Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton isn’t remembered all too well in American history, but he was a politician who had a remarkable gift that is oh, so lacking among many politicians, both then and today.

1. The Historical backdrop

In 1787 Hamilton vigorously advocated for what many considered a very monarchical government for the United States. Though regarded as one of his most eloquent speeches, it had little effect upon the deliberations of the convention. He proposed to have an elected President and elected Senators who would serve for life contingent upon “good behavior”, and subject to removal for corruption or abuse; this idea contributed later to the view of Hamilton as a monarchist sympathizer, held by James Madison (secretary of the Convention) and his friends.

James Madison

It was Madison who opposed Hamilton’s view most sagely. He argued that if you give too much power to the provinces, they’d swamp the central government (as had happened before). On the flip side, give to the national government the power to use force on a state, and you could be inviting civil war. So Madison proposed that the most stable balance of power was one where the national government had no mandates to coerce the states or in any way rival them. Both would exist for the protection of the American people.

Madison’s view was triumphant, little states were given equal representation in the upper house, the Senate, and the men of Philadelphia acknowledged in full the local interests of all the regions by giving them the widest representations in the lower house, the House of Representatives. And whatever powers were not stipulated in the Constitution were left to the States.

This sounds like a shattering defeat for Hamilton. When the Convention was over, he lamented that “no man’s ideas are more remote from the plan than my  are known to be.”

2. Hamilton, the noble politician

But here we see a glimpse of what made Alexander Hamilton a great politician. He added, without a grudge: “Is it possible to deliberate between anarchy and convulsion on one side and the chance of good to be expected on the other?”

Hamilton did not complain because he had lost, instead went to work writing more than forty brilliantly essays urging the states to ratify the Constitution.

Hamilton, despite the negative light historians have at times represented him in, embodies the best qualities a politician can have in his absence of malice, or in the words of Mencken: “A steady willingness to believe that his opponent is as honorable a man as himself and may be right.”

The signing of the Constitution of the United States