Transcript Slide 1

HAMILTON’S AMERICA—JEFFERSON’S AMERICA
An Online Professional Development Seminar
Television’s most-watched history series, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE brings to
life, on air and online, the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped
America’s past and present.
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Online premiered in November 1995 and has won
accolades from viewers and critics alike. To date, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Online has produced over 130 feature sites. These sites enable viewers to watch
films online and encourage in-depth exploration of each film beyond the television
screen.
TEACH WITH AMERICAN EXPERIENCE ONLINE
Alexander Hamilton
The story of a founding father who laid the groundwork for the nation's modern economy -including the banking system and Wall Street. He was also a primary author of the Federalist
Papers.
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Just days after the Civil War ended, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at
Ford's Theatre. As a fractured nation mourned, a manhunt closed in on his assassin, the twentysix-year-old actor, John Wilkes Booth.
The Crash of 1929
The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit
on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.
The Bombing of Germany
During the defining months of the offensive against Germany, American forces faced a moral and
strategic dilemma.
Buffalo Bill
William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's legendary exploits helped create the myth of the
American West that still endures today.
GOALS OF THE SEMINAR
To deepen understanding of Hamilton's and
Jefferson's competing visions for America.
To move classroom presentation away from the
simple polarities of Hamilton the industrialist v.
Jefferson the agrarian.
To introduce resources that illuminate the visions of
Hamilton and Jefferson, including the American
Experience film Alexander Hamilton.
To explore them as potential resources for instruction.
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Constitutional Interpretation
Foreign Policy
Independence and Economic Development
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Constitutional Interpretation
Jefferson feared that an expansion of federal powers through Hamilton’s “loose
construction” of the federal Constitution would jeopardize the survival of the
union.
What is the logic of his apparently counter-intuitive “strict constructionist” position?
How do these opposing approaches to the Constitution reflect different experiences
of the American Revolution and different visions of the new nation’s future?
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Foreign Policy
Jefferson and James Madison sought to promote American interests abroad by an
aggressive foreign commercial policy; Hamilton was more concerned with
protecting federal revenue derived from import duties on the lucrative AngloAmerican trade and therefore sought to avoid conflict with the old mother
country.
How can we reconcile these positions with the conventional understanding that
Jeffersonian Republicans favored minimal government while Hamilton and his
fellow Federalists were precocious advocates of big government?
FRAMING QUESTIONS
Independence and Economic Development
If Hamilton and Jefferson had conflicting visions of the nation’s future, they also
differed on the meaning of American independence.
What role did Hamilton and Jefferson envision for the United States in the
European state system?
How do their contrasting positions on manufactures illuminate their respective
worldviews?
PETER S. ONUF
Thomas Jefferson Memorial
Foundation Professor of History
University of Virginia
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race,
and the New Republic.
ed. (with James Horn and Jan Ellen Lewis).
2002
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of
American Nationhood
2001
Jeffersonian America
2001
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson:
History, Memory, and Civic Culture
ed. (with Jan Ellen Lewis)
1999
All Over the Map: Rethinking Region and
Nation in the United States
(with Edward L. Ayers, Patricia N. Limerick,
and Stephen Nissenbaum)
1996
Jeffersonian Legacies
1993
BACKGROUND
In the late 1700s and the early 1800s the independence and,
indeed, the very existence of the fledgling United States were
tenuous because the new republic was threatened both internally
and externally.
Internally, sectional differences imperiled national unity. Hamilton’s
and Jefferson’s contrasting visions of the nation’s future reflected
these differences.
Making matters worse, this fragile nation existed in a very
dangerous place, a world at war. The imperial rivalries of Britain and
France endangered America’s independence and placed the
nation’s fate beyond its control. Hamilton and Jefferson held
distinctive views on how the United States should maintain its
independence in this hostile global context.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia,
Query XIX (1787)
“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he
had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar
deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. … for the general
operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe. It is
better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring
them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners
and principles.”
Chapter 11:
Narrator: Hamilton is convinced that the United States must develop industry and commerce
if it is ever to become a great nation. Jefferson has a very different vision for the country. He
wants America to remain primarily rural -- independent farmers working the land with little
interference from government. Jefferson and his allies see Hamilton's powerful central
government as a potent threat to individual liberty.
See American Experience
teachers’ guide on a nation of
farmers or merchants.
Gordon S. Wood, Historian: They wanted a different kind of country. They don't want a
bureaucracy. They don't want a standing army. They don't want any of the attributes of a
European state. They don't want any of the things that Hamilton wants for the United States.
Carol Berkin, Historian: Urbanization, industrialization, finance capital -- they don't want
this. They want agriculture, independent farmers. Jefferson, you know, believes that the only
honest profit is made by the man who tills the soil. And everything that Hamilton wanted must
have seemed like a nightmare to them.
Alexander Hamilton, “Report on Manufactures,”
(1791)
“Manufactures open a wider field to exertions of ingenuity
than agriculture, it would not be a strained conjecture,
that the labor employed in the former being at once more
constant, more uniform and more ingenious, than that
which is employed in the latter, will be found at the same
time more productive. . . . women and children are
rendered, more useful, and the latter more early useful,
by manufacturing establishments, than they would
otherwise be.”
Chapter 11:
Narrator: [Hamilton] sees America as an undeveloped land with enormous
potential. He sets out to reshape the country, to transform it into one that can hold
its head high among the great nations of the world.
Alexander Hamilton, “Report on Manufactures,”
(1791)
“Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country,
appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of
manufactures….Ideas of a contrariety of interests between the
Northern and Southern regions of the Union, are, in the main, as
unfounded as they are mischievous. The diversity of circumstances
on which such contrariety is usually predicated, authorizes a directly
contrary conclusion. Mutual wants constitute one of the strongest
links of political connexion.…”
Chapter 9:
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): A new scene opens. The object now is to make our
independence work. To do this, we must secure our Union on solid foundations. It's a job for
Hercules, for we must level mountains of prejudice. We fought side by side to make America free.
Let us, hand in hand, struggle now to make her happy.
Chapter 11:
George Washington (as portrayed by actor): I have just completed my visit to the southern
states and was able to see, with my own eyes, the situation of the country. Tranquility reigns
among the people, and the new government is popular. Our public credit stands on a ground which
three years ago only a madman would have thought possible.
The United States now enjoys a scene of prosperity and tranquility, where every man may sit
under his own vine with none to molest him or make him afraid.
Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank
(1791)
“That every power vested in a government is in its nature
sovereign, and includes, by force of the term, a right to
employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to
the attainment of the ends of such power, and which are
not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in
the Constitution, or not immoral, or not contrary to the
essential ends of political society.”
Chapter 11:
Narrator: In a very short time, he [Hamilton] puts a series of monumental proposals
before Congress -- instituting a national currency, the dollar; establishing a national
bank, the forerunner of the Federal Reserve. Hamilton's vision spurs the growth of
the stock market, the engine of the country's future prosperity. He then proposes the
radical idea that the government get directly involved in the development of largescale industry. To his detractors, Hamilton seems unstoppable.
See American Experience teachers’
guide on creating a national bank.
Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank
(1791)
“The only question must be in this, as in every
other case, whether the mean to be employed or
in this instance, the corporation to be erected,
has a natural relation to any of the
acknowledged objects or lawful ends of the
government.”
Alexander Hamilton, Opinion on the Bank
(1791)
“The relation between the measure and the end;
between the nature of the mean employed
toward the execution of a power, and the object
of that power must be the criterion of
constitutionality, not the more or less of necessity
or utility.”
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on Bank
(1791)
“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this
ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United
States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To
take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially
drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take
possession of a boundless field of power, no longer
susceptible of any definition.”
Chapter 11:
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): I am not the enemy of the republic. I am not part
of that debased squadron plotting to change our republic back into a monarchy. I am not a
pimp whose stock dealers have corrupted Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on Bank
(1791)
“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase,
that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever
would be for the good of the United States…. It is an
established rule of construction where a phrase will bear
either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow
some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and
not that which would render all the others useless.
Certainly no such universal power was meant to be
given them.”
Alexander Hamilton to George Washington
(Aug. 18, 1792)
“If the policy of the Country be prudent, cautious
and neutral towards foreign nations, there is a
rational probability, that war may be avoided
long enough to wipe of the debt”
Alexander Hamilton to George Washington
(Aug. 18, 1792)
“The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this Country, by
employing the influence and force of a Government continually
changing hands, towards it, is one of those visionary things, that
none but madmen could meditate and that no wise men will
believe…. The only path to a subversion of the republican system of
the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting
their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw things into confusion,
and bring on civil commotion.”
Chapter 11:
Joanne B. Freeman, Historian: The very markers of Hamilton's success -- the fact that he's
proposing things, one at a time, and they're being enacted -- ironically enough, those are the
very things that begin to spark opposition. Because people like Jefferson begin to see a pattern,
that Hamilton in some way or another is trying to create a monarchy.
Thomas Jefferson (as portrayed by actor): Yes, I disapprove of his actions as secretary of
the treasury. With his bank and funding system, he is recreating here the rottenness and
corruption of England.
. . .
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): It's the fanatical politics waged by Jefferson that
threaten to disturb the tranquility and order of our government. He is the real enemy of
republicanism.
Alexander Hamilton to George Washington
(Aug. 18, 1792)
“It is certainly much to be regretted that party
discriminations are so far Geographical as they
have been; and that ideas of a severance of the
Union creeping in both North and South.”
Thomas Jefferson to George Washington
(Sept. 9, 1792)
Hamilton’s “system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, & was
calculated to undermine and demolish the republic, by creating an
influence of his department over the members of the legislature….”
His purpose is to subvert “step by step the principles of the
constitution, which he has so often declared to be a thing of nothing
which must be changed.”
Chapter 11:
Narrator: George Washington knows that much of this prosperity is due to the economic
policies of Alexander Hamilton. With Washington's backing, Hamilton now seems to be
single-handedly running most of the Federal government. Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson has fewer than a dozen employees, and Vice President John Adams has no
power in Washington's administration. Hamilton controls the Customs Service, the Coast
Guard, and appoints a vast network of men to collect import duties and taxes.
Thomas Jefferson to George Washington
(Sept. 9, 1792)
“This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton's views &
mine, that would wish the debt paid to morrow; he wishes it never to
be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage
the legislature.”
Chapter 9:
Narrator: Hamilton sees the debt, not as a problem, but as an opportunity. He develops an
audacious plan. He determines not only to pay off all the debt incurred by the federal government
during the war, but also to take on the even larger debts incurred by the thirteen states. The plan is
called "assumption.“
Ron Chernow, Biographer: Hamilton made a decision as the first treasury secretary that seems a
bit bizarre. He actually wanted the federal government to take over, to assume all of the debt from
the states. Now what government official actually wants to take an enormous amount of debt and
then add to that an even greater debt? Hamilton had a political agenda behind it.
Narrator: Most of the states' debt is held by wealthy and powerful men. Hamilton needs these
leaders of society to support the new federal government.
Ron Chernow, Biographer: He felt that if the federal government assumed the debt from the
states, that all of the creditors would feel that they had a direct financial stake in the survival of the
still shaky, new federal government -- because that became the government that was going to pay
them off.
Alexander Hamilton (as portrayed by actor): A national debt, if it's not excessive, will be a
national blessing. It will be the powerful cement of our Union.
Narrator: Leaders of the state governments immediately see what Hamilton is up to.
Henry Lee (as portrayed by actor): He is attempting to bind the states' creditors to the federal
government with hoops of gold. A public debt is a public curse!
Thomas Jefferson to George Washington
(Sept. 9, 1792)
“I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the
slanders of a man whose history, from the
moment at which history can stoop to notice
him, is a tissue of machinations against the
liberty of the country which has not only received
and given him bread, but heaped it's honors on
his head.”
Thomas Jefferson, “Report on Foreign
Commerce”
(1793)
Justifying “discriminating duties”: “It is not to the
moderation and justice of others we are to trust
for fair and equal access to market with our
productions, or for our due share in the
transportation of them; but to our own means of
independence, and the firm will to use them.”
Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin
(Jan. 9, 1816)
“To the labor of the husbandman a vast addition is
made by the spontaneous energies of the earth
on which it is employed: for one grain of wheat
committed to the earth, she renders twenty,
thirty, and even fifty fold, whereas to the labor of
the manufacturer nothing is added.”
Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Austin
(Jan. 9, 1816)
“Compare this state of things with that of ‘85” when TJ
published Notes, “and say whether an opinion founded in
the circumstances of that day can be fairly applied to
those of the present. We have experienced what we did
not then believe, that there exists both profligacy and
power enough to exclude us from the field of interchange
with other nations: that to be independent for the
comforts of life we must fabricate them ourselves. We
must now place the manufacturer by the side of the
agriculturist. The former question is suppressed, or
rather assumes a new form. Shall we make our own
comforts, or go without them, at the will of a foreign
nation?”
ESSENTIAL UNDERSTANDINGS
Hamilton and Jefferson were both patriotic Americans with visions of the
new nation's future greatness.
Their differences were deeply rooted in conflicting assessments of the best
way to promote and defend vital American interests--including
independence--in a dangerous, war-torn world as well as over the nature
and prospects of republican government.
For Hamilton, good government meant the concentration and exercise of
power in the federal government at home, within the union, as well as
abroad. Jefferson agreed that "energetic" government was essential in the
new nation's foreign relations, but believed that the preservation of liberty,
republican government, and federal union required constitutional curbs on
the government at home.
Hamilton feared that popular political mobilization and party politics--that is
"democracy--jeopardized effective central government, the due
subordination of the states, and intersectional harmony. For Jefferson-reluctant leader of the opposition party--a vigilant, politically active people
could alone sustain the necessary, and necessarily precarious, balance
between power and liberty.
HAMILTON’S AMERICA—JEFFERSON’S AMERICA
An Online Professional Development Seminar
FINAL SLIDE.
THANK YOU.