Hamilton's great aim was more efficient organization, whereas Jefferson once said "I am not a friend to a very energetic government.
The United States needed both influences. It was the country's good fortune that it had both men and could, in time, fuse and reconcile their philosophies.
One clash between them, which occurred shortly after Jefferson took office as secretary of state, led to a new and profoundly important interpretation of the Constitution.
When Hamilton introduced his bill to establish a national bank, Jefferson objected. Speaking for those who believed in states' rights, Jefferson argued that the Constitution expressly enumerates all the powers belonging to the federal government and reserves all other powers to the states. Nowhere was it empowered to set up a bank. Hamilton contended that because of the mass of necessary detail, a vast body of powers had to be implied by general clauses, and one of these authorized Congress to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" for carrying out other powers specifically granted.
The Constitution authorized the national government to levy and collect taxes, pay debts and borrow money. A national bank would materially help in performing these functions efficiently. Matters weren't helped by Hamilton's habit of speaking frankly-usually, too frankly-about his political views.
Luckily for historians though, not so luckily for Hamilton , Jefferson often recorded such moments for potential future use. When dinner was over and the cloth was removed as they put it in the 18th century , the conversation strayed into the subject of the British constitution. To Jefferson, this story held the key to Hamilton's politics. As he complained to Washington in , Hamilton had at his disposal a "squadron devoted to the nod of the treasury.
Jefferson himself, he proclaimed repeatedly, had determined "to intermeddle not at all with the legislature If it has been supposed that I ever intrigued among the members of the legislature to defeat the plans of the Secretary of the Treasury, it is contrary to all truth.
Somehow, Washington had to rein in these two men and enable them to work towards some kind of common good-no easy task. In , when he seems to have first realized the depth of the two men's hatred for each other, he wrote almost identical letters to them, pleading with them to try to get along.
As he wrote in his letter to Jefferson,. How unfortunate, and how much is it to be regretted.. The last, to me, is the most serious-the most alarming-and the most afflicting of the two. And without more charity for the opinions and acts of one another in Governmental matters. Washington said essentially the same thing to Hamilton in a letter written three days later, writing in both letters a wonderfully unambiguous but diplomatic sentence assuring each man that the other one was getting scolded as well.
Ron Chernow shares his insights into why George Washington and Alexander Hamilton believed that a new…. Joanne B. Washington's Presidential Cabinet Of course, when he selected Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton for his cabinet, he didn't know that they would become enemies.
It is safe to say that aside from George Washington himself, no one had a greater impact on the founding and development of our nation than Hamilton and Jefferson. Their opposing visions wind like the twin strands of DNA through American history. Jefferson was the more revolutionary of the two, and his ringing affirmation of human rights in the Declaration of Independence has inspired much of the world for more than two centuries. But Hamilton laid the foundation for the strong, centralized modern state led by a powerful executive.
Available at retailers and at Amazon. Correction: The original version of this article misstated the year that Jefferson ran for president again. It was Contact us at letters time. Illustration of four delegates to the Continental Congress that began in colonial America, Correction appended, Feb.
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