Alexander Hamilton Is Dead, Unfortunately
The nation — or at least the Republican Party — is in dire need of Alexander Hamilton these days. Unfortunately, the famed Founder is not available.
Instead, we get pusillanimous, spineless toadies like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who so desperately wants to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick that he refused to commit, on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this past Sunday, to honor the results of the presidential election if Trump loses. Senator, I guess that in your lust to stand next to Trump with upraised arms at the Republican National Convention, you have forgotten what happened to Trump’s last running mate. It is a cautionary tale, Senator Scott. You might want to revisit the history of four years ago.
Or we get the ever-atrocious and always slimy J.D. Vance, senator from Ohio, who once referred to Trump as “America’s Hitler” but who cannot repeat every Trumpian lie about the last presidential election fast enough. I guess being compared to Hitler is not a deal breaker after all.
Or we get craven politicians and political figures like Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, former Attorney General William Barr, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, and countless others, all of whom know Trump keeps lying about the last election and is a threat to the continuation of American democracy. But, I guess, American democracy is not really important to these folks, since all will vote for the former president even as he tells us what he will do to shred the Constitution and the rule of law if given the chance. The message is clear: Democracy, you had a nice run, sorry to see you go, but politics is politics.
No, it is not, when the fate of the Republic hangs in the balance. There are precious few profiles in courage in the party of Lincoln, these days. And, apparently, there is no one to heed the example of Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were bitter rivals in President George Washington’s first Cabinet. They had conflicting visions of America’s future, the role of government, and slavery (though Hamilton was never as ardent an opponent of slavery as the eponymous play about him would have us believe). They clashed over the French Revolution, which Jefferson praised and Hamilton abhorred. (For a comprehensive discussion of Hamilton, see Ron Chernow’s excellent biography. Jefferson has been the subject of numerous excellent studies and biographies.)
Jefferson and Hamilton despised each other. In a letter to Washington, Jefferson referred to his rival as “a man whose history… is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has… heaped its honors on his head.” Jefferson feared that Hamilton was a secret “monarchist,” about the worst thing one politician could say about another in the young Republic. Hamilton, for his part, believed Jefferson excused the excesses of the French Revolution because the author of the Declaration of Independence was “so seditious, so prostitute a character.”
But none of that mattered when Hamilton considered his course of action in the disputed election of 1800. A little background first. Under the Constitution, as originally drafted and ratified and before it was amended, electors cast two ballots for president. The candidate with the most votes became president, the runner-up became vice president. This method of voting was devised because the Framers of the Constitution did not imagine the emergence of political parties nominating a ticket of president and vice president. The original system resulted in political opponents occupying the two top positions in the government in 1796, John Adams as president, Jefferson vice president.
By 1800, the parties were fixed. The Democratic-Republicans ran Jefferson for president and Aaron Burr of New York for vice president. The Federalists nominated the incumbent Adams along with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. The Democratic-Republican slate won, but since electors could not indicate their presidential or vice presidential choice, the result was a tie between Jefferson and Burr. (The plan was for coordination among each party’s electors so that one elector would vote for someone other than the party’s vice presidential choice, insuring that there would not be a tie and the preferred candidate would be the presidential choice. The Federalists did just that, but every Democratic-Republican elector voted for both Jefferson and Burr.)
The Jefferson-Burr tie threw the election into the House of Representatives, where many Federalists who loathed Jefferson considered making Burr president. (The House could only vote for Jefferson or Burr, since they had tied in the Electoral College.) The Federalists considered Burr more politically in tune with them and more malleable.
Enter Alexander Hamilton, a prominent Federalist. Hamilton and Burr were political rivals in New York, and Hamilton had seen enough of the narcissistic Burr to fear his ascent to the presidency. Burr, Hamilton wrote, was “a man of extreme & irregular ambition—that he is selfish to a degree which excludes all social affections & that he is decidedly profligate.” (Italics in the original.) “In a choice of Evils,” Hamilton noted,
“Jefferson is in every view less dangerous than Burr.” And the clincher for Hamilton: “Mr. Jefferson, though too revolutionary in his notions, is yet a lover of liberty and will be desirous of something like orderly Government – Mr. Burr loves nothing but himself – thinks of nothing but his own aggrandizement – and will be content with nothing short of permanent power in his own hands.” (Is it me, or does this describe the likely Republican presidential nominee for 2024?) And, so, Hamilton threw his support to his arch-rival, insuring that Jefferson would be the next president.
Burr never forgave Hamilton, whose role in 1800 was one factor in the simmering feud between the two that led to the duel in which Burr killed Hamilton. Burr fled arrest, and became ensnared in a bizarre treasonous scheme to create a new empire in the West with Spanish help. The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1804, altering the Constitution to provide for separate votes for president and vice president in the Electoral College.
Unlike many modern Republicans, Hamilton understood the dangers of elevating unfit candidates to the presidency. Hamilton would never have sacrificed stability and liberty on the altar of party politics. Hamilton would never have understood the rationale of William Barr, who knows Trump is a threat to liberty but will vote for the four-times indicted former president because, Barr says, Trump “will do less damage over four years” than would a reelected Joe Biden. Does he seriously, truly believe that?
Hamilton would have agreed with Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the January 6 congressional committee, who finds Barr’s position abhorrent: “We can survive bad policy. We can’t survive a leader who’s going to torch the Constitution.” Hamilton’s assessment of Burr drove him to help make Jefferson president. Unfortunately, Hamilton is not around to talk sense into today’s Republicans.
Posted May 7, 2024