds he's writing the blazing polemical pamphlets against the British even picks up must get in these dealing with his fellow students in nearby churchyard so one of the wonderful things about writing this story when the extraordinary things about the man is that he's a great thinker and and doer he's not only one of the great intellectuals in American history but as we see during the revolution he's actually something of a daredevil. As you mentioned he he managed to get enough support so that he could go to to New York to go to university and I guess before that also went to a prep school. In Elizabeth New Jersey New Jersey before that did he. Do we know much about whether he had what he had in the way of
formal schooling. You know very little of because Hamilton had such a horrifying childhood that he essentially shut the door on the past. Once he came to North America he never revisited the Caribbean he scarcely ever even referred to it. One of the very very few references he ever made he said his earliest memory was of standing on a table he was born in the British island of Nias and he remembered standing on a table on the verse reciting the Ten Commandments in Hebrew to a Jewish woman. Now this sounds like a very bizarre helpful self apocryphal agony but it was. It was that the idea of us about a quarter of the islanders supported Jews when there was school and so you probably had some tutoring from an elderly woman which is often the way that education in the Caribbean. We know that he then spends adolescence on saying Roy and towards the very end of his stay there is a Presbyterian minister named Hugh Knox who recognises this vendor Kintz in their midst
and Hugh Knox opens his library to young Alexander. But there doesn't seem to be much evidence of formal schooling he seems to be one of the great autodidacts in American history and he certainly seemed to have a great skill at speaking off the cuff. He did marvelously well he also wrote it during his lifetime wrote a stunning amount of material absolutely stunning amounts and in fact the most recent edition of his Collected papers runs to 22000 pages was published by Columbia University Press and evidently the chief editor of the papers used to joke that he intended to dedicate these 27 volumes to Ehrenberg quote without his cooperation this project would never have been completed I mean Hamilton was a shoe. Word machine and I say in the book I think that he probably wrote this theoretical maximum number of words that a human being can write in 49 years.
You know what I think what's important to or at least it seems very important when you think about his background and think about how he is often perceived as being the polar opposite of Jefferson and that Jefferson is styled to be the man of the people his ideal American was the yeoman farmer he believed in the centralized government all answers. And that Hamilton himself is often represented as being if not an aristocrat someone who was an elitist and who identified with the aristocracy. And that when you look at it it seems odd really that you would see him that way considering the fact that he was that it wouldn't help much. I mean he was the ideal self-made man is he was he was an ardent abolitionist. And so you have to perhaps reassess who he really was and consider how after he was dead people who had been his political enemies shaped the way that he was
seen. Yeah I know I mean one of the great ironies of this period is that Thomas Jefferson who's always represented as the tribune of the common people you know 200 slaves and then Hamilton who was I was derided as the pseudo aristocrat wrister crowd was a passionate abolitionist throughout his life in fact even during the American Revolution. He and his friend John Lawrence championed a plan to emancipate any slave who was willing to pick up a musket for the Continental Army as soon as the revolution is over. Hamilton co founded the first abolitionist Society in New York you also when he was treasury secretary he lends his name and prestige to what later became Hamilton College. It was originally designed to educate Native Americans. He said a very sympathetic and enlightened things about Jews this tendency back then. It is devoid of prejudice. There was elite
elitism you know one of the differences between Hamilton Jefferson was that Chavis and least on paper profess to have much more faith in the wisdom of the common people. Hamilton cells that the electorate was more likely to be swept by popular and dangerous passions to be manipulated by demagogic leaders and so he felt very strongly that politicians should be educated well-informed people who responded to their own sense of principle rather than simply reflecting the popular will. You know so there's the grain of truth to the stereotype but I try in the book to point out. This period is often presented as a kind of you know morality play were Jefferson is the good guy combating the evil Hamilton in the story. It was much much more complicated than that. Well then there's another other thing obviously at work here the fact that
Hamilton died relatively young he was only forty nine when he was killed in this do also he wasn't around to speak for himself or defend himself after that. And to what extent are do you think our perceptions of Hamilton know or people's perceptions of Hamilton in the past had been shaped by Jefferson or others who indeed were his political opponents when he was alive. Yeah I mean it's a good point because Alexander Hamilton had a very very unusual knack for making friends in the equally unusual knack for making enemies and the enemies he made tend to be very powerful enemies. So he's made enemies are John Adams Hama's Jefferson James Madison James. Well I've just named presidents two three four and and five and particularly Adams and Jefferson both out of Hamilton by 22 years. They conduct the grandest correspondence in American political history. It's fascinating for anyone who's never read. Correspondence and there are moments in that correspondence where the one big thing that
Thomas just seemed to have in common is their hatred of Alexander Hamilton Not only that Hamilton not have a chance to respond because I'm sure Hamilton's memoirs would have been luminous five years before Hamilton died. George Washington who was his great patron died so Washington dies without having written his memoirs and so you know history is not only written by the victors histories written by that the long lived. Let me introduce again for people who might have tuned in our guest with this part of focus We're talking with Ron Chernow. He is the author of a new biography of Alexander Hamilton that's the title of the book. It's published by the Pentagon press it's just out and questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Another one. Those questions that I'm sure comes up a lot is that given everything that Hamilton did and the role that he played
in forming the American government in its early stages how is it that Alexander Hamilton not not only did he was he never president he apparently never even sought the presidency yet he never received a single electoral vote the highest that he rose was the first treasury secretary. But I should point out that when he was the first treasury secretary the treasury department was much larger than the rest of the government combined So when you tell someone he was the first treasury secretary doesn't sound all that impressive but in fact his role in Washington's administration was much more akin to that of a Prime Minister lets say than to be a Treasury sector because about 90 percent of the government employees are in the Treasury Department Of course he has to create that from scratch. Just answer your question I think that there was a kind of hierarchy among the revolutionary leaders in terms of age. Washington was 23 years older than Abbott he became president.
Adams is about 20 years older. He became second. Jefferson was the third Prez. And I think he was about 13 years older than Alexander Hamilton so it's probably that Hamilton has cut for his turn in the right rotation has his come but they also argue in the book that Alexander Hamilton I think possibly the greatest policy maker in American history was not the greatest politician he was often an awful politician because he was so candid he was so outspoken and opinionated and uncompromising in his opinions that you know the great politicians tend to be much more guarded in their statements much more hopeful in their statements and Alexander Hamilton you know thought that it was demagogic to constantly flatter the American people and tell them how wonderful they've been how wonderful the country was and of course these are the things our great politicians of almost instinctively understood that that's the way to go.
The voters hearts and there is another thing that you also write about. The book in that that he had in his past a sex scandal and the suspicion was that if he if he would indeed run for president or put himself forward as a candidate for president that would come out and cause great embarrassment at their hurt to his family and probably to scuttle the effort. You know I know that you just said no one has come to my knowledge in previous biographies that made this point. Hamilton for an entire year when he was treasury secretary was having an adulterous affair with young Mrs. Reynolds and then Mr. Reynolds began to blackmail Hamilton Hamilton's enemies Jeffersonian get wind of his affair in this like a five year period where they know about the affair but don't go during those five years. Hamilton is aware and is made aware that if he ever were to run for president the sexual scandal would be revealed
and would do damage. It was obviously to his wife and and his many children and so I think that this is an unspoken reason. We're not overlooked reason why Hamilton never became president and this was it was another case where he had the affair husband finds out. Then the blackmail started this appears to have been a deliberate set up to create a situation where he could be blackmailed. Yeah I think so what about happened just briefly tell the story. The government was then Philadelphia when the 23 year old Mariah Reynolds comes to Hamilton's door s to speak to him privately. She spills out this woeful tale how she's been abandoned by her husband and kid Hamilton provide financial aid in Hamilton later wrote that when he went around Mrs. Reynolds rooming house that night with a bank note where he found her at the top of the stairs. She invited him into her bedroom and then he memorably
said once we were in the bedroom it became clear that other than the CUNY of a consolation would be acceptable. So Hamilton imagines that he's rescuing this damsel in distress but in fact Mr. Mrs. Runnels seem to have been have CONfidence tricked tricksters because suddenly Mr. Randall surfaces from the blue and instead of putting an end to the closers affair he begins to charge Hamilton Ford in Hamilton. Amazingly enough treasury secretary most powerful man the government begins to pay blackmail money to Mr. Annan. It doesn't seem to have the will power to break until it's gone. You know it shows you know other cases of this among politicians that some of the smartest politicians can do some of the most foolish things imaginable. Well stepping back a little bit we talked earlier by his childhood about the fact that he went to first a prep school in New Jersey and then he went to King's College which later became
Columbia University in New York and his studies were interrupted by the revolution and he left King's College. He never did get a degree there. And he became a commander of an artillery company in New York. What did he have any sort of previous military experience before that. No that you know he started the race just reading different books on military history and gunnery he seemed to be one of these people who could teach him so. Semester almost anything in fact one of the most touching things about his story is that during the revolution he's effectively Washington's chief of staff for years during the revolution and from camp to camp. He's lugging a tremendous folio sized volumes called the dictionary of trade and commerce and we see in the empty pages of the military pay but his recording notes on population growth foreign exchange geography European Riverview see himself at night even during dinner if allusion is giving himself a crash course in history finance
and politics and it looks like he's already at this early stage of grooming himself to be treasury secretary. Later on it's quite incredible the way he can teach himself things. So how does he come to the attention of George Washington. Well you know one of the characteristics of Hamilton he had the orphan's knack for impressing influential people from the moment that he get steps off the boat in North America. And there are various revolutionary board generals including And. William Alexander nothing agreed and then finally Washington himself. Battle of White Plains ensuring the subsequent retreat across the seas Hamilton in action with his artillery company and is very very impressed by this young man and his discipline and his professionalism and with his company in Hamilton was a rather slight Fleming's about 5 foot 6 rather slight
build and he's extremely courageous on the battlefield and he instills this crisp discipline and his men so it seems like all of the generals notice him in fact. One thing about Alexander Hamilton throughout his life is that anyone who spends even five minutes in his company recognize that he is someone of exceptional intelligence and ability. Perhaps you could talk a bit more about the relationship between Hamilton and. Washington sometimes it seems to have been described as something of an almost a relationship of father and son and I think that maybe you argue that that's that's really not the right way to look at. I get nothing from it kind of captures the chemistry of what went on you know since Washington was 23 years older and seven inches tall it's kind of natural to think in terms of a father son relationship but Hamilton was a
very very headstrong young man and I think that you did not find it easy to be the number two anyone even George Washington I think the Very Young Man on Washington Hamilton is the only one who could easily imagine himself running the running the Army. But it becomes even though it doesn't have the warmth of a father's son relationship it's a little bit more business like this tremendous mutual respect more than mutual affection. These two men are very complementary talents because Roth Washington has this extraordinary patriotism integrity and great judgment and great judgment was not something that Howell than we had Hamilton has the policy brilliance and the flair and the stamina and so Washington needs a great policy. Making mind Hamilton in turn needs political cover and also Hamilton is a very volatile personality. He needs the guiding and unsteady
judgment of George Washington as a Hamilton does actually his best work. When he's in harness to George Washington when Hamilton is on his own and just shuffling his own judgment his own judgment was very very fallible. We have a caller here someone on the cell phone to bring into the conversation so we will do that. Make them wait on our line number four. Hello. To call there. Hello yes yes this is Bob in Bloomington. Sure. I'm in my car so I'm going to ask you a question can hang up and then listen. OK. One I'd like to know either people of course are written about how to commute situate your work in relation to them and what contribution you make that they don't. And second your books are all about very powerful and wealthy people. And I'd like to know what has drawn you to your topic. Thanks a lot and I'll hang up in less than an hour. Right well in terms of you know what I added one of the reasons that I did this book is that between 1961 1987 there was a brand new edition of
Hamilton's Collected papers published by Columbia University Press and almost quadrupled or quintupled the amount of information we had of how to do the extraordinary additions not only everything written to Hamilton but they scoured the world every diary entry every newspaper reference I had phenomenal materials to work with. I supplemented it with a lot of original research not only in this country but in Caribbean archives in Denmark and Scotland and England so I think I'd like to think that I cast the net much wider than before and there had not been the kind of big cradle to grave go for broke full length book on Hamilton since the 1960s. So there had been some very good short bio bios about one aspect or another of Hamilton's life and the second question now one was can do well he was he was remarking on the kinds of other subjects that I've written and what what is it that
ties them together. There anything you know it's kind of lasts. Some people imagines are just fascinated by Richmond which is not what has drawn me to these books. What I felt was that economic history had been overlooked that economics and finance were kind of the unseen dimension of history. And so what I tried to do and in these books is I see them as mainstream history where blending not only political and social history but also the kind of economic and financial history that often forms the secret backdrop of mainstream history but which I felt had not been sufficiently emphasized. And then in order to make the books palatable and entertaining as possible they've also been in the form of biographical narratives and family sagas. I've learned as a historian that if I can engage
people in human dramas it's amazing how much information they can absorb if given that information just in the abstract form that shut the book after 10 pages so that you know that the story is but Luers them in and once you have them lured into the to the story people are only too happy to get a good history lesson. In what ways is the. The American economy what it is today as a result of Hamilton and maybe that's our way of asking the question but you know what is it you know what it is I'm asking you know. Well you know there's a public side the private side the private side. At the same time the Jeffersons vision was of a nation of farmers and that we would you know remain as an agrarian Eden if we ever were of course a lot of the reality of slave holding plantations in the south.
Well you know when farmers but Hamilton has a competing vision and he has a vision of a nation that would have traditional agriculture you realize that would be important for a very long time. But he also foresaw a nation that would have banks and stock exchanges corporations and factories at a time when this was considered very scary futuristic stuff and he actively helped to establish these things. None of the established the first central bank the forerunner of the Federal Reserve Board when he was treasury secretary to co-found the Bank of New York. Still the 11 largest bank in the country old the stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He co-founded this futuristic industrial city that's now in New Jersey. The terms of the government itself. Well as treasury secretary just to rattle off the list to create the first customs service for its Coast Guard for its tax system first budget system government. Systems present today and most
important of all he's making the enduring constitutional argument that these are permissible act. So he's actually creating the fiscal and monetary system of the federal government while at the same time I think tremendously enlarging the range of possibilities in the private economy. Our telephone number here if you'd like to call in and join the conversation 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have that toll free line that's good anywhere that you can hear us. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Again our guest is Ron Chernow author of a new biography of Alexander Hamilton the I suppose one of the reasons that perhaps some people found to dislike him was that they saw him as a climber a social climber and he certainly you certainly can see him that way and I guess they're one of the things that you would look at would be his marriage his interest too to
find someone who was from a wealthy and important family and he certainly found that in Elizabeth Schuyler whose father was a general and one of the leading families of New York was that in addition to being an advantageous match was that also a lot of manage. I think it was you know let me just say I you know I think that Hamilton. Clearly illegitimate you know orphaned impoverished kids from the Caribbean and I think that you know our other founders Washington Jefferson Madison grow up on these you know that slave plantations and in Virginia I think that Hamilton's upward mobility is something that should be celebrated what he did with his life. Hamilton admitted that he needed to marry into money because Hamilton was involved in the sexual scandal that I was talking about before.
People have imagined that he was unhappily married just because he was involved in the sex scandal. One of the things that I hope I show in the in the book One thing I hope I've contributed to this. Do about this I think was an extraordinarily happy marriage. They had children in fact they showed that Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton his wife outlived them by 50 years. They open the book with the scene of the lives of Hamilton who lived almost a civil war she died at age 97. November 9th November 18th. And she spent a lot of her final years lovingly preserving every scrap that he ever wrote as she was an amazing woman who co-founded him for nearly three decades ran the first orphanage in New York and it's clear from all of the letters that I quote from her during her widowhood that she absolutely adored him and we have all of his letters
to her. And I must say they're affectionate they're tender. There is not a single unkind word over the approximate 24 25 year period of them and in her letters to him. Steroid so that side of the conversation we don't have. Yeah in fact she was a very religious woman she was right so facing she thought he was the important one of the she felt that he belonged to history so that his papers should be preserved. She didn't feel that she should be part of the historical record so she can sign deceptive security so in the book she tried to put herself in the system like you trying to drag her out of the shadows because I think that she was a remarkable woman and I think that her own personal humility should not allow her to be forgotten.
Well that's another interesting I think significant point about the Hamiltons and given the fact that she was who she was that she had been married to Alexander Hamilton that she lived for such a long time afterward. She of of all of the wives of the founding fathers She is also seems to be much less known her profile as is not anything like Martha Washington or John Adams wife or Mrs. Madison or any of those women. Yeah I know there's no question I mean Abigail Adams was an absolutely brilliant devastatingly sharp funny perceptive writer and of course Martha Washington's life as my Republican Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton is much more private she's much more domestic. She's not a great beauty she's not a great intellectual but I tried to show in in in in the book is there she was a woman. She was of a man of great charm and attractive. But she was
a woman I think of extraordinary integrity and I hope as people read this book and kind of understand what a volatile intense character Hamilton was if you did not have this loving steadying influence in his life I don't see how he could have done it because she was also very very forgiving because this was a man who strayed and because he had strayed it was thought that with him not appreciative of his wife I think that he most emphatically was so it's kind of a quieter set of virtues but for me no less moving in Chris Brown when he dies. Left Hamilton dies and she's left with seven children between the ages of two and twenty brings in will still do interesting and significant things. His
amazing story of human doings of elves with the genes that medical attention to herself. Well little attention. We have some callers to talk with. Let's do that. Start first with someone in Chicago. Line four. You know just a momentary diversion from the main body of fear of the protest. For those who may have an interest I'm going to spare Eden the Keurig cemetery of St. Paul's Chapel which is set upon a Broadway and Fulton Street in the New York. That's a block from Ground Zero and part of the Trinity Church complex Trinity Church itself was just a few blocks away from there. Well Washington. Went to church during a stay in New York City when he was first inaugurated president. You write this. Sure a lot of men all say he Emily I just want to know I don't build things.
How it is actually buried in Trinity Church yard a few blocks to the south but you're absolutely right that after Washington's inauguration they walk up Broadway they pray at St. Paul's Chapel which wraps the rice krispie treats from ground zero in fact when Hamilton was an undergraduate at King's. Now Columbia at that point it was located on the Hudson River downtown and so Hamilton with his student group they used to drill in the churchyard at Saint pools which is literally across the street from Ground Zero its kind of point is in fact. You know I live in Brooklyn Heights just across the river from Manhattan not far from Ground Zero and I'll never forget when they finally after 9/11 opened up that forget seeing Hamilton and Eliza's grave covered with the white ash from the World Trade Center. So you say well yes so you should be apply from the fence surrounding the churchyard with
stated that Hamilton was buried there. So this is of course this goes back years ago. No it's just the chopper was just across the street from the old AT&T main offices and Western Electric main offices. If some of the points of interest for those who might have interest in it would you have a question or something just Or if I just wanted to mention it was for anyone who was interested. OK very good. Let's continue let's go to champagne in this is line 1. Oh yeah. Earlier you were talking about the guest was talking about Hamilton's many enemies. And it struck me that they really didn't fall on political lines. And could you could you touch on how these enemies were made and then also on what his vision for the new country was because it was it was quite different than Jefferson but he shared some aspects with Adams and you know let
me just. Send him back for the broadly characterize the different visions of Jefferson because Jefferson is saying you know we're a nation of farmers. He wanted strong states weak central government you know he stressed state's rights and strict construction of constitution tax cuts limited government. HAMILTON So this much of a bustling diversified economy that in addition to agriculture there would be factories trading commerce stock exchanges and the like. Hamilton favored a strong central government. The president very broad construction of the Constitution in terms of Hamilton's envision a making it sing point most of his enemies. War political enemies that is most of them are identified with Jefferson and the Jeffersonian camps of Jefferson Madison Monroe even even even people in the political opposition.
John Adams is kind of an exceptions are an interesting one because he and Hamilton are at least nominally co-head of the same party called the Federalist In fact they have quite a lot. There are a lot of differences in their views but there's also quite a lot of overlap. I mean for instance that both prescience about the French Revolution they should have been strong comrades in arms and yet end up having the most bitter dispute and when Adams is president he excludes Hamilton from the inner circle and yet he feels that his Cabinet is secretly beholden to and manipulated by Alexander Hamilton it was a difficult relationship because Adams was a generation old. I mean Adams is already a towering figure on the continent. Congressman Alexander Hamilton is literally an undergraduate in the 20 years apart in age Washington becomes president. Adams becomes the first vice president. And yet Adams is essentially on the outer. Edge the outer edges of
the administration excluded from the policymaking circle and so Adams when he's vice president has to watch this list and what if I have to watch young Alexander Hamilton the 34 year old treasury secretary who is essentially running the government and who has George Washington's year so that you could see where this resentment toward Hamilton the feeling that he was an unworthy young upstart. You know and who is he to wield all this this power you could kind of see where the tension between them began. It has certainly has been noted if you look at again going back to to Hamilton and Jefferson and their ideas of America that even though Jefferson is the one who was the more embrace then particularly I think Republicans like to to have him to be their model that if we could if we brought them both back and show them what America was that I don't think Mr. Jefferson would be too happy at least.
Hamilton would look around and say Now this is kind of what I had in mind and Jefferson would probably say no this is not what I had and you know absolutely you know whether you love Hamilton or you hate Hamilton I think the one thing in the spirit of the world we live in is much much more the world that Alexander Hamilton in vision and where is Jefferson's visions and dreams and Teague and outmoded at this point so Hamilton was the prophetic figure and of Crist because he endorsed a lot of these different economic institutions that would come to play a large role in the future. But things like banks were considered very scary at the time I mean Jefferson Madison even Adams thought the banks were evil institutions and so Hamilton who was in favor of banks if you're if you're promoting evil institutions the suggestion that's really rise is that you must be evil so that a lot of the different the kind of villain ization of Hamilton that takes place to my mind is
inseparable from a lot of the attitudes that were prevalent particularly in the area and have toured a lot of you know modern financial and economic and institutions that Hamilton is associated with. Let's talk with someone else. Urbana. Mine too low. Hello youre on the track that I was thinking on. Hamilton's economic vision for our very new country and the charge that I keep running into is that he is among other things exceedingly elitist even though he certainly didn't start to start out that way. Wanted to. Didn't didn't seem interested in the dispersing the wealth in the picture I get and I don't know if that's accurate.
Well you know I think that at the time you know now the question of whether to you know distributed redistribute wealth is in the last century is one that has become part of the political system. But it's not really part of politics at the time because there were no income taxes. The idea for instance whether have a progressive tax system right or not doesn't arise at all because the country is financed by import duties and that is a tax on liquor so that there's no way that the. Government can redistribute wealth. I thought there was in the not necessarily through government redistribution but just to have a wide ranging economy. Like I said the picture I get which may be erroneous is that he wanted wealth controlled by a limited number of people.
Well you know it's interesting because the Jefferson who speaks in this very kind of egalitarian language the underlying reality is the slaveholding system which has the most unequal system imaginable. Hamilton if you read for instance his report on manufacturing he believes in a meritocracy he believes in a diversified economy where there will be a very very wide variety of economic institutions and all that then you have a right to be. Appreciate that. Read it. I know this is kind of the story other than in a lot of ways and also since Hamilton. You know what happened then became Treasury secretary. The United States was literally a bankruptcy country. We were bankrupted by revolutionary war debt. Hamilton introduces a program in order to pay all of the revolutionary war dead and restore American public credit. There are a lot of different finance ears and speculators who you know scoop up this depreciated debt and
make a large amount of money. And so they were the beneficiaries of the Hamiltonian system from the point of view of the Jeffersonian Zinn's kind of look how Hamilton was rewarding the speculators. That was not the. That was a incidental side effect of what he was doing it was not why he was doing it because he wanted to enrich the speculators he wanted to restore the American public credit in fact when Hamilton becomes the first treasury secretary you know we're paying like the highest interest rates in the world because we're like the Third World. By the time Hamilton leaves office five years later the United States is qualifying through interest rates as low as the most credit for these countries in the world. That's really what Hamilton. I was interested in the fact that speculators profited off that appreciation of what had been very depressed to get them and that didn't bother him as much as it clearly bothered the Jeffersonian so it felt like that was the whole point of
the exercise but I honestly don't think that Hamilton saw it that way and for him this is just an unavoidable side effect of restoring public credit. Now that I think the cause. Let's go to line 3 also in Urbana. Well yeah you did mention that Alexander Hamilton in his report to the secretary of treasury on the subject of manufactures was the first one that systematically set out the end of an industry argument. We're talking about protectionism which is galling to economic conservatives and something else. I don't know if you've read Michael Lynn in The Observer in England. He wrote a piece giving that we have a lot of work. We
currently have a lot of similarities with the fundamentalist Muslims and he points out that Hamilton wasn't worried about Americans becoming decadent or corrupt. He was more worried about them becoming exceedingly self-righteous. That's wonderful those two things out and see if you have any calculation like this this coming quickly because you're right that in the report a man such as Hamilton argues for various forms of protection although he savored down tease for Ensign industries rather than tariffs which would be passed along to consumers. I'm not certain that Hamilton the hundred should separate. 200 years later but still have been in favor of protectionism because he lays out arguments that the United States since it would be competing in a in the world a very established nation states that it needed at that point as it were as a developing country it needed some protection I don't think that he would have advocated it
as the United States became a more developed country. On the second point one thing that worried Hamilton Jefferson thought strongly that the United States would begin to humanity that the American Revolution you know should then be copied around the world. Hamilton obviously wanted democracy to spread around the world but Hamilton also thought that every democratic revolution would be have would have to be tailored to the particular customs and traditions of the country he didn't think that kind of you know one model fits all. And I think that maybe that's a handy insight at the moment. We see we try to get one more caller in and we have just a couple. That's left. We have someone on the cell phone line one. Hello. Yeah I joined the program and I am it's on I'll have an answer. Answer my questions I'll hang up. I was struck with the longevity of Hamilton when all and I was just curious of any of his children how long they'd lived if any of them lived into the 1900s. And then with
regards to the duel I was wondering if Hamilton if he died instantly what the bill's about and what was the final outcome with Aaron Burr heading up. Thank you. OK. OK take the second question first. Hamilton was shot on the morning of July 11th in a four you can see we're about to have the 100th anniversary of that he he died about 30 hours later in the West Village of Manhattan. The duals. So that's a complicated story since we're at the end of the show that very read in the newspaper is that Hamilton had a despicable opinion about him Hamilton refused to apologize and retracted both of them are competing over the same political turf in New York so that there was a political dimension to it. The difference question was well he noted as you have.
Long ago I got it but largely because there were at the time he died there were there were seven surviving children. They all did interesting things one became an assistant or an acting secretary of state and render Jackson two of them became U.S. attorneys in New York. They all had long lives they didn't live. They lived towards the end of the 19th century and none lived in the twentieth century so off the top of my head not aware that any of the children made it to age 97 right as as their mother's as did the younger. Well we're at the point where we're going to have to stop there's of course much much more in this book and it might indeed change some of your ideas about Alexander Hamilton so if you were interested you could seek it out. The title of the book is simply Alexander Hamilton. It's published by Penguin Press and by our guest Ron Chernow who is also author of the books the house of Morgan the Warburg and Titan which is a biography
of John D Rockefeller. Mr. Journal thank you very much for talking with us it's been a great pleasure thank you.
Program
Focus 580
Episode
Alexander Hamilton
Producing Organization
WILL Illinois Public Media
Contributing Organization
WILL Illinois Public Media (Urbana, Illinois)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip-16-gx44q7r577
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip-16-gx44q7r577).
Description
Description
With author Ron Chernow, award-winnig writer
Broadcast Date
2004-05-27
Genres
Talk Show
Subjects
Government; u.s. presidents; History; Biography; Books and Reading
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:50:09
Embed Code
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Credits
Guest: Me, Jack at
Producer: Me, Jack at
Producer: Brighton, Jack
Producing Organization: WILL Illinois Public Media
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Illinois Public Media (WILL)
Identifier: cpb-aacip-91318a4703e (unknown)
Generation: Master
Duration: 50:05
Illinois Public Media (WILL)
Identifier: cpb-aacip-02b9c769d4f (unknown)
Generation: Copy
Duration: 50:05
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Focus 580; Alexander Hamilton,” 2004-05-27, WILL Illinois Public Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-16-gx44q7r577.
MLA: “Focus 580; Alexander Hamilton.” 2004-05-27. WILL Illinois Public Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-16-gx44q7r577>.
APA: Focus 580; Alexander Hamilton. Boston, MA: WILL Illinois Public Media, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-16-gx44q7r577