Hamilton and Jefferson's Conflicting Visions

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had visions for a young America that can be seen today, but these two brilliant minds were often on competing sides of the same issues. Hamilton wanted to see America be a better version of great Britain. He wanted a strong central government and thought the few elite should be in charge, while the common people voted and followed the lead of the superior members of society. Jefferson wanted the exact opposite, preferring a smaller government with less influence on state matters. He thought the common man should not only vote for the leaders, he should be the leader himself. Unlike Hamilton, he drew inspiration from the French revolution and was against the traditional hierarchy determined by class and wealth. The two men were also divided on how society and economics would best thrive. Hamilton believed in capitalism and big urban areas, while Jefferson envisioned a society based on agriculture. Jefferson believed that in this way there would be more equality of wealth. Jefferson did not trust bankers, as he thought they had too much control over the economy and were a small elite group. Hamilton believed in industry and infrastructure and a society that might benefit the upper classes. Hamilton also supported the idea of a national bank and he created the debt assumption plan that helped relieve America of the debt that came after the revolution. Jefferson did not want the national bank and he believed that the federal government should stick to the constitutional rights given to them and not impose a national bank that he considered unconstitutional (strict construction). Hamilton was arguing the opposite in favor of the national bank because he believed the constitution granted the government powers to do what it wanted to do in order to fulfill the constitutional rights it was granted. What examples of this interpretation do we see today?

The Conservative Side of Alexander Hamilton

Even though most people today, and even most people in the 19th century would easily be able to see how liberal and progressive Alexander Hamilton was -- after all, he was the one to revolutionize the American economy by developing a complex banking system that had never existed within the country prior to this. However, there is reasonable evidence hinting that Hamilton was actually very conservative throughout his years as a politician, as explained in an essay titled, "Alexander Hamilton and American Progressivism" by political scientist professor Carson Holloway of the University of Omaha. In this text, Holloway describes how the reason Hamilton chose to solve problems through creating systems new to the US (such as its national bank) is because he saw that they "had been tested by experience and found to be useful," not because he was able to develop them all on his own. When Holloway mentions that these systems had been proven to be "useful," she is referencing the fact that while Hamilton was trying to get America out of debt in order to help its economy prosper, European nations such as Britain had already developed their own successful, national banks and had thrived off of industries in manufacturing. As a result, a good portion of Hamilton's ideas considered "radical and progressive" by traditional Americans were actually based on the systems of wealthy and industrialized European countries, making them not especially outlandish or liberal since he was just trying to safely emulate the success of these other nations that already had working economic systems. Also, another example showing Hamilton's conservative nature is his active attempts to keep his economic policies in line with the Constitution. Holloway describes this by explaining how Hamilton "took pains to defend his policies as constitutional, thus showing his respect for the Constitution and the limits on government that it establishes." In this passage, Holloway is making it clear that Hamilton never actively tried to radically change the federal government when he became the secretary of the treasurer, as he put a lot of effort into making sure that his policies were constitutional through his defenses. This inevitably implies that he believed in the ideas that were already in the American Constitution, which is why he wanted to promote them and follow them conservatively as a politician. All in all, throughout Holloway's essay, it is made clear that the economic ideas and policies Alexander Hamilton put forth onto the US weren't exactly all necessarily radical and progressive. He borrowed concepts from working systems in other countries, followed the rules of the Constitution strictly, and did even more as continuously emphasized throughout the rest of the essay. So, suffice to say, even though Hamilton wasn't certainly not the most conservative politician of his time, it would be wrong to say that he was a completely progressive and liberal individual.

Questioning the Actions of the Supreme Court

In reading Chapter 9 from the textbook, it became very evident that throughout the 19th century, political parties fought for control over different parts of the federal government through trying to gain control over states they could either declare as free (which would support industry and trade like in the north) or slave (which would support farming and agriculture like the south) states. Yet, even though most northern and southern states accepted the fact that African-Americans could have rights in non-slave states such as New York and Illinois, groups still fought to pacify and oppress these people in anyway they could: one of these groups seemingly being the Supreme Court. In 1846, Missouri slaves Dred and Harriet Scott went to fight for their freedom in a local court because they believed that because they lived in a free state, they didn't have to continue being slaves for a white man. Yet, even though this made sense as most states accepted to some degree that African-Americans had the right to be free in non-slave states, this case ended up becoming so complex that it kept getting escalated until it reached the Supreme Court 10 years later. During this case of Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Taney claimed that according to the Fifth Amendment, they were both property to their owner, and that it would be unconstitutional to allow any slave to be free if they were owned by another within the United States. He also claimed that even though the Constitution stated that "all men are created equal," these words were "too general" which is why he believed that the obvious conclusion from this statement was that "the enslaved African race were not intended to be included." And this got me wondering, to what extent can the Judicial System interpret the words of the Constitution? Because in this case, it's very apparent that Justice Taney is inferring a completely different meaning of the Constitution than what was clearly written through fabricating implications within the text. Can members of the Supreme Court use their own personal biases to pick out meanings from the Constitution that would only support their political opinions? And if they were to do so, would they even get impeached by Congress if the majority of the Senate agreed with their political views? In this situation, Justice Taney as well as the 6 other justices who voted with him were able to get away with their questionable decision because the majority of the senate was comprised of Democrats, which prevented them from trying to impeach them. Yet, if something like this were to happen today (where a political party controlled two branches of government like Congress and the Judicial Branch), would the people let it happen?

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