Positive Liberty

I recently finished listening to Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. Since it was abridged, I won’t try to give a serious review here. Just a few thoughts.

First, Chernow, like McCullough, was very much a partisan in favor of his hero, which I found disturbing. Of course, being a great admirer of Jefferson, I was bound to be sensitive to Chernow’s taking sides with Hamilton, and of course it may have been balanced out by passages not included in the abridged audio version. But Chernow was at times not only unfair to Jefferson, but positively whitewashing when it came to Hamilton. This man was brilliant, no doubt, but his career is full of precisely the sort of hysterical, extremely improper actions that lend credence to Jefferson’s characterization of him as fanatical, ambitious, and dangerous. His actions during the 1800 election are the acts of a man absolutely out of his mind with spite and vengefulness. His extramarital affair was inexcusable. His willingness to duel with Aaron Burr—only a few years after his own son was killed in a duel with the very same pistols—reveals a man almost incapable of rational thought when challenged. And although Chernow goes to great lengths to rationalize the fact, it is undeniable that Hamilton and his friends were engaged in absolutely improper financial dealings within and around the federal treasury. If not actually corrupt—and I suspect they really were—Hamilton’s dealings stank to high heaven.

On the substantive political issues, too, Chernow gives Hamilton the benefit of every doubt. He skims over the Bank of the United States controversy as if Madison was obviously, corruptly in the wrong, when in fact the issue was a complicated one of constitutional interpretation. He mentions that Madison had written passages in the Federalist that seemed to accept the principle of implied powers, but he ignores that Hamilton wrote passages in the Federalist that disclaimed such broad interpretations of the Constitution as he adopted during the Bank controversy. (In fact, the notion that Madison somehow betrayed the principles he adopted during the ratification period ought to have been soundly laid to rest by Lance Banning’s excellent Sacred Fire of Liberty.) He ignores (at least, in the abridged audio version) Hamilton’s enthusiasm for enforcing the Alien and Sedition Acts. He ignores Hamilton’s inexcusable interference with the Department of State, as when he was treating with the English minister behind Jefferson’s back.

Probably the incident I find most deplorable in all of Hamilton’s wavering record of genius and ignominy was the duel with Burr, and the ridiculous rationalizations this supposedly Christian man came up with for his actions. In his last letter to Elizabeth, he wrote,

If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible, without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem. I need not tell you of the pangs I feel, from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. Nor could I dwell on the the topic lest it should unman me.

The consolations of Religion, my beloved, can alone support you; and these you have a right to enjoy. Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted. With my last idea, I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world. Adieu best of wives and best of women. Embrace all my Darling Children for me.

This is the rationalization a man provides for leaving his wife a widow and his half dozen children fatherless—for throwing his family on the charity of his friends, and his own genius away forever? This tin-plated man of “honor,” this peacock, this megalomaniac, chooses the path of bloodshed, and misery for his family, because he called a man “dispicable” whom all the world knew to be such? And this is a man to be respected and admired? Jefferson may have had his flaws, but he never tried to dress up abandonment as an act of courage!