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.