Shortly after listening a few times to Lin-Manuel Miranda's spectacular musical, Hamilton, a friend gave me a copy of the monumental, eponymous biography by Ron Chernow, which turned out to be equally spectacular. You might think it odd for me to classify a 731-page biography as a page-turner, but it is just that. The print was small and the pages large; the words at the end blurred, but the messages my bleary eyes conveyed to my brain were well worth it. I wrote down a few quotes as I read, some of which I will present now with brief comments. All quotes are by Hamilton, unless otherwise indicated.
1. "The more I see, the more I find reason for those who love this country to weep over its blunders."
Thank God, Mr. Hamilton, that you didn't live to see the mess our country is in now. I wish, though, that you were still among us--we certainly could use a brilliant Renaissance man like you now. Not only did you have encyclopedic knowledge of subjects as diverse as finance, the military, and the law; not only did you, along with Madison--mostly you--compose the many essays of the Federalist Papers, which are still widely read and applicable to our situation today, you were blessed with nearly superhuman energy to help you help your adopted country succeed.
When one thinks of all the material gains humanity has accrued since the eighteenth century--electricity, indoor plumbing, devices in medicine and dentistry, the digital revolution, etc. etc., one is amazed. (So much suffering has been alleviated--one thinks of the pain Washington had to endure with his wooden dentures with teeth made from the teeth of a hippopotamus, which caused intractable sores by rubbing against the one tooth he had left in his head. One also thinks of the mortal wound Hamilton received from Aaron Burr in that ill-fated 1804 duel; today he might have survived).
Scientific progress continues unabated. We are plunging deeper and deeper into space; permanent cures for diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries are on the horizon; medical treatments today would astound you, General Hamilton, you who lived in an age when bloodletting and cold baths were the primary treatment for yellow fever, etc. etc.
Still...
Our emotional makeup hasn't evolved much in the past 100,000 years. Inside, we're still fighters and flighters. A caveman with nuclear weapons is indeed a frightful thing.
Hamilton liked democracy but feared a government led by masses of the undereducated. Alas! Mr. Hamilton, newspaper headlines today would hardly change your mind. Things, I think, have gotten worse.
Two quotes come to mind:
Progress is a comfortable disease--e.e.cummings
We are discovering the right things in the wrong order, which is another way of saying that we are learning now to control nature before we have learned to control ourselves--Raymond Fosdick
2. A quote from the book: "A man of irreproachable integrity, Hamilton severed all outside sources of income while in office, something which Jefferson and Madison failed to do."
Oy! Otherwise, no comment.
3. "To have given up these men to their masters, after assurance of protection had been given to them, would have been unjustified."
During the Revolutionary War, Blacks were invited to fight for the British in exchange for their freedom. After the war, slave owners, as part of a peace treaty with Britain, wanted them back. Hamilton helped assure that this wasn't done.
Hamilton was a life-long abolitionist. In contrast to the slave-owning Jefferson, Hamilton insisted that Blacks weren't a jot inferior to whites. He wanted to abolish slavery at the end of the war, but soon realized that the southern states would cede from the union to prevent this, which they eventually did.
Thus, the despicable practice of slavery continued. We should have listened to you, Mr. Hamilton; we all would be so much better off today, if we had.
4.Another quote from the book: "But he was so often worried about abuses committed against the rich,, that he sometimes minimized the skulduggery committed by the rich."
I doubt if Hamilton could ever have imagined the crimes American oligarchs continue to freely commit against the vast majority of Americans today. If he did, I am convinced he would have, as a founding father, written something that might have curbed their vicious greed.
Today, the top 1% of the most wealthy Americans own 40% of the nation's wealth, 50% of the stocks and 24% of the national income. This is obscene. I am sure Hamilton would agree.
4. If the party elected Burr, it would be exposed "to the disgrace of a defeat in an attempt to elevate to the first place in government one of the worst men in the community."
Burr was bad, but compared to the current president, he looks, well, damn good. (An African-American lady recently said that if a flowerpot was running against Trump, she'd vote for the flowerpot.) What would Hamilton have said and done if he had to live under the present administration? A lot.
Alexander Hamilton, I wish you were here. We need you desperately.
5. "Wars often proceed from angry and perverse passions than from calculation of interest."
All too true. This could have been written today. A principal contender for a perverse passion would be greed.
6. "The existence of a Deity has been questioned and in some instances denied, the duty of piety has been ridiculed, the perishable nature of man asserted, and his hope bound to the short span of his earthly state. Death has been proclaimed an eternal sleep."
Hamilton was criticizing here the professed atheism of the French Revolution and the supposed atheism of Jefferson. Jefferson, however, was not an atheist, but a deist, a belief which asserted, basically, that God got the universe going, but then withdraw from it completely. First came God, then came Newton whose mechanistic theory of the universe reigned supreme for many thinkers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Then came the quantum revolution of the twentieth century, which arguably has made God unnecessary even as a prime mover. I can't agree with Hamilton here, but most people still do--even in the twenty-first century. I doubt if Hamilton would have written the same lines if he were alive today.
Nevertheless, I repeat: Alexander Hamilton, you were a genus; wish you were still with us.
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