Alexander Hamilton is often credited with being the most far-sighted of the founders, since he, more than anyone else, saw America’s potential to become a manufacturing and commercial powerhouse among the nations.
Not even a man of Hamilton’s vision, however, could have foreseen that he would one day be the subject of a hit stage musical—let alone one set to hip-hop music. Two centuries after his meteoric rise from poverty and obscurity to the highest levels of the founding generation’s leadership class, Hamilton is a star again—this time on Broadway.
What are conservatives to make of Hamilton’s newfound fame? Some—following Thomas Jefferson, who regarded Hamilton as a subverter of limited government—might be tempted to regret it.
This is a mistake, as I argue at greater length in a new essay entitled “Alexander Hamilton and American Progressivism.” To be sure, Hamilton favored a more energetic national government than men like Jefferson and James Madison; but Hamilton’s commitment to natural rights, constitutionalism, and limited government still placed him well within the political mainstream of the American founding.
Moreover, leaving such political questions aside, conservatives have other reasons to rejoice at Hamilton’s newfound celebrity. Broadway’s “Hamilton” is, of course, less about Hamilton’s political thought than it is about his remarkable life. And that life is an amazing testimony to what can be accomplished by talent and hard work in a free and open society.
If anyone was born disadvantaged, it was young Alexander Hamilton. His childhood was marked by his illegitimacy, his father’s abandonment of the family, and his mother’s untimely death.
Hamilton responded to these setbacks not with despair or fatalism, but with a determination to make something of himself, to advance his position in the world. He certainly succeeded, becoming General Washington’s most trusted aide, organizer and lead writer of “The Federalist Papers,” and the nation’s first and most consequential Secretary of the Treasury.
Hamilton, moreover, advanced himself not by the low arts of popularity, but instead by his willingness to master the details of the work that had to be done on behalf of the public.
Young Alexander Hamilton, while serving in the Continental Army, carried with him a copy of Malachy Postlewayte’s “Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce.” While serving his country, he used his spare time to prepare himself to serve it even better by mastering what he would need to know to manage its financial affairs.
Contemporary conservatives need not agree with everything Hamilton said or did. They can and should, however, admire his virtues and be grateful for his contribution to the creation of the America we have inherited. They can therefore rejoice to find his name in lights.
