April 23, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Alexander Hamilton is one of the most controversial and misunderstood Founding Fathers in American history. A brilliant yet complex figure, his ideas helped shape the nation’s financial system, government, and legacy. Historian Ron Chernow—author of the New York Times bestselling biography Alexander Hamilton, which inspired the hit Broadway musical—shares the true story behind the man, the myth, and the musical. We want to thank the Library of Congress for allowing us and our nation access to this wonderful audio, originally from a book talk back in 2018.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people and all of our history segments are brought to
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. We you
can go to learn all the things that are good
in life and all the things that are beautiful in life.
Their online courses are free. They're terrific. Go to Hillsdale
(00:31):
dot edu. Few figures in American history have been more
hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Ron
Chernow's New York Times best selling biography about Hamilton became
the inspiration for the Broadway hit musical Here's Ron with
the story of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I think it's fair to say that nowadays even well
educated Americans are largely ignorant about the first Treasury Secretary.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
They know that he appears on.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The ten dollar bill, although you may notice with something
of a Hollywood makeover on the new currency. Hamilton I
think was the best looking of the founders, but the
Treasury Department and its wisdom, has decided that he needed
some plastic surgery. You'll notice that they have widened his face,
and they've given him this rugged, square droid look, as
(01:25):
if he were auditioning for a Hollywood action movie. There
was a marvelous piece in US News and World Report
reviewing the airbrushed images of the Founders on the latest bills,
And when the magazine came to Hamilton, it positively gushed
and I quote and asked for Hamilton, he now looks
(01:46):
like a real hunk. So took us two centuries to
get a hunky founder where we have him. Of course,
the other thing that everybody knows about Hamilton, or at
least used to know, was that he was gunned down
by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel in Weehawk
and New Jersey, two centuries before HBO and Tony Soprano
(02:07):
took over the nearby turf. Burr, you probably know, was
the only vice president in American history ever indicted from
murder in two states. Yes, and he actually presided over
a famous impeachment trial in the Senate of a Supreme
Court justice while Heber was simultaneously on the lamb.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
From the law in New York and New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Never a dull moment in the life of Aaron Burr
Hamilton unquestionably led the most dramatic life of any founder.
He was an illegitimate boy born on the British island
of Nevis, and he had suffered through a series of
childhood tramas that would have shattered a lesser figure. His
father abandons the family when Alexander is eleven, mother dies
(02:52):
of tropical.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Fever when he's thirteen.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He's then farmed out to a first cousin, who commits
suicide years later. Calamity is a biblical proportions seem to
find their way to this young man. Now, in seventeen
seventy two, in other words, about a year before the
Boston Tea Party, a monster hurricane lashes Saint Croix, and
this self tought prodigy sits down and he pens a
(03:15):
description of the hurricane of such precocious force and eloquence
that the local merchants, recognizing this wonder in their midst,
band together to finance his education.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
In North America.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The Wonderkins studied at King's College in Lower Manhattan, later
renamed Columbia, King's being a slightly awkward and inconvenient name
after the Revolution, and already as undergraduate extraordinaire Hamilton is
publishing stirring pamphlets against the British.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
He takes up a musket and.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
He drills with his fellow students in nearby Saint Paul's
Churchyard today adjacent to Ground zero, and he delivers spellbinding
speeches to large crowds on what is today New York
City Hall Park. But this young man, and through all
his palpable ardor, is an ambivalent revolutionary. When a rampaging
mob of patriots swoops down on the college, hoping to
(04:08):
tar and feather the Tory president Myles Cooper, young Hamilton,
who was only about five foot six and rather slight
of build, courageously stands in the doorway and blocks their path.
The young man craves liberty, yes, but he also dreads disorder,
and this is a fine balancing act of recurring tension
that will characterize.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
His entire career.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Before he has a chance to graduate, this slim, blue
eyed West Indian is appointed an artillery captain for the
Continental Army. He slips across the fog bound East River
during Washington's famous nocturnal retreat after the Battle of Brooklyn.
He then rises from his sick bed to cross the
icy Delaware to surprise the drowsing Hessians at Trenton. And
(04:52):
then just a few months later, Hamilton is just twenty two,
That guy who had been a penniless orphan just five
years before in the trading house on Saint Croix is
miraculously appointed aide de camp to George Washington. In fact,
he proved so adept at handling Washington's correspondence, Washington is
able to give him the gist of a message and
(05:13):
out pops a beautifully worded, delicately nuanced letter from Hamilton
that it almost seems like an inspired act of ventriloquism.
You will see in this story that, with almost comical
Zelig like consistency, Hamilton has an act for being where
the action is.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He is always there when history is unfolding.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
It's like he's parachuted into every major event over a
thirty year period. For instance, Hamilton was there at Benedict
Arnold's house the morning that the treason plot was discovered
and Arnold fled down the Hudson River. Hamilton found himself
consoling the voluptuous but destroyed Peggy Arnold, who lay in
an upstairs bed.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
She was weeping.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
In this very gaussy and provocative lingerie as she faked
a mad scene to disguise the fact that she was
in cahoots with her husband. Hamilton I think was the
brainiest of all the founders, but I think it's fair
to say that around beautiful women he shed approximately fifty
points on his IQ and he was suckered in by
(06:15):
this masterful performance by Peggy Arnold.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Surprisingly enough, you would think that after this ghastly Dickensian
childhood that Hamilton, Aide the camp an effectively Chief of
Stafford George Washington, would be thrilled at his sudden station
in life.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But he was Hamilton. No, he was chafing at his desk.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
He dreamed of battlefield glory, and like so many intellectuals
then Andre Now, Hamilton was a dared devil who actually
enjoyed courting physical danger. At the Battle of Monmouth, he
was horrified to find General Charles Lee in full blown
retreat with his panic stricken men. The young colonel rides
up to General Lee and says, I will stay here
(06:56):
with you, my dear General, and die with you us
die rather than retreat.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you're listening to ron Chernow, who wrote the book
about Alexander Hamilton and inspired the musical, but also inspired
readers to know so much more about their founders.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And my goodness, what a.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Story he's telling here to folks at the Library of Congress.
When we come back more of the remarkable story of
Alexander Hamilton here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day we set out
(07:33):
to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from
small towns to big cities, and from all walks of
life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this
show without you. Our shows are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to our American Stories dot com and
make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's our
(07:55):
American Stories dot com. And we continue with our American Stories,
and with Ron chernow telling the story of Alexander Hamilton,
(08:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Hamilton, of course, has his supreme moment of heroism at Yorktown. Hamilton,
after mercilessly badgering Washington, is given the command of the
first Infantry Battalion to storm the outer ramparts. Picture the scene.
Hamilton rises up out of the trench. He sprints across
a rutted wasteland, leading his men with frenzied war whoops.
(08:40):
Once at the parapet, Hamilton, whom I said was relatively short,
has one of his subordinates, Neil Hamilton, steps on his shoulder.
He springs up on the parapet, and then he exhorts
his men to follow. You could almost picture Tom Cruise
in the starring scene. Now, despite crushing daytime duties for
Youreorge Washington, Hamilton, against all odds, manages to give himself
(09:04):
a crash course during the Revolution in finance, history and politics.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
From camp to camp, this young.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Autodidact is lugging to enormous folio size volumes called Malachy
Postle Fights Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Not exactly light
bedtime fair after a day of heavy duty correspondence for
George Washington. Hamilton also totes along six volumes of Bluetarch's lives,
and he takes the empty pages of a military paybook,
(09:32):
and we see him recording notes on foreign exchange, population growth, geography,
even European rivers that he will never set eyes on.
In fact, in his notes, very interesting notes called from bluetarch.
We see a young man who seems absolutely bewitched by
the bizarre sexual practices of ancient Rome. For instance, Hamilton
noted that an ancient Rome, young married women seem to
(09:55):
enjoy being whipped by lusty young noblemen. Why because they
thought that it aided conception. I can tell you, when
you study our founding fathers, you are led down all
sorts of unexpected byways.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
In fact, Hamilton had such.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
A roving eye for the young women that Martha Washington
during the Revolution nicknamed her lascivius Tomcat Hamilton, which must
have made for some interesting moments at headquarters with George
brumbling Hamilton and Martha calling for Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Now, Hamilton, as you.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Will know, is a very proud, ambitious outsider without money.
He lacked what the eighteenth century referred to his birth
or breeding. He knew that he needed to marry into
respectable family, and indeed, soon after Elizabeth Skuyler, the daughter
of a very powerful New York dynasty, visits the Continental
Army in seventeen eighty, one of Hamilton's colleagues reports quote,
(10:46):
Hamilton is a gone man. The wedding at the Skyler
Mansion is a very bittersweet affair because Eliza Hamilton has
this huge, rich family. It's teeming with all sorts of
Van Cortland and ven Rinsel are cousins. Well, Hamilton has
only a single friend from Washington's staff, and of course
he doesn't have a single family member in attendance. I mean,
(11:09):
think of the underlying poignancy of that emotional imbalance in
that affair. And yet the very very status conscious Skylar
family always embraces Hamilton as an adored member of the family.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When Hamilton then launches his post war legal career, being Hamilton,
his exploits again seemed to verge on the superhuman. At
the time, he usually served a three year apprenticeship period
to qualify for the law. Hamilton, being Hamilton, manages to
qualify after six months of self study. In fact, he
cobbles together a cribsheet of New York legal procedures and practices.
(11:47):
He does it so expertly that it becomes a textbook
for a generation of New York lawyers.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
WonderBoy. He then immediately does.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Something quite fearless and of course quite controversial. Hamilton begins
to defend the to who had remained in occupied New
York during the British wartime occupation, and those Tory merchants
were now being persecuted by returning patriots. Hamilton always feared
a frenzy of revolutionary retribution. I fear, in fact, it
would be realized in the French Revolution. He also wanted
(12:18):
to retain the capital and connections and know how of
those Tory merchants in order to rebuild New York. Our
city lost somewhere between a quarter and a half of
all of its buildings during the Revolution. Now you'll hear
it said, and very often it's taught this way in school,
that Hamilton was a ferocious snob, that he was the
stooge of the plutocrats of his day. In fact, it
(12:40):
would be desperate with Napoleonic ambitions. And of course, in
this particular morality play of early American history, Thomas Jefferson
is always represented as the pure and virtuous tribune of
the people. The situation was far more complicated than that
historical cartoon. Case in point. During the war, it is Hamilton,
(13:01):
of course, who champions an audacious plan to emancipate any
slave who's willing to pick up a musket for the
Continental Cause. In the seventeen eighties, it is Hamilton who
co founds the first abolitionist society in New York, the
New York Manumission Society. Remember that trading firm in Saint
Croix that I had mentioned that Hamilton worked for as
(13:24):
a teenager. That firm had imported up to three hundred
slaves per year from Western Africa, and it's clear from
subsequent actions that this first hand experience of slavery left
Hamilton with a permanent detestation of the system. In fact,
Caribbean slavery was the most brutal in the world. Even
those who managed to survive the Middle Passage, their life
(13:46):
expectancy once they started working in the sugar cane breaks
of the West Indies was somewhere between three and five years.
So you constantly have these poor people who are perishing
in the fields, and this supply had to be constantly replenished. Hamilton,
despite the historic stereotype, turns out to have been the
most consistent abolitionist among the founders. Barnun I repeat barn Nunn. Hamilton,
(14:12):
it also turns out had very enlightened views about Native Americans.
There is a college in upstate New York called Hamilton College. Well,
the origins of that school had started out as a
secondary school that was supposed to educate Native Americans. Hamilton
lent his name and his prestige to that undertaking. Hamilton
turns out to have had very benign and enlightened views
about Jews. He said in an unpublished paper that the
(14:35):
success of the Jews could only be explained by special providence.
So here's this man whom we're taught to regard as
this ferocious snob, who again and again shows himself as
not only devoid of prejudice, but with a special sympathy
for the oppressed. Now, I think, with the clear exception
of George Washington, nobody did more than Alexander Hamilton to
(14:55):
well the thirteen squabbling states into the powerful nation we
know today. Hamilton personally drafts the first appeal for the
Constitutional Convention. He attends that he is the sole New
York delegate to sign it. As Hamilton who dreams up
and then supervises the most influential defense of the document
ever written, the Federalist Papers. Of those eighty five essays,
(15:18):
Hamilton manages to draft an astonishing fifty one no less
astonishing there are periods where he's publishing them at a
rate of as many as five or six per week.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
No less astonishing. He's doing it as a sideline.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
He had a full time legal practice. In fact, we
have anecdotal evidence of the printer sitting in the outer
office as Hamilton scribbles the final lines of an essay.
No single treatise on the US Constitution has been cited
more frequently by the Supreme Court than the Federalist papers,
nearly three hundred times over the past two centuries. And
(15:51):
if you chart the frequency of citation, the frequency of
citation actually is rising with time, not decreasing. Hamilton, boy,
wonder the new federal government is created.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
He hits the ground running.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Hamilton is only thirty four years old when Washington appoints
him the first Treasury Secretary.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
This instantly makes him not only the.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Most powerful person in America, guarantees that he'll be the
most controversial.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Why.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Remember Washington's cabinet, and the term was not used. It
was originally called the general Council. Washington's cabinet consisted.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Of just three people.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
There was Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, Henry Knox, Secretary
of War, and Hamilton a treasury I think fair to say,
pound for pound, the best cabinet in American history. Even
the Attorney General edwind Randolph is a part time legal
advisor to the president, lacking that small thing called the
Justice Department at that point.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And you've been listening to Ron Churnow, author of the
definitive biography An Alexander Hamilton, called Alexander Hamilton, And what
a story we're listening to. He didn't have the birth
that is, he wasn't born to blue bloods, obviously, he
was born well in Saint Croix with nothing, but he
had that talent, that writing talent.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
To start.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Remarkably, Hamilton drafts fifty one of the Federalist Papers, and
he did it in his spare time. He was a
lawyer and self taught and just a prodigy. What's so
fascinating about the Federalist Papers that it's the most cited
document in Supreme Court jurisprudence and in case law than
(17:36):
any other document there is, and it continues to be
cited with increasing frequency. In other words, the writing of
Hamilton more relevant than ever in our nation's battles that
are often settled in the courts when we come back
more of the story of Alexander Hamilton here on our
(17:56):
American stories.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And we continue with.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Our American stories and with the story of Alexander Hamilton
as told by his definitive biographer, Ron Chernow this talk
again came from the Library of Congress. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now, in the early days, Jefferson at State starts with
six employees. Henry Knox starts with a mere dozen. At war,
Hamilton starts out with about three dozen, and the number
quickly balloons to several hundred employees, a frightening bureaucracy by
the standards of the day, and also again many times
(18:45):
larger than the rest of the government combined. Which is
why when you read histories of the period, historians tend
to like in Hamilton's position in Washington's administration to that
of a prime minister rather than a mere department head.
When you say to people Alexander Hamilton was the first
Treasury secretary, it just does not begin to capture the
scope and magnitude of the power that this man wielded.
(19:09):
Beyond the size of the Treasury Department is a proportion
of the government. Remember, Hamilton had to invent that department
from scratch. At the time, there were no income taxes.
Most revenues came from import duties. This meant he had
to create a custom service. To have a custom service,
who have to create beacons in boys and lighthouses up
and down the eastern seaboard. Smuggling, as you know, was
(19:33):
a favorite revolutionary pastime. Suddenly this activity has to be
stopped in the name of patriotism. So Hamilton has to
construct a fleet of so called the revenue cutter as
the start of course of the Coast Guard. Again and
again we see Hamilton forging the basic building blocks.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Of the American government.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He takes a country bankrupted by revolutionary war.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Debt, he restores its credit.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He devises our first taxism, our first budget system, our
first central bank, our first monetary system. He has the
federal government to adopt all of the state that why
does he do that? That seems counterintuitive for the federal
government to add that to what it already had. Well,
Hamilton knew that if the federal government adopted the state,
that creditors would transfer their allegiance to the federal government,
(20:20):
and it would also forever after give the federal government
a kind of moral authority over revenues that the States
would never have. Very cunning and very characteristic of Hamilton
in terms of embedding a political program in a seemingly
technocratic program. Again, again, no less important than all of
these pragmatic achievements as Treasure Secretary, it is Hamilton, the
(20:43):
great constitutional scholar, who makes the enduring arguments that all
of these new activities are in fact permitted under the
new National Charter. Remember Washington's first question first administration always
is is this permissible under the constitution. Hamilton kind of
clairvoyance that is hard to explain encourage his manufacturing stock exchanges, banks,
(21:06):
and corporations at a time when these activities seemed like scary, futuristic.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Stuff to many people.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
In the book, I dubbed him the messenger from the future,
or as the New York Historical Society would have at,
the man who made modern America. So why has Hamilton
been villainized as a dangerous reactionary since he seems to
anticipate things that happened one hundred or two hundred years
later rather than looking backward. Partly, I think this goes
(21:36):
back to the deadly rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson in
Washington's cabinet. Jefferson, you know, a man of very decided opinions,
was a rather shy, soft spoken man, and Jefferson actually
shrank from open disagreement.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
If you happen to find.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yourself at a dinner party with Thomas Jefferson and you
disagreed with him, Jefferson would not openly confront you. Hamilton
would certainly openly confront you. What Jefferson would do he
would repair to his lodgings that evening, he would record
the statement that you had made, and then he would
store it up for later use. And boy did he
store things up. With Hamilton and Jefferson's secret diary, there
(22:14):
are nearly four dozen references to Hamilton. The epic animosity
between these two Olympian figures is partly a matter of
clashing visions. Jefferson, once a rural America with a weak
central government, stresses states rights, strict construction, the constitution, tax cuts.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Limited government, etc.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Hamilton's division is of a bustling, diversified America of trade, finance,
and manufacturing as well as traditional agriculture. Hamilton favors an
energetic federal government certainly a strong presidency, strong independent judiciary,
relatively weak states, and a very expensive interpretation of the Constitution.
(22:54):
You could see where the laconic Jefferson was quite understandably
terrified of Hamilton's sheer brilliance. Hamilton was one of these
frightening windbags whom you meet from time to time, who
can speak in perfectly worded paragraphs for hours on end,
and Hamilton did. Hamilton also was one of these intimidating
characters who could and did toss off a ten thousand
(23:16):
word opinion overnight for George Washington. And you could see
in Jefferson's diary that he's really struggling with Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Hamilton made a speech of three quarters of an hour
in the Cabinet today, as if he had been speaking
to a jury. The next day, Jefferson wearily records Hamilton
spoke again for three quarters of an hour. Hamilton was
quite frankly a word machine. Hamilton wrote enough in forty
nine years to fill twenty two thousand pages in the
(23:46):
latest edition of his Collected Papers, and your Speaker was
masochistic enough to.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Read every one of those pages.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It is said that Harold Syrett, who edited the papers
for Columbia University Press and outstanding job. Harrold Syret evidently
used to joke that he intended to dedicate the many
volumes to Aaron Burr quote, without whose cooperation this project
would never have been completed. When Hamilton publishes some articles
(24:22):
supporting Washington's neutrality proclamation, Jefferson contacted James Madison and pleaded
with him to robut Hamilton in print. Quote, for God's sake,
my dear sir, take up your pen, select the most
striking heresies and cut Hamilton to pieces.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
There is nobody else.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Who can and will enter the lists with him. There
was nobody else in America who could enter the lists
with Alexander Hamilton. Even James Madison orphan shrank from the invitation.
The cabinet feud between Hamilton and Washington become so vitriolic,
almost pathological, that poor long suffering Washington has to finally
plead with both of them to desist from their vicious
(25:05):
attacks on each other. Hamilton's attacks were directly written by Hamilton.
Jefferson would employ different surrogates, but the effect was the same.
In the end, it's Jefferson, not Hamilton, who leaves Washington's
cabinet and defeat and Hamilton, who reigns triumphant.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
But as you will know, the glittering.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Prize that eludes Alexander Hamilton as the presidency, and of course,
Thomas Jefferson goes on to become a two term president.
During the summer of seventeen ninety one, remarkably enough, at
the height of his powers as Treasury Secretary, a young
twenty three year old woman named Mariah Reynolds knocks at
his door. Government was then in Philadelphia. She asked to
(25:47):
speak to Hamilton privately, and she spills out a woeful
tale of how she has been cruelly abandoned by her husband,
this bulgarian named James Reynolds. She appeals to Hamilton for
financial aid. Hamilton, several years later narrated what happened next quote.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
In the evening.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I put a bank bill in my pocket and went
to her rooming house. I inquired for missus Reynolds, and
miss shown upstairs at the head of which she met
me and conducted me into a bedroom. I took the
bill out of my pocket and gave it to her.
Some conversation that ensued from Richard was quickly apparent that
other than pecuniary consolation.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Would be acceptable.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The eighteenth century had away with words.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
I mean, And you've been listening to Ron Churnow, author
of the definitive biography an Alexander Hamilton, called Alexander Hamilton,
and of course that book inspired the musical that has
made its way around the world more than once. And
what a story, by the way, what a battle between
him and Jefferson about competing visions for the United States,
(26:53):
and some of those battles still happening today. Clearly Hamilton
won in the larger, broader vision of a strong central government,
but the battle today between the States and the big
bureaucracies in Washington, d c. Prevail and continue to dominate
the headlines even when we come back more of this
(27:14):
remarkable story, the story of Alexander Hamilton, with author Ron Churnow.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
(27:38):
American stories, and with the author of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Churnow,
Let's pick up where we last left.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Off now for a full year.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Despite all of the controversies swirling around his programs, when
Hamilton should have been most vigilant of his reputation, the
smartest man in American politics does about the most foolish
thing Imaginablelton, to his embarrassment, never knew whether Missus Reynold's
attraction for him was real or just a clever con job.
He later wrote, the variety of shapes which this woman
(28:08):
could assume was endless. Hamilton keeps furtively slipping off in
the night to these assignations with Missus Reynolds, even after
mister Reynolds, who was this rather coarse character. Mister Reynolds
suddenly appears and instead of stopping the adulterous affair between
Hamilton and his wife, mister Reynolds decides it would be
more fun to tax it.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Hamilton begins to fork.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Over blackmail money to the scrifter James Reynolds, despite the
obvious fatal damage that this can do to Hamilton's career,
not to mention to his devoted, long suffering wife Eliza.
One day, Missus Reynolds was entertaining a friend named Jacob
Klingman when Hamilton comes unexpectedly the or and even Hamilton
(28:54):
took certain precautions like always being alone with Missus Reynolds,
Hamilton is petrified to discover an eyewitness.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So what does he do.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
He pretends that he's simply dropping off a message for
the low life. James Reynolds pause a moment to picture
this kind of let it sink in. Imagine your home.
One day, there is a knock on the door, You
go downstairs, you open the door, and there's Colin Pawler
Donald Remsfelt, pretending to be the FedEx delivery man and
imagining that he's going to get away with the disguise.
(29:29):
Hamilton ultimately publishes a ninety five page pamphlet admitting to
the affair. Because his enemy said, oh, you know that
money he was paying to James Reynolds, that was for
illicit speculation and treasury securities. Hamilton says, no, no, no,
says it in ninety five pages. No, no, no, that
was adultery that the money was for. Now, I know
(29:50):
that all of this intrigue in backstabbing runs countered to
our preferred image of the founders. These tales may remind
us more of the fallen state of our tabloid political
culture today than of the men enshrined in our school textbooks.
And let me stress so that there's not any misunderstanding
my tempt here is in no way to deny the
greatness of the Founders. The very best thing about spending
(30:12):
five years on Alexander Hamilton, I got on a daily
basis just to drink in his glorious words, to spend
five years not only in his company, but that of
all of the Founders, and if anything, I came away
with a far more exalted sense of their brilliance, their depth,
their integrity, et cetera. At the same time, I wanted
(30:33):
to liberate Hamilton and the other Founders from what I
thought was a sometimes stultifying image of gentility of these
people with powdered wigs and silver buckled shoes. The Founding
Fathers were not statues chiseled and stone. They were passionate,
fascinating figures of tremendous force and intensity.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Once the revolution was over, they exhibited.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Very much the same lust for power, status, and influence
as other human beings. Nor do I think that we
should fault them for that. In fact, it was their
candidly realistic view of the ambition and the avarice rooted
in human nature that enabled them to construct the most
ingenious constitution that has guarded us against human frailty.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
For more than two centuries.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
As you know, Madison wrote famously in Federalists fifty one,
if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Thank God that they.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Took that grim, that pessimistic view of human nature, rather
than assuming that we would have a succession of saints
in the White House. The Founders, i think, wrote these
things not just from abstract speculation, but from their own
personal experiences and observation.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Let me jump ahead to the duel.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Six times earlier in his career, Alexander Hamilton had entered
into the highly ritualized quarrels known as affairs of honor.
The potential culmination of affair of honor could.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Always be a duel.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
On those previous six occasions Hamilton had as it were,
settled out of a court. The quarrels had not ended
up in the dueling ground they could have.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Hamilton was a very combative man.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
He was hyper sensitive, I think, probably because of his
illegitimate boyhood in the Caribbean and what was a lifelong
sense of shame about his illegitimacy. So he's always very
vigilant anything concerning his reputation and sense of honor. The
novelty of what happens with Aaron Burr in eighteen oh
four was that for the first time Hamilton is on
(32:32):
the receiving end of the challenge instead of issuing it.
I think this throws him off balanced psychologically. When Hamilton
and Burr met on the field of honor in Weehawk
in New Jersey on July eleventh, eighteen oh fourth, Hamilton
and Vice President Aaron Burr were two politicians with their
careers in sharp decline, as shown by.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
The Reynolds affair.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Hamilton had perhaps committed political suicide.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
In public ones to orphan.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
By this point, Aaron Burr, for his part, had alienated
Thomas Jefferson. He was of Jefferson's party. During the famous
tie election of eighteen hundred. To try to explain it
briefly for those of you aren'tfamiliar with it, there was
not a separate vote in the electoral College for president
and vice president. Jefferson and Berber nominally on the same ticket,
the understanding being that Jefferson would be president Aaron Burr
(33:20):
vice president. When there is a tie between Jefferson and
Burr and the electoral College, Aaron Burr suddenly decides that
it might be rather pleasant to be President of the
United States instead of merely vice president. Thomas Jefferson, who
incredibly enough wins that election with an assist from Alexander Hamilton,
(33:40):
of all people, burb becomes vice president. Thomas Jefferson has
a very very long memory for such fatal miscalculations, decides
to drop Burr from the ticket. In eighteen oh four,
Berger turns to New York tries to run for governor again.
Hamilton blocks Burr's path. Hamilton's explanation for it was as follows.
(34:01):
He said that he supported Jefferson rather than Burr because
he would rather have somebody with the wrong principles rather
than no principles. He thought that Burr was unprincipled and unscrupulous.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Of course, Burr is.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
During that tie and tacitly flirting with the Federalists. A
lot of Federalists, who like Hamilton, disliked Thomas Jefferson, said, well,
Burr may be an opportunist, he maybe lose canon whatever,
but we can cut a deal with Burr. Whereas Jefferson.
They realized that he had the wrong principles, but he
was a man of very fixed and unalterable principles. At
(34:44):
the time, Hamilton, who had engaged in a lot of
legitimate criticism but also a lot of hyperbole towards Thomas Jefferson,
wrote what I think was the most candid and accurate
appraisal of Jefferson that he ever did in a letter
at the time of the tie election. He said, you know,
I used to watch mister Jefferson when he was Secretary
(35:05):
of State and I was Secretary of the Treasuring and
he said, I often thought that he was like a
man who knew that he was someday inherit an estate,
the estate being the presidency, and in spite of his rhetoric,
did not really want to deplete the estate which he
knew he would someday inherit. And Hamilton predicted that Jefferson,
(35:25):
once in office, would in fact enjoy it and would
betray a taste for federal power that had not been
apparent in his rhetoric, certainly when he was in opposition
to the policies of Washington and Hamilton. The duel occurs
when Aaronbur reads in a newspaper that Hamilton has issued
(35:46):
a despicable opinion about him at an Albany dinner party.
Burt was never unduly disturbed by having killed Hamilton. He
had a rather macabre sense of humor. He liked to
refer jokingly quote to my friend Hamilton, whom I shot.
Let me say in closing that I knew with Hamilton
that I had been handed a precious biographer's gift. I
(36:07):
seem to like these large, floud figures who forced me
to wrestle with their contradictions and with Hamilton. Every time
I began to lapse into hero worship, he would pull
me up with some colossal, unexpected blunder. And every time
I started to lose patience with him, he would redeem
himself again with some beautiful act of statesmanship or friendship
or love.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I would maintain that.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
From Lexington and Concord in seventeen seventy five to these
Jefferson's first inauguration in eighteen oh one, nobody stood more
consistently at the center of American political life than Alexander Hamilton.
This is a story, an incredible story of an illegitimate,
orphan young man who comes.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Out of nowhere, sets the world on.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Fire, and grows up quite literally alongside his adopted country and.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
A terrific job on the editing by our own Greg
Hengler and a special thanks to Ron Churnow. This talk
was given at the Library of Congress in Washington, d C.
And we love bringing you speeches and stories from the
past and sometimes from in the very distant past. And
this by no better a storyteller in American history than
(37:17):
Ron Chernow again, the book is Alexander Hamilton. If you
haven't read it, get it. If you haven't seen the musical,
see it. But you'll understand what inspired the musical if
you read the book. I love what he said about
Hamilton that every time he started to get into some
hero worship, well, Hamilton told do something that had well
that would take his mind.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Off that, let's just say.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
And then every time he got frustrated with Hamilton, well,
he'd get lifted right out of that frustration by something
either heroic or beautiful or dazzling that Hamilton would do.
He was a fierce abolitionist and had a heart for
the oppressed, for Jews, for the American Indian. So in
addition to being this towering financial figure, this incredible fighter,
(38:02):
he had a soul for the outsider. The story of
Alexander Hamilton, indeed the story of one of our fundamental founders.
Here on our American stories.
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people and all of our history segments are brought to
us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. We you
can go to learn all the things that are good
in life and all the things that are beautiful in life.
Their online courses are free. They're terrific. Go to Hillsdale
(00:31):
dot edu. Few figures in American history have been more
hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Ron
Chernow's New York Times best selling biography about Hamilton became
the inspiration for the Broadway hit musical Here's Ron with
the story of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I think it's fair to say that nowadays even well
educated Americans are largely ignorant about the first Treasury Secretary.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
They know that he appears on.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The ten dollar bill, although you may notice with something
of a Hollywood makeover on the new currency. Hamilton I
think was the best looking of the founders, but the
Treasury Department and its wisdom, has decided that he needed
some plastic surgery. You'll notice that they have widened his face,
and they've given him this rugged, square droid look, as
(01:25):
if he were auditioning for a Hollywood action movie. There
was a marvelous piece in US News and World Report
reviewing the airbrushed images of the Founders on the latest bills,
And when the magazine came to Hamilton, it positively gushed
and I quote and asked for Hamilton, he now looks
(01:46):
like a real hunk. So took us two centuries to
get a hunky founder where we have him. Of course,
the other thing that everybody knows about Hamilton, or at
least used to know, was that he was gunned down
by Vice President Aaron Burr in a duel in Weehawk
and New Jersey, two centuries before HBO and Tony Soprano
(02:07):
took over the nearby turf. Burr, you probably know, was
the only vice president in American history ever indicted from
murder in two states. Yes, and he actually presided over
a famous impeachment trial in the Senate of a Supreme
Court justice while Heber was simultaneously on the lamb.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
From the law in New York and New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Never a dull moment in the life of Aaron Burr
Hamilton unquestionably led the most dramatic life of any founder.
He was an illegitimate boy born on the British island
of Nevis, and he had suffered through a series of
childhood tramas that would have shattered a lesser figure. His
father abandons the family when Alexander is eleven, mother dies
(02:52):
of tropical.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Fever when he's thirteen.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
He's then farmed out to a first cousin, who commits
suicide years later. Calamity is a biblical proportions seem to
find their way to this young man. Now, in seventeen
seventy two, in other words, about a year before the
Boston Tea Party, a monster hurricane lashes Saint Croix, and
this self tought prodigy sits down and he pens a
(03:15):
description of the hurricane of such precocious force and eloquence
that the local merchants, recognizing this wonder in their midst,
band together to finance his education.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
In North America.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
The Wonderkins studied at King's College in Lower Manhattan, later
renamed Columbia, King's being a slightly awkward and inconvenient name
after the Revolution, and already as undergraduate extraordinaire Hamilton is
publishing stirring pamphlets against the British.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
He takes up a musket and.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
He drills with his fellow students in nearby Saint Paul's
Churchyard today adjacent to Ground zero, and he delivers spellbinding
speeches to large crowds on what is today New York
City Hall Park. But this young man, and through all
his palpable ardor, is an ambivalent revolutionary. When a rampaging
mob of patriots swoops down on the college, hoping to
(04:08):
tar and feather the Tory president Myles Cooper, young Hamilton,
who was only about five foot six and rather slight
of build, courageously stands in the doorway and blocks their path.
The young man craves liberty, yes, but he also dreads disorder,
and this is a fine balancing act of recurring tension
that will characterize.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
His entire career.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Before he has a chance to graduate, this slim, blue
eyed West Indian is appointed an artillery captain for the
Continental Army. He slips across the fog bound East River
during Washington's famous nocturnal retreat after the Battle of Brooklyn.
He then rises from his sick bed to cross the
icy Delaware to surprise the drowsing Hessians at Trenton. And
(04:52):
then just a few months later, Hamilton is just twenty two,
That guy who had been a penniless orphan just five
years before in the trading house on Saint Croix is
miraculously appointed aide de camp to George Washington. In fact,
he proved so adept at handling Washington's correspondence, Washington is
able to give him the gist of a message and
(05:13):
out pops a beautifully worded, delicately nuanced letter from Hamilton
that it almost seems like an inspired act of ventriloquism.
You will see in this story that, with almost comical
Zelig like consistency, Hamilton has an act for being where
the action is.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
He is always there when history is unfolding.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
It's like he's parachuted into every major event over a
thirty year period. For instance, Hamilton was there at Benedict
Arnold's house the morning that the treason plot was discovered
and Arnold fled down the Hudson River. Hamilton found himself
consoling the voluptuous but destroyed Peggy Arnold, who lay in
an upstairs bed.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
She was weeping.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
In this very gaussy and provocative lingerie as she faked
a mad scene to disguise the fact that she was
in cahoots with her husband. Hamilton I think was the
brainiest of all the founders, but I think it's fair
to say that around beautiful women he shed approximately fifty
points on his IQ and he was suckered in by
(06:15):
this masterful performance by Peggy Arnold.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Surprisingly enough, you would think that after this ghastly Dickensian
childhood that Hamilton, Aide the camp an effectively Chief of
Stafford George Washington, would be thrilled at his sudden station
in life.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
But he was Hamilton. No, he was chafing at his desk.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
He dreamed of battlefield glory, and like so many intellectuals
then Andre Now, Hamilton was a dared devil who actually
enjoyed courting physical danger. At the Battle of Monmouth, he
was horrified to find General Charles Lee in full blown
retreat with his panic stricken men. The young colonel rides
up to General Lee and says, I will stay here
(06:56):
with you, my dear General, and die with you us
die rather than retreat.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you're listening to ron Chernow, who wrote the book
about Alexander Hamilton and inspired the musical, but also inspired
readers to know so much more about their founders.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And my goodness, what a.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Story he's telling here to folks at the Library of Congress.
When we come back more of the remarkable story of
Alexander Hamilton here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories. Every day we set out
(07:33):
to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from
small towns to big cities, and from all walks of
life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this
show without you. Our shows are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to our American Stories dot com and
make a donation to keep the stories coming. That's our
(07:55):
American Stories dot com. And we continue with our American Stories,
and with Ron chernow telling the story of Alexander Hamilton,
(08:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Hamilton, of course, has his supreme moment of heroism at Yorktown. Hamilton,
after mercilessly badgering Washington, is given the command of the
first Infantry Battalion to storm the outer ramparts. Picture the scene.
Hamilton rises up out of the trench. He sprints across
a rutted wasteland, leading his men with frenzied war whoops.
(08:40):
Once at the parapet, Hamilton, whom I said was relatively short,
has one of his subordinates, Neil Hamilton, steps on his shoulder.
He springs up on the parapet, and then he exhorts
his men to follow. You could almost picture Tom Cruise
in the starring scene. Now, despite crushing daytime duties for
Youreorge Washington, Hamilton, against all odds, manages to give himself
(09:04):
a crash course during the Revolution in finance, history and politics.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
From camp to camp, this young.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Autodidact is lugging to enormous folio size volumes called Malachy
Postle Fights Dictionary of Trade and Commerce. Not exactly light
bedtime fair after a day of heavy duty correspondence for
George Washington. Hamilton also totes along six volumes of Bluetarch's lives,
and he takes the empty pages of a military paybook,
(09:32):
and we see him recording notes on foreign exchange, population growth, geography,
even European rivers that he will never set eyes on.
In fact, in his notes, very interesting notes called from bluetarch.
We see a young man who seems absolutely bewitched by
the bizarre sexual practices of ancient Rome. For instance, Hamilton
noted that an ancient Rome, young married women seem to
(09:55):
enjoy being whipped by lusty young noblemen. Why because they
thought that it aided conception. I can tell you, when
you study our founding fathers, you are led down all
sorts of unexpected byways.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
In fact, Hamilton had such.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
A roving eye for the young women that Martha Washington
during the Revolution nicknamed her lascivius Tomcat Hamilton, which must
have made for some interesting moments at headquarters with George
brumbling Hamilton and Martha calling for Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Now, Hamilton, as you.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Will know, is a very proud, ambitious outsider without money.
He lacked what the eighteenth century referred to his birth
or breeding. He knew that he needed to marry into
respectable family, and indeed, soon after Elizabeth Skuyler, the daughter
of a very powerful New York dynasty, visits the Continental
Army in seventeen eighty, one of Hamilton's colleagues reports quote,
(10:46):
Hamilton is a gone man. The wedding at the Skyler
Mansion is a very bittersweet affair because Eliza Hamilton has
this huge, rich family. It's teeming with all sorts of
Van Cortland and ven Rinsel are cousins. Well, Hamilton has
only a single friend from Washington's staff, and of course
he doesn't have a single family member in attendance. I mean,
(11:09):
think of the underlying poignancy of that emotional imbalance in
that affair. And yet the very very status conscious Skylar
family always embraces Hamilton as an adored member of the family.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
When Hamilton then launches his post war legal career, being Hamilton,
his exploits again seemed to verge on the superhuman. At
the time, he usually served a three year apprenticeship period
to qualify for the law. Hamilton, being Hamilton, manages to
qualify after six months of self study. In fact, he
cobbles together a cribsheet of New York legal procedures and practices.
(11:47):
He does it so expertly that it becomes a textbook
for a generation of New York lawyers.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
WonderBoy. He then immediately does.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Something quite fearless and of course quite controversial. Hamilton begins
to defend the to who had remained in occupied New
York during the British wartime occupation, and those Tory merchants
were now being persecuted by returning patriots. Hamilton always feared
a frenzy of revolutionary retribution. I fear, in fact, it
would be realized in the French Revolution. He also wanted
(12:18):
to retain the capital and connections and know how of
those Tory merchants in order to rebuild New York. Our
city lost somewhere between a quarter and a half of
all of its buildings during the Revolution. Now you'll hear
it said, and very often it's taught this way in school,
that Hamilton was a ferocious snob, that he was the
stooge of the plutocrats of his day. In fact, it
(12:40):
would be desperate with Napoleonic ambitions. And of course, in
this particular morality play of early American history, Thomas Jefferson
is always represented as the pure and virtuous tribune of
the people. The situation was far more complicated than that
historical cartoon. Case in point. During the war, it is Hamilton,
(13:01):
of course, who champions an audacious plan to emancipate any
slave who's willing to pick up a musket for the
Continental Cause. In the seventeen eighties, it is Hamilton who
co founds the first abolitionist society in New York, the
New York Manumission Society. Remember that trading firm in Saint
Croix that I had mentioned that Hamilton worked for as
(13:24):
a teenager. That firm had imported up to three hundred
slaves per year from Western Africa, and it's clear from
subsequent actions that this first hand experience of slavery left
Hamilton with a permanent detestation of the system. In fact,
Caribbean slavery was the most brutal in the world. Even
those who managed to survive the Middle Passage, their life
(13:46):
expectancy once they started working in the sugar cane breaks
of the West Indies was somewhere between three and five years.
So you constantly have these poor people who are perishing
in the fields, and this supply had to be constantly replenished. Hamilton,
despite the historic stereotype, turns out to have been the
most consistent abolitionist among the founders. Barnun I repeat barn Nunn. Hamilton,
(14:12):
it also turns out had very enlightened views about Native Americans.
There is a college in upstate New York called Hamilton College. Well,
the origins of that school had started out as a
secondary school that was supposed to educate Native Americans. Hamilton
lent his name and his prestige to that undertaking. Hamilton
turns out to have had very benign and enlightened views
about Jews. He said in an unpublished paper that the
(14:35):
success of the Jews could only be explained by special providence.
So here's this man whom we're taught to regard as
this ferocious snob, who again and again shows himself as
not only devoid of prejudice, but with a special sympathy
for the oppressed. Now, I think, with the clear exception
of George Washington, nobody did more than Alexander Hamilton to
(14:55):
well the thirteen squabbling states into the powerful nation we
know today. Hamilton personally drafts the first appeal for the
Constitutional Convention. He attends that he is the sole New
York delegate to sign it. As Hamilton who dreams up
and then supervises the most influential defense of the document
ever written, the Federalist Papers. Of those eighty five essays,
(15:18):
Hamilton manages to draft an astonishing fifty one no less
astonishing there are periods where he's publishing them at a
rate of as many as five or six per week.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
No less astonishing. He's doing it as a sideline.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
He had a full time legal practice. In fact, we
have anecdotal evidence of the printer sitting in the outer
office as Hamilton scribbles the final lines of an essay.
No single treatise on the US Constitution has been cited
more frequently by the Supreme Court than the Federalist papers,
nearly three hundred times over the past two centuries. And
(15:51):
if you chart the frequency of citation, the frequency of
citation actually is rising with time, not decreasing. Hamilton, boy,
wonder the new federal government is created.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
He hits the ground running.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Hamilton is only thirty four years old when Washington appoints
him the first Treasury Secretary.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
This instantly makes him not only the.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Most powerful person in America, guarantees that he'll be the
most controversial.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Why.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Remember Washington's cabinet, and the term was not used. It
was originally called the general Council. Washington's cabinet consisted.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Of just three people.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
There was Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, Henry Knox, Secretary
of War, and Hamilton a treasury I think fair to say,
pound for pound, the best cabinet in American history. Even
the Attorney General edwind Randolph is a part time legal
advisor to the president, lacking that small thing called the
Justice Department at that point.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And you've been listening to Ron Churnow, author of the
definitive biography An Alexander Hamilton, called Alexander Hamilton, And what
a story we're listening to. He didn't have the birth
that is, he wasn't born to blue bloods, obviously, he
was born well in Saint Croix with nothing, but he
had that talent, that writing talent.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
To start.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Remarkably, Hamilton drafts fifty one of the Federalist Papers, and
he did it in his spare time. He was a
lawyer and self taught and just a prodigy. What's so
fascinating about the Federalist Papers that it's the most cited
document in Supreme Court jurisprudence and in case law than
(17:36):
any other document there is, and it continues to be
cited with increasing frequency. In other words, the writing of
Hamilton more relevant than ever in our nation's battles that
are often settled in the courts when we come back
more of the story of Alexander Hamilton here on our
(17:56):
American stories.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And we continue with.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Our American stories and with the story of Alexander Hamilton
as told by his definitive biographer, Ron Chernow this talk
again came from the Library of Congress. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Now, in the early days, Jefferson at State starts with
six employees. Henry Knox starts with a mere dozen. At war,
Hamilton starts out with about three dozen, and the number
quickly balloons to several hundred employees, a frightening bureaucracy by
the standards of the day, and also again many times
(18:45):
larger than the rest of the government combined. Which is
why when you read histories of the period, historians tend
to like in Hamilton's position in Washington's administration to that
of a prime minister rather than a mere department head.
When you say to people Alexander Hamilton was the first
Treasury secretary, it just does not begin to capture the
scope and magnitude of the power that this man wielded.
(19:09):
Beyond the size of the Treasury Department is a proportion
of the government. Remember, Hamilton had to invent that department
from scratch. At the time, there were no income taxes.
Most revenues came from import duties. This meant he had
to create a custom service. To have a custom service,
who have to create beacons in boys and lighthouses up
and down the eastern seaboard. Smuggling, as you know, was
(19:33):
a favorite revolutionary pastime. Suddenly this activity has to be
stopped in the name of patriotism. So Hamilton has to
construct a fleet of so called the revenue cutter as
the start of course of the Coast Guard. Again and
again we see Hamilton forging the basic building blocks.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
Of the American government.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
He takes a country bankrupted by revolutionary war.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Debt, he restores its credit.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He devises our first taxism, our first budget system, our
first central bank, our first monetary system. He has the
federal government to adopt all of the state that why
does he do that? That seems counterintuitive for the federal
government to add that to what it already had. Well,
Hamilton knew that if the federal government adopted the state,
that creditors would transfer their allegiance to the federal government,
(20:20):
and it would also forever after give the federal government
a kind of moral authority over revenues that the States
would never have. Very cunning and very characteristic of Hamilton
in terms of embedding a political program in a seemingly
technocratic program. Again, again, no less important than all of
these pragmatic achievements as Treasure Secretary, it is Hamilton, the
(20:43):
great constitutional scholar, who makes the enduring arguments that all
of these new activities are in fact permitted under the
new National Charter. Remember Washington's first question first administration always
is is this permissible under the constitution. Hamilton kind of
clairvoyance that is hard to explain encourage his manufacturing stock exchanges, banks,
(21:06):
and corporations at a time when these activities seemed like scary, futuristic.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Stuff to many people.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
In the book, I dubbed him the messenger from the future,
or as the New York Historical Society would have at,
the man who made modern America. So why has Hamilton
been villainized as a dangerous reactionary since he seems to
anticipate things that happened one hundred or two hundred years
later rather than looking backward. Partly, I think this goes
(21:36):
back to the deadly rivalry between Hamilton and Jefferson in
Washington's cabinet. Jefferson, you know, a man of very decided opinions,
was a rather shy, soft spoken man, and Jefferson actually
shrank from open disagreement.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
If you happen to find.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yourself at a dinner party with Thomas Jefferson and you
disagreed with him, Jefferson would not openly confront you. Hamilton
would certainly openly confront you. What Jefferson would do he
would repair to his lodgings that evening, he would record
the statement that you had made, and then he would
store it up for later use. And boy did he
store things up. With Hamilton and Jefferson's secret diary, there
(22:14):
are nearly four dozen references to Hamilton. The epic animosity
between these two Olympian figures is partly a matter of
clashing visions. Jefferson, once a rural America with a weak
central government, stresses states rights, strict construction, the constitution, tax cuts.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Limited government, etc.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Hamilton's division is of a bustling, diversified America of trade, finance,
and manufacturing as well as traditional agriculture. Hamilton favors an
energetic federal government certainly a strong presidency, strong independent judiciary,
relatively weak states, and a very expensive interpretation of the Constitution.
(22:54):
You could see where the laconic Jefferson was quite understandably
terrified of Hamilton's sheer brilliance. Hamilton was one of these
frightening windbags whom you meet from time to time, who
can speak in perfectly worded paragraphs for hours on end,
and Hamilton did. Hamilton also was one of these intimidating
characters who could and did toss off a ten thousand
(23:16):
word opinion overnight for George Washington. And you could see
in Jefferson's diary that he's really struggling with Hamilton.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Hamilton made a speech of three quarters of an hour
in the Cabinet today, as if he had been speaking
to a jury. The next day, Jefferson wearily records Hamilton
spoke again for three quarters of an hour. Hamilton was
quite frankly a word machine. Hamilton wrote enough in forty
nine years to fill twenty two thousand pages in the
(23:46):
latest edition of his Collected Papers, and your Speaker was
masochistic enough to.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Read every one of those pages.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It is said that Harold Syrett, who edited the papers
for Columbia University Press and outstanding job. Harrold Syret evidently
used to joke that he intended to dedicate the many
volumes to Aaron Burr quote, without whose cooperation this project
would never have been completed. When Hamilton publishes some articles
(24:22):
supporting Washington's neutrality proclamation, Jefferson contacted James Madison and pleaded
with him to robut Hamilton in print. Quote, for God's sake,
my dear sir, take up your pen, select the most
striking heresies and cut Hamilton to pieces.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
There is nobody else.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Who can and will enter the lists with him. There
was nobody else in America who could enter the lists
with Alexander Hamilton. Even James Madison orphan shrank from the invitation.
The cabinet feud between Hamilton and Washington become so vitriolic,
almost pathological, that poor long suffering Washington has to finally
plead with both of them to desist from their vicious
(25:05):
attacks on each other. Hamilton's attacks were directly written by Hamilton.
Jefferson would employ different surrogates, but the effect was the same.
In the end, it's Jefferson, not Hamilton, who leaves Washington's
cabinet and defeat and Hamilton, who reigns triumphant.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
But as you will know, the glittering.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Prize that eludes Alexander Hamilton as the presidency, and of course,
Thomas Jefferson goes on to become a two term president.
During the summer of seventeen ninety one, remarkably enough, at
the height of his powers as Treasury Secretary, a young
twenty three year old woman named Mariah Reynolds knocks at
his door. Government was then in Philadelphia. She asked to
(25:47):
speak to Hamilton privately, and she spills out a woeful
tale of how she has been cruelly abandoned by her husband,
this bulgarian named James Reynolds. She appeals to Hamilton for
financial aid. Hamilton, several years later narrated what happened next quote.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
In the evening.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I put a bank bill in my pocket and went
to her rooming house. I inquired for missus Reynolds, and
miss shown upstairs at the head of which she met
me and conducted me into a bedroom. I took the
bill out of my pocket and gave it to her.
Some conversation that ensued from Richard was quickly apparent that
other than pecuniary consolation.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Would be acceptable.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
The eighteenth century had away with words.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
I mean, And you've been listening to Ron Churnow, author
of the definitive biography an Alexander Hamilton, called Alexander Hamilton,
and of course that book inspired the musical that has
made its way around the world more than once. And
what a story, by the way, what a battle between
him and Jefferson about competing visions for the United States,
(26:53):
and some of those battles still happening today. Clearly Hamilton
won in the larger, broader vision of a strong central government,
but the battle today between the States and the big
bureaucracies in Washington, d c. Prevail and continue to dominate
the headlines even when we come back more of this
(27:14):
remarkable story, the story of Alexander Hamilton, with author Ron Churnow.
Here on our American stories. And we continue with our
(27:38):
American stories, and with the author of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Churnow,
Let's pick up where we last left.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Off now for a full year.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Despite all of the controversies swirling around his programs, when
Hamilton should have been most vigilant of his reputation, the
smartest man in American politics does about the most foolish
thing Imaginablelton, to his embarrassment, never knew whether Missus Reynold's
attraction for him was real or just a clever con job.
He later wrote, the variety of shapes which this woman
(28:08):
could assume was endless. Hamilton keeps furtively slipping off in
the night to these assignations with Missus Reynolds, even after
mister Reynolds, who was this rather coarse character. Mister Reynolds
suddenly appears and instead of stopping the adulterous affair between
Hamilton and his wife, mister Reynolds decides it would be
more fun to tax it.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Hamilton begins to fork.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Over blackmail money to the scrifter James Reynolds, despite the
obvious fatal damage that this can do to Hamilton's career,
not to mention to his devoted, long suffering wife Eliza.
One day, Missus Reynolds was entertaining a friend named Jacob
Klingman when Hamilton comes unexpectedly the or and even Hamilton
(28:54):
took certain precautions like always being alone with Missus Reynolds,
Hamilton is petrified to discover an eyewitness.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
So what does he do.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
He pretends that he's simply dropping off a message for
the low life. James Reynolds pause a moment to picture
this kind of let it sink in. Imagine your home.
One day, there is a knock on the door, You
go downstairs, you open the door, and there's Colin Pawler
Donald Remsfelt, pretending to be the FedEx delivery man and
imagining that he's going to get away with the disguise.
(29:29):
Hamilton ultimately publishes a ninety five page pamphlet admitting to
the affair. Because his enemy said, oh, you know that
money he was paying to James Reynolds, that was for
illicit speculation and treasury securities. Hamilton says, no, no, no,
says it in ninety five pages. No, no, no, that
was adultery that the money was for. Now, I know
(29:50):
that all of this intrigue in backstabbing runs countered to
our preferred image of the founders. These tales may remind
us more of the fallen state of our tabloid political
culture today than of the men enshrined in our school textbooks.
And let me stress so that there's not any misunderstanding
my tempt here is in no way to deny the
greatness of the Founders. The very best thing about spending
(30:12):
five years on Alexander Hamilton, I got on a daily
basis just to drink in his glorious words, to spend
five years not only in his company, but that of
all of the Founders, and if anything, I came away
with a far more exalted sense of their brilliance, their depth,
their integrity, et cetera. At the same time, I wanted
(30:33):
to liberate Hamilton and the other Founders from what I
thought was a sometimes stultifying image of gentility of these
people with powdered wigs and silver buckled shoes. The Founding
Fathers were not statues chiseled and stone. They were passionate,
fascinating figures of tremendous force and intensity.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
Once the revolution was over, they exhibited.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Very much the same lust for power, status, and influence
as other human beings. Nor do I think that we
should fault them for that. In fact, it was their
candidly realistic view of the ambition and the avarice rooted
in human nature that enabled them to construct the most
ingenious constitution that has guarded us against human frailty.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
For more than two centuries.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
As you know, Madison wrote famously in Federalists fifty one,
if men were angels, no government would be necessary.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Thank God that they.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Took that grim, that pessimistic view of human nature, rather
than assuming that we would have a succession of saints
in the White House. The Founders, i think, wrote these
things not just from abstract speculation, but from their own
personal experiences and observation.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Let me jump ahead to the duel.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Six times earlier in his career, Alexander Hamilton had entered
into the highly ritualized quarrels known as affairs of honor.
The potential culmination of affair of honor could.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Always be a duel.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
On those previous six occasions Hamilton had as it were,
settled out of a court. The quarrels had not ended
up in the dueling ground they could have.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Hamilton was a very combative man.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
He was hyper sensitive, I think, probably because of his
illegitimate boyhood in the Caribbean and what was a lifelong
sense of shame about his illegitimacy. So he's always very
vigilant anything concerning his reputation and sense of honor. The
novelty of what happens with Aaron Burr in eighteen oh
four was that for the first time Hamilton is on
(32:32):
the receiving end of the challenge instead of issuing it.
I think this throws him off balanced psychologically. When Hamilton
and Burr met on the field of honor in Weehawk
in New Jersey on July eleventh, eighteen oh fourth, Hamilton
and Vice President Aaron Burr were two politicians with their
careers in sharp decline, as shown by.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
The Reynolds affair.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Hamilton had perhaps committed political suicide.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
In public ones to orphan.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
By this point, Aaron Burr, for his part, had alienated
Thomas Jefferson. He was of Jefferson's party. During the famous
tie election of eighteen hundred. To try to explain it
briefly for those of you aren'tfamiliar with it, there was
not a separate vote in the electoral College for president
and vice president. Jefferson and Berber nominally on the same ticket,
the understanding being that Jefferson would be president Aaron Burr
(33:20):
vice president. When there is a tie between Jefferson and
Burr and the electoral College, Aaron Burr suddenly decides that
it might be rather pleasant to be President of the
United States instead of merely vice president. Thomas Jefferson, who
incredibly enough wins that election with an assist from Alexander Hamilton,
(33:40):
of all people, burb becomes vice president. Thomas Jefferson has
a very very long memory for such fatal miscalculations, decides
to drop Burr from the ticket. In eighteen oh four,
Berger turns to New York tries to run for governor again.
Hamilton blocks Burr's path. Hamilton's explanation for it was as follows.
(34:01):
He said that he supported Jefferson rather than Burr because
he would rather have somebody with the wrong principles rather
than no principles. He thought that Burr was unprincipled and unscrupulous.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Of course, Burr is.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
During that tie and tacitly flirting with the Federalists. A
lot of Federalists, who like Hamilton, disliked Thomas Jefferson, said, well,
Burr may be an opportunist, he maybe lose canon whatever,
but we can cut a deal with Burr. Whereas Jefferson.
They realized that he had the wrong principles, but he
was a man of very fixed and unalterable principles. At
(34:44):
the time, Hamilton, who had engaged in a lot of
legitimate criticism but also a lot of hyperbole towards Thomas Jefferson,
wrote what I think was the most candid and accurate
appraisal of Jefferson that he ever did in a letter
at the time of the tie election. He said, you know,
I used to watch mister Jefferson when he was Secretary
(35:05):
of State and I was Secretary of the Treasuring and
he said, I often thought that he was like a
man who knew that he was someday inherit an estate,
the estate being the presidency, and in spite of his rhetoric,
did not really want to deplete the estate which he
knew he would someday inherit. And Hamilton predicted that Jefferson,
(35:25):
once in office, would in fact enjoy it and would
betray a taste for federal power that had not been
apparent in his rhetoric, certainly when he was in opposition
to the policies of Washington and Hamilton. The duel occurs
when Aaronbur reads in a newspaper that Hamilton has issued
(35:46):
a despicable opinion about him at an Albany dinner party.
Burt was never unduly disturbed by having killed Hamilton. He
had a rather macabre sense of humor. He liked to
refer jokingly quote to my friend Hamilton, whom I shot.
Let me say in closing that I knew with Hamilton
that I had been handed a precious biographer's gift. I
(36:07):
seem to like these large, floud figures who forced me
to wrestle with their contradictions and with Hamilton. Every time
I began to lapse into hero worship, he would pull
me up with some colossal, unexpected blunder. And every time
I started to lose patience with him, he would redeem
himself again with some beautiful act of statesmanship or friendship
or love.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I would maintain that.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
From Lexington and Concord in seventeen seventy five to these
Jefferson's first inauguration in eighteen oh one, nobody stood more
consistently at the center of American political life than Alexander Hamilton.
This is a story, an incredible story of an illegitimate,
orphan young man who comes.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Out of nowhere, sets the world on.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Fire, and grows up quite literally alongside his adopted country and.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
A terrific job on the editing by our own Greg
Hengler and a special thanks to Ron Churnow. This talk
was given at the Library of Congress in Washington, d C.
And we love bringing you speeches and stories from the
past and sometimes from in the very distant past. And
this by no better a storyteller in American history than
(37:17):
Ron Chernow again, the book is Alexander Hamilton. If you
haven't read it, get it. If you haven't seen the musical,
see it. But you'll understand what inspired the musical if
you read the book. I love what he said about
Hamilton that every time he started to get into some
hero worship, well, Hamilton told do something that had well
that would take his mind.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Off that, let's just say.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
And then every time he got frustrated with Hamilton, well,
he'd get lifted right out of that frustration by something
either heroic or beautiful or dazzling that Hamilton would do.
He was a fierce abolitionist and had a heart for
the oppressed, for Jews, for the American Indian. So in
addition to being this towering financial figure, this incredible fighter,
(38:02):
he had a soul for the outsider. The story of
Alexander Hamilton, indeed the story of one of our fundamental founders.
Here on our American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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