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Townhall...
Hamilton: The
Original Self-Made American Who Also Made a Nation
By Mona Charen
His face adorns the $10 bill, but as Richard Brookhiser, host of
“Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton” (airing on PBS April 11), finds when
conducting a quick street canvas -- many Americans cannot identify him.
“Washington has a monument,” Brookhiser intones. “Jefferson has a
memorial. It’s often said that New York City is Hamilton’s monument.”
That would be more than enough for any man, yet, as this engrossing
film from producer Michael Pack makes clear, it doesn’t quite do
justice to the genius of Hamilton. First secretary of the Treasury, a
drafter of the Constitution, author of two-thirds of the Federalist
Papers, and father of the U.S. economy, Hamilton was also the prototype
of the self-made American success -- the original Horatio Alger hero,
and then some.
Unlike the planters, wealthy merchants, and successful lawyers from
established families who comprised the other founders, Hamilton was
born in the Virgin Islands, “the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler,” as
John Adams sneered in one of his less charitable moments. (To be fair,
Hamilton could be lacerating about Adams, too.)
He was a bastard -- but some brat. At age 11, orphaned and penniless,
Hamilton found work in a St. Croix counting house. There he learned
that strong application could yield advancement. He was so gifted at
administration that his boss was willing to leave the 14-year-old
Alexander in full charge of the business when he left for four months.
Also in St. Croix, Hamilton saw the suffering of slaves, forced to work
endless hours in the scorching sun harvesting sugar cane. The camera
lingers on the lanky, bamboo-shaped stalks. Most slaves, Brookhiser
notes, “died within seven years.” Hamilton became a fervent and
lifelong opponent of slavery.
So prodigious were his talents that a few of the merchants on St. Croix
sponsored his emigration to the colonies to further his education. He
was 16. Within the next two decades, he would serve as deputy to Gen.
George Washington, achieve glory in battle himself, excel at the law,
and, from nothing, create for his adopted country its first monetary
system, its first fiscal system, its first accounting system, and its
first central bank. He also founded the Coast Guard, the Customs
Service, and the New York Post. In a touching moment, the film captures
the ritual in which newly minted Coast Guard officers -- to this day --
salute the grave of the service’s founder.
Historical documentarians face a problem -- no footage. Most resort to
long pans of period paintings, or linger over photographs and sunsets,
or throw in the occasional actors in period costume marching off to
battle, along with talking heads. There’s nothing wrong with that style
(Ken Burns, the master of the genre, has a great new film on
Prohibition coming in October). But this film takes a different
approach, setting itself firmly in the contemporary world -- the world
that Hamilton did so much to create.
Brookhiser travels from a prison in the Virgin Islands, where he chats
with women who, like Hamilton’s mother, are behind bars, to the
People’s Court for a re-enactment of one of Hamilton’s famous law
cases, to the hectic streets of New York City, pulsing with business.
He and Bernard-Henri Levi play-act the meeting between Hamilton and
Talleyrand. He chats with Larry Flynt about the sex scandal that nearly
ended Hamilton’s career, and with former gang members about the touchy
matter of honor, which did end his life.
To appreciate Hamilton fully, it’s necessary to set the stage, as
Brookhiser and historian Ron Chernow do, explaining that after the
Revolution, the United States was an economic cripple, deeply in debt,
its currencies nearly worthless as a result of inflation.
“We were,” says Chernow, “the deadbeat of world finance. We were like a
Third World country.” Hamilton steered the new republic toward
solvency. (We could use him now!)
Unlike the other founders, Chernow notes, who had mainly
“pre-capitalist worldviews” with a strong bias toward agriculture, and
who tended to see commerce and manufacturing as “corrupting
influences,” Hamilton foresaw that the United States could become a
great trading nation. From his earliest days in the St. Croix counting
house, doing business with people from around the world speaking many
languages, Hamilton understood that wealth is created by trade and
commerce, not just from the soil.
Hamilton was an economic wizard, but also a profound political
philosopher, a deep-dyed patriot, a gifted administrator who served as
Washington’s informal “prime minister” during the first president’s
term -- and also a human being with weaknesses and foibles. He spoke
brilliantly, the film reminds us, but sometimes too much. He might have
bitten his tongue a bit more on the subject of Vice President Aaron
Burr. But he did not, and the film takes us, reluctantly but
inexorably, to the dueling ground at Weehawken, N.J., where we feel
anew that day’s terrible toll.
Read it at Townhall
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