![]() For the new system to work, though, quarterly interest payments had to be punctually made. To do so, he refunded a mass of old wartime IOUs with three new bonds, with characteristics that aided both bondholders and the government. This shines through most clearly in Washington’s Farewell Address, which Hamilton helped to write, and which boils down to ‘peace through strength.’Īs for protective tariffs, or in other words, tariffs high enough to reduce imports, Hamilton never implemented one, because his primary goal as America’s first Treasury Secretary was to establish the nation’s credit rating, after its predecessor had defaulted on its debts to disastrous effect. While Hamilton wanted America to grow larger and more powerful in due time, he was also opposed to it getting into costly, needless wars. He also would have opposed the era’s big tariffs. ![]() Hamilton was a staunch advocate of a bimetallic standard, after all, and the Federal Reserve looked little like his private Bank of the United States. ![]() In fact, I think he would have taken up his pen alongside Garet Garrett and other New Deal critics. While true that Hamilton believed that a somewhat-larger and more effective government that did not trample upon individual liberties was possible, it does not follow that he would have sided with Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, much less Joseph R. It was within that context of limited government that the famous debates between Hamilton and the Jeffersonians, about the elastic and general welfare clauses, took place. It could try to do other things, like more firmly establish justice, but not at the expense of Americans’ rights or liberties. Like James Madison and the others, Hamilton believed that the Preamble and the Ninth Amendment – that’s the one that mentions unenumerated rights retained by the people – made clear that the federal government’s primary function was the protection of individual liberty. Barnett calls the “ presumption of liberty” interpretation of the US Constitution. Like all the Founders and Framers, Hamilton was what is today called a classical liberal, someone who believed in what law school professor Randy E. Perhaps the most important thing to understand about Alexander Hamilton today, however, is that he did not, repeat, did not, espouse massive government, militarism, or protective tariffs. His funding system did indeed cement together the fragile new union, and he laid the groundwork for America’s subsequent corporate and legal development. I and others have already explained how Hamilton did not, in fact, want a large, permanent national debt, nor just one big bank, nor a manufacturing monopoly, nor any of the heinous policy crimes of which he now stands accused. Most recently, National Conservatism ( NatCon) pundits like Julius Krein insist that Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures called for big government in general, and protective tariffs in particular, to bolster their view that America today needs “strategic tariffs” as part of a “ national industrial policy.” This attempt to capture Hamilton’s legacy, like so many others that have come before, is based on an outdated misreading of Hamilton’s Report and of the actual policies he pushed through Congress. Some loved Hamilton, some hated him, and some wrote musicals about him, but only a handful fully understand his impact on US economic development and policy. Knott built a career studying Hamilton’s reception by scholars and the American public over time. Ever since Aaron Burr gut-shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804, the legacy of the most controversial Founder and Framer has been fought over by people from throughout the political spectrum.
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