From National Book Award winner Ron Chernow, a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.
Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades," now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important fig...
From National Book Award winner Ron Chernow, a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.
Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades," now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.
An illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, Hamilton rose with stunning speed to become George Washington's aide-de-camp, a member of the Constitutional Convention, coauthor of The Federalist Papers , leader of the Federalist party, and the country's first Treasury secretary. With masterful storytelling skills, Chernow presents the whole sweep of Hamilton's turbulent life: his exotic, brutal upbringing; his brilliant military, legal, and financial exploits; his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Monroe; his illicit romances; and his famous death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July 1804.
For the first time, Chernow captures the personal life of this handsome, witty, and perennially controversial genius and explores his poignant relations with his wife Eliza, their eight children, and numberless friends. This engrossing narrative will dispel forever the stereotype of the Founding Fathers as wooden figures and show that, for all their greatness, they were fiery, passionate, often flawed human beings.
Alexander Hamilton was one of the seminal figures in our history. His richly dramatic saga, rendered in Chernow's vivid prose, is nothing less than a riveting account of America's founding, from the Revolutionary War to the rise of the first federal government.
作者简介
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Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelance journalist. Between 1973 and 1982, Chernow published over sixty articles in national publications, including numerous cover stories. In the mid-80s Chernow went to work at the Tw...
Ron Chernow was born in 1949 in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating with honors from Yale College and Cambridge University with degrees in English Literature, he began a prolific career as a freelance journalist. Between 1973 and 1982, Chernow published over sixty articles in national publications, including numerous cover stories. In the mid-80s Chernow went to work at the Twentieth Century Fund, a prestigious New York think tank, where he served as director of financial policy studies and received what he described as “a crash course in economics and financial history.”
Chernow’s journalistic talents combined with his experience studying financial policy culminated in the writing of his extraordinary first book, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990). Winner of the 1990 National Book Award for Nonfiction, The House of Morgan traces the amazing history of four generations of the J.P. Morgan empire. The New York Times Book Review wrote, “As a portrait of finance, politics and the world of avarice and ambition on Wall Street, the book has the movement and tension of an epic novel. It is, quite simply, a tour de force.” Chernow continued his exploration of famous financial dynasties with his second book, The Warburgs (1994), the story of a remarkable Jewish family. The book traces Hamburg’s most influential banking family of the 18th century from their successful beginnings to when Hitler’s Third Reich forced them to give up their business, and ultimately to their regained prosperity in America on Wall Street.
Described by Time as “one of the great American biographies,” Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998) brilliantly reveals the complexities of America’s first billionaire. Rockefeller was known as a Robber Baron, whose Standard Oil Company monopolized an entire industry before it was broken up by the famous Supreme Court anti-trust decision in 1911. At the same time, Rockefeller was one of the century’s greatest philanthropists donating enormous sums to universities and medical institutions. Chernow is the Secretary of PEN American Center, the country’s most prominent writers’ organization, and is currently at work on a biography of Alexander Hamilton. He lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York.
In addition to writing biographies, Chernow is a book reviewer, essayist, and radio commentator. His book reviews and op-ed articles appear frequently in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He comments regularly on business and finance for National Public Radio and for many shows on CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Channel. In addition, he served as the principal expert on the A&E biography of J.P. Morgan and will be featured as the key Rockefeller expert on an upcoming CNBC documentary.
Every other founding father story gets told Every other founding father gets to grow old And when you’re gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story? “事实上,汉密尔顿的建议之多,影响之大,因而有很多历史学家把他看成一个类似首...
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Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died., their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step i...(1回应)
2012-05-24 12:16:103人喜欢
Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died., their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step in their rootless, topsy-turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, embittered people. Their short lives had been shadowed by a stupefying sequence of bankruptcies, marital separations, deaths, scandals, and disinheritance. Such repeated shocks must stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could even count on help from anyone. That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human being – that this fatherless adolescent could ended up a founding father of a country that he had not yet even seen – seems little short of miraculous. Because he maintained perfect silence about his unspeakable past, never exploiting it to puff his later success, it was impossible for his contemporaries to comprehend the exceptional nature of his personal triumph. What we knew of Hamilton’s childhood has been learned almost entirely during the past century. 引自 Chap.1 The Castaways
[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...
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 ...
2019-12-31 12:47:571人喜欢
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.
Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died., their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step i...(1回应)
2012-05-24 12:16:103人喜欢
Let us pause briefly to tally the grim catalog of disasters that had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769: their father had vanished, their mother had died., their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, sixteen, and Alexander, fourteen, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless. At every step in their rootless, topsy-turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, embittered people. Their short lives had been shadowed by a stupefying sequence of bankruptcies, marital separations, deaths, scandals, and disinheritance. Such repeated shocks must stripped Alexander Hamilton of any sense that life was fair, that he existed in a benign universe, or that he could even count on help from anyone. That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human being – that this fatherless adolescent could ended up a founding father of a country that he had not yet even seen – seems little short of miraculous. Because he maintained perfect silence about his unspeakable past, never exploiting it to puff his later success, it was impossible for his contemporaries to comprehend the exceptional nature of his personal triumph. What we knew of Hamilton’s childhood has been learned almost entirely during the past century. 引自 Chap.1 The Castaways
【Translated by Cristal Lachesis】 就像暴民对迈尔斯•库珀(译者注:汉密尔顿在国王学院的校长,是个亲英的托利党,后被独立派袭击)的袭击一样,里文斯顿家的情景深深刻在了汉密尔顿的记忆里。他对这些暴民无秩序行径的恐慌预示了他对法国大革命的恐惧。在皮尔斯的人洗劫了里文斯顿的商店几天之后,汉密尔顿写信给约翰•杰伊,承认里文斯顿名下的媒体是“危险和有害的”,并且此人是“可鄙的”。然而,他感到有义务谴责...(5回应)
2012-05-27 00:08:141人喜欢
【Translated by Cristal Lachesis】
就像暴民对迈尔斯•库珀(译者注:汉密尔顿在国王学院的校长,是个亲英的托利党,后被独立派袭击)的袭击一样,里文斯顿家的情景深深刻在了汉密尔顿的记忆里。他对这些暴民无秩序行径的恐慌预示了他对法国大革命的恐惧。在皮尔斯的人洗劫了里文斯顿的商店几天之后,汉密尔顿写信给约翰•杰伊,承认里文斯顿名下的媒体是“危险和有害的”,并且此人是“可鄙的”。然而,他感到有义务谴责这一行为的非法性质:
“在当前这种骚乱的局势之下,当人们的热情积聚到一种罕见的程度,随之而来的便是致命的极端主义的巨大风险。同样程度的热情,存在于缺乏一定理性和知识库存引导的大众身上,即使是出于反对暴政和压迫,也十分自然地引导他们走向一切权威的藐视和漠视。绝对中庸在智力出众的人群中也难以找到。在缺乏思考的民众中间,寻找它是不可能的。当这些人的心智从古代建制和规范的依附中解放出来,他们倾向于忘乎所以,或多或少地走向无政府状态。”
显然,这个有点自相矛盾的二十岁青年拥护革命,但也为习惯性的混乱的长期后果而忧心忡忡,尤其是在未经教育的大众之间。汉密尔顿缺少那种死忠革命分子的冲动气质。他看得一清二楚,更多的自由可以带来更大的混乱,并且,由于一种危险的辩证法,可以导致自由的彻底丧失。汉密尔顿一生的任务就是尝试驯服和解决这一矛盾,使自由和秩序达到平衡。
[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...
The feisty Hamilton always reacted to controversy with stubborn grit and a certain perverse delight in his own iconoclasm. He never shrank from a good fight.
2021-11-26 11:42:05
The feisty Hamilton always reacted to controversy with stubborn grit and a certain perverse delight in his own iconoclasm. He never shrank from a good fight. 引自第197页
“Increasingly Hamilton despaired of pure democracy, of politicians simply catering to the popular will, and favored educated leaders who would enlighten the people and exercise their own judgement.”
2021-02-12 13:46:23
“Increasingly Hamilton despaired of pure democracy, of politicians simply catering to the popular will, and favored educated leaders who would enlighten the people and exercise their own judgement.”
Political structures: central government vs. the states “Unless the central government’s hand was strengthened, the states would amass progressively more power until the union disintegrated into secessionist movements, smaller confederacies, or civil war. The populous states would indulge in separatist designs and take advantage of commercial rivalries or boundary disputes as pretexts to wage...
2021-02-10 13:51:40
Political structures: central government vs. the states
“Unless the central government’s hand was strengthened, the states would amass progressively more power until the union disintegrated into secessionist movements, smaller confederacies, or civil war. The populous states would indulge in separatist designs and take advantage of commercial rivalries or boundary disputes as pretexts to wage war against smaller states...
Congress needed to strengthen the powers of the union to regulate trade, levy enforceable taxes on land and individuals, and appoint military officers of every rank.”
The episode captured the contradictory impulses struggling inside this complex young man, a committed revolutionary with a profound dread that popular sentiment would boil over into dangerous excess. Even amid an insurrection that he supported, he fretted about the damage to constituted authority and worried about mob rule. Like other founding fathers, Hamilton would have preferred a stately re...
2021-01-20 13:45:23
The episode captured the contradictory impulses struggling inside this complex young man, a committed revolutionary with a profound dread that popular sentiment would boil over into dangerous excess. Even amid an insurrection that he supported, he fretted about the damage to constituted authority and worried about mob rule. Like other founding fathers, Hamilton would have preferred a stately revolution, enacted decorously in courtrooms and parliamentary chambers by gifted orators in powdered wigs. The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends.
This could be applied to what happened on 1/6.
And about religion:
The best government posture toward religion was one of passive tolerance, not active promotion of an established church.
0 有用 弱水三千 2021-10-05 14:46:43
好久没有看到行文这么流畅有丝毫不会让人疲倦的大部头专辑了,可以和瑞蒙克的<维特根斯坦传>相媲美.
0 有用 可乐重度失眠者 2022-04-17 21:58:03
20200411-20220417
0 有用 ChristopherTin 2022-03-17 08:36:31
切諾是一位靈活的作家,能夠處理悲壯的劇情、政治醜聞的陰謀、知識創新的興奮、戰爭的狂熱,以及安靜、親密關係的私人時刻。他的主要優勢是他的心理洞察力。切爾諾專注於其主題的內部運作,讓我們通過他的眼睛看到歷史,而不是通過他沉浸在歷史中。 然而,切諾對心理學的關注會同樣使他誤入歧途。在他最糟糕的情況下,他很容易出現一種廉價的心理分析,這對本書的意義沒有幫助。這在對漢密爾頓在聖克羅伊島的童年的處理中表現得最... 切諾是一位靈活的作家,能夠處理悲壯的劇情、政治醜聞的陰謀、知識創新的興奮、戰爭的狂熱,以及安靜、親密關係的私人時刻。他的主要優勢是他的心理洞察力。切爾諾專注於其主題的內部運作,讓我們通過他的眼睛看到歷史,而不是通過他沉浸在歷史中。 然而,切諾對心理學的關注會同樣使他誤入歧途。在他最糟糕的情況下,他很容易出現一種廉價的心理分析,這對本書的意義沒有幫助。這在對漢密爾頓在聖克羅伊島的童年的處理中表現得最為明顯。每當切諾想要解釋漢密爾頓的行為時,他都會很快地引用這段經歷。 切諾在大多數情況下對漢密爾頓的行為進行了寬容和慷慨的解釋,而對漢密爾頓的敵人——亞當斯和杰斐遜的行為,特別是對他們的行為則不那麼寬容。 總的來說,切諾創作了一部經過充分研究的傳記,既極具可讀性,令人振奮,又有啟發性。這是一本好書。 (展开)
0 有用 观察机 2022-02-07 01:07:46
Audible版36hr,非常享受的听书体验,改编的音乐剧能如此火爆确实很大程度该归功这本书,笔力深厚、翔实得当,汉密尔顿的辉煌人生与惨淡收场像是在眼前上演了一遍。还有值得拥有更多关注的女人们,epilogue写Eliza在Hamilton过世后的人生,让人十分感叹。
0 有用 疤头汤尼 2022-01-20 01:20:45
对不起,我读不下去了,转手就把书给卖了,下次再也不买这么厚的英文书了……
0 有用 大盘鸡 2021-12-31 04:24:04
读的很慢很细的一本书。拜卖方和对家律师所赐,圣诞节前后有很多个在电脑前一边等文件一边读书的深夜,赶在2021年的尾巴上读完了汉密尔顿绚烂而悲壮的一生。