Honoring Alexander Hamilton on the Occasion of His Birthday - Dr. Mackubin Owens

Honoring Alexander Hamilton on the Occasion of His Birthday - Dr. Mackubin Owens

Wednesday, Jan. 11, marks the anniversary of Alexander Hamilton’s birth in 1757.  I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Hamilton, examining his statesmanship in the light of Book V of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, the philosopher’s treatment of prudence. I concluded that Hamilton was second only to George Washington in importance to the new Republic. Washington was indeed the “indispensable man” of the American Founding, but as my friend and former Naval War College colleague, Steve Knott, and our mutual former student, Tony Williams, made clear in their important book, Washington and Hamilton, it was their alliance that “forged America.”

I contend that Hamilton should be honored for the critical role he played in three important areas: republican constitutional order; political economy and public finance; and national defense. Regarding the first, Hamilton was one of the primary authors of The Federalist, the document that today still best explains the political theory of the American constitutional government.

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Hamilton, like most of the founding generation — including Thomas Jefferson — understood the American Revolution as an act of deliberation designed to establish a government limited in power to securing the antecedent natural rights of its citizens enumerated in the Declaration of Independence — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Although Hamilton, like Jefferson, envisioned the American Republic as a government of limited powers, he nonetheless believed that such a government needed to be strong enough to execute those powers. Accordingly, he stressed the importance of an energetic executive. But also recognizing the danger of an overreaching executive, he strongly argued on behalf of the separation of powers.

Hamilton likewise played a critical role in laying the foundation for encouraging the entrepreneurship that would propel America’s economic growth. His objective was to establish the United States as a commercial republic as described by the likes of Montesquieu and Adam Smith. As the first secretary of the treasury, Hamilton set the conditions for prosperity and economic success by establishing the nation’s credit, which provided an incentive for individuals and nations alike to invest in America. Hamilton believed that a firm foundation of public credit this was necessary not only because the government required it to survive, but because it served as a means to establishing a virtuous citizenry, without which republican government is impossible.

Finally, it has been the case that throughout history, the necessities, accidents, and passions of war have always tended to undermine liberty and free government. The unprecedented ability of the United States to wage war while still preserving liberty is a legacy of Hamilton, who deserves much of the credit for the institutions that have enabled the United States to minimize the inevitable tension between the necessities of war and the requirements of free government.

Hamilton rejected the utopian vision of Jefferson and many of his allies. “Let us recollect, that peace or war, will not always be left to our options.…To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude, that the fiery and destructive passions of war, reign in the human breast, with much more powerful sway, than the mild and beneficial sentiments of peace; and, that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”

Hamilton understood that war was a fact of international life, and that the survival of the infant Republic depended on developing and maintaining the potential to make war. Hamilton’s goal was to establish a republican regime both fit for war and safe for freedom. As a strategist before the word was coined, his strategic objectives were to enable the American Republic to avoid war when possible and to wage it effectively when necessary, all the while preserving both political and civil liberty. This required prudence, which Aristotle described as the virtue most characteristic of the statesman.

The first step in making the United States secure was to create a powerful and indissoluble union that would greatly discourage war on the North American continent, thus avoiding the militarization that had led to the downfall of earlier free governments. Indeed, Hamilton’s support for the Constitution was based largely on his belief that only such a union could ensure American security at home and project unity abroad. The Union, said Hamilton, is “the rock of our political salvation.”

The second step was to ensure that the nation had the means to defend itself in a hostile world dominated by Great Britain and France. These included the establishment of credit and a national bank, the encouragement of manufactures, and the creation of a standing army and an ocean-going navy. The Jeffersonians rejected these measures but the War of 1812 proved their wisdom, and ultimately Hamilton’s strategic sobriety has prevailed, accounting in large measure for the unprecedented ability of the United States to combine great power and an unprecedented degree of liberty.

Without the institutions that Hamilton was instrumental in creating and the strategic sobriety that he taught, the United States would be hard pressed to defend its interests in a dangerous world while maintaining liberty at home. Unfortunately, the institutions that Hamilton helped to create were severely weakened by the rise of Progressivism in the late nineteenth century and its bastard child, the administrative state, an unconstitutional fourth branch of government that violates the principle of separation of power and which often operates in defiance of the will of the American people.

While the Founders created a republic based on natural law and natural right, the Progressives believed that there could be no abiding, non-arbitrary standard of moral or political judgment, independent of human will. The Progressives asserted a new conception of man, who possesses no natural rights, but who does have potentially limitless material needs that must be provided by an administrative state governed by “experts.” They effectively replaced liberty with “efficiency” and redefined “rights” as prescriptive entitlements. While Hamilton argued for a strong but limited government, the Progressives and their heirs have given us a strong but UNLIMITED government, one that is ultimately dangerous to the liberties of the American people.

We see this both in domestic and foreign policy. In the former, the institutions that Hamilton helped to create have been corrupted into instruments of endless regulations, spending and taxation. In the latter, prudence and strategic sobriety have been replaced with a foreign policy committed to liberal internationalism, a fool’s errand that often places the interests of other states above those of Americans. 

 So happy birthday to Mr. Hamilton. But in honoring him, let us also reflect on the corruption of the institutions he helped to create.