It
ought never to be forgotten that Alexander Hamilton was unusual among the
Founding Generation because of the humble circumstances of his birth and
upbringing. He was not the only “self-made man,” if the term can be said to
apply – Benjamin Franklin was certainly, and self-consciously, that – but he
was perhaps the only one of them to grow up in conditions that in many respects
resembled abject poverty. Without question, this fact colored his outlook,
though in what manner it is not always clear. As has hopefully become evident
by now, Hamilton tended to view the great political and social issues of the
era in which he lived through a highly utilitarian prism. Whether or not
something was right seemed to interest him less than whether it was possible.
His strained circumstances as a youth in the West Indies doubtless affected his
understanding of economics. Likewise, his rise from merchant clerk to
undergraduate at one of the most prestigious colleges in the American colonies
surely nurtured an appreciation on his part of the capacity of the lowborn for
feats of intellect and ambition. Consequently, it may have been that his
various attempts to praise the judgement, the commercial instincts, and the
shrewdness of his plebeian audience were entirely sincere. Though not a farmer
himself, he was also not a clergyman, planter, or statesman. Putting aside his
two years in America as a student, he almost certainly had more in common with
the rural colonists he sought to address than with his pseudonymous opponent
Samuel Seabury, or than Seabury had with them. A Full Vindication may thus represent, in spite of its haughtiness
and elevated language, an attempt by a lowly clerk who had ascended beyond his
station to speak to, and on behalf of, the class to which he had lately belonged.
There
remains, of course, the possibility that Hamilton was not in the slightest bit
interested in relating to or speaking for his supposed social equals. Attempting
to distance himself from the lowly circumstances of his birth and upbringing
was a recurring theme throughout his adulthood, and no doubt the early years of
his residence in America were where and when that effort began. As a result,
speaking to the farmers of colonial New York as though they were his equals in
judgement, morals, or intellectual ability, even anonymously, may not have
seemed an attractive prospect. Rather, in keeping with the tendencies and
biases of the class he hoped to join, he may have preferred to establish some
degree of intellectual and rhetorical distance between himself and the audience
he was attempting to sway. Thus, rather than understanding his appeals as
genuine, it may be wiser to view them as flowing out of the same 18th
century elite ambivalence toward the common people and their innate capacities
that Seabury himself was given to. Hamilton’s attempts at flattery seem
especially to square with this assessment. Had he truly intended to express
sympathy with the farmers he sought to address, and to speak well of their
discretion and their integrity, he might have chosen language that appeared
less haughty, dismissive, and calculating. After asking in paragraph eighty of A Full Vindication whether his readers
were unwilling to rise to the defense of their own rights, he declared, “I
would not suspect you of so much baseness and stupidity as to suppose the
contrary.” Had he meant to compliment the agriculturalists to whom he
explicitly addressed himself, he might have more directly expressed admiration
for their intelligence and their nobility of spirit. Instead, he phrased his
appeal so as to dare them to prove they were not, as he claimed, base or
stupid.
In
truth, it may always be unclear whether Hamilton truly sought to speak for the
farmers of his adopted homeland with A
Full Vindication or was guilty of speaking through them – failing to take
their perspective into account while using them to make a point. Because
Hamilton was born into bastardy and destitution and fought hard to shed the
stigma attached to both, it can be difficult at any given time to determine
whether he was speaking as a man of humble origins or as a man whose humble origins
were a source of shame. That being said, Hamilton’s freshman pamphlet remains a
fascinating object of study. Compared, for instance, to Thomas Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British
North America, also published in 1774, it represents a uniquely
matter-of-fact take on the conflict then mounting between the American colonies
and the British Parliament. Whereas A
Summary View approached the relationship between the American colonies and
the British Crown in terms of the legal and philosophical principles that bound
them together – the colonies, Jefferson asserted, were sovereign entities that
voluntarily acknowledged the British monarch as their own – Hamilton portrayed
the link between London and the various colonial capitals as fundamentally
economic and opportunistic.
Since their foundations, he argued,
the colonies had become integrated into the economy of the British Empire. The
raw materials that they produced or extracted – timber, fish, tobacco, wool,
hemp, iron, etc. – were purchased by British merchants and sold to British
manufacturers. They in turn sold finished goods like textiles and metalwork,
and luxury goods like sugar and tea, on the American market. The profits
generated by this Trans-Atlantic relationship were far from insignificant, to
the point that Britain became willing to go to significant lengths to see it
prosper and would have been quick to respond to any potential threats. The
mutually dependent nature of this relationship consequently left both parties
vulnerable to manipulation in the event of, say, a political disagreement.
Hamilton proved to be keenly aware of this fact, and counselled his fellow
colonists to use it to their advantage amidst the ongoing dispute between the
colonies and Parliament. If the citizens of British America wished to focus the
attention of recalcitrant British ministers on responding to the demands of
their American constituents, he argued, the plan of action most likely to
produce a viable result was a disruption of British commerce. The First
Continental Congress had recommended as much at the conclusion of its meeting
in October, 1774, and Hamilton pressed his adopted countrymen express their
support.
It is noteworthy that at no point
in A Full Vindication did Hamilton
express support for the independence of the colonies from Britain. Parliament
may have suspected that a latent desire for independence resided in the breast
of every American, he allowed in paragraph thirty-seven, but it was not a
motivation he gave voice to himself or attributed to his fellow colonists. What
he and his countrymen desired, he asserted, was merely the preservation of
their accustomed liberties and a general redress of the grievances that they
nurtured. A fundamental break with Britain, it seemed, was not on Hamilton’s
mind as yet. Indeed, his invocation across A
Full Vindication of various concepts rooted in British political philosophy
and history would seem to indicate that he remained attached to many elements
of British culture and believed that his readers felt likewise.
In paragraph five, for instance,
Hamilton declared, “No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any
power or preeminence over his fellow-creatures more than any other; unless they
have voluntarily vested him with it.” In spite of how clearly this idea seems
to resonate with later developments in American republicanism, in 1774 it was
almost certainly a legacy of the English Civil War (1642-1651) and the Glorious
Revolution (1688-1689). Charles II’s ascension to the throne at the behest of
Parliament in 1660, the overthrow of his brother James II in 1688, and
Parliament’s designation of George I as rightful heir to the throne in 1701
combined to solidify the notion that the British monarch could no longer expect
to rule without the consent of the kingdom’s elected representatives. By
affirming this concept while applying it to the American context – the
colonists, he avowed, had never been asked to give their consent to being ruled
by Parliament – Hamilton was arguably acknowledging his own commitment to the
ideals theoretically at the core of contemporary British political culture. Similar
references to British legal and political traditions, notably including the
unwritten British Constitution, can be found in paragraphs six, seven, seventeen,
fifty-seven, eighty-one, one hundred eleven, and one hundred sixteen. Whereas Jefferson’s
A Summary View was prepared to
effectively declare that the colonies were independent already, had always
been, and maintained a connection to the British Crown out of a sense of
tradition and respect, Hamilton seemed to maintain a high personal regard for
British political philosophy and accordingly sought to preserve the customary
relationship between Britain and America. The First Continental Congress, whose
defense Hamilton came to, had been convened to do just that.
Though only a year and a half
elapsed between the publication of A Full
Vindication in the winter of 1774 and the formal declaration of American
independence in the summer of 1776, independence was itself far from inevitable
at the time Hamilton penned his freshman political pamphlet. The Congresses
that convened in September, 1774 and May, 1775 took their inspiration from
prior successful efforts by the united colonies to seek redress for ill-judged
British legislation. Neither body was conceived as a vehicle for colonial
independence, and the second of the two proposed a number of alternative
measures before Britain’s resort to arms forced some of the more conservative
delegates in attendance to seriously contemplate a fundamental break with the
mother country. Consequently, the debate that Thomas Jefferson, Alexander
Hamilton, Samuel Seabury, and many others were engaged surrounding the calling
of the First Continental Congress should not be understood as being between
advocates of independence on one side and reconciliation on the other. The
Revolution had yet to progress to that point, and there were still a great many
perspectives on the mounting crisis being daily advocated in newspapers and in
pamphlets across the colonies.
The perspective that Alexander
Hamilton put forward in A Full
Vindication of the Measures of Congress is noteworthy among them for
several reasons. As aforementioned, Hamilton’s experiences growing up in the
West Indies and working as a clerk in a trading firm left him with a unique
understanding of the relationship between commerce and politics. Whereas a
classically educated and well-read man like Thomas Jefferson addressed the
conflict between the colonies and Parliament in terms of sovereignty and
history, Hamilton believed that raw economics were what defined the web of
relationships within the British Empire. This would have been a very unusual
perspective for the era, and one which could not have helped but strike its
audience so. It is also worth considering, on a more personal level, where
Hamilton was in the course of his life when A
Full Vindication was published.
Two years out from an obscure
existence in the Danish West Indies, he was a further eight months removed from
forming a volunteer militia company with his Kings College classmates and
taking up arms against Great Britain. A
Full Vindication thus represents one of the most influential members of the
Founding Generation at an incredibly crucial turning point in his life. Not yet
a diehard revolutionary, he was willing at least to support aggressive
retaliation in response to British intransigence and advise his adopted
countrymen to do the same. Some portion of his affections seem to lie with
Britain still, yet he was evidently content to see British ministers and the
merchants and manufacturers that supported them suffer for presuming to take
liberties with their American cousins. The events of 1775 evidently convinced
him that more drastic action was called for, though they should not be
understood as having turned him into an insurgent overnight. As easy, and comfortable,
as it is to conceive of the American Revolution as having begun with a “shot
heard ‘round the world,” the reality is somewhat more complex. From protest to
armed insurrection, the Revolution proceeded slowly. Petitions gave way to
debate, which gave way to coordinated disobedience, which gave way to
rebellion. The individuals who helped shape these various stages and gave form
to the end result proceeded along a similar course of radicalization. A Full Vindication is effectively a
signpost along Hamilton’s path from uninitiated immigrant to dedicated
revolutionary. For that reason, and others, it is absolutely worthy of close
consideration.
Anyway, that’s how I see it. Give
it a look yourself: http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0054
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