The Dinner - Hamilton and Madison

At the center of this chapter is a dinner party, arranged by Thomas Jefferson, between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.  According to Jefferson, by arranging this simple dinner, he had "brokered a political bargain of decidedly far-reaching significance." However, exactly what the bargain was and who got what is not a simple matter.

Conventional history declares that:

Madison agreed to permit the core provision of Hamilton's fiscal program to pass; and in return Hamilton agreed to use his influence to assure that the permanent residence of the national capital would be on the Potomac River.

But what was this "core provision of Hamilton's fiscal program"? There's the rub. Whenever money is involved, nothing is what it seems.

Hamilton's program seemed simple; he wanted the new federal government to assume the debts incurred by the states during the Revolutionary War and "all citizens who owned government securities should be reimbursed at par --- that is, the full value of the government's original promise. "

Here's the problem, as Madison increasingly saw it:

But many original holders of the securities, mainly veterans of the American Revolution who had received them as pay for their service in the war, had then sold them at a fraction of their original value to speculators. . . . The picture that began to congeal in his ]Madison's] mind was the essence of injustice: battle-worn veterans of the war for independence being cheated out of their just rewards by mere moneymen." 

But Madison had other problems with Hamilton's proposal:

. . . his core objections were economic. Most of the southern states, Virginia among them, had paid off the bulk of their wartime debts. The assumption proposal therefore did them an injustice, by "compelling them, after having done their duty, to contribute to those states who have not equally done their duty."

So why did Madison ultimately support the Assumption Bill?  Madison was from Virginia, and out of the deal his state got more than just the location of the new federal capital.

. . . the new version of the Assumption Bill would reduce the state's [Virginia's] total obligation so that the debt assumed and the federal taxes owed would turn out, rather miraculously, exactly equal ($3.5 million). Being therefore to receive exactly what she is to pay," . . . "she will neither win not lose by the measure."

Plus the capital would be in Virginia!  And that would "vivify our agriculture and commerce by circulating thro' our state an additional sum every year of half a million dollars."

So, for Virginia, it was as much about the money as the location.

The Duel - Burr and Hamilton

According to Ellis, the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr was the "culmination of a long-standing personal animosity and political disagreement" between the two men, "that emerged naturally . . . out of the supercharged political culture of the early republic."

The more immediate cause of the duel, which resulted in Hamilton's death and Burr's disgrace, was a letter published in March, 1804 by Dr. Charles Cooper in the Albany Register in which Cooper "recalled a harangue Hamilton had delivered against Burr the preceding February." Cooper didn't report exactly what Hamilton said, but the letter concluded with this statement: "I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General HAMILTON has expressed of Mr. BURR."

On June 18th, Burr sent Hamilton a letter drawing his attention to Cooper's published letter.   He wanted Hamilton to "explain or disavow" the word despicable.  It was Hamilton's response that escalated the exchange:

Hamilton's fate was effectively sealed once he sent this letter [his response to Burr]. Not only did he miss the opportunity to disown the offensive characterization of Burr; he raised the rhetorical stakes with his dismissive tone and gratuitously defiant counterthreat."

Why did Hamilton go out of his way to antagonize Burr?  Here's what Ellis writes:

The full meaning of the duel . . . cannot be captured without recovering those long-lost values of the early American republic, which shaped the way Burr and Hamilton so mistrusted and even hated each other. . . . Hamilton believed --- and he had a good deal of evidence to support his belief --- that the very survival of the infant American nation was a stake. Understanding why he entered such hyperbolic thoughts is key to the core meaning of the duel.

And why did Hamilton so hate Burr?

Burr's reputation as a notorious womanizer or as a lavish spender who always managed to stay one step ahead of his creditors did not trouble Hamilton. What did worry him to no end was the ominous fit between Burr's political skills and the opportunities for mischief so clearly available in a nation whose laws and institutions were still congealing. . .  Personal character was essential in order to resist public temptations . . . because the temptations being served up by the political conditions in this formative phase of the American republic put the moral fiber of national leadership to a true test.

In other words, Burr was a blatant political opportunist; the republic might not survive if such men secured too much power.  In 1801, Hamilton had this to say about Burr:

His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement. . . . If he can he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure himself permanent power and with it wealth. He is truly the Catiline of America. 

Everyone in Hamilton's generation would recognize the reference.  According to Ellis, Catiline "was the treacherous and degenerate character whose scheming nearly destroyed the Roman Republic and whose licentious ways inspired . . . Cicero's eloquent oration on virtue."

Hamilton was afraid men like Burr might destroy the American republic in the very hour of its birth.  They prized their own power over the needs of the fledgeling country.  It was his duty, as a man who was concerned for the country, to do as much as possible to keep such men at bay.

This was not a debate about different ways to serve the country, it was a duel to the death between the forces that would nurture the republic and those that would destroy it.

If Hamilton came back today he would probably see those same forces still at work.

Preface - The Generation

This initial chapter summarizes Ellis's take on the period after the American Revolution. Here's a key passage:

The creation of a separate American nation occurred suddenly rather than gradually, in revolutionary rather than evolutionary fashion. . . [It was] an improvisational affair in which sheer chance, pure luck -- both good and bad -- and specific decisions made in the crucible of specific military and political crises determined the outcome.

He also says that the United States was "founded on a contradiction" and is still engaged in on-going debate that has yet to be resolved.

. . . the revolutionary generation found a way to contain the explosive energies of the debate in the form of an ongoing argument or dialogue that was eventually institutionalized and rendered safe by the creation of political parties. And the subsequent political history of the United States then became an oscillation between new versions of the old tension, which broke out in violence only on the occasion of the Civil War. In its most familiar form . . .  [it is seen] as a conflict between state and federal sovereignty. 

When you consider the current "polarization" of the political process, you might wonder how much longer the two party system will be able to contain the "explosive energies" of this ongoing argument.

Historians also seem caught up in this argument as they attempt to summarize the early history of the republic.  One version is known as the "pure republicanism" interpretation or the "Jeffersonian interpretation."

It depicts the American Revolution as a liberation movement, a clean break not just from English domination but also from the historic corruption of European monarch and aristocracy. The ascendence of the Federalists to power in the 1790s thus becomes a hostile takeover of the Revolution by corrupt courtiers and moneymen (Hamilton is the chief culprit), which is eventually defeated and the true spirit of the Revolution recovered by the triumph of the Republicans in the elections of 1800.

The alternate verison "sees the American Revolution as an incipient national movement with deep, if latent, origins in the colonial era."

The constitutional settlement of 1787-1788 thus becomes the natural fulfillment of the Revolution and the leaders of the Federalist party in the 1790s -- Adams, Hamilton, and, most significantly, Washington -- as the true heirs of the revolutionary legacy. (Jefferson is the culprit.) The core revolutionary principle in this view is collectivistic rather than individualistic, for it sees the true spirit of '76 as the virtuous surrender of personal, state, and sectional interests to the larger purposes of American nationhood, first embodied in the Continental Army and later in the newly established federal government.

No matter what the interpretation, the fact is the original colonies achieved nationhood. Not only that, but they managed to create a democratic republic on a large scale -- something that had never been done before. How the Founding Fathers did it is the question Ellis explores in his series of stories about them, starting with the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

"Acknowledgements"

I'm approaching non-fiction cautiously, so I'll start with two short comments on the acknowledgements that Ellis throws in before the first chapter.

Ellis says he got the idea for his book from Lytton Strachy's Emminent Victorians.  Not having read Strachy's work, I can't comment on any similarities other than those Ellis himself points out:

Eminent Victorians made Strachy famous for the sophistication of his prejudices --- his title was deeply ironic --- but I want to thank him for giving me the courage of mine.

In other words, if Eminent Victorians is characterized by sophisticated prejudices, the same can be said of Founding Brothers.  I will be on the lookout for Ellis's "prejudices," and I can only hope I will be up for their "sophistication."

It also makes me ponder his title, the replacing of the traditional "Founding Fathers" with the term "Founding Brothers." Isn't it a clue to how Ellis will approach the traditionally stolid "fathers" of the United States, seeing them less from the perspective of history and more in the immediate context of their contemporaries?

Ellis also acknowledges a number of "colleagues" who saved him "from countless blunders." In the list I noticed the name Gordon Wood as a "brother" historian.  I recently finished Wood's lengthy Empire of Liberty, and it inspired me to go on to Ellis's book, which covers a lot of the same ground only on a much smaller scale.

As I read Ellis, I may occassionally glance back at what Wood says.  Even though Wood's book was published after Ellis's, Empire of Liberty is my personal Ur-text for the early history of the "republic" that came to be known as the United States.

Introduction

This is my second reader's blog, and my first attempt to go through a work of non-fiction. The analysis required might be different and the temptation to digress greater, but (if nothing else) it will help me "think" more about what I'm reading.

As I approach the late afternoon of my life (I can almost feel the evening chill) and become more an "historical" personage and less a full-fledged participant in current events, my interest in history increases.  After all, I'm on the cusp of becoming history, either being lost in it or remembered for a certain amount of time after my departure.

(Given the intensity of actually living, being remembered might seen a small consolation, but what are you going to do?)

In short, I've lived long enough to embody an "historical" perspective.  Ergo, my interest in history. It seems a more familiar, less forbidding place than the present.

But when I read (contemplate, mediate on?) a book of history, I'm also dealing with the idea of history. What is History, really?  As an attempt to think about that I'll conclude  with a quote from a book by Edward Hallet Carr published in 1961 (Does this already make it of questionable value? After all, it is more than 20 years old.):

All history is "contemporary history," declared Croce, meaning that history consists essentially in seeing the past through the eyes of the present and in the light of its problems, and that the main work of the historian is not to record, but to evaluate; for, if he does not evaluate, how can he know what is worth recording?