Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Do We Treasure Our Hamilton?

Hamilton's Got All the Money
by Torrey Hamilton Brinkley

It has been fun recently to ask various (young) tellers at the local bank to name the person shown on the ten dollar bill. Many of them think that it would be a former president of the United States. Often they do not have a clue who the portrait features. A very few know that Alexander Hamilton was actually the first Treasurer of the United States of America.

Since he was a distant relative, it seems incumbant to share a few facts on the life of this man, who was very instrumental in the formation of our country, both in the approval of our Constitution and in the organization of our first Treasury Department (that is to say, levying & collecting taxes and seeing to the disbursement of funds for general needs).

Not every founding father of our country was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Alexander was born in 1755 in Nevis Island in the West Indies to a Scottish merchant and a married woman separated from her husband at the time. When Alex was ten years old, his father abandoned the family, and the young lad had to work for a trading firm on the island of St. Croix.

At age 17 his employers sent Hamilton off to study in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and finally studied at Kings College (now Columbia University). By the age of 21 Hamilton was named captain of a New York artillery company in the Revolutionary War, serving directly under General George Washington.

At the age of 25 Alexander married Elizabeth Schuyler, the daughter of a wealthy New York family, and they together had 8 children. In 1782 Hamilton began practicing law in New York and then helped push the U.S. into forming a Constitutional Convention to strengthen the infant Federal Government (1787 in Philadelphia).

Along with James Madison and John Jay, Hamilton debated all the pros and cons of a strong federal government, having a constitution with checks & balances, separation of powers and having the financial means necessary to make such a new country work in a voluntary manner (a Republic was a new idea in the then known world) in a book we can read today called The Federalist.

Thus in 1787, Hamilton noted:
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."
Observation: Look how many countries today are still forced to act & believe due to cruel and/or powerful dictatorial leaders.

When considering the interplay of ideas in a multi-level government: executive, legislative & judicial, Hamilton noted:
"We are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question."
Question: Have you noticed all the questioning of personal motives in the political debates of the day, here in 2007, as attacks come from the left, right & middle?

Even as freedom loving countries around the world today are under attack by militant religious zealots scattered in many places, intent on forcing their worldview on others, note Hamilton's warning from 220 years ago:
"For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution."

Two years after the adoption of the Constitution (1789), Hamilton became Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, under President George Washington. Thomas Jefferson opposed this idea of having a national bank to handle the government's finances, but the Supreme Court upheld the notion. Hamilton, as well wanted the US government to encourage manufacturing in our country. But Jefferson and Madison opposed this idea, too, thinking that farming was more important.

These differences of opinion served to cause Hamilton to form one political party, the Federalist Party, favoring a strong federal government. Jefferson and Madison, on the other hand, started the Democratic-Republican Party, which wanted a weaker national government.

By the time of the 1800 election, Thomas Jefferson was named President, thanks, in part, to Hamilton supporting Jefferson over another candidate, Aaron Burr. Burr served 4 years as Vice President, and then ran for Governor of New York. Hamilton distrusted Burr's character and worked to cause his defeat. That prompted the infamous duel, in which Aaron Burr (former V.P) shot & killed Alexander Hamilton (former Treasurer), on July 11, 1804.

May we note Hamilton's concluding remarks to the Constitutional delegates in 1787, and be challenged to carry on the vision of such brave men:
"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts, which are to embrace 13 distinct States in a common bond of amity & union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests & inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?"
Note: We are not perfect. But, as Christians believe, we are forgiven. And, as well, we are to forgive others.