Customer Reviews

Alexander Hamilton: A Biography

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

You won't want to put this book about the architect of American government down. McDonald has written an extremely well researched book about Alexander Hamilton, the man who arguably did more to set the American government in motion than any of the other founders. Not only thorougly written, but the author weaves the events of Hamilton's most interesting and significant life into a very readible book. The author is a first class biographer and writer.

Although George Washington has been described as the "indispensible man" of the Revolution, the title "indispensible man of the first administration" rightly belongs to Hamilton. He faced major issues that would define how the government operated and whether or not our fledgling nation would rest upon a sound financial system.

Hamilton succeeded brilliantly. Against long odds, he dealt with the assumption issue (state debts incurred during the revolution), coinage, taxation and the establishment of the nation's credit. This was after effective adminstrative service during the Revolution as Washington's aid (as well as other important posts such as leading the storming of Redoubt No. 10 at Yorktown), writing the Federalist Papers with Madison and Jay, and pushing the ratification of the Constitution through a reluctant New York General Assembly.

The book also provides fascinating glimpses of political manuvering among the founders. Although brilliant when establishing our plan of government and enshrining ideals into our framework of governance, they plotted and schemed like the best Tammany Hall politicos. Jefferson is shown to be an idealist even in dealing with current issues. Monroe arguably commits treason when revealing confidential information of President Washington to sympathizers of the French Directorate in order to gain them advantage over the Administration. Madison, so noble in structuring the Constitution, is shown as one of the ablist congressional gamesmen ever to have played.

These are not necessarily criticisms of the founders. While they rightly hold their reputations for having created our Constitutional govenrment, the portrait of their workings within the system -- buffetted by parochial interests, vanity, ambition and all of the other factors at play on public officials, makes them more human and accessible.

Throughout all, Hamilton is a steadying influence on events. Guided by the principals of establishing a system of administration and government that will constrain the bad habits of public men and force their ambitions to work toward the public good, as well his overriding drive to put the nation on sound financial footing, Hamilton is revealed as the keystone of the early Federalist period. Without his steadfastness and talents, it is possible that our ideals may have only been words on a paper labled "Constitution" as a backward nation wallowed in debt and succumbed to the machinations of forces from within and without who would use the United States for their own purposes.

Great book about a Great man.

This book drastically changed my opinion about Alexander Hamilton. Up to the time I opened it (after four idle years on my book shelf), James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had been considered the primary gilt-edged heroes of the Revolution and main pillars upon which the Constitution was formed. Mr. Hamilton? Well, he was relegated to the less-than-heroic rank as a self-promoting, money-centered, cold and heartless calculator, notable only for his unpopular battle to establish a federal bank and his life-ending duel with Aaron Burr.

But Mr. McDonald's fascinating review of Alexander Hamilton's life added texture to the stereotype and a sympathetic understanding of Hamilton's character and intellectual brilliance.

Perhaps it was because he had few intellectual peers that Hamilton was feared and disliked by the likes of Madison and Jefferson. Perhaps it was precisely for that reason Hamilton became a favorite of George Washington and served as his aid and advisor. As General and as President, Washington maintained an Olympus view of the men of his times. He appreciated Jefferson and Madison for what they offered to our young nation. But he seems to have valued Hamilton more.

Hamilton's view of government, money and banking, his integrity and his admirable regard for honor have never really been accurately nor fully told in school room history.

But thanks to Mr. McDonald, they are easily discovered in this well-written effort, a book which is highly recommended.

I wanted to learn more about Hamilton as the founder of the US financial system, and to understand more of his background in relation to the other founding fathers. This book did a great job of both, the author being a well published historian who has focused on the early American economy.

Mr. McDonald does a very good job of developing Hamilton's life, and the various philosophical influences that influenced him most significantly. Starting with his early life on St. Croix, his early abandonment and subsequent David Copperfield-esque determination to achieve fame in life, we are able to watch as Hamilton starts first by pursuing glory in the Revolutionary War, his close service with Washington, and how he then went to work as an attorney, and following Washington's election returned to serve his country as the first Secretary of the Treasury.

Hamilton's ambitions for the fledgling financial system are solidly shaped by his own background and hard work. It is quickly apparent how different his own background was from other founding fathers, most notably those of the South, and most poignantly Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton held himself to very high standards, his own need to be honest about an extra-marital affair is a lesson to our current politicians, and he frequently ran afoul of others because of his strong will and confidence that he was morally in the right. Hamilton was above repute with his financial dealings, preventing himself from benefitting from his own legislation and actions in an age when such was the norm. His ability to clearly divine a situation and act decisively led him to be not only an excellent litigator and legislator, but also an indispensable agent for the Government, his importance being most noted during Washington's second term in office.

All in all the author does a very good job of putting Hamilton into both the proper historical context, and helping the reader understand how he was viewed in his own time.

Favorite Excerpts:

"I would willingly risk my life tho' not my Character to exalt my Station... I wish there was a War." - Hamilton (page 5)

"He never ceased to dream of grand and heroic accomplishments, but he tempered his dreams with regular habits, reliable behavior, systematic and persistent application, and constant attention to self-improvement. He despised laziness, disorderliness, unpredictability, impropriety, procrastination, drunkennes, sloght - the ways of the islands and, as he would come to believe by 1779, the ways of most Americans as well." - McDonald on Hamilton (page 10)

"As a general marches at the head of his troops, so ought wise politicians... insomuch that they ought not to wait the event, to know what measures to take; but the measures which they have taken, ought to produce the event." - Demosthenes (page 35)

"Nothing is more common than for men to pass from the abuse of a good thing to the disuse of it." - Hamilton (page 42)

"As Hamilton learned in doing his research for the report [to congress], few American farmers knew whether farming was more or less profitable than other enterprises, for almost none kept any records. The lack of information did not, however, prevent them from having opinions." McDonald (page 233)

Jefferson had, "a womanish attachment to France and a womanish resentment of Great Britain." - Hamilton on Jefferson (page 265)

"Having contributed to place those of the Nation on a good footing, I go to take a little care of my own; which need my care not a little." - Hamilton on his resignation (page 303)

"Real firmness is good for everything - Strut is good for nothing." - Hamilton (page 334)

Forrest McDonald wrote this book out of a profound knowledge of the legal, financial, and economic environment of the world of late-colonial America that Alexander Hamilton came into, and of the early Republic, that he transformed. Hamilton was a brave soldier, an astute politician, an extremely talented administrator, a great lawyer and a man of extraordinary personal morality and honor. These characteristics were enough to vault him to the upper reaches of early American society. But his financial and economic program -- that rescued this new and foundering nation -- is the true basis of his greatness.

Hamilton was a man of parts, not least of which was his technical mastery of the financial means to establish and maintain a sound currency and national credit. Apprenticed to a merchant at an early age, he quickly came to appreciate the mentally invigorating effects of the commercial life. He was naturally quick and, as in repudiation of his socially marginal origins, a rigorous adherent to morality and "gentlemanly" honor. His talents, hard work and charm bouyed him up, and he seized each new opportunity with both hands, for his ambition would not let him rest. McDonald tells the story of Hamilton's early years with vigor and interest, but it is clear that the thrust of this book is to elucidate his real accomplishment as Secretary of the Treasury. This was the funding and assumption of the debts that the just-formed United States had inherited, the taxes and tariffs to pay for these, and the financial mechanisms -- including the Bank and the sinking fund -- to create, as out of nothing (or less than nothing) a universal and sound currency, as well as a store of capital to fund businesses, which he felt must be the drivers of the economy.

This book is fairly compact, but gives a good feel for Hamilton the man. If you want more in that line, then the current biography by Ron Chernow is where to look. But here you will learn what Hamilton did that no one else could have done, and that needed doing. Even his enemies -- Jefferson especially -- found, though they repudiated the man and his politics, that in the end they couldn't do without his works.

This is the 15th book on the Founding Fathers I have read in the last three months. Hands down it is the best. I have always admired Hamilton for his abilities. But McDonald makes clear he was a deep thinker not just a man of tremendous energy. He set out with a grand vision beyond any other founder - to effect a social revolution. I have read Novus Ordo Seclorum by the same author, but this book is a swift running current. Once you jump into the first chapter you will just keep going. I would put this book on the list of 10 nonfiction books every American should read. Now, I just wish someone could write on the other Founders with the same panache, style, and love for America.

This is a well-written and thought-provoking book, but at the same time one that I found unsatisfactory on certain levels. For one thing, as a biography, it's limited in scope, providing little information about Hamilton's life beyond his administrative and political affairs. His childhood and youth are dispensed with in about 15 pages, and the American Revolution - in which Hamilton participated as an senior aid to Washington and as combat officer - is already over by page 25, bypassing what one assumes should have been a wealth of fascinating material. His wife is mentioned no more that the few times, his children hardly at all, and we learn very little about his personal relationships with the other leading figures of his era. A life-and-times style biography was obviously not part of the author's design in the first place, and this criticism may thus be irrelevant, but a more substantive problem is the bias that pervades his book. While it's common enough for biographers to fall in love with their protagonists, Professor McDonald to carries his enthusiasm to an extreme. I'm not a historian by any means, but I've read enough to know that the men surrounding Alexander Hamilton were a prodigiously gifted array of politicians. Yet a reader who knew nothing of the period beyond the contents of this book would have the impression that they were a collection of relative mediocrities who paled in the light of Hamilton's genius. Even Washington, who comes off better than most, seems to have achieved success only through his willingness to acquiesce, most of the time, to Hamilton's unerring behind-the-scenes guidance. Hamilton's enemies are portrayed as conniving villains, and the arch-villain, Thomas Jefferson, appears to have had no purpose to his life other than to foil Hamilton's otherwise infallible blueprint for a happy and prosperous nation. The fact that Hamilton himself probably more-or-less saw his world in this light is more understandable than how a historian two centuries later could succumb the this same lack of objectivity. Despite these failings, Professor McDonald has nonetheless produced a remarkable study here, and I learned a great deal from it. What emerges is the portrait of a man who, even allowing for the author's partiality, was indeed probably the most forward-looking of his peers in his understanding of what the United States was to become. Modern Americans take for granted their colossal economic might and geopolitical dominance. Yet post-revolutionary America was a weak, divided country run by agrarians generally hostile to the formation of the finance capital and industrial enterprise. The essence of the Federalist vision for America was that establishment of a strong central government was necessary to facilitate economic development. And Hamilton's unique contribution to this vision was his understanding of the critical importance that a dynamic system of national credit and currency would play in bringing about prosperity. Hamilton was a supremely ambitious man, yet his aspirations propelled him not to be a king or a president or a conquering general. When the new American government formed following the revolution, the only post he desired - easily granted to him by Washington - was Treasury Secretary. It was from this position that he believed he could establish the monetary foundations critical to the fledging economic powerhouse he sought to nurture. His political opponents, led by Jefferson, understood this vision only too well as one that would result in a tumultuous transfer of wealth and power to industrialists and bankers, at the expense of the agrarian order they hoped to perpetuate. One insight implicit in this story, even though the author doesn't draw it for us, is the obvious nature of the link between this post-revolutionary conflict and the great civil war what was to ignite half a century later. It couldn't be clearer that it was the Federalist dream for America, well-rooted by the mid-nineteenth century, that drove the Southern Confederacy to revolt. That same dream finally emerged in full flower in the following century as Yankee industrialism triumphed and Hamilton's Dollar achieved preeminence. Hamilton's death in 1805 following a duel with Aaron Burr has to have been one of the weirdest and most dramatic incidents in American history. Yet it is characteristic of this biography that the event is described only briefly and dryly in the epilogue. Hamilton was a brilliant man, but one whose personal arrogance probably contributed unnecessarily to the partisan hatred of the post-war years and no doubt as well to his own premature demise. For me it was interesting to learn that Hamilton's son also died in a dual, three years before his father, at a time when this violent custom had become rare. This remarkable co-incidence suggests a fiery dynamic in the Hamilton family which this book leaves us totally in the dark about, as it does about many other dimensions of his life and character. To the extent Professor McDonald sought to trace Hamilton's development as a political thinker and the practical impact of his work on the nation's founding, this well-written biography succeeds admirably. However, readers seeking a balanced and full account of the man's life will have to look to other sources.

I started this book thinking that Aaron Burr did us a favor. Even though I am on the other side of the political spectrum of the author, Forrest McDonald, he was able to change my mind about the role of Alexander Hamilton in our history. I now believe that Hamilton was the sharpest of our Founding Fathers. I am still Jeffersonian at heart (though as an engineer in an air-conditioned cubicle I would never want to be a yeoman farmer), but I have a lot more respect for the man who adorns the $10 bill. The strengths and weaknesses of Hamilton rival those of the current President (June 2000). The Maria scandal is even better than the Monica scandal, and the Hamilton economy is even more solid than the Clinton economy. The writing of McDonald is inspiring. While reading this book I felt compelled to jump up and do something as important as Hamilton did. Alas, I could not, but the experience of reading this book is something I will remember for a long time.

Forrest McDonald is the only biographer of Hamilton who has what it takes to discuss his subject. As a Professor of Economics and Law, he understands not only the fields in which Hamilton worked, but the historical importance of this brilliant Founding Father.

Hamilton has been subjected to a massive deconstruction by the Jeffersonian Party--and it still goes on. Perhaps TJ made the grand speeches and declarations which define our Republic--but Alexander Hamilton lived the life and took the political risks which have made America the greatest nation on earth. This Founder was no mere politician, no businessman with his eye on the main chance, but a profound economic philosopher.

If you want to read a book which will tell you the truth about Alexander Hamilton, make this the one!

Hamilton is one of the most misunderstood figures is American history. Even if you consider Hamilton a 'dastardly figure,' after reading this book one can't help but see him a true revolutionary who succeeded in developing a system that helped to transform American society into the industrial and economic power it is today.

Being primarily interested in U.S. constitutional history I picked up this book to better understand Hamilton's contribution to the Constitution and the development of the American government. McDonald more than delivered what I was looking for. This biography lays out Hamilton's public life and places his actions into the context of the political events of the time. I also learned some things I had never read before. Particularly, that Hamilton was one of a handful of founders who strongly denouced slavery. I highly recomend this book to anyone interested in early american politics.

One should note that the detractors of this work are those who are obvious believers in the cult of Jefferson. Modern America has so deified Jefferson, that when a historian suggests he acted with impure motives or used dirty tactics, he is attacked as a "partisan." For example, McDonald details the controversy surronding the Bank. He demonstrates that the constitutional objections raised by Madison and Jefferson were a result of a fear that the Bank would be used to keep the capital in Philadelphia rather than move it to the Potomac. Madison, Jefferson, and Washington all were engaged in land deals in the area that would be harmed if the move didn't occur. What does this prove: Only that they weren't angels. Simply pointing this out shouldn't warrant McDonald being attacked as "partisan" or this book as "Hagiography."