By: Stephen F. Knott
Since the day Aaron Burr fired his
fatal shot in the notorious duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in July, 1804,
Americans have tried to come to grips with Alexander Hamilton’s legacy. A
controversial figure in his time and ours, Hamilton is often portrayed as the
most reactionary member of the founding generation — the man who hoped to foist
a crown upon America and called the people a “great beast.” Although Hamilton
did not advocate the former and probably never said the latter, he remains for
many Americans the founding’s villain.
It is unfortunate that many
Americans have this distorted image of Hamilton, for no man worked more
assiduously for the ratification of the American Constitution than Alexander
Hamilton. Hamilton had many doubts about the efficacy of the Constitution, yet
as the guiding force behind The
Federalist Papers and for the remainder of his life, he arrayed all of his
formidable intellectual talents in defense of our nation’s charter.
Hamilton was well aware that he was part of a unique generation (Tom Brokaw to
the contrary, this was America’s greatest generation) whose decisions would
prove to cynics around the globe that men were capable “of establishing good
government from reflection and choice” rather than on “accident and force.”
On Alexander Hamilton’s birthday,
perhaps George Washington’s perspective on his closest advisor is worth
pondering. As the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Washington observed
that Hamilton filled “one of the most important departments of government with
acknowledged abilities and integrity.” Washington went on to note that Hamilton
was “enterprising, quick in his perceptions” and that his
judgment was “intuitively great.” Responding to Hamilton’s critics, Washington
noted that some considered Hamilton to be an “ambitious man, and therefore a
dangerous one. That he is ambitious I shall readily grant, but it is of that
laudable kind which prompts a man to excel in whatever he takes in hand.”
As Americans living under the
Constitution, we are the modern beneficiaries of Alexander Hamilton’s great abilities,
intuitive judgment, and laudable excellence.
_____________________________
Stephen F. Knott is a member of the Board of Visitors of
WJMI, a Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War
College and the author of Alexander
Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth (2002).
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