The AHA! Blog

The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society (The AHA Society) was established to provide extensive and accurate information on one of the United States' most influential Founding Fathers - Alexander Hamilton. The AHA! blog shares "Hamilton in the Headlines," present-day articles about Alexander Hamilton.

[theahasociety]

Today is the official release of the book Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life by Jeff Wilser! A fun, humorous approach to a biography, this book also contains different life lessons that Alexander Hamilton can teach us. The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society was very involved in reviewing the book, and to celebrate its debut, we are hosting a special contest to win a free copy! 

Learn more here

[theahasociety]

The History Behind a Hamilton Bas-Relief in Dupont Circle

In the Washington Post’s local section, the following question was asked by a reader: “There is a large bas-relief of Alexander Hamilton on the side of the building at 1337 Connecticut Ave. NW. Any idea why?— Josh Gibson, Washington”. Columnist John Kelly explored to find the answer:

Thanks to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his much-lauded Broadway musical, we live in the age of Alexander Hamilton, the founding father supposedly forgotten by America. But Hamilton never really went away. He’s is in our wallets — on the $10 bill — and he’s larger than life on the side of a building south of Dupont Circle.

For a clue as to why, let us follow Lindsay Jenkins into the basement of the building, as Answer Man did on a recent afternoon. Lindsay is the co-owner of Humble Beast CrossFit, an exercise studio that opened two years ago at 1337 Connecticut Ave. NW. The building is also home to the Gryphon Restaurant and a nightclub called Kabin.

Answer Man wants to know if you bought this Do-It-Yourself Beatnik Kit, advertised in 1959 in The Washington Post.

In the basement, past Humble Beast’s mats, weights and sweating clients, is a large safe, a vault actually, designed and built by the Herring-Hall-Marvin Safe Co. of — wait for it — Hamilton, Ohio. Today, the safe stores booze from the Gryphon. When the building opened, it stored another kind of liquid asset: cash and checks. When the building was dedicated in 1954, it was the largest branch of Hamilton National Bank.

Hamilton National Bank came into existence in 1933, created from the ashes of eight failed District neighborhood banks, including Potomac Savings Bank, Woodridge-Langdon Savings & Commercial Bank and Seventh Street Savings Bank.

If you’ve seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you know there were runs on banks during the Great Depression, with customers clamoring for their money. It became so bad that shortly after taking office in 1933, Franklin Rooseveltshut down all commercial banks for a week — the “national banking holiday.”

The idea, said Gary Richardson, an economics professor at the University of California at Irvine and former historian of the Federal Reserve, was to give the government time to figure out how to address the problem, deciding which banks were strong enough to reopen and which had to be liquidated.

“The banks in Washington that merge into Hamilton are ones that are shut down on the banking holiday but not immediately reopened,” Gary said. “They fail what we would call today their stress tests.”

As the economy improved, banks were able to give depositors more of their money back. Customers whose banks were folded into Hamilton National Bank got about 90 cents on the dollar.

At first, the branches of the Hamilton Bank were in the old buildings of their constituent banks. The one on Connecticut Avenue was the first new branch. The four-story building was designed by the architectural firm of Corning and Moore, who did many apartment buildings and strip shopping centers in the area. The large portrait of Hamilton — left of the entrance, about four foot square, above three stars reminiscent of those on the D.C. flag — is signed “C. Papaleo” and was made by the Lamb Seal & Stencil Co. of Washington.

Just a few months after the Dupont Circle branch opened, Hamilton National Bank was purchased by the National Bank of Washington, which itself was bought in 1990. The building was later dubbed the Penelope by the Greek-American family firm that owned it after the bank moved out.

Alexander Hamilton will stay where he is, said Felipe Serpa of Valor Development, owners of the building, which will be turned into a boutique hotel. “The plaque is deemed historical,” he said. [Read Full Article]

[theahasociety]

Exploring the myth of Alexander Hamilton’s elitism

In “What Jason Frank and Isaac Kramnick Forget About Hamilton,” Stephen F. Knott, author of Alexander Hamilton and the Persistence of Myth, refutes claims made in a recent New York Times Op-Ed that Alexander Hamilton was an elitist and wanted to “restore non-titled aristocracy to America.” This article is from the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

In a recent New York Times Op-ed (“What ‘Hamilton’ Forgets About Hamilton,” June 10, 2016) Jason Frank and Isaac Kramnick, both professors of government at Cornell University, attempt to push back against the recent wave of enthusiasm for Alexander Hamilton inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical. Appalled by what they consider an inappropriately charitable presentation of the historical Hamilton and his political views, they offer a stern rebuttal, and an indirect defense of Hamilton’s rival, Thomas Jefferson. Unfortunately, their revision is itself largely a repeat of tropes that have been part of the anti-Hamilton literature since the 1790s, which calls for a response of its own.

Frank and Kramnick’s central claim is that Alexander Hamilton “insisted on deference to elites” and thus wanted to “restore non-titled aristocracy to America.” To make matters worse, Hamilton had nothing but “contempt” and “disdain” for the common man. Frank and Kramnick also appear to endorse the centuries old slur first promulgated by the “populist” Thomas Jefferson (a “populist” who was one of the largest slave owners in Virginia) that Hamilton’s economic scheme “supported the rule of commercial oligarchs.” The identity of these 1790s “oligarchs” goes unmentioned, and their assertions rely on many such unsupported allegations.

The notion that Hamilton sought to “restore” (restore from when and where?) an American aristocracy is complete fiction. Hamilton addressed this accusation during the New York Ratifying Convention of 1788, where he observed that “I hardly know the meaning of this word [aristocracy] as it is applied . . . Who are the aristocracy among us? Where do we find men elevated to a perpetual rank above their fellow citizens; and possessing powers entirely independent of them . . . There are men who are rich, men who are poor, some who are wise, and others who are not . . . indeed every distinguished man is an aristocrat.” To the extent that Hamilton favored the creation of an “elite,” it was one composed of men of intellect and accomplishment, not one of birth. Hamilton was the personification of these qualities, for he had emerged from one of the most dysfunctional childhoods imaginable to improve his lot in life, ultimately rising to serve at the side of General, and later President, George Washington.

To label Hamilton an “elitist” twists the meaning of the term beyond all recognition. Interestingly, Hamilton, unlike the “populist” Jefferson, had a wide circle of friends, mostly fellow war veterans, while the Sage of Monticello isolated himself on his hilltop plantation far removed from the madding crowd. Hamilton, this “elitist,” this minion of the “oligarchs,” died without wealth and left his widow and his seven children reliant on the charity of friends. The accusation that Hamilton was a toady of the rich and well-born was first leveled against Hamilton by the Antifederalists and then later parroted by Jefferson and his lieutenants, including James Madison. Madison, as Mary Sarah Bilder recently revealed, went back and doctored some of his notes from the Constitutional Convention to bolster the image of Hamilton as a monarchy-loving Anglophile. Of course, being called a monarchist in the 1790s was the equivalent of being called a communist in the 1950s – it was a tactic designed to curtail debate and destroy one’s opponent, and the accusation alone had political impact even if could not be proven.

Hamilton was the nation’s first victim of the politics of personal destruction. Jefferson, and generations of Jeffersonian historians, considered him a power-hungry, people-hating plutocrat or an immigrant of questionable loyalty, who despite having fought with honor for his country’s independence, would be repeatedly accused of being a British sympathizer, or worse. Sadly, nativist elitists like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could never accept a “bastard” immigrant from an obscure speck of an island in the Caribbean as their equal. Both men outlived Hamilton by twenty-two years, and spent part of that time spinning the historical record to portray Hamilton in the worst possible light.

Hamilton’s views on “who should govern” were far more complex than Frank and Kramnick contend. His skeptical view of human nature was not confined simply to “the lower classes.”  Like many enlightenment thinkers, Hamilton sought a balanced government, one where the various interests in society were pitted against one another, in hopes that the national interest, not the interest of any particular group, would prevail.  Hamilton believed that all individuals, regardless of wealth, were slaves to the passions of “avarice, ambition, and interest” and government must be designed in such a way as to mitigate the dangers inherent throughout the populace. Additionally, Hamilton understood that the nascent American government would collapse without the support of merchants, bankers, and shippers, and sought to enlist their support. But all of this was done to make the abstract provisions of the Constitution a reality – in other words, to create a nation. It was not done to stick it to the little man. Frank and Kramnick also “forget” that while Hamilton proposed lifetime terms for United States Senators, his proposal for a House of Representatives elected by universal male suffrage was far more democratic than that which ultimately emerged from the Constitutional Convention.

It is unfortunate that Frank and Kramnick continue to recycle clichés about Hamilton’s contempt for the common man – an accusation all the more regrettable if one considers Hamilton’s comparatively progressive views regarding the employment of African-Americans as soldiers in the American Revolution, his founding membership in the New York Society for the Manumission of Slaves and his proposal that all of its members free their slaves, his compassionate position on the status of native Americans, and his party’s support for Toussaint Louverture and his Haitian revolution (one that the “populist” Jefferson refused to assist out of fear of the “contagion” spreading into the American south and upending the Jeffersonian slavocracy). Hamilton also came to the conclusion during the Jay Treaty debate in the mid-1790s that slave owners who had lost their property to the British should not be compensated by having their slaves returned, as he noted that “the restoration of property is a favored thing yet the surrender of persons to slavery is an odious thing.” Hamilton’s objection was based on his interpretation of international law, but at times he seems to have been morally offended by the concept of slavery. “In the interpretation of Treaties things odious and immoral are not to be presumed,” and he added “Is not this, as it regards the rights of humanity, an odious sense?” This of course infuriated the populist Jefferson. Hamilton’s alleged disdain for the common man looked much different from the perspective of a slave, or a Native American, or a free black in the north, the latter of whom overwhelming supported Hamilton’s Federalist Party, thus earning the endearing nickname from the Jeffersonians as the “black Federalists.” While some assert that Alexander Hamilton was no abolitionist, in comparison to Thomas Jefferson, he was Frederick Douglass in a waistcoat and breeches.

“Hamilton” the musical got it right – Alexander Hamilton envisioned a society that allowed those with talent and ambition to “rise up.” And, it should be noted, Hamilton created an economic system and political institutions that would put the most elitist institution of all, slavery, on the path to extinction. But the accusation, so crudely put by Frank and Kramnick, that Hamilton had a “disdain for the lower classes” and, in case you missed it the first time, a “contemptuous attitude toward the lower classes,” will no doubt live on. This slur is gospel among far too many progressive historians and political scientists, who still see Charles Beard as cutting-edge, and who are convinced that money, self-interest, and a contempt for the common man is what motivated Alexander Hamilton, if not all of the framers. [Article source]

Note that the text as shared here has been approved by the author.

[theahasociety]

“The Real Hamilton: What’s Not to Love?”

An article by Peter Coy in Bloomberg Businessweek explores the historical significance of Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies and how they could be useful today:

The bipartisan Disneyfication of America’s first Treasury secretary began in earnest last fall when President Barack Obama spoke at a fundraising performance of the hit musical Hamilton and said it “happens to be the only thing Dick Cheney and I agree on.” The real Alexander Hamilton made no effort to be loved by all, as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant, rap-infused musical makes clear. He was vain and opinionated. He was also usually right. No libertarian, he believed the federal government could and should play a central role in economic development. His arguments deserve fresh consideration for today’s problems—even if taking them seriously will make it harder for everyone to agree on his wonderfulness.

For starters, Hamilton rejected Scottish economist Adam Smith’s then-novel doctrine of laissez-faire. He feared that pure free trade would trap the U.S. into remaining an economic colony supplying cotton, tobacco, food, and raw materials to Britain. He wanted the federal government to have the power to tax and spend, giving it real agency. “Power without revenue is a bubble,” he wrote.

Hamilton advocated building a strong industrial base “to render the United States independent [of] foreign nations for military and other essential supplies.” His groundbreaking Report on the Subject of Manufactures in 1791 invented the idea of moderate tariffs to protect infant industries. It also called for investment in roads and canals; strong banking and patent systems; and boards for promoting arts, agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce. “In other words,” writes Ha-Joon Chang, a development economist at the University of Cambridge, in an e-mail, “all the key elements of the economic system that have made the U.S. one of the most successful economies in human history.”

History shows that Hamilton bested his rival Thomas Jefferson, who wanted the nation to be a loose confederation of yeoman farmers. “The 20th century became an American century precisely because America by 1880 was not a gigantic Australia,” Stephen Cohen and Bradford DeLong wrote in a new book, Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy. The U.S. today has a big federal government, a strong central bank, and the world’s most powerful military. Since World War II, the federal government has helped finance the computer, the semiconductor, the Internet, aircraft, and biotechnology.

The founding father may have been the biggest influence on how capitalism has evolved

In recent years, though, the economic tide has turned. Manufacturing, which Hamilton considered vital to security and prosperity, has shrunk to 12 percent of the economy from 21 percent in 1980, according to United Nations data. (To be sure, the same has happened in other industrialized nations.) At the same time, the federal government is becoming less ambitious. More tax dollars that were spent on doing stuff are being diverted to supporting people, mostly through Social Security and Medicare. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget projects that outlays excluding transfer payments, grants, and interest—in other words, spending on everything from the Pentagon to the National Institutes of Health to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—will fall to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product by 2021. That would be the lowest level since the government began tracking this in 1940.

Politically, too, Hamilton’s ideas have been in retreat. Democratic President Jimmy Carter deregulated airlines, trucking, and railroads. Republican President Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Democratic President Bill Clinton presided over financial deregulation after promising in his 1996 State of the Union address that “the era of big government is over.” And so on up through today’s Republican majorities in the House and Senate, which resist stepping up spending on what Hamilton would have called “internal improvements,” despite historically low borrowing costs. The result is crumbling infrastructure and dwindling economic competitiveness. As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers likes to ask: “Is anyone proud of Kennedy airport?”

Hamilton, in short, is getting more respect on Broadway than inside the Beltway—and less respect at home than he’s gotten abroad. The economist Friedrich List introduced Hamiltonian ideas to Germany in the 1840s, before German unification, as journalist James Fallows described in a 1993 article in the Atlantic. Japan imported List’s brand of nation-building from Germany during the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to 1912. Japan in turn spread its thinking to Korea and Taiwan, which it occupied until the end of World War II. “You can even say that he [Hamilton] is the man who had the biggest influence on the way in which capitalism has developed,” argues Cambridge’s Chang, a native of South Korea.

Advocates for measures to bolster U.S. manufacturing say Hamilton, were he alive today, would be on their side. “He certainly recognized that the full development of a national economy required a very strong government hand,” says Alan Tonelson, a trade expert whose blog is called RealityChek. “He was an economic nationalist,” says Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. In Hamilton’s worldview, says Paul, “there’s a role for government to develop smart public policies to spur economic growth.”

There is no real successor to Hamilton on the political scene today, says Michael Lind, author of the 2012 book Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States. “What you have is a kind of Jeffersonian populist opposition to trade,” says Lind, who is co-founder of New America, a public policy institute. The right, he says, is nativist, and the left is antibusiness. “I really don’t see anybody having this strategic, Hamiltonian view...” 

Hamilton, having fought alongside Washington in the Revolutionary War, was acutely sensitive to the military importance of having one’s own arms manufacturing capacity. Says Lind: “He wouldn’t do what the U.S. has done, which is to simultaneously extend defense commitments, cut the defense budget, and offshore much of our defense industrial base to our most likely military rivals.” The U.S. gets rare earths for night-vision gear from China and rockets for satellite launches from Russia. “It just seems crazy,” he says. The economic nationalism of Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower was a pragmatic search for policies that worked, regardless of ideology, says author DeLong, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. “Sometime around 1980 we very much lost that sense of pragmatism.” The financial sector “hypertrophied,” DeLong says, inequality grew, and antitrust laws fell into disuse.

Hamilton had some deeply undemocratic ideas. At the Constitutional Convention he recommended that the president serve for life on condition of good behavior, appoint all the governors, and have veto power over state legislation. He wanted something like an American king. He was also energized by the thought of copying the Brits in using children in the mills, “many of them of a very tender age,” as he put it. What’s more, when he died in 1804, the U.S. was an economic backwater. Tariffs for infant industries made more sense then than now. The young nation could go far simply by mimicking (or stealing) British machine designs. “Hamiltonianism is for a particular historical stage with particular preconditions,” DeLong says.

For all that, Hamilton’s economic nationalism has enduring appeal—tailored, of course, to a new age, as Hamilton himself would have advocated: “I hold with Montesquieu that a government must be fitted to a nation as much as a Coat to the Individual,” he once wrote. The slapdash, overextended system the U.S. has now is serving Americans poorly. A Hamilton for the 21st century could be just what the country needs. [Article source]

[theahasociety]

NY Times: “In Hamilton’s Debt”

Paul Krugman writes an Op-Ed in the NY Times approving of the announcement that Alexander Hamilton will remain on the $10, citing the importance and relevance of Hamilton’s economic programs:

The Treasury Department picked an interesting moment to announce a revision in its plans to change the faces on America’s money. Plans to boot Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill in favor of a woman have been shelved. Instead, Harriet Tubman — one of the most heroic figures in the history of our nation, or any nation — will move onto the face of the $20 bill.

She will replace Andrew Jackson, a populist who campaigned against elites but was also, unfortunately, very much a racist, arguably an advocate of what we would nowadays call white supremacy. Hmm. Does that make you think about any currently prominent political figures?

But let me leave the $20 bill alone and talk about how glad I am to see Hamilton retain his well-deserved honor. And I’m not alone among economists in my admiration for our first Treasury secretary. In fact, Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong have an excellent new book, “Concrete Economics,” arguing that Hamilton was the true father of the American economy.

Full disclosure: I know next to nothing about Hamilton the man and his life story. Nor, I’m sorry to say, have I managed to see the musical. But I have read Hamilton’s pathbreaking economic policy manifestoes, in particular his 1790 “First Report on the Public Credit,” a document that remains amazingly relevant today.

In that report, Hamilton proposed that the federal government assume and honor all of the debts individual states had run up during the Revolutionary War, imposing new tariffs on imported goods to raise the needed revenue. He believed that doing so would produce important benefits, which I’ll get to in a minute.

First, however, I think it’s interesting to ask how such a proposal would be received today.

On the left, it would surely be denounced as a bailout — a giveaway to speculators who had purchased devalued debt for pennies on the dollar, and would reap large capital gains. Indeed, a fair bit of the report is devoted to explaining why trying to prevent such windfall gains, via “discrimination between the different classes of creditors,” would be impractical and unwise.

Meanwhile, on the right — well, Hamilton was calling for a tax increase, which modern conservatives oppose under any and all circumstances. Luckily for him, there was no Club for Growth to demand his impeachment.

But why did Hamilton want to take on those state debts? Partly to establish a national reputation as a reliable borrower, so that funds could be raised cheaply in the future. Partly, also, to give wealthy, influential investors a stake in the new federal government, thereby creating a powerful pro-federal constituency.

Beyond that, however, Hamilton argued that the existence of a significant, indeed fairly large national debt would be good for business. Why? Because “in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money.” That is, bonds issued by the U.S. government would provide a safe, easily traded asset that the private sector could use as a store of value, as collateral for deals, and in general as a lubricant for business activity. As a result, the debt would become a “national blessing,” making the economy more productive.

This argument anticipates, to a remarkable degree, one of the hottest ideas in modern macroeconomics: the notion that we are suffering from a global “safe asset shortage.” The private sector, according to this argument, can’t function well without a sufficient pool of assets whose value isn’t in question — and for a variety of reasons, there just aren’t enough such assets these days.

As a result, investors have been bidding up the prices of government debt, leading to incredibly low interest rates. But it would be better for almost everyone, the story goes, if governments were to issue more debt, investing the proceeds in much-needed infrastructure even while providing the private sector with the collateral it needs to function. And it’s a very persuasive story to just about everyone who has looked hard at the evidence.

Unfortunately, policy makers won’t do the right thing, largely because they keep listening to fiscal scolds — people who insist that public debt is a terrible thing even when borrowing costs almost nothing. The influence of these scolds, their virtual veto over fiscal policy, somehow persists even though their predictions of soaring interest rates and runaway inflation keep not coming true.

The point is that Alexander Hamilton knew better.

Unfortunately, Hamilton isn’t around to help counter foolish debt phobia. But maybe reminding policy makers of his wisdom is one way to chip away at the wall of folly that still constrains policy. And having his face out there every time someone pulls out a ten can’t hurt, either. [Article Source]

Read more about Alexander Hamilton’s thoughts on public debt and credit in this collection of Hamilton quotes.

[theahasociety]

“Alexander Hamilton's New York Values”

 In Bloomberg View, Cass R. Sunstein discusses how Alexander Hamilton is the “founder of New York values,” including the concept that “in New York you can be a new man.” 

Having spoken contemptuously about “New York values,” Senator Ted Cruz had a catastrophic election night in New York. So it’s fitting that just one day after the primary, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Alexander Hamilton -- the founder of New York values -- will remain on the $10 bill. It’s also fitting that in the same week Hamilton, the musical, a joyful celebration of New York values, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Most politicians who run for national office develop a deep affection for the nation’s diverse states, with all their unique quirks and histories. It’s much worse than bad politics for a candidate to complain about “Vermont values,” “Nebraska values,” “Georgia values,” “Ohio values,” or the values of any of the states. In light of the nation’s hard-won unity, it’s a betrayal of the great motto of the United States, which can also be found on our currency: E pluribus unum (from many, one).

Which brings us to that guy on the $10 bill. An illegitimate child, Hamilton was born in the British West Indies, abandoned by his father, and orphaned as a teenager. When he was about 17, he made his way to New York.

It’s there that he attended college (King’s, which became Columbia University), began his career, joined the Revolutionary Army, founded the Bank of New York and wrote many of The Federalist Papers (addressed, by the way, “To the People of the State of New York”). It’s in New York that he died and is buried. It’s easy to visit the many places where he lived and worked.

Among the founders, Hamilton was probably the most passionate advocate of national unity. He wanted people to think of themselves as Americans, not as citizens of separate states.

In the Federalist Papers, he spoke of the union as a great barrier to the potentially destructive spirit of factions and hostility among the states: “Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system.” He was alarmed by the dangers “from dissensions between the States themselves, and from domestic factions and convulsions.”

During the Constitution’s framing, a little-known revision of the preamble clarifies Hamilton’s ultimate triumph. An early draft began this way: “We the People of the States of New Hampshire, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York” and so forth “do ordain, declare and establish the following constitution for the government of ourselves and our posterity.”

The start of the final preamble is in a far more Hamiltonian spirit, and it’s much better: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union.”

[See full article]

As an interesting historical note, Alexander Hamilton was one of the five people who served on the Committee of Style to draft the final version of the Constitution. So it’s no coincidence that it ended up with a “far more Hamiltonian spirit!”

[theahasociety]

“Applaud Hamilton Call” on $10 Bill

If you have not yet heard the news, Treasury Secretary Lew has announced that Alexander Hamilton will remain on the $10 bill! Read more about the announcement here.

Many newspaper editorials have been applauding the announcement, including USA Today:

Last year, Treasury Department officials decided that a woman needed to be on a bill, but they didn’t bother to select a woman for that honor. Nor did they carefully think through the question of which man deserved to be demoted. They simply announced that the woman-to-be-named-later would go on the $10 bill, which was next in line for a periodic face-lift needed to thwart counterfeiters.

Wednesday's decision to identify the woman as anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman, and to reverse course on the bill she'd be on, is a big win for common sense and historical merit.

Rather than demoting Alexander Hamilton, who happens to be on the $10 bill, the new plan is to demote Andrew Jackson from the $20 note (though his image might be retained in smaller form on the reverse side).

That is as it should be.

Hamilton was not just America’s first Treasury secretary, he was one of the two or three most important of the Founding Fathers. After helping to draft the Constitution, he became the principal author of the Federalist Papers — a kind of Cliff Notes on the Constitution and the thinking of the men who drafted it.

He was also the pragmatic thinker who figured out how to make a crazy experiment in democratic government actually work. It was he who came up with a plan for dealing with the new nation’s crippling war debt, by creating a state-sponsored bank to spread out the payments.

To add to his allure, Hamilton’s story was quintessentially American. Born impoverished to a single mother on the Caribbean island of Nevis, he found his way as a teenager in 1773 to New York, where he soon began writing influential pro-independence pamphlets and served George Washington as a top military aide and, later, presidential adviser.

Hamilton fully deserves to keep his place on the currency along with his mentor Washington, who’s on the $1 bill, as well as Abraham Lincoln, who’s on the $5 bill. Hamilton's cause no doubt benefited from the wildly popular Broadway musical that bears his name. But the hip-hop musical would never have been such a hit had Hamilton not led such a compelling life.

Andrew Jackson, on the other hand, has little to recommend him. Though well-regarded in his day as the nation’s first populist president after a long line of Virginia land owners and Boston lawyers, he could hardly be called an exemplary president today.

An ardent defender of slavery, Jackson is perhaps best known for advocating and signing legislation that forcibly removed Native Americans from their ancestral lands in Georgia. When the Supreme Court ordered the removals to stop (on the grounds that they violated treaties the U.S. government had signed) he simply ignored it and dared Chief Justice John Marshall to enforce it.

As for Tubman, she'd be the first African American on U.S. currency, and the first woman since Martha Washington made a brief experience on the $1 silver certificate in the 1880s. As an instigator of the underground railroad, which helped runaway slaves attain their birthright of freedom, Tubman is worthy of a place of honor.

After further review, the Treasury Department made the right call. [Article Source]

[theahasociety]

Upcoming $10 Bill Announcement?

After Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s announcement last June that a woman would be featured on the $10 bill, Lew stated that Hamilton would remain on the $10 bill in some capacity, leaving the American public buzzing over what exactly this would mean. There has been very vocal pushback to #SaveHamilton on the $10 bill and place a woman on the $20 instead with the #Womanon20s campaign. Design plans for the $10 bill and the selected woman to be featured have not yet been shared. Previously planned announcements have been postponed, though CNN has reported that they expect the Treasury to soon make an announcement about the fate of the $10 bill. 

From CNN: 

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is expected to announce this week that Alexander Hamilton's face will remain on the front of the $10 bill and a woman will replace Andrew Jackson on the face of the $20 bill, a senior government source told CNN on Saturday.

Lew announced last summer that he was considering redesigning the $10 bill to include the portrait of a woman. The decision to make the historic change at the expense of Hamilton drew angry rebukes from fans of the former Treasury Secretary. The pro-Hamilton movement gained steam after the smash success of the hip-hop Broadway musical about his life this year.

Those pressures led Lew to determine that Hamilton should remain on the front of the bill. Instead, a mural-style depiction of the women's suffrage movement -- including images of leaders such as Susan B. Anthony -- will be featured on the back of the bill.

A Treasury spokesman declined to comment on the pending changes. But Lew hinted that a decision could come this week.

"When we started this conversation not quite a year ago, it wasn't clear to me that millions of Americans were going to weigh in with their ideas," he told CNBC. "We're not just talking about one bill. We're talking about the $5, the $10, and the $20. We're not just talking about one picture on one bill. We're talking about using the front and the back of the bill to tell an exciting set of stories."

Along those lines, Lew also plans to announce this week that Andrew Jackson -- a less beloved former president whose face graces the front of the $20 bill -- will be removed in favor of a female representing the struggle for racial equality, according to the government source.

That decision would place a female on one of the most widely circulated bills in the world. But the historic change placing a female on the front of the $20 note won't come for more than a decade, the source said, since the process for changing the design of that note is still in the early stages. [Read full article]

Other papers have picked up the story (including the Washington Post), and optimism has grown after Lin-Manuel Miranda (creator of the musical ‘Hamilton’) met with Secretary Lew and last month tweeted out that Lew told Miranda “you’re going to be very happy” with the $10 bill decision. However, there has been no official indication from the Treasury that there will in fact be an upcoming announcement, or what the announcement would be about. 

For more information on the #SaveHamilton campaign, visit the AHA Society official website. 

[theahasociety]

Lessons from Hamilton: From Parenting to Politics

As greater audiences pay attention to Alexander Hamilton as a result of the musical ‘Hamilton’, they are more than ever evoking lessons that can be taken from Hamilton’s life. 

This includes personal matters, such as the self-described “helicopter parent” who decided to take parenting cues from Hamilton, inspired to let her child be more independent after noting that “Hamilton himself is the kind of brilliant, motivated self-starter we'd all like to encourage our children to be.” [Read full article]

Lessons from Hamilton also include action to be taken in the political realm, whether policy or, as Bradly Tusk notes in an editorial in CNN, “What 'Hamilton' teaches us about standing up for your beliefs:”

In the fifth grade, back in 1983, I read a book about politics called "Advise and Consent." It was a novel by Allen Drury about a Senate confirmation process of a nominee for secretary of state. It was gripping and wonderful, and I was hooked on politics from that day forward.

That fervor lasted until around five years ago, when I came to realize that the vast majority of politicians I knew and had worked with and for (with the very notable exception of Mike Bloomberg) held office solely because their egos demanded constant outside validation and endless attention. There was virtually no issue, no policy, no cause where they'd risk their career to advance something in which they believed.

Once I figured that out, the notion of spending my time helping elect or serve these people was a nonstarter. So I can only imagine how young people interested in politics must feel watching this year's presidential campaigns. There may be one antidote though: "Hamilton."

My 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son are both obsessed with the hit Broadway show. They've each seen it, they listen to the soundtrack constantly, the older one is taking a shot at Ron Chernow's 818-page biography of Alexander Hamilton that inspired the show, and we're constantly talking about the decisions Hamilton made and what precipitated each of them.

The one that seems to resonate with them the most is Hamilton's decision to support Thomas Jefferson over Aaron Burr in the election of 1800. Despite a career-long disagreement with Jefferson on virtually every issue, Hamilton ultimately gave Jefferson his support, summing up the decision as "Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none."

Is one scene in one Broadway show enough to convince a new generation that the point of politics -- even the true glory of politics -- is to believe in something enough to risk your career, even life, over it? I doubt it.

Even then, real life probably didn't quite match the show's idealism. By all accounts, Hamilton wasn't afraid to fight for his beliefs at any cost. Jefferson's body of work speaks for itself, but he was, in some ways, still a politician.

But one thing is clear: They believed in more than themselves and their ambitions. And they'd be horrified by the way the system they built has turned out.

So as we complain about the candidates on the ballot this year, rather than just shaking our heads, we should start thinking about how we change the norms that shape politics -- and politicians -- in the first place. For as long as we're willing to elect people for whom winning (and keeping) office is mainly about blunting their insecurity rather than achieving a particular policy goal, we'll keep being faced with awful choices and even worse outcomes.   But if we can start teaching today's students that Hamilton's underlying view that the only point of holding office is to achieve something tangible (and not just to get more followers on Twitter), then maybe we can start attracting candidates who care about more than solely fulfilling their own ambitions. Maybe we can start attracting candidates who'd see voting for a difficult but important bill that costs them their seat is the highest validation of their career.

Maybe that's too much to ask for. But the greatest public service I can think of during this election cycle would be to put "Hamilton" on network TV so that everyone can see it. And to teach American history around what people such as Hamilton, Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison believed in, rather than just teaching the basic facts around what they did.

And to instill in every student in every public school, charter school, independent school, yeshiva, Catholic school and everywhere else that our country can only succeed if we're willing to ask truly tough questions of our candidates and hold them accountable for actual results rather than endless empty rhetoric.

So whether you're Bloomberg, the Koch brothers, George Soros, Tom Steyer, Joe Ricketts, Paul Singer or any of the other billionaires who frequently invest big dollars into campaigns, maybe the best thing you can do this year is keep your money out of politics and invest it instead in educating today's students that the principles that Alexander Hamilton lived by over 200 years ago are the same principles that can once again give us a government we can believe in and a nation we can be proud of. [Article source]

[theahasociety]

Alexander Hamilton and Supreme Court Nominations: Opinion #4

Continuing the AHA! blog series of articles evoking Hamilton in the current debate on the Senate’s role in approving Presidential nominations to the Supreme Court, the latest comes from Brenda M. Cotter in the Huffington Post. Her article, “Refusing to Consider Judge Merrick Garland: What Would Hamilton Think?” states:

The Republican leadership of the United States Senate has made clear that they will exercise their majority power to ensure that the Senate will not take up the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, or any other nominee, to the United States Supreme Court until a new President is elected. This position is directly at odds with the Constitution because it intentionally undermines the authority and obligation of the President to appoint Supreme Court justices.

Article II, Section II, Clause II of the United States Constitution states that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint...Judges of the Supreme Court...” The view of the Republican leaders that they can simply block any nomination without hearing is contrary to these plain words. The president has the right and the obligation not only to nominate, but to appoint. Refusing to advise and/or consent to any Obama nomination eviscerates the President’s constitutional right and obligation to appoint Supreme Court judges and, accordingly, intentionally prevents a President from fulfilling his Constitutional duties.

There is no doubt that the Senate has an important Constitutional role in the process of appointing Supreme Court judges. Their advice and consent ensures a robust process to evaluate the nominee and operates as a check on the executive branch to ensure that nominees for such a critical position are not subject to the sole judgment of a particular President. Indeed, founding father Alexander Hamilton spoke at length about the rationale for this provision of the Constitution in Federalist Paper #76.

Hamilton was well aware that vesting the power of nomination and appointment in the president, and power to advise and consent in the Senate, would result in some vigorous debate and might result in failed nominations. However, Hamilton’s faith in the process was supported by three assumptions. He believed: a) that there would always be enough people [men] of integrity and “independence” in the Senate, guided by their sense of “public-spirit,” to prevent misuse of the advise and consent power; b) that the power was “checked” by the ability of the President to just send forth another nominee; and c) that in light of these things there would likely be only “special and strong reasons” to reject a nominee.

Unfortunately, Hamilton’s assumptions were all incorrect. There are not enough people in the Senate of integrity and independence, the power is not “checked” by sending another nominee when the Senate won’t consider any nominee, and there will not be only “special and strong reasons” to reject a nominee when all nominees are categorically rejected. Indeed, it would be a nice fantasy to conjure Hamilton in the present. I am confident that he would be appalled at this perversion of the advice and consent clause. (He might also enjoy taking in the show Hamilton on Broadway).

The argument that there is somehow an exception where the president has one year remaining in their term is specious. The Constitution does not apply to only seventy-five percent of a president’s term of office. If there were some exception, it would be found in the Constitution. The Republican efforts to found their actions on a so-called “Biden Rule” are similarly misplaced. While Joe Biden gave a speech in 1992 questioning whether a Supreme Court nomination should be delayed close to an election, neither he, nor anyone else, has caused the Senate to refuse outright to consider any nominee. In addition, this argument, taken to its logical extreme, yields absurd outcomes. Should senators only be able to vote in their first five years? Can the Senate refuse to advise and consent and prevent a president from fulfilling their constitutional obligations for any number of reasons that fulfill their particular political whims? What’s next: the Senate won’t provide advice and consent because the president was born in....Hawaii?

In short, the actions of the Republican Senate leadership and Republican senators in blocking any nomination violate the Constitution. If only the Justice Department would sue. Even if the suit was successful, there would still be a cynical strategy of delay or refusal to confirm someone as obviously qualified as Judge Merrick Garland but, it would serve the purpose of making clear that the Republican Party leadership’s purported respect for the Constitution, and the founder’s “original intent” is a sham, invoked only when convenient to naked political interest. Where is Alexander Hamilton when you need him? [See article source]

[theahasociety]

Alexander Hamilton and Supreme Court Nominations: Opinion #3

Continuing the series of articles being written on Alexander Hamilton and the Senate’s role in Supreme Court confirmations, the AHA! blog shares an article by Jeffery Peters, a writer and political consultant, who writes in Business Superstar:

With the Supreme Court hearing cases on immigration, mandatory union fees, and costly EPA regulations, the decision to replace Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most important economic considerations today. The wrong nomination could easily change the course of our recovery and make it almost impossible conduct business.

As expected, there is much fighting and drama surrounding the process to determine his successor, but it is surprising that no one has mentioned Alexander Hamilton's view on the Senate's role in the appointment process. Justice Scalia loved turning to The Federalist Papers to determine what our Founders thought.

Hamilton's “Federalist Paper 76” describes the necessity of a “balance of powers” and explains why the Senate has a role in the President's appointment process. He begins by describing why the nomination aspect of the appointment process cannot be left to the will of a large body alone: “Hence, in every exercise of the power of appointing to offices, by an assembly of men, we must expect to see a full display of all the private and party likings and dislikes, partialities and antipathies, attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly.”

Instead of focusing on the merits of an individual, parties would make deals to get their own favorites approved: “The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight... And it will rarely happen that the advancement of the public service will be the primary object either of party victories or of party negotiations.”

A large group deciding on nominations would need to compromise its integrity to gain enough votes to pass a candidate, and Hamilton repeatedly stresses that virtue, not party, is the only consideration that matters in approving a nominee.

It is for this reason that Hamilton stated the President is allowed only to nominate an individual: “But it is easy to show, that every advantage to be expected from such an arrangement would, in substance, be derived from the power of NOMINATION, which is proposed to be conferred upon him; while several disadvantages which might attend the absolute power of appointment in the hands of that officer would be avoided.”

In an ideal situation, the President would nominate someone of virtue and character that everyone can accept. “But might not his nomination be overruled?" Hamilton opined. "I grant it might, yet this could only be to make place for another nomination by himself. The person ultimately appointed must be the object of his preference, though perhaps not in the first degree. It is also not very probable that his nomination would often be overruled.”

If the Senate rejects all of the President's candidates, then that is a risk if they aren't justified in their action: “They could not even be certain, that a future nomination would present a candidate in any degree more acceptable to them; and as their dissent might cast a kind of stigma upon the individual rejected, and might have the appearance of a reflection upon the judgment of the chief magistrate, it is not likely that their sanction would often be refused, where there were not special and strong reasons for the refusal.”

The ultimate and complete ability to refuse any and all nominations by the President is necessary for a sound government, as Hamilton argues, “To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.”

Hamilton believed that the natural inclination to craft a legacy would lead the President to carefully consider his appointments, and a poor nomination would be severely damaging to his reputation: “It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature. The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing.”

Beyond legacy and reputation, there are also immediate political considerations: “The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.”

When Hamilton drafted The Federalist Papers, Presidents were not bound to only two terms. With the final years of the second term no longer spent worrying about a continued political existence, the only time serves to limit a President. This alteration both adds and takes away from the likelihood of a corrupt choice: the President is not restricted by a need for popularity in who he chooses, but it is even more likely that no nomination of his is accepted.

Additionally, Senators were appointed by the individual states during Hamilton's life, and they were not elected until later. The Senate, in slowly shifting in membership to reflect popular opinion, is bound to serve the will of the people if party leaders wish to retain control. Thus, the check against a corrupted President was removed and added as a check against a corrupt Senate.

As such, the Senate is more bound to serve the will of the people during a President's final term than the President. They, and they alone, have a mandate by the people to do the people's will, and the President can no longer claim to be champion of the common man to whom he is no longer beholden.

In “Federalist Paper 77,” Hamilton points out that “The blame of a bad nomination would fall upon the President singly and absolutely. The censure of rejecting a good one would lie entirely at the door of the Senate; aggravated by the consideration of their having counteracted the good intentions of the Executive. If an ill appointment should be made, the Executive for nominating, and the Senate for approving, would participate, though in different degrees, in the opprobrium and disgrace.”

The pertinent issue now is if the President will nominate an individual with strong character and virtue without consideration for political leanings. With Justice Scalia's passing, not only is a staunch conservative voice is now missing from the court, but we also lost one of the greatest legal minds in our history.

Any nominee that can't practically quote at will from The Federalist Papers, Tucker's Commentaries, Rawle's View, or Story's Commentaries lacks the intellect necessary to match Justice Scalia's. He was an expert on jurisprudence and morality, and he could explain the philosophical underpinnings to every aspect of American law. Even replacing him with a token conservative who lacks his expertise is to do a disservice to the position.

Right now, the decision on who can replace Justice Scalia is more important than even who the next President will be. Partisan ideology should not be a consideration by the President, the Senate, or the voters, but the people should demand the utmost scrutiny. It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has transformed into an ideological tool, but there has been the rare nominee who was chosen for character over ideological considerations.

If the President nominates someone who has a strong understanding of the Constitution and knows the words and intent of the Founding Fathers like Justice Scalia, then the Senate should approve that person. However, if the President submits the names of friends or those who lack such an understanding, which is true of all of the names suggested so far, then the Senate is obligated to do whatever it can to ensure that these lesser people do not make it onto the Supreme Court.

Hamilton argues that the Senate has the full power to serve as obstructionists, but he also recognizes that such actions are a gamble. Without such powers, there would be no check upon the power of the President to ensure that the best pick, an individual of character and virtue, will be made instead of one based only on partisan politics.

For the sake of the liberties of our citizens and a sound economy, either the President must nominate someone who is of peerless character and has a strong understanding that can match Justice Scalia, or the Senate must do whatever it can to prevent a nominee to be considered until a new President is chosen. [See article source] 

[theahasociety]

Alexander Hamilton and Supreme Court Nominations - Opinion #2

The AHA! Blog continues to share articles on Hamilton in relation to the current debate over Senate confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to the US Supreme Court. Since Alexander Hamilton wrote all of the Federalist Papers regarding the Judicial Branch, it is not a surprise that his name is constantly evoked in these debates. 

Though the article shared in a previous AHA! blog post cited Alexander Hamilton’s writings as proof that Hamilton would not have wanted the Senate to block the new nominee to the Supreme Court, the article below written by Seth Lipsky in the New York Post evokes Hamilton’s Federalist No. 69 to argue a different case:

Somewhere Alexander Hamilton is smiling. For the battle that’s beginning over President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court vindicates the famous Founder’s assurances on judicial appointments.

Hamilton knew that Americans would find their protection from would-be kings in the wisdom of the Senate. He marked this point in 69 Federalist, one of the columns he wrote back in 1788 under the pen name Publius.

The topic of Federalist 69 is the “real character of the executive.” It makes it clear that in filling the seat once held by Justice Antonin Scalia, President Obama is at the complete mercy of the Senate — and should be.

It was Hamilton’s aim in the Federalist columns, which he wrote with James Madison and John Jay, to convince New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution. One of the things New Yorkers feared was that a president might take on kingly powers.

Like, say, the sort held by the tyrant George III[...] Hamilton wrote of judges that what the president had was the power “to nominate, and, WITH THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE SENATE, to appoint.”

Not just judges, but ambassadors and other ministers. It was Hamilton who put the words in all caps. He went on to contrast the powers of the presidency created in the Constitution with those of “the King of Great Britain.”

The king, Hamilton wrote, “is emphatically and truly styled the fountain of honor,” by which he meant something like the original source of power. “He not only appoints to all offices, but can create offices. He can confer titles of nobility at pleasure.”

What Hamilton stressed was what he called “a great inferiority in the power of the President, in this particular, to that of the British king.” Nor, he went on, was the presidential power even “equal to that of the governor of New York.”

At the time in New York, the appointment power was held by a council that included the governor and four state senators. Not only could New York’s governor nominate a state judge, but he was “ENTITLED to a casting vote in the appointment.”

Again, the all-caps are Hamilton’s. And then the famous words: “In the national government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment could be made.” This is precisely what Hamilton was marking as a constitutional VIRTUE (all-caps mine).

Hamilton went on to sharpen the contrast with New York. In the state’s government, he warned, “if the council should be divided, the governor can turn the scale, and confirm his own nomination.”

For today, Hamilton puts paid to the notion being slyly advanced by President Obama and the Democrats that the Senate has a responsibility to give an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Judge Garland. That is constitutional poppycock.

We are in precisely the circumstances in which Hamilton foresaw that no appointment could be made. The Founders understood that the ability of the states, via the Senate, to check a nomination was one of the Constitution’s attractions.

And why not? They were revolutionary men. They were taking down a monarchy. They did not want to vest a president with kingly powers of appointment. They didn’t require the Senate to hold even so much as an up-or-down-vote.

Hamilton contrasted the mode of appointment by the president and “an entire branch of the national legislature” with the “privacy in the mode of appointment by the governor of New York.”

The governor, he sneered, was “closeted in a secret apartment with at most four, and frequently with only two persons.” So “the power of the chief magistrate of this State, in the disposition of offices, must, in practice, be greatly superior to that of the Chief Magistrate of the Union.”

With such assurance that the president could be blocked by the Senate, New York ratified the Constitution. And that’s what Obama and Garland are up against.

No one knows it better than the justices Garland aspires to join. They understand full well that the Founders intended there to be circumstances where, absent an intervening election, no appointment to the Supreme Court could be made.

They know that the states wouldn’t have ratified the Constitution if this had not been the case. They know that the Founders were prepared to let the king, the president and the Devil himself take the hindmost. [See article source]

[theahasociety]

Alexander Hamilton and Supreme Court Nominations

The Washington Post recently published an article by David Lay Williams, a professor of political science at DePaul University, exploring the process of nominating a Supreme Court Justice as expressed by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. 

On Wednesday, President Obama fulfilled his constitutional duty of nominating Merrick Garland to replace the recently deceased Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. And now many Republican senators have affirmed their intention of refusing to hold confirmation hearings on two grounds. The first is that the Constitution does not require that the Senate vote on presidential nominees. The second is that the office can be vacant until after the November presidential election, when the national popular will declares itself at the ballot box and an appointment can be made consistent with that will.

As the debate over Garland’s nomination unfolds, it is instructive to follow the spirit of Antonin Scalia himself by examining “The Federalist,” the series of essays written from 1787 to 1789 by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to promote ratification of the Constitution in New York. Scalia made a habit of referencing these essays in his opinions, and he even urged lawmakers to “all get a copy of the Federalist Papers and read it, underline it and dog-ear it.”

I have several copies of The Federalist in my office in various states of disrepair from repeated underlining and dog-earing and have returned to them recently for wisdom in understanding the founders’ principles underlying the nomination process. The bulk of these arguments can be found in Hamilton’s “Federalist No. 76,” which he published on April 1, 1788.

Hamilton explains why the Constitutional Convention chose the method of presidential nomination and senatorial confirmation of federal judges by comparing it with four other alternatives. The first alternative would place this power in the hands of the people themselves — perhaps consistent in spirit with the democratic principle evoked by some Senate Republicans today. Hamilton rejects this, calling it “impracticable” to assemble all citizens and ask them to coordinate in selecting judges.

The second alternative would create an assembly of citizens to appoint judges. But Hamilton argues this could lead to partisan politics, partial interests, intrigue and corruption at the expense of the public good. Because members of the assembly would lack the individual responsibility for choosing judges, they would have little incentive to protect their reputations by making a responsible choice.

A third alternative, and one much more to Hamilton’s liking, would give appointment power to a single individual. He prefers this to assemblies since individuals have a “livelier sense of duty and more exact regard to reputation.”

The final alternative is the one found in the Constitution — with the president nominating and the Senate confirming. To Hamilton, this has all the advantages of the third option, with the added advantage of providing “excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the president, and would tend greatly to preventing the appointment of unfit characters from state prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.”

There are two principles that can be deduced from Hamilton’s view of the appointment process. First, he wants to reduce the role of politics as much as possible. He wants to avoid the kind of calculations that have politicians considering “the suffrages of the party” rather than the qualifications “which fit the person for the station.”

Second, Hamilton wants the appointment process to empower judges who will be both intellectually capable and virtuous. Part of what it means to be virtuous for Hamilton is to be free from “prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity” — which is another way of suggesting that party politics should play little to no role. To the extent that nominees have such attachments, the Senate should regard them with suspicion.

Hamilton concludes by reflecting on the virtue of senators and their ability to meet his standards for the confirmation process. One would expect him to have little hope, given that earlier in “Federalist No. 6” he describes men as “ambitious, vindictive and rapacious.”  Yet he moderates his view here:

This supposition of universal venality in human nature is little less an error in political reasoning than the supposition of universal rectitude. The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence; and experience justifies the theory. It has been found to exist in the most corrupt periods of the most corrupt governments.

In short, Hamilton argues that it would be wrong to assume everyone is bad. He expects that while the Senate will have its share of ambitious partisans, it should also have enough who are virtuous and civic-minded enough to set political considerations aside for the public good. In the case of the confirmation process, this means evaluating the president’s nominations according to the standards of intellectual powers and civic virtue.

What does this amount to? Surely, as many have already commented, the Senate is within its technical constitutional rights to withhold its vote on Garland. Yet insofar as this is motivated by political considerations, senators are in violation of the spirit of Hamilton, who argued that the entire point of the appointment process was to remove these considerations. [See article source]

[theahasociety]

“What We Can Learn From Jefferson-Hamilton Debate on National Bank”

Carson Holloway in the Daily Signal explores the upcoming anniversary of the chartering of Bank of the United States and the key lesson for modern politicians from the Hamilton-Jefferson debates over the bank’s constitutionality: 

This February is the 225th anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s and Thomas Jefferson’s famous 1791 debate—carried on in President George Washington’s cabinet—over the constitutionality of Hamilton’s proposed Bank of the United States.

It might seem strange to call such an anniversary to mind. After all, we usually celebrate our great moments of national agreement (like the Declaration of Independence), not of controversy. It might even be a little painful, since the bank bill argument was only the opening shot in a bitter political and constitutional battle between Washington’s two chief ministers.

Nevertheless, it is proper to celebrate and reflect on this first major constitutional dispute in our history. Hamilton and Jefferson disagreed about the correct interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause and therefore about the legitimate scope of the powers of the federal government.

They agreed, however, on something more fundamental. What united them was the importance of constitutional fidelity, or the need to make sure that government policy is guided by the true meaning of the Constitution.

At first sight, Jefferson emerges as the Constitution’s champion in this dispute. Hamilton’s initial report calling for a national bank did not even bother to bring forward any constitutional basis for such a measure.

It was Jefferson, following James Madison’s lead, who contended that the Necessary and Proper Clause could not be pushed so far as to justify the creation of such an institution. Nevertheless, in the clash of argument over the question Hamilton, too, established his constitutional seriousness.

He replied to Jefferson at impressive length, trying to show that Jefferson had misunderstood the Necessary and Proper Clause, that it could reasonably be read to authorize laws that were, if not indispensable to, at least reasonably related to the exercise of the government’s enumerated powers.

Hamilton prevailed, and George Washington signed the bill into law. This reminds us of Washington’s often overlooked role in our first great constitutional debate: He caused it by calling for Hamilton and Jefferson’s written opinions of the question of the bank’s constitutionality. In doing so, Washington set a high example of constitutional statesmanship and earned, once again, his unique position of honor among our nation’s presidents.

Washington, who usually followed Hamilton’s advice on matters of domestic policy, surely favored the bank bill. And since it had been passed easily in both houses of Congress, after Madison had raised his constitutional objections in the House, Washington had plenty of political cover, had he wanted to exploit it, to simply sign the bill and move on. That he instead called for further argument within his own cabinet shows that he was utterly serious about keeping his administration’s policy square with the Constitution.

We live in a time of widespread constitutional unseriousness. It is a time in which a speaker of the House, asked about the constitutional basis of a bill pending before the Congress, can answer, “Are you serious?” In such times, we sorely need the example of such statesmen as Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washington. [See article source]

[theahasociety]

“Hamilton and Health Care”

The Commonwealth Fund, a US think tank on health care, recently published an article by David Blumenthal, M.D. postulating that the modern-day divide on government-provided health care is a direct inheritance from the ideological divide that formed between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans at the nation’s founding:

If you want to understand health care in America, go to Broadway, where Hamilton is playing nightly to sold-out crowds. Better yet, read the Ron Chernow biography, Alexander Hamilton, on which the show is based.

In health care politics—and in all our politics—the United States is still living out the conflict between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson that flared in the 1790s. On the surface, the fight was about whether the federal government had the right to establish a central bank. But the split went far, far deeper.

Jefferson and his ally, James Madison, both Virginia planters, hewed to a vision of America as an agrarian republic in which states were the dominant governmental authority and citizen farmers were the economic engine. A New Yorker, Hamilton favored a strong federal government that could unite the states into a powerful new country with a modern industrial economy.

Slavery was also a factor in the political divide. The Virginians were fearful that Northerners would attack what they called “their peculiar institution.” Hamilton deeply opposed slavery.

To some extent, Jefferson and Madison’s distrust of central government grew directly and powerfully out of resentment toward the English king and parliament. Hamilton, a revolutionary war hero, nevertheless found aspects of English and European institutions worth emulating.

To an extraordinary extent, this conflict between states’ rights, rural values, and insularity on the one hand, and federal authority, urban values, and openness on the other, continues to animate American political life. Here is the origin of so many of our conflicting ideological and cultural instincts: suspicion of central authority and a strong belief in American exceptionalism versus trust in Washington’s ability to solve problems and a willingness to look abroad for inspiration and solutions.

As a result, conservatives see the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as an illegitimate overreach by the federal government with European socialist overtones. Many liberals favor even stronger federal intervention through a European style single-payer health system.

The fact that these disparate worldviews continue to lurk deep within America’s collective subconscious—and to shape our policy choices—reveals the power of history and culture in the fate of nations. (Article source)

[theahasociety]

Documentary on Hamilton Musical Announced

A documentary on the musical Hamilton has been in the works for years, following Lin-Manuel Miranda through the process of the musical’s creation, and it has just been announced that the documentary “Hamilton’s America” will air on PBS in the fall as part of “Great Performances.”

Variety reports:

“Hamilton’s America” will showcase the making of the hit Broadway musical, following creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, along with his team. The project will feature interviews with key thinkers and artists, plus scenes from “Hamilton,” including never-before-seen footage.

“PBS is thrilled to give viewers an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at this sensational — and sold out — Broadway musical,” said Beth Hoppe, chief programming executive and general manager, general audience programming at PBS. “With this level of access to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his team, PBS continues to live up to our mission of giving viewers a backstage pass and a front row seat to the arts.”

Exec producer David Horn added, “Since we presented ‘In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams’ in 2009, we’ve been taken by Lin-Manuel’s unique talents and we’re honored to collaborate with him again on ‘Hamilton’s America.’ The film will offer audiences a fascinating point of view as we witness first-hand Lin’s inspiration and creative process, as well as the lasting impact of Alexander Hamilton on our society today.”

Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics, plus plays the title role in the musical — and will serve as an exec producer on the documentary — commented: “On behalf of the entire ‘Hamilton’ cast and creative team, many of whom are ‘In The Heights’ alumni, we are overjoyed to be returning to PBS in partnership with RadicalMedia with this project. We invited filmmaker Alex Horwitz into ‘the room where it happened’ a few years ago, and he’s captured parts of this journey no one has seen. We can’t wait to share it, thanks to PBS.”

“Hamilton’s America” marks a continuation of business between Miranda and RadicalMedia. Years ago, the production company filmed some of Miranda’s early work with the hip-hop improv group “Freestyle Love Supreme,” and later down the road, they filmed the creation of his “In the Heights” musical for the PBS Great Performances documentary, “In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams.”

RadicalMedia’s Dave Sirulnick, who serves as an exec producer on the doc, tells Variety that “Hamilton’s America” will appeal to theater-goers who have seen the musical, but also to those who haven’t been able to get their hands on a ticket. “For all viewers, they will get to see moments on the journey that Lin and his creative team undertook, taking the story of the least celebrated of the founding fathers of the United States, relating to it in a profound personal way, making bold creative choices, and finding inspiration close to home and far away.”

He adds that the musical’s greatness has led to the “most incredible, natural buzz, curiosity and desire to be in the room where it happens.” Of his documentary, Sirulnick says, “This is one of the rare experiences in our current digital age that can only be seen in it’s entirety, in one theater in one city, and that runs counter to much of the ubiquity of the digital-sharing age that we live in. And that is fascinating. The documentary ‘Hamilton’s America’ will bring people into the theater with new footage of the musical, and along for the bold creative journey that it took to get there.” (Read full article)

From Theatermania:

The behind-the-scenes documentary will explore the creation of the musical, following Miranda as he composes songs in Aaron Burr's actual bedroom; Christopher Jackson (who portrays George Washington in the show) as he takes a trip to Washington's grave; Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr. (who plays Aaron Burr) as they visit the Museum of American Finance; and Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, and Jasmine Cephas Jones as they discover the lives of the Schuyler Sisters. The film will also include interviews with experts and personalities, as well as new footage of the production onstage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. (Read full article)

And from the New York Times:

The filmmakers started shooting the documentary in 2013, two years before the show arrived on Broadway, and have footage of visits by the creative team to historic sites associated with Alexander Hamilton, whose life is the basis of the musical. The film will also feature scenes from the show, and a look at the life of Hamilton, according to Dave Sirulnick, one of RadicalMedia’s executives.

The making of “Hamilton” has been heavily chronicled in print and on television, and Mr. Miranda is now wrapping up a book about the show, but Mr. Sirulnick said that in the documentary “the storytelling is going to be very fresh” and will offer a close-up view of the creative team at work. (Read full article)

The AHA Society was also filmed as part of the documentary, and we look forward to seeing the final result!

[theahasociety]

The creative Pati Cmak has posted on Tumblr several scenes from the musical Hamilton drawn in the style of Disney. Have you seen the musical or listened to the soundtrack? Can you identify the scenses depicted? 

To see more Hamilton sketches and animations, visit Pati Cmak’s Tumblr.