Alexander Hamilton

我的渣翻译： 让我们停下来短暂地清点一下这一于1765和1769年之间降临在两个男孩身上的阴郁的灾难名录：他们的父亲消失了，他们的母亲去世了，他们的表亲和法定监护人死于血腥的自杀，而且他们的姑妈、叔叔、外祖母都已死去。十六岁的詹姆斯和十四岁的亚历山大，现在被孤零零地留在这个世界上，没有朋友，身无分文。在他们漂泊无根、混乱不堪的生涯中的每一步，他们都被失败者、破产者、心怀怨恨之人包围，他们短暂的生命被一系列令人震惊的破产、离婚、死亡、丑闻和遗产权剥夺的阴影笼罩。如此反复的打击一定剥夺了亚历山大•汉密尔顿的如下任何一则认知，即生活是公平的，他存在于一个善好的世界，或他可以依靠任何人获得帮助。这一事实——这可憎的童年产生了这样一个坚强的、富有创造力的、自立自强的人，这失去父亲的少年最终成为一个他还尚未见到的国家的国父之一——看起来并不是一个奇迹。因为他对自己不可言说的过去保持着完美的沉默，从未利用它来吹嘘自己日后的成功，他的同代人不可能理解他的个人成功具有何等超凡脱俗的意义。我们今日对汉密尔顿童年的了解大多来源于上个世纪。

【Translated by Cristal Lachesis】 【下面是卖腐时间- -】 汉密尔顿和劳伦斯立刻喜欢上了对方，形影不离。汉密尔顿之后称赞他的朋友的“热情，智力，进取心”。在战争继续时，汉密尔顿写给劳伦斯的信充满了不可遏制的热爱之情，以至于他的一位传记作家，詹姆斯•T•福莱克斯纳，在他们的关系中察觉到了同性爱的蛛丝马迹。因为十八世纪的书信文体非常浮夸华丽，即使在男人之间，人们必须小心翼翼地选择表达的词汇，特别是考虑到劳伦斯给汉密尔顿的信是温和而合乎分寸的。然而，这里并不值得注意的是，人们是多么频繁地用“女性化”这个词来形容汉密尔顿——更惊人的前提是他军事化的举止和男子气概的功绩。当约翰•C•汉密尔顿撰写他父亲的授权传记时，遗漏了一张散页保存在文献之中，描述了汉密尔顿与劳伦斯的关系：“在军队年青人的交往之中，表现出一种‘革命之骑士’的风度，他们的友谊充满了深深的喜爱，接近于女性间情谊的温柔。”汉密尔顿还是个男孩时肯定接触过同性恋，因为很多“鸡奸犯”和窃贼、扒手和其他不受欢迎的人一起被流放到加勒比群岛区域。在所有十三个殖民地，鸡奸是一项死罪，所以如果汉密尔顿和劳伦斯确实成为了情人——而且不能绝然否认这种确定性——他们一定是采取了超常谨慎的预防措施。至少，我们可以说汉密尔顿对他的朋友产生了一种少年时期的迷恋。 汉密尔顿，劳伦斯和一位年轻的法国贵族组成了生气勃勃的三人组，后者刚刚在1777年7月31日被任命为大陆军的荣誉主要将军之一。十九岁的拉法耶特侯爵，是个时髦漂亮，精力充沛的贵族青年，受到革命理想的感染并自愿为革命服务。“汉密尔顿和劳伦斯所属的’欢乐三人组’(the gay trio)因拉法耶特而变得完整了，”汉密尔顿的孙子日后写道。“整体来看，关于他们的事迹总是让人联想到大仲马笔下著名的三个火枪手。”拉法耶特总是用最富感情的语调形容他的两个北美朋友。对劳伦斯，他写道：“他的坦诚，正直，爱国主义和光辉的骑士风度使我成为他最忠实的朋友”。形容汉密尔顿时，拉法耶特更加热情洋溢，称他为“我最爱的朋友，你兄弟般的友爱使我感到同等的骄傲和快乐”。伊丽莎•汉密尔顿承认“侯爵像爱自己的兄弟一样爱汉密尔顿；他们的爱是相互的。”

[Translated by Cristal Lachesis] 冬季驻营期间，汉密尔顿一直在自学，像是在为未来更艰巨的任务而装备他的头脑。“智性的力量和意志的力量是他成功的源泉，”亨利•卡波特•洛奇日后写道。从成为一名炮兵司令之日开始，汉密尔顿就保留着一本背后有空白页的记账本；担任华盛顿的助手时，他的课外阅读笔记填满了整整112页。汉密尔顿是自我完善式的自学者的典型，把所有的闲暇时间都用来完善自我。他渴望成为十八世纪的贵族理想中那种多才多艺，精通每一知识领域的人。感谢他的记账本，我们知道他阅读了数量惊人的哲学，包括培根，霍布斯，蒙田，和西塞罗。他还仔细阅读了希腊，普鲁士和法国的历史。这在为华盛顿处理信函这一要求极高的一日工作之外并不是件轻松的事，但他牢记这些信息，并付诸有利的用途。当其他美国人梦想着一个抹去了一切贫瘠欧洲文明的印记的美妙新世界时，汉密尔顿谦逊地研究这些社会，以寻找建立新政府的线索。与杰斐逊不同，汉密尔顿从不认为美国的建立是奇迹般的一大步跨过深渊，迈向崭新的图景，而且他认为新世界有太多要向旧世界学习。 汉密尔顿钻研的第一本书可能就是玛拉奇•波斯尔思韦特的《商业与贸易通用辞典》，一部博大精深的政治、经济与地理学年鉴，充满了关于税制、公共债券、货币与金融的文章。这本词典是沉重的上下两卷对开本，想一想年轻的汉密尔顿在战争的混乱中辛苦搬运它们的情景就令人触动。汉密尔顿称赞波斯尔思韦特为“政治代数界最有才能的大师”。作为制造业的支持者，波斯尔思韦特奠定了这位战地助手对混合型经济的第一印象，其中政府可以同时引导商业活动和解放人们的创造性能量。从记账本上我们可以看出未来的财政部长出色地掌握了金融学的基本原理。“当你拥有更多的外国货币时，本国货币的汇率将升高，反之则降低，”汉密尔顿批注道。他还用关于世界的基本知识填塞他的大脑：“欧洲大陆长2600英里，宽2800英里”“布拉格是捷克的最主要城市，商业的最重要部分操纵在犹太人手里”。他记录波斯尔思韦特书上的表格，从出生-死亡率，人口增长，对外汇率，贸易平衡，到分门别类的国家总体经济产量。汉密尔顿对波斯尔思韦特的摘录显示了他在完成私人学习课程时堪称典范的一丝不苟。 与其他建国之父一样，汉密尔顿在古代典籍的智慧中搜寻政治的先例。从德摩斯梯尼的《第一斥责书》中，他摘录了一段用于总结他自己的观念，即领袖不应迎合群众的一时心血来潮。“像将军行进在他的队伍之前，”明智的政治家也应“行进在群众的头脑之前，因为他们不应等待事件发生再思考如何采取措施，而是思考什么措施导致了这一事件。”近乎五十一页的记账本包含了一套六卷本普鲁塔克《希腊罗马名人传》的摘录。据此，汉密尔顿经常借用普鲁塔克关于欲望、贪婪和阴谋策划夺权的人们的史诗故事来阐释政治。由于他的政治哲学根植于对人性的研究中，他对普鲁塔克的传记性描述显得特别欣喜。他还小心地注意到元老院、教会和其它精英团体对民众生活的统治。汉密尔顿早已对权力的制衡这一使得政府在暴政和无政府主义维持中间道路的原则感兴趣。在莱克格斯的传记中，他批注道： 在莱克格斯的无数改革中，第一和最重要的就是元老院的成立，这一机构在重大事务上拥有的等同于国王的权力……促生而又限制了傲慢和危险的专制天才，将它控制在平等和节制的范围内。因为国家之前没有可以参照的稳定的权力基础，有时偏向绝对专制，有时偏向绝对民主。但元老院的成立之于共和国，仿佛压舱石之于船只，将一切保持在公正的平衡之中。 汉密尔顿还对普鲁塔克记录的爱情故事和奇怪的性爱风俗特别感兴趣。他在记账本上记录了牧神节庆典期间两个古罗马裸体贵族男青年如何鞭打一位已婚女性，以及“该已婚女性如何对鞭打感到高兴，因为他们想象这有助于受孕”。汉密尔顿还对莱克格斯批准一位贵族男性向另一位丈夫请求让他的妻子怀孕的故事感到好奇，由于“通过在肥沃的土壤中耕种，他可能养育繁盛的子孙来保存他们双亲所有的优秀品质”。同一个莱克格斯还尝试使已婚女性“更健康，能产下更强壮的后代”，方法是让选定的处女和年轻男子“裸体在节庆场合在他们眼前跳舞”。 任何研究过汉密尔顿的记账本的人，对他有朝一日会成为一流的宪法学者，无人能及的财政部长，以及美国政坛第一起桃色新闻的男主角的结局，都不会大惊小怪的。 【最后一段笑死我了好吗……】

In contriving the smoothly running machinery of a modern nation-state – including a budget system, a funded debt, a tax system, a central bank, a customs service, and a coast guard – and justifying them in some of America’s most influential state papers, he set a high-water mark for administrative competence that has never been equaled. If Jefferson provided the essential poetry of American political discourse, Hamilton established the prose of American statecraft.

More than anyone else, the omnipresent Hamilton galvanized, inspired, and scandalized the newborn nation, serving as the flash point for pent-up conflicts of class, geography, race, religion, and ideology.

The magnitude of Hamilton’s feats as treasury secretary has overshadowed many other facets of his life: clerk, college student, youthful poet, essayist, artillery captain, wartime adjutant to Washington, battlefield hero, congressman, abolitionist, Bank of New York founder, state assemblyman, member of the Constitutional Convention and New York Ratifying Convention, orator, lawyer, polemicist, educator, patron saint of the New-York Evening Post, foreign-policy theorist, and major general in the army.

We have left behind the rosy agrarian rhetoric and slaveholding reality of Jeffersonian democracy and reside in the bustling world of trade, industry, stock markets, and banks that Hamilton envisioned.

At a time when Jefferson and Madison celebrated legislative power as the purest expression of the popular will, Hamilton argued for a dynamic executive branch and an independent judiciary, along with a professional military, a central bank, and an advanced financial system.

Ambition was reckless if inspired by purely selfish motives but laudable if guided by great principles.

The relationship between Washington and Hamilton was so consequential in early American history – rivaled only by the intense comradeship between Jefferson and Madison – that it is difficult to conceive of their careers apart. The two men had complementary talents, values, and opinions that survived many strains over their twenty-two years together. Washington possessed the outstanding judgment, sterling character, and clear sense of purpose needed to guide his sometimes wayward protégé; he saw that the volatile Hamilton needed a steadying hand. Hamilton, in turn, contributed philosophical depth, administrative expertise, and comprehensive policy knowledge that nobody in Washington’s ambit ever matched. He could transmute wispy ideas into detailed plans and turn revolutionary dreams into enduring realities. As a team, they were unbeatable and far more than the sum of their parts.

Nonetheless, the two men had clashing temperaments and frequently showed more mutual respect than true affection. When Charles Willson Peale painted Washington in 1779, he presented a manly, confident figure with a quiet swagger and an easy air of command. In fact, Washington wasn’t nonchalant and could be exacting and quick to take offense. While he had a dry wit, his mirth was restrained and seldom expressed in laughter. He did not encourage familiarity, fearing it would encourage laxity in subordinates, and held himself aloof with a grave sobriety that gave him power over other people. In addition, over time he became such a prisoner of his own celebrity that people couldn’t relax in his presence. Gilbert Stuart noted the fierce temper behind the fabled self-control, and his later paintings of Washington show something hooded and wary in the hard, penetrating eyes. The self-control was something achieved, not inherited, and often masked combustible emotions that could explode in fury. “His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned, but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it,” Jefferson later said perceptively. “If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in his wrath.”

Those who met Washington in social situations were usually taken with his gallantry and convivial charm. Abigail Adams fairly cooed when she met him, reassuring John that “the gentleman and soldier look agreeably blended in him.” Working with him in cramped quarters, however, Hamilton had many chances to see Washington’s irritable side and sometimes ungovernable temper. Washington was extremely fond of Hamilton, preferring him to his other aides, but he did not express his affection openly. Hamilton always addressed him as “Your Excellency,” and it irked him that he could not penetrate the general’s reserve. But Lafayette noted that Hamilton, in turn, held something back. The notion that Hamilton was a surrogate son to Washington has some superficial merit but fails to capture fully the psychological interplay between them. If Hamilton was a surrogate son, some suppressed Oedipal rage entered into the mix. Hamilton was so brilliant, so coldly critical, that he detected flaws in Washington less visible to other aides. One senses that he was the only young member of Washington’s “family” who felt competitive with the general or could have imagined himself running the army. It was temperamentally hard for Alexander Hamilton to subordinate himself to anyone, even someone with the extraordinary stature of George Washington. At the same time, he never doubted for an instant that Washington was a great leader of special gifts and the one irreplaceable personage in the early American pageant. He had the deepest admiration for Washington, even if he didn’t wallow in hero worship. He had misgivings about Washington as a military leader – the general did lose the majority of battles he fought in the Revolution – but not about him as a political leader. Having hitched his star to Washington, Hamilton struck a bargain with himself that he honored for the remainder of his career: he would never openly criticize Washington, whose image had to be upheld to unify the country.

It is remarkable that Washington would have drafted his young aide for such a tough assignment. After Saratoga, Horatio Gates was the hero of the day, the darling of New England politicians, and this only deepened the mutual antipathy between him and Washington. Gates had even snubbed Washington by refusing to inform him directly of his victory. Thus, Hamilton’s mission was fraught with a multitude of perils. From a general at the zenith of his popularity, he had to pry loose a sizable number of troops and to do so, if possible, without issuing any orders. Hamilton would have to ride three hundred miles and then bargain with Gates without any further opportunity to consult with Washington. Clearly, the imperious Gates would feel demeaned by having to negotiate with a diminutive twenty-two-year-old. Hamilton would need to tap all the cunning and diplomacy in his nature.

Dueling was so prevalent in the Continental Army that one French visitor declared, “The rage for dueling here has reached an incredible and scandalous point.” It was a way that gentlemen could defend their sense of honor: instead of resorting to courts if insulted, they repaired to the dueling ground. This anachronistic practice expressed a craving for rank and distinction that lurked beneath the egalitarian rhetoric of the American Revolution. Always insecure about his status in the world, Hamilton was a natural adherent to dueling, with its patrician overtones. Lacking a fortune or family connections, he guarded his reputation jealously throughout his life, and affairs of honor were often his preferred method for doing so. The man born without honor placed a premium on maintaining his.

The June 18 speech was to prove one of three flagrant errors in his career. In each case, he was brave, detailed, and forthright on a controversial subject, as if laboring under some compulsion to express his inmost thoughts. Each time, he was spectacularly wrongheaded and indiscreet, yet convinced he was right. Only one thing was certain: this verbose, headstrong, loose-tongued man made poor material for the conspirator conjured up by his enemies.

Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.

The battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.

Like other founding fathers, Hamilton inhabited two diametrically opposed worlds. There was the Olympian sphere of constitutional debate and dignified discourse – the way many prefer to remember these stately figures – and the gutter world of personal sniping, furtive machinations, and tabloid-style press attacks. The contentious culture of these early years was both the apex and the nadir of American political expression. Such a contradictory environment was probably an inescapable part of the transition from the lofty idealism of Revolution to the gritty realities of quotidian politics. The heroes of 1776 and 1787 were bound to seem smaller and more hypocritical as they jockeyed for personal power and advantage in the new government.

Adams said that Washington possessed “the gift of taciturnity.” Hamilton’s mind was so swift and decisive that it could lead him into rash decisions. Washington’s management style was the antithesis of this. “He consulted much, pondered much, resolved slowly, resolved surely.” Hamilton later said of the president. Washington could weigh all sides of an issue and coolly appraise the political repercussions. “Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence, never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed,” said Jefferson.

The federal government had captured forever the bulk of American taxing power. In comparison, the location of the national capital seemed a secondary matter. It wasn’t that Jefferson had been duped by Hamilton; Hamilton had explained his views at dizzying length. It was simply that he had been outsmarted by Hamilton, who had embedded an enduring political system in the details of the funding scheme. In an unsigned newspaper article that September, entitled “Address to the Public Creditors,” Hamilton gave away the secret of his statecraft that so infuriated Jefferson: “Whoever considers the nature of our government with discernment will see that though obstacles and delays will frequently stand in the way of the adoption of good measures, yet when once adopted, they are likely to be stable and permanent. It will be far more difficult to undo than to do.”

Then, in blazing italics, Hamilton trumpeted his main theme: “Now it appears to the Secretary of the Treasury that this general principle is inherent in the very definition of government and essential to every step of the progress to be made by that of the United States: namely that every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attainment of the ends of such power.” If Jefferson’s and Randolph’s views were upheld, “the United States would furnish the singular spectacle of a political society without sovereignty or of a people governed without government.”

The Bank of the United States would enable the government to make good on four powers cited explicitly in the Constitution: the rights to collect taxes, borrow money, regulate trade among states, and support fleets and armies. Jefferson wanted to deprive the federal government of the power to create any corporations, which Hamilton thought could cripple American business in the future. At the time, few corporations existed, and those mostly to build turnpikes. The farseeing Hamilton perceived the immense utility of this business form and patiently explained to Washington how corporations, with limited liability, were superior to private partnerships. In the end, his bank argument was predicated not only on his interpretation of the Constitution but on his reading of history: “In all questions of this nature, the practice of mankind ought to have great weight against the theories of individuals.”

In the best of all possible worlds, Hamilton preferred free trade, open markets, and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” He wrote later in life, “In matters of industry, human enterprise ought doubtless to be left free in the main, not fettered by too much regulation, but practical politicians know that it may be beneficially stimulated by prudent aids and encouragements on the part of the government.” At this early stage of American history, Hamilton thought aggressive European trade policies obligated the United States to respond in kind. He therefore supported temporary mercantilist policies that would improve American self-sufficiency, leading to a favorable trade balance and more hard currency. For a young nation struggling to find its way in a world of advanced European powers, Realpolitik trumped the laissez-faire purism of Adam Smith.

A year later, trading in government bonds grew so brisk that the Buttonwood group adjourned to an upstairs room of the new Tontine Coffee House, a three-story brick structure at Wall and Water Streets, right near Hamilton’s New York home. Its first president was Archibald Gracie, whose East River mansion was to house New York mayors. Local wits christened the Tontine Coffee House “Scrip Castle” in honor of Hamilton’s bank scrip, which had triggered expanded share trading. Henceforth, Wall Street would signal much more than a short, narrow lane in lower Manhattan. It would symbolize an industry, a sector of the economy, a state of mind, and it became synonymous with American finance itself.

Jefferson often told of a dinner discussion that he had about British politics with Adams, Knox, and Hamilton in Philadelphia in 1791. They were discussing the “corruption” of the British political system – the system of royal patronage and pensions, the unequal size of electoral districts, and so on – when the following exchange occurred:

Mr. Adams observed, “Purge that constitution of its corruption … and it would be the most perfect constitution ever devised by the wit of man.” Hamilton paused and said, “Purge it of its corruption … and it would become an impracticable government. As it stands at present, with all its supposed defects, it is the most perfect government which ever existed.”

Jefferson gave this comment a sinister gloss, but Hamilton was merely saying that the Crown needed patronage to offset Parliament’s power of the purse. In Federalist number 76, Hamilton had described the tendency of popular assemblies, in England and elsewhere, to encroach upon the executive branch. Admiration for Britain’s unwritten constitution and representative government had been commonplaces of colonial rhetoric. John Marshall said of prerevolutionary America, “While the excellence of the English constitution was a rich theme of declamation, every colonist believed himself entitled to its advantages.” Only seven months before the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, “Believe me, dear Sir, there is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do.” During the fight to ratify the Constitution, Patrick Henry praised the British constitution as superior to the new American version. It was not illogical for patriots to see their new government as realizing British ideals that had been wantonly trampled on by the Crown. It was France, not England, that had long been associated with despotic government, and Hamilton’s high praise for England was not as heretical as Jefferson pretended it was.

Washington’s decision to forgo a third term was momentous. He wasn’t bound by term limits, and many Americans expected him to serve for life. He surrendered power in a world where leaders had always grabbed for more. Stepping down was the most majestic democratic response he could have flung at his Republican critics. Toward the end of his first term, he had asked James Madison to draft a farewell address and then stashed it away when he decided on a second term. Now, in the spring of 1796, he unearthed that draft. As at the close of the American Revolution, Washington wanted to make a valedictory statement that would codify some enduring principles in American political life. To update Madison’s draft, he turned to Hamilton. Washington no longer felt obliged to restrain his affection for his protégé and now sent Hamilton handwritten notes marked “Private.” He increasingly treated him as a peer and warm friend, and Hamilton responded with gratitude.

If Hamilton was the major wordsmith, Washington was the tutelary spirit and final arbiter of what went in. The poignant opening section in which Washington thanked the American people could never have been written by Hamilton alone. Conversely, the soaring central section, with its sophisticated perspective on policy matters, showed Hamilton’s unmistakable stamp.

How to explain the paradox that a man of such unbounded talent and ambition never attained the top office or even made a covert run for it? Surely he must have wanted to be president. The conundrum can be solved partly by noting that the political stars were never suitably aligned for Hamilton. Obviously, he could not have challenged Washington for the presidency, and, as John Adams correctly told Abigail, “I am the heir apparent.” Hamilton himself had stated that Adams, Jefferson, and Jay, by virtue of their seniority, were seen as presumptive presidential contenders. Also, Hamilton left the government determined to repair his finances and refurbish his legal practice. Moreover, by then he was so controversial, so divisive, that the mere mention of his name could trigger debates. Adored by his followers, he was seen as cocky, conceited, and swaggering by his enemies.

Other reasons account for Hamilton’s failure to snatch the prize. Though blessed with a great executive mind and a consummate policy maker, Hamilton could never master the smooth restraint of a mature politician. His conception of leadership was noble but limiting: the true statesman defied the wishes of the people, if necessary, and shook them from wishful thinking and complacency. Hamilton lived in a world of moral absolutes and was not especially prone to compromise or consensus building. Where Washington and Jefferson had a gift for voicing the hopes of ordinary people, Hamilton had no special interest in echoing popular preferences. Much too avowedly elitist to become president, he lacked what Woodrow Wilson defined as an essential ingredient for political leadership: “profound sympathy with those whom he leads – a sympathy which is insight – an insight which is of the heart rather than of the intellect.” Alexander Hamilton enjoyed no such mystic bond with the American people. This may have been why Madison was so adamant that “Hamilton never could have got in” as president.

The prickly Adams developed a tender affection for Jefferson, albeit one mingled with an uneasy sense of his unfathomable mystery. No less than Hamilton, Adams perceived that Jefferson, behind the façade of philosophic tranquility, was “eaten to a honeycomb” with ambition. Jefferson, in turn, detected traces of the curmudgeon in Adams. “He hates Franklin, he hates Jay, he hates the French, he hates the English,” he told Madison from Paris. “To whom will he adhere? His vanity is a lineament in his character which had entirely escaped me.” Four years later, Jefferson sent Madison a more potent version of this same critique, calling Adams “vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men.” For all that, Jefferson appreciated Adams as a warmhearted, convivial spirit, a fascinating conversationalist, and a man of bedrock integrity. Their relationship had foundered in 1791 when Jefferson lauded The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine by drawing an invidious contrast to the “political heresies which have sprung up among us” – a cutting reference to Adams’s Discourses on Davila, which Jeffersonians read as a plea for a hereditary presidency. After Jefferson stepped down as secretary of state, he and Adams seldom corresponded during the next three years.

John Adams was an unprepossessing man. Short and paunchy with a round, jowly face and a pale complexion, he had piercing eyes that protruded from behind thick lids. He had an exceedingly active mind, always bubbling with words. Images welled up spontaneously from his imagination, as in his extraordinary description of Thomas Paine as “the satyr of the age … a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a butch wolf.” Because he bared his psyche in diaries and letters, we know him more intimately than any other founder. One can summon up an army of adjectives for John Adams – crotchety, opinionated, endearing, temperamental, frank, erudite, outspoken, generous, eccentric, restless, petty, choleric, philosophical, plucky, quirky, pugnacious, fanciful, stubborn, and whimsical – and scarcely exhaust the possibilities. His life was a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting moods. Charles Francis Adams summed up his mercurial grandfather well when he wrote that he could be very warm and engaging in ordinary conversation but “extremely violent” when provoked.

Had they been more alike in style and temperament, Hamilton and Adams might have embraced as political comrades, since their views tallied on so many issues. Consider this statement from Adams: “Popularity was never my mistress, nor was I ever or shall I ever be a popular man … But one thing I know: a man must be sensible of the errors of the people and upon his guard against them and must run the risk of their displeasure sometimes or he will never do them any good in the long run.” This was Hamilton’s credo as well. Like Hamilton, Adams had sufficient faith in the people to want liberty for them but enough doubts to want to constrain their representatives with an ironclad system of checks and balances. Both men were staunch nationalists; admired the British system; were averse to utopian thinking; rejected romantic notions that human nature could be purified by democracy; and thought the masses could be no less tyrannical than kings. Both also feared the French Revolution as a possible portent for America. For Adams, events in France reeked of “blood and horror, of murder and massacre, of ambition and avarice.”

The personal recriminations of the 1800 election can obscure the huge ideological shift that reshaped American politics and made the Republicans the majority party. In races for the House of Representatives, where Hamilton’s Letter played no part, the Republicans took control by a more lopsided margin – sixty-five Republicans to forty-one Federalists – than in their presidential victory. The people had registered their dismay with a long litany of unpopular Federalist actions: the Jay Treaty, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the truculent policy toward France, the vast army being formed under Hamilton and the taxes levied to support it. The 1800 elections revealed, for the first time, the powerful centrist pull of American politics – the electorate’s tendency to rein in anything perceived as extreme.

Having said that, one must add that the celebration of the 1800 election as the simple triumph of “progressive” Jeffersonians over “reactionary” Hamiltonians greatly overstates the case. The three terms of Federalist rule had been full of dazzling accomplishments that Republicans, with their extreme apprehension of federal power, could never have achieved. Under the tutelage of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, the Federalists had bequeathed to American history a sound federal government with a central bank, a funded debt, a high credit rating, a tax system, a customs service, a coast guard, a navy, and many other institutions that would guarantee the strength to preserve liberty. They activated critical constitutional doctrines that gave the American charter flexibility, forged the bonds of nationhood, and lent an energetic tone to the executive branch in foreign and domestic policy. Hamilton, in particular, bound the nation through his fiscal programs in a way that no Republican could have matched. He helped to establish the rule of law and the culture of capitalism at a time when a revolutionary utopianism and a flirtation with the French Revolution still prevailed among too many Jeffersonians. With their reverence for states’ rights, abhorrence of central authority, and cramped interpretation of the Constitution, Republicans would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve these historic feats.

Hamilton had promoted a forward-looking agenda of a modern nation-state with a market economy and an affirmative view of central government. His meritocratic vision allowed greater scope in the economic sphere for the individual liberties that Jefferson defended so eloquently in the political sphere. It was no coincidence that the allegedly aristocratic and reactionary Federalists contained the overwhelming majority of active abolitionists of the period. Elitists they might be, but they were an open, fluid elite, based on merit and money, not on birth and breeding – the antithesis of the southern plantation system. It was the northern economic system that embodied the mix of democracy and capitalism that was to constitute the essence of America in the long run. By no means did the 1800 election represent the unalloyed triumph of good over evil or of commoners over the wellborn.

Jefferson had not captured the presidency by a wide margin over Adams, but he was an agile politician with a sure sense of populist symbolism. A handsome man of sometimes unkempt appearance, Jefferson eliminated the regal trappings of the Washington and Adams administrations and brilliantly crafted an image of himself as a plain, unadorned American. The various Jeffersons served up by Hamilton in his essays – the epicurean Jefferson, the spendthrift Jefferson, the patrician Jefferson, the indebted Jefferson, the slave-owning, lovemaking Jefferson – were blotted out by one of history’s most impressive image makers. For two weeks after his inauguration, Jefferson stayed at his boardinghouse near the Capitol and supped at the common table. Once in the White House, the folksy president (who had been a fashion plate in Paris) galloped through Washington on horseback, dispensed with wigs and powdered hair, shuffled around in slippers, fed his pet mockingbird, and answered the doorbell himself. (When William Plumer first visited the executive mansion, he mistook the president for a servant.) Only Jefferson could have turned frumpy clothing into a resonant political statement.

In a tremendous visionary leap, Hamilton foresaw a civil war between north and south, a war that the north would ultimately win but at a terrible cost: “The result must be destructive to the present Constitution and eventually the establishment of separate governments framed on principles in their nature hostile to civil liberty.”

Politicians were among the most ardent duelists. Many duels arose from partisan disputes and, as Joanne Freeman has shown in Affairs of Honor, they often followed contested elections, as losers sought to recoup their standing. Political parties were still fluid organizations based on personality cults, and no politician could afford to have his honor impugned. Though fought in secrecy and seclusion, duels always turned into highly public events that were covered afterward with rapt attention by the press. They were designed to sway public opinion and shape the images of the adversaries.

Once a duel was agreed upon, Hamilton had to reconcile the two glaringly incompatible elements of the situation: his need to fight to preserve his political prestige and his equally powerful need to remain true to his avowed opposition to dueling. He opted for a solution chosen by honorable duelists before him: he would throw away his fire – that is, purposely miss his opponent.

Thus, at 7:00 A.M. on July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr stood face-to-face, ready to settle their furious quarrel. Both gentlemen followed strict etiquette and “exchanged salutations.” Twenty-three days had elapsed since the onset of their clandestine imbroglio. For two decades, they had met in New York courtrooms and salons, election meetings and legislatures, and had preserved an outward cordiality. Had it not been for their political rivalry, they might have been close friends. Both entered the duel from weak positions, hoping to reap some measure of political rehabilitation. To judge from a final painting of him by John Trumbull, Hamilton retained his keen, steady gaze, but melancholy clouded his face. And to judge from a John Vanderlyn painting done two years earlier, Burr had receding hair, graying at the edges, and a hint of anger darkened his expression. He was handsome and elegantly attired, however, and fearless on the field of honor.

In Hamilton’s last hours, more than twenty friends and family members pressed into his chamber, most praying on their knees with their eyes fixed on Hamilton’s every expression. David Ogden said they gave way to “a flood of tears” and “implored heaven to bless their friend.” For some, the deathwatch became insupportable. “The scene is too powerful for me,” Gouverneur Morris wrote. “I am obliged to walk in the garden to take breath.” Morris later recalled the scene around Hamilton, “his wife almost frantic with grief, his children in tears, every person present deeply afflicted, the whole city agitated, every countenance dejected.” Hamilton alone seemed resigned as the end neared. At one point, speaking of politics, he said, “If they break this union, they will break my heart.” He could have left no more fitting political epitaph.