HAMILTON’S AMERICA—JEFFERSON’S AMERICA

An Online Professional Development Seminar

Television’s most-watched history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE brings to life, on air and online, the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present.

AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Online premiered in November 1995 and has won accolades from viewers and critics alike. To date, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Online has produced over 130 feature sites. These sites enable viewers to watch films online and encourage in-depth exploration of each film beyond the television screen.

Alexander Hamilton

The story of a founding father who laid the groundwork for the nation's modern economy -- including the banking system and Wall Street. He was also a primary author of the Federalist Papers.

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Just days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theatre. As a fractured nation mourned, a manhunt closed in on his assassin, the twenty-six-year-old actor, John Wilkes Booth.

The Crash of 1929

The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.

The Bombing of Germany

During the defining months of the offensive against Germany, American forces faced a moral and strategic dilemma.

Buffalo Bill

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the American West that still endures today.

TEACH WITH AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ONLINE

GOALS OF THE SEMINAR

To deepen understanding of Hamilton's and Jefferson's competing visions for America.

To move classroom presentation away from the simple polarities of Hamilton the industrialist v. Jefferson the agrarian.

To introduce resources that illuminate the visions of Hamilton and Jefferson, including the American Experience film Alexander Hamilton.

To explore them as potential resources for instruction.

FRAMING QUESTIONS

Constitutional Interpretation

Foreign Policy

Independence and Economic Development

FRAMING QUESTIONS

Constitutional Interpretation

Jefferson feared that an expansion of federal powers through Hamilton’s “loose construction” of the federal Constitution would jeopardize the survival of the union.

What is the logic of his apparently counter-intuitive “strict constructionist” position?

How do these opposing approaches to the Constitution reflect different experiences of the American Revolution and different visions of the new nation’s future?

FRAMING QUESTIONS

Foreign Policy

Jefferson and James Madison sought to promote American interests abroad by an aggressive foreign commercial policy; Hamilton was more concerned with protecting federal revenue derived from import duties on the lucrative Anglo-American trade and therefore sought to avoid conflict with the old mother country.

How can we reconcile these positions with the conventional understanding that Jeffersonian Republicans favored minimal government while Hamilton and his fellow Federalists were precocious advocates of big government?

FRAMING QUESTIONS

Independence and Economic Development

If Hamilton and Jefferson had conflicting visions of the nation’s future, they also differed on the meaning of American independence.

What role did Hamilton and Jefferson envision for the United States in the European state system?

How do their contrasting positions on manufactures illuminate their respective worldviews?

PETER S. ONUF

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History

University of Virginia

The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic.

ed. (with James Horn and Jan Ellen Lewis).2002

Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

2001

Jeffersonian America2001

Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture

ed. (with Jan Ellen Lewis)1999

All Over the Map: Rethinking Region and

Nation in the United States(with Edward L. Ayers, Patricia N. Limerick,

and Stephen Nissenbaum)1996

Jeffersonian Legacies

1993

BACKGROUND

In the late 1700s and the early 1800s the independence and, indeed, the very existence of the fledgling United States were tenuous because the new republic was threatened both internally and externally. 

 

Internally, sectional differences imperiled national unity.  Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s contrasting visions of the nation’s future reflected these differences.

Making matters worse, this fragile nation existed in a very dangerous place, a world at war.  The imperial rivalries of Britain and France endangered America’s independence and placed the nation’s fate beyond its control.  Hamilton and Jefferson held distinctive views on how the United States should maintain its independence in this hostile global context.

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX (1787)

“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. … for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles.”

Chapter 11:

Narrator: Hamilton is convinced that the United States must develop industry and commerce if it is ever to become a great nation. Jefferson has a very different vision for the country. He wants America to remain primarily rural -- independent farmers working the land with little interference from government. Jefferson and his allies see Hamilton's powerful central government as a potent threat to individual liberty.

Gordon S. Wood, Historian: They wanted a different kind of country. They don't want a bureaucracy. They don't want a standing army. They don't want any of the attributes of a European state. They don't want any of the things that Hamilton wants for the United States.

Carol Berkin, Historian: Urbanization, industrialization, finance capital -- they don't want this. They want agriculture, independent farmers. Jefferson, you know, believes that the only honest profit is made by the man who tills the soil. And everything that Hamilton wanted must have seemed like a nightmare to them.

See American Experience teachers’ guide on a nation of farmers or merchants.

Alexander Hamilton, “Report on Manufactures,”

(1791)

“Manufactures open a wider field to exertions of ingenuity than agriculture, it would not be a strained conjecture, that the labor employed in the former being at once more constant, more uniform and more ingenious, than that which is employed in the latter, will be found at the same time more productive. . . . women and children are rendered, more useful, and the latter more early useful, by manufacturing establishments, than they would otherwise be.”

Chapter 11:

Narrator: [Hamilton] sees America as an undeveloped land with enormous potential. He sets out to reshape the country, to transform it into one that can hold its head high among the great nations of the world.

Alexander Hamilton, “Report on Manufactures,”(1791)

“Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures….Ideas of a contrariety of interests between the Northern and Southern regions of the Union, are, in the main, as unfounded as they are mischievous. The diversity of circumstances on which such contrariety is usually predicated, authorizes a directly contrary conclusion. Mutual wants constitute one of the strongest links of political connexion.…”

Chapter 9:

Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): A new scene opens. The object now is to make our independence work. To do this, we must secure our Union on solid foundations. It's a job for Hercules, for we must level mountains of prejudice. We fought side by side to make America free. Let us, hand in hand, struggle now to make her happy.

Chapter 11:

George Washington (as portrayed by actor): I have just completed my visit to the southern states and was able to see, with my own eyes, the situation of the country. Tranquility reigns among the people, and the new government is popular. Our public credit stands on a ground which three years ago only a madman would have thought possible.

The United States now enjoys a scene of prosperity and tranquility, where every man may sit under his own vine with none to molest him or make him afraid.

Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank

(1791)

“That every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes, by force of the term, a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power, and which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the Constitution, or not immoral, or not contrary to the essential ends of political society.”

Chapter 11:

Narrator: In a very short time, he [Hamilton] puts a series of monumental proposals before Congress -- instituting a national currency, the dollar; establishing a national bank, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve. Hamilton's vision spurs the growth of the stock market, the engine of the country's future prosperity. He then proposes the radical idea that the government get directly involved in the development of large-scale industry. To his detractors, Hamilton seems unstoppable.

See American Experience teachers’ guide on creating a national bank.

Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank(1791)

“The only question must be in this, as in every other case, whether the mean to be employed or in this instance, the corporation to be erected, has a natural relation to any of the acknowledged objects or lawful ends of the government.”

Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank(1791)

“The relation between the measure and the end; between the nature of the mean employed toward the execution of a power, and the object of that power must be the criterion of

constitutionality, not the more or less of necessity or utility.”

Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on Bank

(1791)

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”

Chapter 11:

Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): I am not the enemy of the republic. I am not part of that debased squadron plotting to change our republic back into a monarchy. I am not a pimp whose stock dealers have corrupted Congress.

Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on Bank

(1791)

“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States…. It is an established rule of construction where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which would render all the others useless. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them.”

Alexander Hamilton to George Washington(Aug. 18, 1792)

“If the policy of the Country be prudent, cautious and neutral towards foreign nations, there is a rational probability, that war may be avoided long enough to wipe of the debt”

Alexander Hamilton to George Washington

(Aug. 18, 1792)“The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this Country, by

employing the influence and force of a Government continually changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things, that none but madmen could meditate and that no wise men will believe…. The only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw things into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.”

Chapter 11:

Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: The very markers of Hamilton's success -- the fact that he's proposing things, one at a time, and they're being enacted -- ironically enough, those are the very things that begin to spark opposition. Because people like Jefferson begin to see a pattern, that Hamilton in some way or another is trying to create a monarchy.

Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): Yes, I disapprove of his actions as secretary of the treasury. With his bank and funding system, he is recreating here the rottenness and corruption of England.

. . .

Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): It's the fanatical politics waged by Jefferson that threaten to disturb the tranquility and order of our government. He is the real enemy of republicanism.

Alexander Hamilton to George Washington(Aug. 18, 1792)

“It is certainly much to be regretted that party discriminations are so far Geographical as they have been; and that ideas of a severance of the Union creeping in both North and South.”

Thomas Jefferson to George Washington(Sept. 9, 1792)

Hamilton’s “system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, & was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic, by creating an influence of his department over the members of the legislature….” His purpose is to subvert “step by step the principles of the constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing which must be changed.”

Chapter 11:

Narrator: George Washington knows that much of this prosperity is due to the economic policies of Alexander Hamilton. With Washington's backing, Hamilton now seems to be single-handedly running most of the Federal government. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson has fewer than a dozen employees, and Vice President John Adams has no power in Washington's administration. Hamilton controls the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, and appoints a vast network of men to collect import duties and taxes.

Thomas Jefferson to George Washington(Sept. 9, 1792)

“This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton's views & mine, that would wish the debt paid to morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the legislature.”

Chapter 9:

Narrator: Hamilton sees the debt, not as a problem, but as an opportunity. He develops an audacious plan. He determines not only to pay off all the debt incurred by the federal government during the war, but also to take on the even larger debts incurred by the thirteen states. The plan is called "assumption.“

Ron Chernow, Biographer: Hamilton made a decision as the first treasury secretary that seems a bit bizarre. He actually wanted the federal government to take over, to assume all of the debt from the states. Now what government official actually wants to take an enormous amount of debt and then add to that an even greater debt? Hamilton had a political agenda behind it. Narrator: Most of the states' debt is held by wealthy and powerful men. Hamilton needs these leaders of society to support the new federal government.

Ron Chernow, Biographer: He felt that if the federal government assumed the debt from the states, that all of the creditors would feel that they had a direct financial stake in the survival of the still shaky, new federal government -- because that became the government that was going to pay them off.

Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): A national debt, if it's not excessive, will be a national blessing. It will be the powerful cement of our Union.

Narrator: Leaders of the state governments immediately see what Hamilton is up to.

Henry Lee (as portrayed by actor): He is attempting to bind the states' creditors to the federal government with hoops of gold. A public debt is a public curse!

Thomas Jefferson to George Washington(Sept. 9, 1792)

“I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received and given him bread, but heaped it's honors on his head.”

Thomas Jefferson, “Report on Foreign Commerce”

(1793)

Justifying “discriminating duties”: “It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with our productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.”

Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin(Jan. 9, 1816)

“To the labor of the husbandman a vast addition is made by the spontaneous energies of the earth on which it is employed: for one grain of wheat committed to the earth, she renders twenty, thirty, and even fifty fold, whereas to the labor of the manufacturer nothing is added.”

Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin(Jan. 9, 1816)

“Compare this state of things with that of ‘85” when TJ published Notes, “and say whether an opinion founded in the circumstances of that day can be fairly applied to those of the present. We have experienced what we did not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange with other nations: that to be independent for the comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We must now place the manufacturer by the side of the agriculturist. The former question is suppressed, or rather assumes a new form. Shall we make our own comforts, or go without them, at the will of a foreign nation?”

ESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDINGS

Hamilton and Jefferson were both patriotic Americans with visions of the new nation's future greatness.

Their differences were deeply rooted in conflicting assessments of the best way to promote and defend vital American interests--including independence--in a dangerous, war-torn world as well as over the nature and prospects of republican government.

For Hamilton, good government meant the concentration and exercise of power in the federal government at home, within the union, as well as abroad. Jefferson agreed that "energetic" government was essential in the new nation's foreign relations, but believed that the preservation of liberty, republican government, and federal union required constitutional curbs on the government at home.

Hamilton feared that popular political mobilization and party politics--that is "democracy--jeopardized effective central government, the due subordination of the states, and intersectional harmony.  For Jefferson--reluctant leader of the opposition party--a vigilant, politically active people could alone sustain the necessary, and necessarily precarious, balance between power and liberty.

HAMILTON’S AMERICA—JEFFERSON’S AMERICA

An Online Professional Development Seminar

FINAL SLIDE.

THANK YOU.