Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1757 - July 12, 1804)

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.

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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). 

The WJMI Year in Review

Happy New Year from the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute!  We at WJMI are grateful for your support this past year.  A few statistics from 2013:

During 2013 over 9,171 people have downloaded WJMI’s free manual “Jefferson & Madison’s Guide to the Constitution” at the Federalist Papers Project: 

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/ebooks/jefferson-and-madisons-guide-to-the-constitution 

The Guide is also available on Amazon’s Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/Jefferson-Madisons-Guide-Constitution

Our Blog averages over 2,000 page views per month.  Our top blog posts are:           

Entry	Pageviews
The Declaration of Independence	9535
The Basic Principles of the Declaration of Independence	8317
Favorite Quotes from President Calvin Coolidge	4838
James Madison's "Advice to My Country"	2205
Quotes Concerning the Declaration of Independence	2044

WJMI sponsored three seminars for secondary school teachers during 2013:

     The Bill of Rights: Charter of Freedom            February 15, 2013

     Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution       September 13, 2013

     Thomas Jefferson Roundtable                            November 15, 2013

WJMI also sponsored several seminars on the Constitution for Citizens in Utah and Virginia.

Tony Williams joined WJMI as full-time Program Director in 2013. He is the author of four books on the Founding, including “America's Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation's Character” (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), all available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Williams

WJMI began to collaborate in 2013 with the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University (http://cnu.edu/cas/) and they will co-sponsor our first teacher seminar of 2014 in February on the topic of “The Life & Character of George Washington.”

We hope that you have a Happy & Prosperous New Year and commend to all this wise advice:

"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors,

and let each New Year find you a better man."

— Benjamin Franklin

The Boston Tea Party

By: Tony Williams

On December 16, Americans recognize and celebrate the 240th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  We honor what patriot John Adams called an act “so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid, and inflexible.”  Adams rightly predicted that the Boston Tea Party would be remembered as a significant event in the resistance against British tyranny. “It must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I can’t but consider it an epocha in history.” 

The events of the Boston Tea Party are familiar to most schoolchildren. The colonists were angered by the Tea Act which gave a monopoly to the East India Company and the tax that was retained from the Townshend Acts.  The Bostonians refused to allow the tea to be landed in Boston and threatened the tea agents.  After a democratic mass meeting of thousands in which Sam Adams warned that they would make “Boston harbor a tea-pot tonight!” the assembled crowd make their way to Griffin’s Wharf to destroy the tea.  Patriots dressed up like Mohawk Indians and methodically dumped an incredible 90,000 pounds of tea worth £10,000 into the water. 

For the colonists, it was not a matter of paying a few extra pence for their tea, but rather the constitutional principle of Englishmen not wanting to be taxed without their consent.  George Washington asked from Virginia: “What is it we are contending against?  Is it against paying the duty of 3d. per pound on tea because burdensome?  No, it is the right only . . . as Englishmen, we could not be deprived of this essential and valuable part of our Constitution.” 

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British passed several acts collectively known as the “Coercive Acts,” which systematically violated the rights of the colonists in Massachusetts.  Their right to trade was violated, their right to their property and not to have troops in their home without their consent was violated, their right to self-government was violated, their right to justice and local trial by jury for accused royal murderers, and their right to settle out West was violated.    

The colonists believed that these acts constituted a systematic British plan of despotism to enslave the colonists.  They argued for their rights as Englishmen, but they also argued that their natural rights from nature and nature’s God were being violated as well.  Washington wrote, “An innate spirit  of freedom first told me, that the measures, which administration hath for some time been, and now are most violently pursuing, are repugnant to every principle of natural justice; whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully convinced me, that it is not only repugnant to natural right, but subversive of the laws and constitution of Great Britain itself.”

It is no surprise then that Washington averred, “The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition.”  Although history is filled contingency and reconciliation was certainly possible to avert war and revolution at this point, it is also true that the Boston Tea Party triggered a series of events that would ultimately lead to independence and self-government for Americans. 

It is for that reason that Americans rightly commemorate the event. 

Tony Williams is the WJMI Program Director and has written about the Boston Tea Party and related events in his book America’s Beginnings: The Dramatic Events that Shaped a Nation’s Character. 

The First Whitehouse Christmas with John & Abigail Adams

“When the second President of the United States, John Adams, and his wife Abigail, moved into what would come to be known as the White House [in November 1800], the residence was cold, damp, and drafty. Sitting at the edge of a dreary swamp, the First Family had to keep 13 fireplaces lit in an effort to stay comfortable. It is in this setting that the cantankerous president held the first ever White House Christmas party in honor of his granddaughter, Susanna. It could be said that the invitations sent for this party were the very first White House Christmas cards, though in those early days, the building was referred to as the President’s Palace, Presidential Mansion, or President’s House.

The affair was planned in large part by the vivacious First Lady, Abigail Adams, and was considered a great success. A small orchestra played festive music in a grand ballroom adorned with seasonal flora. After dinner, cakes and punch were served while the staff and guests caroled and played games. The most amusing incident of the evening occurred when one of the young guests accidentally broke one of the First Granddaughter’s new doll dishes. Enraged, the young guest of honor promptly bit the nose off of one of the offending friend’s dolls. The amused president had to intervene to make sure the incident didn’t take an uglier turn.”

Following the Adams’ first Christmas in the White House, they held the first presidential levee on New Year’s Day.

“As you can imagine, the celebration was grand! Cookies, custards, and cakes, all baked in the new hearths on either side of the enormous kitchen fireplace, were served, along with all kinds of puddings, pastries, trifles, and tarts. Borrowing court etiquette from European kings and queens she had seen while John was U. S. Ambassador to Britain, Abigail regally greeted guests from a throne-like chair. Standing proudly beside her was her husband, wearing velvet breeches and lace with fashionably powdered hair.

Although that reception was a lavish affair, John and Abigail preferred more basic fare, and a few of their favorite foods, which can be traced to their New England roots, included Green Turtle Soup, Indian Pudding, and Gooseberry Fool.”

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Sources:

http://www.whitehousechristmascards.com/john-adams-1797-1801/john-adams/

http://lincolnslunch.blogspot.com/2010/07/john-and-abigail-adams-indian-pudding.html

Remember Pearl Harbor

In  the morning hours of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise air attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii (located on the south side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu).  The first wave of Japanese planes reached the U.S. Naval Station at 7:55 a.m

Almost two weeks before the strike, on November 26, 1941, the Japanese attack force, led by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, left Etorofu Island in the Kurils (located northeast of Japan) on its 3,000-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean with an armada of six aircraft carriers, nine destroyers, two battleships, two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and three submarines. 

At 6:00 a.m. on December 7^th, the Japanese aircraft carriers began launching their planes amid rough sea. In total, 183 Japanese aircraft took to the air as part of the first wave of the attack on Pearl Harbor. At 7:15 a.m., the Japanese aircraft carriers, plagued by even rougher seas, launched 167 additional planes to participate in the second wave of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

That Sunday morning, U.S. military personnel at Pearl Harbor were either still asleep, in mess halls eating breakfast, or getting ready for church. They were completely unaware that an attack was imminent.  Just before the first bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor, Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, leader of the air attack, called out, "Tora! Tora! Tora!" ("Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!"), a coded message which told the entire Japanese navy that they had caught the Americans totally by surprise. 

The Japanese onslaught lasted just two hours, but it was devastating. They had been hoping to catch U.S. aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, but the aircraft carriers were out to sea that day. The next major important naval targets were the battleships. As their planes approached, there were eight U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor, seven of which were lined up at what was called Battleship Row and one (the Pennsylvania) was in dry dock for repairs (the Colorado, the only other battleship of the U.S.'s Pacific fleet, was not at Pearl Harbor). One of the eight, the Arizona, was struck a number of times by bombs. One of these bombs, thought to have hit the forward magazine, caused a massive explosion, which quickly sank the vessel. Approximately 1,100 of her crew were killed and drowned. Including the eight battleships, enemy bombs and torpedoes destroyed nearly twenty American naval vessels and almost two hundred aircraft.  In total, more than 2,400 American soldiers and sailors died in the attack, and another 1,000 were wounded.  

The day after the assault, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. In his speech he said,

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan….No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory…With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.”

Congress approved the President’s pronouncement with just one dissenting vote.  Three days later, Japanese allies Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States.  America had been thrust into World War II.

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(Sources: http://www.history.com/topics/pearl-harbor and http://history1900s.about.com/od/worldwarii/a/Attack-Pearl-Harbor.htm)

Reflections on the Gettysburg Address

By: Tony Williams

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered all 272 words of the Gettysburg Address in a mere two minutes to dedicate the cemetery for the soldiers who died there in early July.  The result of the brief speech was one of the most profound, and certainly the most poetic, reflections upon the meaning of America.

Evoking the language of the King James Bible, Lincoln begins with the immortal words:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Lincoln takes his audience, and us, back to 1776 and the Declaration of Independence.  Throughout his public career, he appealed to the Declaration of Independence dozens of times to denounce the evils of slavery and praise the American natural rights republic in which our rights were from God, who created all men equal in those rights according to natural law and human nature.

For example, in 1858, in addition to similar statements in the debates with Stephen Douglas, he explained that the Declaration asserted a moral principle of equality that breathes life into the American experiment in liberty and self-government:

When they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

In addition, in 1859, Lincoln wrote that Jefferson’s revolutionary principle of the equality of mankind changed the world:

All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.

In the opening of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln evokes the past – taking us back to the founding or conception of the republic at its birth – and provides a vision of the American continent.  Notice the brilliant use of time and place in each paragraph which could be graphed if you’re of such a mind to do such a thing. 

In the next paragraph, Lincoln brings us to the present – an awful, bloody present in which 51,000 Americans perished at this one battlefield over three horrific days.  Instead of continent, Lincoln discusses the nation.  So, rather than birth-past-continent, this haunting paragraph gives us death-present-nation. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Note how Lincoln repeats the word “dedicate” over and over again – a nation dedicated to the principle of equality, a president dedicating a battlefield, a people dedicated to seeing the bloody civil war to its end to complete its work towards equality.  You’ll find several uses of the word in the closing. 

Listen to the poetic triplets of parallel construction in the concluding paragraph when Lincoln says, “We can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow,” and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  This rhetorical device gives the speech its magical cadence and rhyme. 

The closing takes us to the future, to the battlefield, and to the rebirth of the nation in the fulfillment of its principles from its birth as Lincoln brings us full-circle with great praise to the honored war-dead.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

With that, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps our greatest wordsmith, and arguably our greatest expositor of the ideas of the American founding reminds us that America was created as a nation of ideas – liberty, self-government, and equality of all humans. 

Tony Williams is the Program Director for the Washington, Jefferson & Madison Institute 

Recommended Jefferson Readings from Stephen F. Knott

Recommended Jefferson Readings from Stephen F. Knott:

1. The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Modern Library Classics), Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds.

This collection captures Jefferson as a polemicist for liberty -- the poet of the glorious cause and the rights of man. Jefferson’s pen elevated the American Revolution into something higher than an anti-colonial quest for independence. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “all honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

2.  The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, by Merrill Peterson

An account of how Jefferson was elevated into the American Pantheon, joining Washington and Lincoln as sacred figures in the American mind. Peterson sees Franklin Roosevelt as a key figure in the rehabilitation of Jefferson’s image, which reached its nadir during and after the American Civil War. FDR led the effort to build the beautiful Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, helped to restore Monticello, and insisted that Jefferson’s visage adorn the nickel. Roosevelt believed that Jefferson’s elevation into America’s secular trinity would serve as a healthy counterweight to the Federalist George Washington and to the Republican Abraham Lincoln.

3.   Jefferson and His Time, by Dumas Malone

This six volume set, or more appropriately, this magisterial tome, was the result of decades of diligent research and writing by Dumas Malone, who devoted his life to all things Jefferson. Malone began writing Jefferson’s biography in 1943 and published the final volume of his series in 1981, four years after he began to lose his sight. Malone admired the entire founding generation, noting that in comparison to 20th century political leaders, the founders “thought more about the future, and they knew more of the past.” Malone added that “to all who cherish freedom and abhor tyranny in any form [Jefferson] is an abiding symbol of the hope that springs eternal.”

The remaining books I am recommending tend to be more critical of Jefferson and more sympathetic toward his Federalist rivals:  

4. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Joseph Ellis

Ellis portrays a complex Jefferson who was able to “compartmentalize” the various contradictions in his life, contradictions which were quite pronounced. For instance, President Jefferson violated his own embargo which was designed to pressure Britain and France to cease their harassment of American shipping on the high seas. The President ordered an expensive piano from England but massaged his conscience by “keep[ing] it in storage” until after the embargo was lifted. Ellis offers an insightful account of the Sage of Monticello’s shifting stance on the place of slavery in the new nation – toward the end of his life Jefferson came to believe that northern hostility to slavery was part of a scheme to oppress the southern states.

5. Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side, by Leonard Levy

Levy’s seminal work shattered the myth of Hamilton as a force for evil in the founding and Jefferson as the champion of the enlightenment – a Manichean view of the founding that unfortunately persists to this day. According to Levy, Jefferson “at one time or another supported loyalty oaths; countenanced internment camps for political suspects; drafted a bill of attainder; urged prosecutions for seditious libel; trampled on the fourth amendment; condoned military despotism; used the Army to enforce laws in time of peace; censored reading; chose professors [at the University of Virginia] for their political opinions.”

6. The Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, by Forrest McDonald

A critical account of Jefferson’s presidency from a historian who is sympathetic to Alexander Hamilton. McDonald once described Jefferson’s embargo of 1807 as having the same effect as “a flea trying to stop a dog-fight by threatening suicide.” McDonald notes that President Jefferson met with considerable success in his first term, in part by overcoming his constitutional scruples and acquiring 827,000 square miles of the Louisiana territory from France for 15 million dollars.  However, Jefferson’s attempt to purge a hostile Federalist dominated judiciary and undo much of Hamilton’s financial plan met with less success. Jefferson deftly controlled Congress from behind the scenes, although over time the more radical wing of the Jeffersonian coalition began to question the President’s commitment to the Democratic-Republican ideology. Jefferson and his allies gutted the American military in order to cut federal spending and balance the budget – actions that had near-catastrophic consequences during the War of 1812.

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).