Alexander Hamilton

by Ron Chernow

  By the time Hamilton completed eight “Defence” and three “Philo Camillus” essays, President Washington had signed the Jay Treaty in mid-August 1795 despite a steady drumbeat of press criticism. At first the treaty’s prospects had looked poor, but the American economy was booming from British trade while French trade had dropped by more than half since the Bastille was stormed in 1789. With the treaty approved, Hamilton did not rest his pen. If anything, its passage gave his “Defence” essays extra weight as an authoritative exposition.

  Hamilton had become the treaty’s undisputed champion. Fisher Ames thought he was so far superior to his Republican critics that he had squandered his talents in writing “The Defence”: “Jove’s eagle holds his bolts in his talons and hurls them, not at the Titans, but at sparrows and mice.”65 Though of a different political persuasion, Jefferson agreed that the Republicans had provided no effective antidote to Hamilton’s poison. It was a difficult time for Jefferson, who was suffering from rheumatism at Monticello. He was reading the “Defence” series, forwarded to him by John Beckley, with mounting upset. He feared that Hamilton was winning the argument, and by September 21 he could stand it no longer. Once again, he turned to Madison as his proxy. In so doing, Jefferson gave voice to the sheer terror that Hamilton’s intellect inspired in him and paid his foe one of the supreme lefthanded tributes in American history. He told Madison:

  Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican party. Without numbers, he is an host [i.e., an army or multitude] within himself. They have got themselves into a defile, where they might be finished. But too much security on the Republican part will give time to his talents and indefatigableness to extricate them. We have had only middling performances to oppose to him. In truth, when he comes forward, there is nobody but yourself who can meet him.66

  Before Jefferson requested his aid, Madison had been cocky in his critique of Hamilton’s performance, stating that “Camillus...if I mistake not will be betrayed by his anglomany into arguments as vicious and vulnerable as the treaty itself.”67 Now that Jefferson asked him to rebut those arguments, Madison beat a hasty retreat from the challenge.

  While Madison shrank from verbal jousting with Hamilton, he continued to wage a vigorous legislative campaign against the Jay Treaty. He did so by pouncing upon an interpretation of the Constitution so unorthodox as to provoke a full-blown constitutional crisis. Back in the distant days when they had coauthored The Federalist Papers, Madison and Hamilton had jointly explained why the Constitution gave the Senate—with its long terms, learned members, and institutional memory— the sole power to ratify treaties. Now Madison found it expedient to argue that approval of the Jay Treaty fell within the bailiwick of the House of Representatives as well, because it had the power to regulate commerce. Of this astonishing proposition, biographer Garry Wills has noted that it was more than a “loose construction” of the Constitution: “It amounted to reversal of its plain sense.”68

  Once upon a time, Jefferson had applauded the notion that the populist House would retain power over money matters while foreign affairs would be assigned to the more patrician Senate. Eager to scotch the treaty, he now altered his position: “I trust the popular branch of our legislature will disapprove of it and thus rid us of this infamous act.”69

  Hamilton considered the legislative threat to the Jay Treaty as tantamount to a House veto—something that would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the American system. Fortunately, Hamilton was in an excellent position to resume his protreaty crusade. Rufus King had just completed his “Defence” essays dealing with the commercial side of the treaty, allowing Hamilton to cap the series by tackling the new constitutional issues. In early January, he devoted the last two essays of “The Defence” to exposing the absurdity of letting the House scrap a treaty. If such a precedent was established, the “president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, can make neither a treaty of commerce nor alliance and rarely, if at all, a treaty of peace. It is probable that, on minute analysis, there is scarcely any species of treaty which would not clash, in some particular, with the principle of those objections.”70 If Madison’s novel argument stood, the federal government would be unable to manage relations with foreign countries and would have to cede such authority to a squabbling, pontificating Congress.

  The young country seemed to face another clash on basic governance issues, another battle over the true meaning of the Constitution. Led by Madison, the Republicans seemed willing to hazard all to kill the treaty. John Adams told Abigail that the “business of the country . . . stands still.... [A]ll is absorbed by the debates.” If the Republicans remained “desperate and unreasonable,” he warned, “this Constitution cannot stand....I see nothing but a dissolution of government and immediate war.”71 Under the shadow of this impasse, business slowed, prices fell, and imports declined.

  In pushing the treaty, the major asset that the Federalists possessed was still George Washington, the unifying figure in American life. For Jefferson, Federalism was a spent force sustained only by the president’s unique stature. Hence, Republicans decided that the time had come to shatter the taboo about criticizing Washington, and they declared open season on him. Once again, the Republican press drew a facile equation between executive power and the British monarchy. On December 26, 1795, Philip Freneau wrote that Washington wanted to enact the Jay Treaty to elevate himself to a king: “His wishes (through the treaty) will be gratified with a hereditary monarchy and a House of Lords.”72 This sort of vicious abuse, once reserved for Alexander Hamilton, was now directed at the venerable Washington. The president heard rumors that Jefferson was leading a whispering campaign that portrayed him as a senile old bumbler and easy prey for Hamilton and his monarchist conspirators. Jefferson kept denying to Washington that he was the source of such offensive remarks. Joseph Ellis has commented, however, “The historical record makes it perfectly clear, to be sure, that Jefferson was orchestrating the campaign of vilification, which had its chief base of operations in Virginia and its headquarters at Monticello.”73

  In the early days of Washington’s presidency, James Madison had been his most trusted adviser and confidant. Now in early March 1796, Madison risked an unalterable break with Washington by supporting a congressional demand that the president turn over the private instructions given to Jay to guide his negotiations— instructions that Hamilton had largely assembled. Hamilton, outraged, urged Washington to protect the confidentiality of these executive discussions; being Hamilton, he listed thirteen compelling reasons for such executive privilege. If Madison prevailed, it would set a precedent that “will be fatal to the negotiating power of the government, if it is to be a matter of course for a call of either House of Congress to bring forth all the communications, however confidential.”74 Hamilton’s position toughened in coming weeks, and by late March he advised Washington that he should send no reply whatever to the House and “resist in totality.”75 If the House gained the power to nullify a treaty, Hamilton warned, it would destroy executive power and erect “upon its ruins a legislative omnipotence.”76 Hamilton and Madison were again pitted in a fundamental contest over whether the executive or legislative branch would run American foreign policy.

  Hamilton was relieved when Washington denied Congress the treaty instructions. With this request spurned, Madison and House Republicans vowed to starve the treaty by blocking appropriations needed to implement it. Hamilton wanted Washington to deliver a solemn protest to Congress, citing “the certainty of a deep wound to our character with foreign nations and essential destruction of their confidence in the government.”77 Partly at Hamilton’s instigation, the Federalists organized meetings of merchants and circulated petitions to promote the treaty. “We must seize and carry along with us the public opinion,” Hamilton told Rufus King.78 A tremendous outpouring of popular feeling arose on both sides of the issue, and mass rallies in many cities culminated in pro or con resolutions. When a demonstration against the treaty w
as called for the Common in New York City— the same public space where Hamilton had made his dramatic debut as a student orator—he sent a broadside to be distributed to those attending. He invoked the glorious wartime service of Washington, Jay, and others who now stood accused of selling their souls to England: “Can you, I ask, believe that all these men have [of] a sudden become the tools of Great Britain and traitors to their country?”79

  At first, Madison had been energized by the sense of a congressional majority backing him, but the Federalist campaign slowly whittled down this strength. Adams noted the toll on a shaken Madison. “Mr. Madison looks worried to death. Pale, withered, haggard.”80 On April 30, 1796, Federalists eked out a razor-thin victory of fifty-one to forty-eight in the House to make money available for the Jay Treaty. Hamilton’s “Defence” essays may well have tipped the balance. Biographer Broadus Mitchell concluded, “It is a fair inference that Hamilton’s arguments for the treaty made the difference between acceptance and rejection.”81 For Madison, the vote confirmed Washington’s power and the success of scare tactics employed by the Federalists. Always searching for sinister cabals, Madison also believed that northern merchants and banks had bought the vote, though it was probably the general prosperity spawned by trade with England that enlisted the sympathies of ordinary citizens.

  Wrangling over the Jay Treaty cost Madison his friendship with Washington. Washington was so indignant at what he regarded as Madison’s duplicity that he unearthed the secret minutes from the Constitutional Convention and showed how the framers, Madison included, had refused to give the House the power to thwart the executive branch in making treaties. Madison was sure that Hamilton had goaded Washington into this “improper and indelicate act,” though it was actually Washington’s own doing.82 Washington never forgave Madison, never sought his counsel again, and never invited him back to Mount Vernon. It was a crushing defeat for the short, erudite Republican leader. Federalist pamphleteer William Cobbett gloated of Madison, “As a politician he is no more. He is absolutely deceased, cold, stiff and buried in oblivion for ever and ever.”83 Jefferson likewise refused to concede that the treaty had passed on its merit or because of Hamilton’s inspired advocacy; he credited the Federalist victory to the prestige of Washington, “the one man who outweighs them all in influence over the people.”84

  Increasingly disillusioned with both Jefferson and Madison, Washington felt a corresponding warmth toward Hamilton. Even though he was no longer in the cabinet, Hamilton was still the one who helped Washington to reconcile political imperatives with constitutional law. The two men had won a great victory together: they had established forever the principle of executive-branch leadership in foreign policy. Shortly before the House vote on the treaty, Washington thanked Hamilton “for the pains you have been at to investigate the subject” and assured him of “the warmth of my friendship and of the affectionate regard” in which he held him.85 Washington had never expressed friendship for Hamilton so fervently before. For Hamilton, the Jay Treaty victory represented the culmination of his work with Washington. By settling all outstanding issues left over from the Revolution, the treaty removed the last impediments to improved relations with England and promised sustained prosperity.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  SPARE CASSIUS

  As demonstrated by his leadership on the Jay Treaty, Hamilton was more than just the principal theorist of the Federalists. He was also their chief tactician and organizer, mobilizing the faithful through numberless letters, speeches, and writings. Most astounding of all, his political work formed just one portion of his demanding life, and perhaps not the most time-consuming one. “I am overwhelmed in professional business and have scarcely a moment for anything else,” he told Rufus King two years after leaving office.1 By common consent, he was New York’s premier lawyer, with an elite clientele that included the city of Albany and the state of New York. “He was employed in every important and every commercial case,” noted James Kent. “He was a very great favorite with the merchants of New York.”2 With so much lucrative work, he now earned three or four times his Treasury salary, but he did not aim to maximize his income. As Attorney General William Bradford once teased him, “I hear that...you will not even pick up money when it lies at your feet....You were made for a statesman and politics will never be out of your head.”3

  Often the political and legal sides of Hamilton’s life dovetailed. He handled many maritime-insurance cases stemming from the seizure of American ships by foreign powers. He also argued notable constitutional cases, finally traveling to Philadelphia in early 1796 to defend before the Supreme Court the constitutionality of the carriage tax he had introduced as treasury secretary. “He spoke for three hours,” said one newspaper, “and the whole of his argument was clear, impressive and classical.”4 The court approved Hamilton’s argument that this excise tax was legal and that Congress had power “over every species of taxable property, except exports.”5 The decision in Hylton v. United States not only endorsed Hamilton’s broad view of federal taxing power but represented the first time the Supreme Court ever ruled on the constitutionality of an act of Congress.

  With his life engrossed by work, Hamilton had little leisure time left over for the scientific, scholarly, and artistic pursuits that embellished the days of Jefferson. He was chronically overworked and increasingly absentminded. Months after leaving office, he wrote to the Bank of the United States and admitted that he did not know his account balance because he had lost his bank book—this from the man who had created the bank. He did allow himself some vacation time. During the summer of 1795, he made a three-week journey to meet with Indian tribes at Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. From a sketchy journal he kept, it appears this was basically a business trip involving a land sale, enlivened by ceremonial meetings with tribal leaders. In the autumn of 1796, Hamilton spent five days hunting and riding horseback on Long Island with two friends, a trip that may have been therapy for medical problems. His old kidney disorder had flared up, forcing Hamilton to renounce champagne forever. “We got a few grouse and the ride restored Hamilton’s digestion,” reported his friend John Laurance. “He was not well.”6 This was the extent of Hamilton’s wanderlust. It is odd that the man who melded the nation so closely together through his fiscal policies never arranged a pleasure trip through the United States.

  Hamilton’s failure to travel to Europe or even the south is explained partially by his workload, but his attachment to family may have been no less important. After his Long Island adventure, he rushed off to Albany to argue a case and wrote to Eliza from the Schuyler mansion, “I need not add that I am impatient to be restored to your bosom and to the presence of my beloved children. ’Tis hard that I should ever be obliged to quit you and them. God bless you my beloved.... Y[ou]rs. with unbounded Affec[tion] A Hamilton.”7 Hamilton wrote dozens of such tender notes to Eliza. Whatever his imperfections, he was a caring father and husband who often seemed anxious about the health and welfare of his family. Once the Maria Reynolds affair ended, he was not eager to leave Eliza and the children alone.

  Alexander and Eliza continued their longtime practice of sheltering orphans. On October 1, 1795, George Washington Lafayette, son of the marquis, appeared incognito with a tutor in New York. Hamilton had never lost his affection for Lafayette, who he thought would recover his popularity in France after the Revolution faded, but the arrival of Lafayette’s son posed a thorny situation for George Washington. The marquis was still imprisoned by the Austrians at the Olmütz fortress, and young Lafayette wanted American help in freeing him. With his paternal regard for Lafayette, Washington dearly wanted to embrace his son, but the Jay Treaty furor made this a vexed question. Washington already stood accused of antiFrench bias, and Lafayette, while a certified hero of the American Revolution, had been branded a traitor to the French one.

  For Washington, suspended between his personal feelings and political necessity, it was an exquisitely painful predicament. Though he was in
clined to have Hamilton send the two young men to Philadelphia, Hamilton thought it prudent to postpone this, and he took the two young Frenchmen into his home. “The President and Mrs. Washington would gladly have received them into their family,” Eliza recalled, “but state policy forbade it at that critical time. The lad and his tutor passed a whole summer with us.”8 Actually, it was the whole winter. For six months, the Hamiltons tried to cheer up the gaunt, melancholy youth before he was finally allowed to see Washington in April 1796 as the Jay Treaty crisis waned.

  It was to be more than a year before Lafayette was released from prison and wrote to Washington after what he described as “five years of a deathlike silence from me.”9 Both thrilled and relieved, Hamilton wrote at length to Lafayette, assuring him that their friendship would “survive all revolutions and all vicissitudes.... No one feels more than I do the motives which this country has to love you, to desire and to promote your happiness. And I shall not love it, if it does not manifest the sensibility by unequivocal acts.” If Lafayette ever needed asylum in America, he would receive a cordial reception: “The only thing in which our parties agree is to love you.”10 Alexander Hamilton seldom used the word love three times in one letter.

  The Republican demonizing of Alexander Hamilton only intensified after he left the Treasury Department. To opponents, he seemed able to manipulate the government from New York. That Hamilton came to exercise profound influence over the distant cabinet members is patent from his extensive correspondence with them. What is equally clear, however, is that he did not obtrude in some power-hungry, ham-handed fashion but was gradually invited into their deliberations.