Hamiltonian perfidy
April 14, 2008 4 Comments
About this post, Jeremy left this comment: “Sorry, this is bugging me to no end… what is the pernicious myth about Hamilton vs. Jefferson to which you refer?”
If I took the time to research a reply, I’d probably never respond, and it’s a fair question he asks, so here’s my off-the-cuff response:
When I was in 3rd grade, we were taught that Jefferson and Hamilton were not only political rivals, but that they represented opposite tendencies in the early American republic: Hamilton representing strong central authority and Jefferson representing decentralization.
So far so good, and even at age 8, I sided with Jefferson.
But since then I’ve heard other claims from modern Hamiltonians (e.g., Ric Burns, brother of Ken, in his documentary series about the history of New York): that Jefferson was for aristocracy while Hamilton favored meritocracy, that Jefferson was opposed to capitalism and opposed to industry — a sort of primitivist agriculturalist, where Hamilton was all about the power of the market and promoting commerce. These claims are misleading to say the least. A free-market Jeffersonian might even insist that they are backwards.
Then, just recently, Stephan Kinsella posted “Catoites on Hamilton v. Jefferson,” which tells us of claims that “Jefferson was also a slaveholding racist — in contrast to Hamilton, whom Wilkinson says ‘was against slavery’.”
Tom DiLorenzo replies:
Hamilton was not the moral role model that Wilkerson apparently believes he was. He owned “house slaves,” returned several runaway slaves to their owners, and once purchased six slaves at a slave auction (biographer Ron Chernow says they were for his brother-in-law). He never advocated abolition per se. He was also a notorious adulterer.
Anthony Gregory will tell you that Thomas Jefferson was not the great libertarian hero some of us sometimes make him out to be. He was especially bad in office. But I think Anthony would agree that in the context of his ideological battles with Hamilton, Jefferson was heroic, and (out of office) he was good on theory and principle as well. He wasn’t against industrial capitalism; he was against corporate welfare. There’s nothing incompatible with a hard-money free-market advocate having a fondness for farming and a suspicion of Anglo-American capitalists, who were already hand-in-glove with the State before, during, and after the War of Independence.
Hamilton, in contrast, was not in favor of capitalism (not in any free-market sense), but rather the very mercantilism that Adam Smith was denouncing in The Wealth of Nations. He was friendly to big business and industry, not the market. And Hamiltonian meritocracy resembles the Mandarin variety, whereby merit can advance you within a centralized system of privilege. It isn’t something that should be confused with individualism or liberty.
I am by no means the expert on this, but yes, I agree. I think among libertarians, we shouldn’t pretend Jefferson was a god. But Jeffersonianism is heroic.
I had a discussion with a friend last night about the Founding Fathers. I put it like this:
Modern liberals will say Jeffersonian libertarianism is tainted, because Jefferson had slaves and was in many ways a hypocrite.
Some conservatives will say it’s irrelevant if Founding Fathers had slaves — they were still tapped into all that is True and Correct. We should ignore their hypocrisy and embrace them fully.
I believe that, despite having severe problems, the Founding generation of America also had many unique virtues. I think we need to understand both the hypocrisy and the idealism to understand America.
Going back to Jefferson in particular, he was especially idealist, which made some of his hypocrisy all the more tragic and pronounced.
However, if there is one thing about the Jeffersonians: They did seem, in some ways, to be more expansionist and imperialist in their foreign policy outlook, than the Hamiltonians. At least once the ball got rolling. But even the relatively minor, somewhat Jeffersonian wars until the Mexican War were not unambiguously worse than the Hamiltonian view on national corporatism, as I understand it.
So, again, I’m no expert, but I think you’re right in your assessment of my position on Jefferson vs. Hamilton.
And in a weird spin on this, we have little Timmy Sandefur saying he loves Jefferson. What gives? Doesn’t he know Jefferson was a racist slaveowner, and also favored extreme federalism in the Kentucky Resolves? http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2008/04/happy-birthday.html
Mr. Kinsella continues to flaunt his intellectual dishonesty as publicly as he is able. While I long ago pointed out that Jefferson explicitly denied the alleged right of states to secede, and in fact called for the use of military force to stop them if they so tried, Mr. Kinsella simply ignores this fact, hoping no doubt that his silence will be more convincing than his name calling. 2) I wonder if it is at all necessary fore to explain to any literate audience that oneay admire a man, even as deeply as I admire Jefferson, while nonetheless acknowledging his errors and moral weaknesses. Jefferson was, as I have explained in depth in publications Mr. Kinsella has not taken the time to read or rebut, that Jcefferson was wrong about the Constitution in the Kentucky Resolutions. I would also hesitate to think that Mr. Kinsella is ignorant of Jefferson’s bold, if limited, legacy in fighting against slavery. Onegeeat accomplishment was his work in establishing the precedent that the federal government did indeed have the power to ban the spread of slavery into the western territories, a proposition which was in fact the proximate cause of the Civil War. Jefferson’s position was attacked of course by the Southrons like Calhoun who called it tyranny. They, too, denounced as a “self evident lie” Jefferson’s other great proposition, that all men are created equal. As an exercise in my Christian charity I will choose to believe that Mr. Kinsella has forgotten these facts.
Thanks – that truly is a pernicious myth (one I’ve never heard). Hopefully HBO’s “John Adams” miniseries will dispel much of those erroneous notions.
I consider Jefferson a hero simply because he was an actual white man that considered the possibility that the anarchy of the native americans might be viable if the constitutional republic didn’t work out. But he certainly was flawed, especially in office, which never fails to bring out the pragmatist in us all. And there’s the whole slavery thingamabob.