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Alexander Hamilton And the Persistence of Myth (American Political Thought)

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Knott provides us with a clear account of Hamilton's philosophical contributions and a compelling story about the uncertainty with which Americans approach his legacy. This book is masterful in detailing the competing political agendas and in framing how politicians, acamedicians, and pundits use the Founders and their rhetoric to push forward their own agendas. A wonderful book that helps us understand our American political culture, as much as one of our country's most important Founding Fathers.

When one looks at American political history, we tend to analyze the issues at the surface without realizing the ideology that influenced policies over the last 200 years. Stephen Knott developed a unique method at extracting the driving force behind American history. His thesis is that Alexander Hamilton was so influential in the development of the American government and economic system that his ideology has loomed in the background of every major period in U.S. history.

Mr. Knott provides research on historians, authors, and politicians of the last 200 years who have provided favorable and/or critical analysis of Hamilton's influence on American government and policy. What Knott was successful in proving was the point that Hamilton has had an effect, for better or for worse, on nearly every presidential administration. He also demonstrated how these administrations tended to attribute their policies to either Hamilton or Thomas Jefferson. The rivalry that began while both worked in George Washington's administration has continued to this day.

While unique and informative, this particular book on Hamilton does have one major drawback. Knott eventually shows his admiration for Hamilton. However, although he wisely references the negative material against Hamilton made by politicians and historians over the years, he tends to dwell on one particular comment that has not even been completely proven: the supposed quote that was used to show Hamilton's preference for a monarchy when he called the general public 'the beast'. Knott concludes his book by saying that most of the negative comments made towards Hamilton are not warranted, especially that particular quote. He does not help his own position with his constant referral to that quote throughout his book. He uses it so often, it tends to become distracting and it takes away from the other good material he has provided.

This is not a biography on Hamilton. Therefore, before purchasing this book, it is recommended that a biography on Hamilton be read first. Knott assumes the reader already knows some of Hamilton's accomplishments, milestones, and thoughts on government. Recommended biographies on Hamilton would be the books by Ron Chernow or Forrest McDonald.

Finally! A compelling defense of the Founder second only to Washington in terms of indespensibility to the creation and greatness of this county. Professor Knott chronicles the roller-coaster ride of Hamilton's reputation, from his murder by the scoundral Burr to the present. He presents overwhelming evidence that General Hamilton has been abused by critics, historians and Jefferson-lovers alike. Knott's painstaking history of the apochryphal "great beast" comment provides a frightening lesson of how a single malicious report can turn even a great man's historical reputation upside down. The fact that Mr. Hamilton's solitary statue stands ignored at the back door of the Treasury Department while Mr. Jefferson is surrounded by marble and carved words perfectly illustrates how the myth of greatness trumps the reality of greatness. Professor Knott's conclusion that "a return to Hamiltonianism" could fix much of what ails American politics is right on the money. Fantastic book.

"fall for anything."

Construction on the myth began years before Alexander Hamilton died on July 12, 1804. It surely got its nurturing from the National Gazette started in 1791 by Philip Freneau, Madison's Princeton roommate, and Thomas Jefferson. And it surely had its fires flaming during the fallout from Hamilton's Reynolds Affair which tainted his career from then on. From the get go, Hamilton's image was tarnished. He didn't fall for anything however. The day he died is the same day as the battle of the Boyne where the catholic, Stuart King James II and his Jacobites were defeated by the protestant William III, of Orange. Another Hamilton had died in a duel on November 15, 1712 in Hyde Park in London. Although his birth was deemed illegit, Alexander Hamilton was of noble lineage; his father's family was derived from the Scottish, ducal line of Hamilton.

Stephen F. Knott's book is not a biography; it's more of a thoughtful, unbiased tracing of pundits' and politicians' interpretation/opinion of his work in American government through the years up to the present. It is a must read for anyone who attempts to judge Hamilton's person because the historical record is replete with misrepresentations of his life's work. Knott's analysis is thorough; you'll understand the bias behind any biographer who studies him. I believe one best understands Hamilton from his own writings and those scholars who studied them as Knott did. Knott shows that Hamilton has been labelled a fascist, a monarchist, a Napoleon, a dictator, a Caesar by mostly Jeffersonians who were content with superficial studies of his life. He also explains how Hamilton viewed popular opinion, how he saw government stood to represent the people, how government stood to protect the people from unwise, even lawless movements such as fascism and communism. Knott also feels that we have much to learn from his thought on how our government should function.

In Knott's Chapter 7, entitled Hail Columbia!, he quotes the historian Daniel J. Boorstin as writing, "we are either Jeffersonians or Hamiltonians. In no other country has the hagiography of politics been more important". However, where does Burr fit in? He was Jefferson's Vice President at the time, good friends of the New York governor Clinton who was vehemently opposed to the Constitution. Indeed, New York was the state most resistant to its ratification, very nearly succeeding in killing it altogether if it had not been for Alexander Hamilton and others. And, as Knott relates, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, and the other founding fathers saw Burr as unprincipalled and unfit to govern. As to labelling Jefferson's people as "the beast", Knott rightly traces it to a comment a Henry Adams made, years after Hamilton's death, from a comment he heard fourth hand. I believe, and noone has made the connection, if Hamilton made that comment, "the beast" that he referred to is none other than the symbolic beast of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 which opposes the saints and God and which exalts itself above God and above the law. Hamilton was christian to the core, fighting the good fight, not participating in evil deeds of darkness but exposing them just as Paul exhorted the Ephesian church to do in Ephesians 5:11. He publicly confessed his adultery. I believe he died a martyr and a saint.

Alexander Hamilton has been dead since 1803 and remains a deeply devisive figure. Stephen Knott attempts to reconcile the US to Hamilton and his legacy, but undermines his case by overstating Hamilton's contributions and attempting to undermine the position of all of his subject's many rivals. This book though interesting is at times mean-spirited and as petty as Hamilton could be at times. It is probably the book that Hamilton deserves, but it is not the one that people who are interested in Hamilton should have to read.

Hamilton did enjoy a significant career. He was aide de camp to George Washington during the Revolutionary War (where he frequently clashed with his commanding officer), author of some of the Federalist Papers, political theorist, lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury who put the infant American republican on a firm financial foundation. This is the positive legacy of Hamilton.

Probably the reason that Hamilton's legacy is tainted is due to failures in his character. Aside from being inept as a political leader, Jefferson and even Adams can be said to run circles around him, Hamilton managed to clash with the first five presidents at one time or another. Possibly the only way he avoided clashes with John Quincy Adams was due to the latter's choice of overseas diplomatic postings during Hamilton's heyday.

Hamilton's fall came about during an investigation into alleged financial improprieties as Secretary of the Treasury. In a move that set any number of precedents, Hamilton confessed to adultery with one Maria Reynolds and the focus shifted away from the criminal charge of corruption to the moral one of adultery. Hamilton's weakness for the ladies was well known, Martha Washington named her tom cat Hamilton due his tendency to seek out new ways to father litters on unsuspecting female cats.

In those days resignation was the only option open, certainly preferable to prison, and Hamilton gave up his cabinet post. Although certainly accomplished, absence from the trappings of power seemed to make Hamilton nuts and more than a little bit of a nuisance to the other founding fathers. After trying to stage a political comeback by promoting war with France (a war the US was both unwilling and unable to prosecute), Hamilton ensured the defeat of his party's candidate for president in 1800 and the elevation of his rival Jefferson as president and the man who would later shoot him on the field of honor, Aaron Burr as vice president.

I had high expectations of this book, and was hoping this would be a book not unlike those on Merrill Peterson on the legacy of Jefferson and Lincoln and how the interpretation of their respective legacies changed over time. The one conclusion that one gets from reading this book by Stephen Knott is that Hamilton lacks this dimension. There are also sour grapes with regard to Jefferson and the even more human Adams.

Knott's problem is that he seems to have only a limited understanding of the legacy of the other founding fathers and assumes that anything that Hamilton was in favor of that was subsequently adopted was due to America's first Secretary of the Treasury. While it is nice that Hamilton was a proponent of the Navy, it really took John Adams who had been talking about establishing a navy since Hamilton was an undergraduate.

Hamilton's reputation suffered markedly during two distinct periods, the period from Jefferson's presidency and up to the Civil War. Knott sees Hamilton's resurgence in popularity after the Civil War as a defeat of the Jeffersonian notion of state's rights that died at Appomattox. Of course, Jefferson's only legacy was not just about the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. It was Jefferson that Lincoln turned to when he called for a new birth of freedom at Gettysburg, a feature that Knott seems to resent.

Where Hamilton's stock tends to rise is with times of plutocratic ascendency and the Gilded Age was a time in which Hamilton's reputation rose to heights previously thought impossible to obtain. This phenomenon and its causes appears to be lost on Knott who is insistent that America would be a better place if only it reconciled itself to Hamilton's legacy.

However, it was during this time that Henry Adams reproduced the quote that has affected Hamilton's legacy forever more. `Your people is a great beast." Knott devotes a great deal of space, too much really, to try to discredit the accuracy of the quote. However, he might have wondered why people felt that this quote worked to sum up Hamilton's attitude to the masses. Effort might have been put to better use acknowledging that the Federalist forces that Hamilton led were not exactly the forces of populism.

Subsequently, Hamilton's reputation received blows, from which it scarcely recovered from at the hands of Southern historians like Claude Bowens and William Dodd and the pro-Jefferson vision of Franklin Roosevelt. Knott is positively resentful of the Jefferson memorial when he reflects that a simple statue in front of the Treasury building eulogizes Hamilton.

Hamilton's legacy during the post WWII period withstood numerous ups and downs. While the popularity of books about the founding fathers continue to be popular, Hamilton's legacy is of such a mixed variety that it would be impossible for it to return to the high water mark of the gilded age, despite concerns about Jefferson's position regarding slavery. Were there no Jefferson, there would be no Lincoln. Hamilton may have belonged to a society for the abolition of slavery, but that really is not the critical portion of his legacy.

The primary problem that Knott has is that Hamilton can never stand alone as the presiding genius of the early Republic. While a proponent of a strong federal government, his plutocratic and fundamentally undemocratic bias will always prevent him from being accepted in the same way as Jefferson and Lincoln. Hamilton is fundamentally the yin to Jefferson's yang and together they represent what is the real American experience.