Jeffersonian Hamiltonianism: The Source

Back to Washington's Administration, first term.

Treasury Secretary wants a strong central government, one that will assume the debts of the nation and restore the full faith and credit of the country to leery investors and wary nations. With his mind ever-trained on building the nation's economy, he wanted investors, businessman, and industrial elites to prosper. Beyond a strong central government with an established central bank, Hamilton envision a United States teeming with innovation and industry, where commerce stretched across the country and throughout the world.

Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, wants to maintain the independence of the states. A tidewater gentryman with a plantation and self-regulating economy, he envisions a nation of gentlemen farmers where every man would own his land and attend to his needs without a meddling federal government interrupting the serenity of it all.

These two visions contain economic and political elements to their implementation.

Economically, Hamilton's vision was viable and welcome. The United States, in spite of the large expanses of arable land, is predominantly and industrial, now post-industrial nation. Jefferson's near Utopian vision of yeoman farmers as far as the eye could see was visionary at best, a fading dream for a dying--and peculiar-institution of slave labor and plantationocracy.

Yet Jefferson's political vision, though currently assaulted in practice, was wise, thorough, and fully constitutional. Unfortunately, Jefferson wanted to assimilate limited government and states' rights with the failing economy of landed aristocracy, a thankfully long-gone way of life which would never have supported the skyrocketing prosperity of the post-bellum United States. This same chasm between political sense and cultural nonsense poisoned the country's view of state's rights when its loudest champions wanted to resort to the doctrine in order to maintain segregation. Even now, unwitting advocates and inane ideologues accuse the Tea Party of atavistic political sensibilities, crypto-racism, and reactionary world-view.

In many ways, Thomas Jefferson's views characterizes the rising concerns of the Tea Party, including the Government's unchecked growth and unwanted encroachment into the affairs of the several states and the people, both of which were supposed to be curtailed by the ninth and tenth amendments of the Constitution.

Hamilton's economic vision was right on, yet the United States has continued to pursue his political vision, which ironically is hindering the very industrial progress he advocated.

So, rather than doing away with Jeffersonian Hamiltoniansim, let us switch the emphasis and delineation to Hamiltonian Jeffersonism, in which this country continues supporting the economic vision of Hamilton, yet relies extensively on the plan and purpose of Jefferson's hopes--a limited federal government which renounces most of the governing power to the states and abides by both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.