286. Alexander Hamilton
Rating: ☆☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Ron Chernow
Genre: Non Fiction, History, Biography, Politics
818 pages, published March 29, 2005
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
As the title suggests, the book is a biography of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father who had a tremendous influence on shaping the newly created United States. Author Ron Chernow conveys a compelling tale of a man who started life as a bastard as a orphan in the West Indies to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthor of The Federalist Papers, founder of the Bank of New York, leader of the Federalist Party, and the first Treasury Secretary of the United States. This biography makes the case that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s numerous sacrifices to champion ideas that were often hotly disputed during his time.
Quotes
“Perseverance in almost any plan is better than fickleness and fluctuation. (Alexander Hamilton, July 1792)”
“Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.”
“Hamilton, the human word machine.”
“In fact, no immigrant in American history has ever made a larger contribution than Alexander Hamilton.”
“If we must have an enemy at the head of government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible.”
“The law is whatever is successfully argued and plausibly maintained.”
“As too much power leads to despotism, too little leads to anarchy, and both eventually to the ruin of the people.”
“Of all the founders, Hamilton probably had the gravest doubts about the wisdom of the masses and wanted elected leaders who would guide them. This was the great paradox of his career: his optimistic view of America’s potential coexisted with an essentially pessimistic view of human nature. His faith in Americans never quite matched his faith in America itself.”
“Hamilton’s besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.”
“He had learned a lesson about propaganda in politics and mused wearily that “no character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.” If a charge was made often enough, people assumed in the end “that a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent.”
“The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends.”
“Many of these slaveholding populists were celebrated by posterity as tribunes of the common people. Meanwhile, the self-made Hamilton, a fervent abolitionist and a staunch believer in meritocracy, was villainized in American history textbooks as an apologist of privilege and wealth.”
“A prudent silence will frequently be taken for wisdom and a sentence or two cautiously thrown in will sometimes gain the palm of knowledge, while a man well informed but indiscreet and unreserved will not uncommonly talk himself out of all consideration and weight. (Alexander Hamilton’s ‘thesis on discretion’ written to his son James shortly before his fatal duel with Burr.)”
“If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraft.”
“With a ready tongue and rapier wit, Hamilton could wound people more than he realized, and he was so nimble in debate that even bright people sometimes felt embarrassingly tongue-tied in his presence.”
“The suspect nature of these stories can be seen in the anecdote Jefferson told of Hamilton visiting his lodging in 1792 and inquiring about three portraits on the wall. “They are my trinity of the three greatest men the world has ever produced,” Jefferson replied: “Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Locke.” Hamilton supposedly replied, “The greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar.”
“The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good.”
“We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned. (Hamilton’s staunch abolitionism formed an integral feature of this economic vision.) He has also emerged as the uncontested visionary in anticipating the shape and powers of the federal government. At a time when Jefferson and Madison celebrated legislative power as the purest expression of the popular will, Hamilton argued for a dynamic executive branch and an independent judiciary, along with a professional military, a central bank, and an advanced financial system. Today, we are indisputably the heirs to Hamilton’s America, and to repudiate his legacy is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.”
My Take
Given my interest in American founding, Alexander Hamilton was a pleasure to read. Author Ron Chernow brings the man and the period to life and I learned a lot about one of the greatest men in our country’s history. He is a truly inspirational figure, rising from obscurity as an illegitimate orphan from the Caribbean to become the key architect of federal power for a young United States. I am seeing the Hamilton musical in a few months and am glad to have some background knowledge of the man on whom it is based. A fascinating, highly recommended book, especially for those interested in American History.