{"id":3857,"date":"2015-06-26T20:11:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T20:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3857"},"modified":"2016-08-20T15:58:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-20T15:58:03","slug":"its-all-about-the-hamiltons-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/its-all-about-the-hamiltons-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s all about the Hamiltons, baby"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott L Montgomery<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Ask most Americans who appears on each US bank note, and they\u2019ll probably have the hardest time<\/a> identifying Alexander Hamilton, who currently appears on the $10 bill.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s through no fault of Hamilton\u2019s. In the dominant narrative of American history, George Washington ($1), Abraham Lincoln ($5), the controversial Andrew Jackson ($20) and Benjamin Franklin ($100) all play more prominent roles.<\/p>\n

Maybe this was a factor in the US Treasury Department\u2019s decision<\/a> to remove Alexander Hamilton from the $10 bill by 2020. But it\u2019s a poor choice. While it\u2019s decidedly not<\/em> a bad idea to place a woman on a bill, we Americans need to have Hamilton (and his story) before us \u2013 perhaps now more than ever before.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just that Hamilton was the first treasury secretary. Hamilton\u2019s immigrant story, his role in the American Revolution, his rescue of the US economy, and, above all, his vision for the United States \u2013 all make his continued presence important and necessary.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Americans today live in a nation built upon the foundation of Hamilton\u2019s ideas.<\/p>\n

From fervent revolutionary to founding father<\/h2>\n

Born on the Caribbean island of Nevis (a British slave colony for sugar) in 1755, Hamilton was an illegitimate child and an immigrant. His mother endured an abusive marriage, poverty and jail before birthing two boys out of wedlock. Alexander was 11 when she died, and he was later adopted by a merchant, who sent the precocious teenager to America for an education when he was 17 years old.<\/p>\n

This was in 1773, three years before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Almost immediately, Hamilton launched himself into a revolutionary fervor, making impassioned speeches and publishing pamphlets<\/a> in the voice of a native patriot:<\/p>\n

What, then, is the subject of our controversy\u2026? [W]hether we shall preserve that security to our lives and properties\u2026or resign them into the lands of the British.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For a youth under 20, with the spray of an \u00e9migr\u00e9 voyage still on his shoulders, Hamilton assumed America\u2019s time of trial as his own.<\/p>\n

During the war, he performed heroic service as an artillery captain, and later worked as General Washington\u2019s aide-de-camp. The general valued him highly for his eloquence and sharp, logical mind.<\/p>\n

Hamilton quickly saw that the underfed, poorly equipped Colonial army reflected a failure of government. The Articles of Confederation<\/a> prevented the levying of taxes and conscripting of soldiers; there were powers left to the states, few of which fully supported the war. If monarchy endowed a sovereign with too much power, here, in Hamilton\u2019s mind, was the perilous opposite. Unchanged, it would offer \u2013 according to Hamilton<\/a> \u2013 \u201call the\u2026opportunity we can wish to cut our own throats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton, then, felt the urgent need for a central government that possessed powers independent of the individual states, and in the 1780s, he was a primary backer for a new constitution. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 produced a document with which he partially disagreed, but nonetheless rose to defend when it was attacked by libertarian voices. This defense took the form of The Federalist<\/a>, to which James Madison and John Jay contributed, a text considered by some as the best expression of democratic political theory ever written.<\/p>\n

The ideas that built America<\/h2>\n

Asked to be the country\u2019s first president, Washington agreed on the condition that Hamilton be his secretary of the treasury.<\/p>\n

Hamilton\u2019s first task was saving the nation\u2019s finances. America was bankrupt and lacked the ability borrow large sums. Combining European investment, taxes and government bonds, Hamilton\u2019s audacious plan worked miracles. To further strengthen public credit, he erected a national bank (over the heated opposition of Jefferson and others who feared government tyranny).<\/p>\n

The bank added much-needed stability for the nascent country\u2019s shaky finances, and though Andrew Jackson would close The First Bank of the United States in the 1830s, it would later re-emerge in 1913 as the Federal Reserve.<\/p>\n

Above all, it was Hamilton\u2019s broad vision for America for which he should be most remembered. This emerges both in Federalist Papers and in his Report on Manufacturers, which he presented to Congress in 1791.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Alexander Hamilton\u2019s Report on Manufacturers.<\/span>
\nGilder Lehrman Collection<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Report on Manufacturers<\/a>, the secretary introduced some of Adam Smith\u2019s key theories: the centrality of labor and its divisions; the value of industry and innovation; distrust of great wealth and inherited nobility; and the need for a military to defend against foreign powers.<\/p>\n

But Hamilton didn\u2019t simply parrot Smith\u2019s ideas. He also argued for nurturing home-grown industries, publicly financing science and technology and attracting immigrants (especially skilled ones). Opposed to Jeffersonian visions of a rural, small-town America having \u201centangling alliances with none,\u201d Hamilton set in motion a country that he hoped would grow to be a world power and a beacon of democratic freedoms.<\/p>\n

Hamilton hated slavery and rejected bigotry, and it was he \u2013 more than Madison \u2013 who articulated that the US had much work to do before its laws could match its enlightened ideals.<\/p>\n

Until his death, Hamilton fought to preserve a union of states that would one day be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great European powers: before perishing in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr<\/a> (whom he considered a scoundrel), Hamilton blocked a plan calling for New England to secede from the Union, with Burr as its president.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Alexander Hamilton met an untimely death after his duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.<\/span>
\nWikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A tarnished reputation<\/h2>\n

Hamilton was not democracy\u2019s saint. He wanted the president to be elected for life, and he deemed a Bill of Rights unnecessary. He was cocky, with an explosive temper.<\/p>\n

But Jeffersonians did the most damage to Hamilton\u2019s reputation. Fearing his call for a strong central government, they cast him as a lover of aristocrats and tyrants. As explored in a new book, The Shape of the New: Four Big Ideas that Built the Modern World<\/a>, such characterizations \u2013 which extended into the 20th century \u2013 were the result of the long-term war of ideas between anti-government conservatives and pro-government liberals, a struggle that very much continues to this day.<\/p>\n

Today, few Americans would proudly call themselves Hamiltonians. They should. An immigrant from a single-parent family, Hamilton had a life story reflected in those of millions of Americans. While we speak in dulcet tones about Thomas Jefferson, it is the land of Hamilton we inhabit.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this truth will come to bear. The highly praised musical Hamilton<\/a> \u2013 which is based on historian Ron Chernow\u2019s magisterial biography<\/a> \u2013 is set to open on Broadway this summer.<\/p>\n

Until then, the \u201cten dollar founding father without a father\u201d (as the musical has it) more than deserves to keep his bill.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Scott L Montgomery<\/a> is Affiliate Faculty, Jackson School of International Studies at University of Washington<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott L Montgomery, University of Washington Ask most Americans who appears on each US bank note, and they\u2019ll probably have the hardest time identifying Alexander Hamilton, who currently appears on the $10 bill. It\u2019s through no fault of Hamilton\u2019s. In the dominant narrative of American history, George Washington ($1), Abraham Lincoln ($5), the controversial Andrew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":6812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6813,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions\/6813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}