[abp:0195392434]
The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2007, is part of The Oxford History of The United States series. I've also read the Oxford books which, chronologically, precede and follow it, Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 and James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. All are terrific.
I blogged about the Wood book here, in part regarding the irony that Hamilton's economic program during the republic's early years was so successful it made him and his class obsolete, and led to the demise of the Federalist party and their attitudes. The idea that there was a natural aristocracy whose privilege it should be to govern the masses was replaced by ideas of the thousands of successful new men ("middling sorts") that Hamiltonianism produced. These new men believed they had as much right to govern as the self-appointed elite, even more given they could better understand the common man's interests. I pointed out that:
The irony that it was Hamilton’s economic programs that gave rise to the men who would replace him and his class would not be lost on Hamilton. After Jefferson’s election in 1800 he knew his time was through and he feared that everything he and the other revolutionaries had fought for had been subverted: “This American world was not meant for me.”
I went on further to discuss the age-old question regarding which viewpoint prevailed in the long run, the Hamiltonian or the Jeffersonian view. I declared my belief that we live in a Hamiltonian world but that Jefferson had won the argument, i.e. that granting the kind of power to the federal government that Hamilton wished, and got, would lead to the very type of coercive government that we now live under. Today's gargantuan government is the logical end-point of unchecked Hamiltonianism.
But Jefferson's Republican Party was complicit, as Howe points out in his book. Had Hamilton lived a few decades longer he may have been achieved some sort of satisfaction knowing that the Republicans who fought so vehemently against his programs would come to adopt many of them themselves. During his presidency, Madison, backed by Jefferson, proposed a Second Bank of The United States; the running of a national debt in order to finance constitutionally-questionable national infrastructure; and protective tariffs; three of the most bitterly disputed issues of Hamilton's economic program in the early days of the republic. What the Republicans had argued then as immoral and unconstitutional became part of their own agenda. While Howe points out that the Republicans had quite different reasons than the early Federalists in adopting these views, what struck me was how easily politicians shed their prior moral and intellectual objections once it became politically expedient for them. You can't change the spots on a leopard.
Which leads one to the conclusion that where we are now was probably inevitable. Given a country the size and complexity of the United States, with all its regionalism and diversity of color, religion, and attitude, it may matter little who won the initial republican arguments or small vs. large federal government, weak vs. strong states rights. Right off the bat the federal government held the upper hand and, given the nature of men and politicians, it was only a matter of time before leviathan appeared on the scene. The wonder may be that we held out so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment