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Originally Posted by Hazzard
I am early on in the book about him by Ron Chernow, and so far Chernow is taking a very sympathetic view of Hamilton. Chernow feels bad that Hamilton, who died before he could write his own memoirs, has been defined through all these years by others, and is basically arguing that Hamilton should have a higher place amongst the founding fathers.
Clearly Hamilton was a brilliant man -- perhaps the sharpest of all of the founding fathers -- with a work ethic second to none, but for most of the past couple hundred years he has been the red-headed, freckled step-child to Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and the rest.
I'm curious what you think about him.
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I've often thought that if I were to list the, say, 20 most important people who ever lived (in terms of their impact on the human face of the earth as you see it today), of course you'd start out with the obvious ones in your top five or ten--Jesus, Paul, Mohammed, Newton, Alexander (the Great), Plato, the Yahwist, Mark (assuming he wrote the original Gospel, whoever he was), Budha, Confucious, Luther, etc. Before too long the names would start to get pretty subjective. But while you were still within that top 20 you'd have to list at least one American, I submit, if you were being objective, regardless of the subjectivity of the overall enterprise by the time you got there. I mean, America was the first republic state on earth since Rome fell into dictatorship not long before Christ was born, and she has been a pretty long lasting, powerful, influential republic by historical standards. Right?
Who would be the first American that you'd list? Washington? Jefferson? Lincoln? I say Hamilton. Why? More than any other of our founding fathers Hamilton saw in his mind's eye modern America as it exists today. Hamilton put his ideas into powerful words and Hamilton's vision for America is the one that has endured, been most influential, even prophetic, from the United States' fiscal processes to its federalist system to its very geographical make up. With the Louisiana Purchase and the outcome of the Civil War it was the Hamiltonian vision for America that prevailed. He is our great tragic here who will, millenia from now, be most remembered, in my opinion.
The one who has the strongest claim for top billing among Americans other than Hamilton is Washington, in my view, simply because he was the first man in 1800 years to decline a postition of monarchy or dictatorship in favor of the transcendent expiriment that was underway in America; Washington provided the stable leadership she needed during the war, her founding, and her earliest years as a fledgling, then subversive republic; and Hamilton was Washington's creation. But Hamilton clearly conceived and expressed the nuts and bolts of the republic for Washington. Given that America was the first such form of government since ancient Rome someone had to write the handbook for it, and Hamilton was the one that destiny picked.