📍  Alexander Hamilton was the most brilliant American statesman who ever lived, possessing the loftiest and keenest intellect of his time. Hello and welcome to How to Take Over the World, this is Ben Wilson, and that was a quote from the American president Theodore Roosevelt.  Today we are obviously talking about Alexander Hamilton.

I'm doing a series on the American founders, and I am convinced that there are only three founding fathers of the United States who were truly indispensable.  There are many who made extremely valuable contributions, but only three without whom I think the revolution would have failed. And those three are George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin.

I don't mean to downplay the contributions of men like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay, Benjamin Rush, John Adams. I could go on. There were many great men in that generation. There were giants on the earth in those days, to paraphrase the Bible. But only those three were genuinely indispensable, I think.

And of those three, I agree with Teddy Roosevelt that Alexander Hamilton was the greatest.

I've been really looking forward to this episode, and one of the reasons is,  The musical Hamilton. I'm really glad that the musical has popularized the character of Alexander Hamilton. But a quibble I have with it is that I think perhaps it doesn't convey the true greatness of the man.  He was central to the dealings of the There was a great French diplomat named Talleyrand, and he was central to the dealings of Napoleonic Europe. This is a man who knew all the great generals and heads of state in the late 18th and early 19th century. And he said, and I quote, I consider Napoleon Fox and Hamilton, the three greatest men of our epic.

And he said, I consider Napoleon Fox and Hamilton, the three greatest men of our epic Fox was a very prominent English wig politician. And if I were forced to decide between the three, I would give without hesitation, the first place to Hamilton.   And that is like a pretty amazing quote. This is someone who knew and intimately worked with Napoleon.

Uh, and. And that is like a pretty amazing quote. I mean, this is someone who was intimately familiar with Napoleon, who knew him extremely well, worked with him daily for a long time. And he thought that Alexander Hamilton, who he also knew well, as we shall see, was even more brilliant than Napoleon. In many ways, Hamilton is the American Napoleon.

Both were short and thin with reddish hair. Both were brilliant artillery captains. Both were from small islands off the coast of the country. They would end up calling their home. Both were notorious flirts and womanizers. Both were extremely energetic. Both had Titanic egos and were obsessed with earning military glory.

Both implemented sweeping reforms to their country's governments. They even died at nearly the same age. Napoleon was 51 and Hamilton was 49. When you read about Hamilton, if you have,  When you read about Hamilton, if you have any experience or knowledge of Napoleon, you are just constantly reminded of the similarities between the two.

There are even more commonalities that I will point out, but I find one of their differences to be illuminating. Of the two, only Alexander Hamilton was ever able to speak accentless French.

You know, they have all these similarities. I think actually one of their differences is very telling and very funny, which is that of the two, only Alexander Hamilton was able to speak French without an accent.  I'm not the first person to make this observation. Many people at the time used it as sort of a slur, um, to say, you know, Hamilton, he has these Napoleonic ambitions.

And many people since then have noted the similarities between the two men. Historian Henry Adams wrote, from the first to the last words he wrote, I always read the same Napoleonic kind of adventuredom.  So, why do I think Alexander Hamilton was the most indispensable, the greatest founding father of the United States?

Stay tuned to find out. That's what this series is all about. I will caveat this by saying that Washington is a very close second. They were a brilliant partnership, and without either one, things would have gone very differently. And my main argument is that Hamilton is underappreciated, Even after the musical, not that Washington was overrated or anything like that.

I think he more than merits his place at the center of the American pantheon.  Okay, so let's see what made Hamilton so great and why his con  Okay, so let's see what made Hamilton so great and why his contributions were so vital. I'll note that my main source is Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, but I'll also pull a couple quotes from the biography written by his son, John C.

Hamilton. With all that said, let's get into it. This is The Rise of Alexander Hamilton.

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so Hamilton was born on January 11th, 1755, on the small Caribbean island of Nevis.  Chernow writes that he was slight and thin shouldered, and distinctly Scottish in appearance, with a florid complexion, reddish brown hair, and sparkling violet blue eyes. He was short, very handsome, but kind of delicate. Some even described him as feminine looking. He grew up on Nevis, and also on the nearby island of St.

Croix, where his mother moved the family after being abandoned by Hamilton's father, James Hamilton.  These were small islands that were unimportant in and of themselves, but were very important economic centers. They were huge producers of sugarcane. Slavery was absolutely central in both Nevis and St.

Croix.  Slavery was absolutely central in both Nevis and St. Croix. If you go somewhere like Virginia in the late 17 hundreds, slavery is very important to, to slavery is very important to the functioning of the economy, but most people did not own slaves. Only the rich moneyed class actually had these largest states.

That were worked by slaves. But that was not the case in Nevis and St. Croix. Even a poor widow like Rachel Hamilton owned a handful of slaves. The whole society was built around slavery.

Alexander Hamilton's mother, Rachel, had been married previously to a man named Mr. Levin, and he had,  and she had never obtained a divorce so that technically Alexander and James Hamilton Jr., his brother, were illegitimate. Though Rachel and James Hamilton lived together for 15 years, so it's not like he was born fatherless.

As a child, he wouldn't have felt like an illegitimate child. You know, he had a father and, you know, he had a father and a mother in the household. Um, sometimes it was portrayed by his political enemies that he was the son of a prostitute. Um, but that's, that's not the case.  When Hamilton was 13 years old, he and his mother contracted yellow fever,  they laid together on small cots in a cramped room.

And while young Alexander eventually recovered, his mother died right there next to him, perhaps even in his embr

They laid together on small cots in a cramped room, and while young Alexander eventually recovered, his mother died right there next to him. Perhaps they were even touching as she passed away.  With their father out of the picture, he and his brother James Jr. were sent to live with their cousin, who committed suicide shortly thereafter.

And they were then separated, and Alexander was sent to live with a rich and prominent merchant, Thomas Stevens.  Hamilton became best friends with Stevens son, Edward Stevens. The boys were soulmates. Later in their lives, Stevens would write to Hamilton of, quote, those vows of eternal friendship which we have so often mutually exchanged.

And that is a very intense friendship for these boys of only 14 years old, to be swearing oaths of eternal loyalty to each other. It reminds me of the relationship between Genghis Khan and his blood brother, Jamukha. These very powerful men often form these very intense friendships when they're young.

Anyway, many people think that they were, in fact, not just friends, But half brothers, so this guy that he went to go live with Thomas Stevens, he showed an enduring interest in the welfare of Alexander Hamilton. His son very closely resembled Alexander Hamilton. So, so Hamilton and his friend, Edward Stevens, supposedly, when people saw them, they were just taken aback.

They go, Whoa, you two best friends look exactly alike. And, um, and so that's like kind of compelling evidence that, that maybe  And so that's pretty compelling evidence that maybe Thomas Stevens, uh, was in fact Hamilton's father. Add to that the fact that James Hamilton, for whatever reason, didn't show a lot of interest.

You know, they continued to write a little bit, uh, but he never came to see him in America. Um, it's just weird that when his son was having all this magnificent success in the United States, he never took more of an interest where this Thomas Stevens guy kind of did.

So, so that's another data point. In fact, in the 1800s, this was taken as fact rather than a conspiracy theory. Timothy Pickering wrote, It was generally understood that Hamilton was an illegitimate son of a gentleman of the name of Stevens. And Henry Cabot Lodge wrote that, Every student of the period is familiar with the story which oral tradition has handed down, that Hamilton was the illegitimate son of a rich West Indian planter or merchant, generally supposed to have been Mr.

Stevens, the father of Hamilton's early friend and school fellow.

And this also explains some things in that, James Hamilton  was kind of a lazy, feckless ne'er do well. He could never get things to work, and he wasn't very enterprising, he wasn't a go getter, Whereas Thomas Stevens was enterprising and brilliant, just like Alexander Hamilton. So, I believe this secret parentage story, although of course, Unless someone does some grave digging and genetic testing, we'll likely never know the truth of his parentage.

Even as a young boy, Hamilton had worked to put together an impressive library, which included Plutarch's Lives, the poetry of Alexander Pope, and a French edition of Machiavelli's The Prince.

And why a French edition? Well, his mother was of French Huguenot extraction, and so Hamilton spoke more or less fluent French from his childhood.

And as we shall see, this came in handy later for Hamilton, his ability to speak fluent French.  Now, I have relayed the events of his childhood in a fairly straightforward manner, but it's worth noting how difficult of a childhood this was. Chernow summarizes it well. He says, A grim catalogue of disasters had befallen these two boys between 1765 and 1769.

Their father had vanished, their mother had died, their cousin and supposed protector had committed bloody suic  their cousin and supposed protector had committed blu protector had committed bloody suicide, and their aunt, uncle, and grandmother had all died. James, 16, and Alexander, 14, were now left alone, largely friendless and penniless.

At every step in their rootless, topsy turvy existence, they had been surrounded by failed, broken, and bittered people. Their short lives had been shadowed by a stupefying sequence of bankruptcies, marital separations, deaths, scandals, and disinheritance.  Okay, so,  it is an extremely difficult childhood. But despite these difficult circumstances, Alexander Hamilton thrived as soon as he was given the opportunity.

He received a big boost to his education when, at the age of 14, he was apprenticed to the merchant business Beekman and Kruger. And so, even though he is in a faraway island, Hamilton gets a top rate mercantile education. He is basically in charge of their business in St. Croix. He has to monitor and oversee deals of timber, food, barrels, iron, lime, rope, bricks, cattle, and slaves.

You know, these are general merchants. They trade in everything. And so Hamilton gets to handle all the accounts, make purchases, make sales, and see all the figures and keep track of them. He actually has almost exactly the same first job as John D. Rockefeller.  Hamilton had a great memory, was great with numbers, and was extremely hardworking and energetic.

He does really well in his first job, and shows himself to have a top notch mind for business.  Now the firm was actually based out of New York, and the partners were frequently gone for long stretches, so Hamilton gets very used to running things himself. And is actually annoyed when one of the partners, Kruger, returns to St.

Croix to oversee things himself for a little bit. And one of the defining attributes of Hamilton was that he always thought that he was the smartest person in the room, and he chafed. under any sort of oversight or authority. He hated to be subservient to anyone. He always wanted to be in control. And, you know, when you look at his record, you understand why he always thought he was the smartest person in the room.

He usually was. And, uh, and so this starts very, very early. He wants to be the man. He wants to be the person in charge. And he recognizes within himself, this Titanic ambition

he thinks that, you know, he, he has the ability to be the man, to, to really accomplish things in life. And he just wants the opportunity to show it. We have this amazing letter that he wrote to his friend, uh, and  we have this amazing letter that he wrote to Edward Stevens, that guy who's his, his close friend and maybe half brother.

And in it, he writes, To confess my weakness, Ned, my ambition is so prevalent that I condemn the groveling and conditions of a clerk,  and the like to which my fortune, et cetera, condemns me. And would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.

I'm confident, Ned, that my youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate preferment, nor do I desire it. But I mean to prepare the way for futurity. But I mean to prepare the way for futurity. I'm no philosopher, you see,  maybe justly said to build castles in the air. My folly makes me ashamed and beg, you'll conceal it.

Yet Netty, we have seen such schemes successful when the pro  yet netty. We have seen such schemes successful when the projector is con, yet netty. We have seen such schemes successful when the projector is constant. I shall conclude by saying I wish there was a war.  So  that's like I I I love that letter that  Hamilton is pining for a war at 14 years old.

And you see just how he's chomping at the bit to distinguish himself. And, uh, and he, he kind of intuits that if there's a war, that would be an opportunity for him to show how smart and capable he is and distinguish himself and rise in the ranks. Interestingly, his big break comes the same way it came for Napoleon.

So a huge hurricane comes and completely devastates a number of Caribbean islands, including Nevis and St. Croix. And Hamilton, in the wake of this huge natural disaster, writes a fantastic essay where he describes the storm and offers reflections on life in its wake. I'll share a couple passages so you can get a feel for him and his writing style.

Here's what he writes. Good God, what horror and destruction! It's impossible for me to describe  good God, what horror and destruction. It's impossible for me to describe or you to form any idea of it. It seemed as if a total disillusion of nature was taking place. The roaring of the sea and wind, fiery meteors flying about it in the air, the prodig the prodigious glare of almost perpetual lightning, the crash of the falling houses, the ear piercing shrieks of the distressed, were sufficient to strike astonishment into angels.

And then he goes on to offer his thoughts on what has happened. He says, My reflections and feelings on the frightful and melancholy occasion are set forth in the following self discourse.

Where now, O vile worm, Where now, O vile worm, Is all thy boasted fortitude and resolution? What has it become of thine arrogance and self sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible, you now appear. And for why? The jarring of elements, the discord of clouds?

Oh, impotent, presumptuous fool, how durst thou offend that omnipotence? whose nod alone were sufficient to quell the destruction that hovers over thee, or crush thee into atoms.

But see, the Lord relents. He hears our prayers. The lightning ceases. The winds are appeased. The warring elements are reconciled, and all things promise peace. The darkness is dispelled, and drooping nature revives at the approaching dawn. Yet hold, O vain mortal, check thy ill timed joy. Art thou so selfish to exult because thy lot is happy in a season of universal woe?

Hast thou no feeling for the miseries of thy fellow creatures? Art thou incapable of the soft pangs of sympathetic, of sympathetic, sorrow? Look around thee and shudder at the view. See desolation and ruin where'er thou turn thine eyes. See thy fellow creatures pale and lifeless, their bodies mangled, their souls snatched into eternity, Unexpecting, alas, perhaps unprepared.

Hark their bitter groans of distress. O ye who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity, and bestow your superfluity to ease them. Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withhold your compassion. , what are your sufferings compared to those?  Ye have still more than enough left.

Act wisely, sucker the miserable, and lay up a treasure in heaven.  Okay, so,  maybe it's a bit overwrought and a bit heavy handed with the moralizing, But, it's excellent prose, especially for a teenager, especially in these far flung islands.  This essay takes St. Croix by storm.

No pun intended. And well to do men start inquiring after the author, Hamilton, had published it anonymously. And when people find out that a teenager has written this, they think, Okay, a top notch writer like this shouldn't be stuck here on this island, and they raise a fund to send him to the United States so he can receive a college education.

So, in 1772, at the age of 17, Hamilton sets off for Boston. And by the way, I want to pause to give my first major lesson, which is that if you are a young person, even if you're not so young, one of the most valuable things that you can do is put out Content, put out your thoughts, put out writing. So start a blog, a Twitter account, a podcast, a newsletter, anything like that.

It lets people know how smart and capable you are. It attracts people who are inclined toward your interests or your mode of thinking and it has the added benefit. That in articulating what matters most to you, you have to think about and clarify and discover what matters most to you.

For me personally, this podcast has been an exceptional way to find my people, people who believe what I do think like I do are interested in what I'm interested in and it has opened doors.  I wouldn't have believed when I started this podcast and it's not a coincidence that both Hamilton and Napoleon broke through in this way.

If you forgot, Napoleon wrote a political pamphlet that attracted the attention of The government in Paris called the directory. And that was how he got his first big military appointments.

So I think for anyone learning to write well is one of those. So I think for anyone learning to write well as one of those foundational skills that enables everything else that you do. So get your thoughts out into the world. It creates a great surface area. Also for luck, it creates opportunities to be discovered. And leap your career progress forward. It's, it's just one of the most high impact things that you can do

for Hamilton's work habits.  For Hamilton's work habits is daily habits. We don't know much. very much. But we do know that he rose early, drank strong coffee, and then according to Chernow, quote, seated himself at his table where he would remain six, seven, or eight hours.

So breakfast was basically just coffee at his,  so breakfast was basically just coffee at this point in his life. That changes a little bit once he gets married, but for now that's how he works. I haven't found any direct references to him being a light eater, but if you're waking up, drinking coffee, and then sitting at your desk for a marathon eight hour stretch without getting up from the table, then I think.

You probably qualify as a light eater,  you know, it's not just when or how you eat that matters. Also, it's what you eat And I'm one of those people who obsesses over and I'm one of those people who obsesses over environmental toxins Microplastics things like that. I think they're a major contributor to all these things that people suffer nowadays Depression weight gain sinking testosterone levels all sorts of maladies that are associated with modern life.

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I love your company. Thank you for sponsoring this episode. 📍   Okay, so Hamilton, okay, so Hamilton goes to the U. S. He goes first to Boston, and then proceeds from there to New York. He tries to get into college at Princeton, which was then, and still is, one of America's most prestigious universities, but they won't let him in because he's too young. So, I guess at this point I have to mention that there is controversy around his birth year.

So Hamilton has a very turbulent background. He's basically an orphan. You know, his mother dies when he's young and then he's passed from family to family to family. He's from the small Island. Probably there weren't good records kept anyway. So. We're actually not totally sure of his birth year. So he thinks it's 1757.

Um, and that's what he tells everyone that he's born in 1757, thereby making him 15 years old.  There's actually pretty compelling evidence that he was actually born in 1755. So he's actually 17 years old. And so that is the, uh,  and so that is the date that I have been using. Um,

so that is the date I have been using, but anyway, he, he thinks he's two years younger than, than most people think he actually was. So the point is he's trying to get into Princeton as a 15 year old. And they say, no. That's too young. And he brings up the example of another young man who had been admitted to Princeton at a young age, just a few years previously, a young man named Aaron Burr.

In fact, at this point, Hamilton might have heard the story from Burr himself. They might've already met, but Burr was a well connected American, whereas Hamilton was a penniless foreigner. And so he is rejected from Princeton. And he ends up going to King's college in New York, the institution that would eventually become known as Columbia university.

Now, Hamilton was always very good at making friends and he does so right away. The fact that he is poor and a foreigner doesn't stop him. He quickly gains a group of very close friends and begin studies on his own in preparation for college.

You know, one of the reasons that he's so good at making friends, even though like he doesn't know anyone, he's kind of starting from zero. Is he's very charismatic. He's very smooth, a contemporary leftist account. It says

His eyes were of a deep Azure eminently beautiful without the slightest trace of hardness or severity and beamed with higher expressions of intelligence and discernment. than any others that I ever saw. He displayed in his manners and movements a degree of refinement and grace which I never witnessed in any other man.

Okay, so,  even though he's, he's really small, he's got a very impressive physical presence. And these great manners, and there's just something about him that really strikes people. Even when they just first meet him, they realize that he's unlike anyone they've ever met.  

You know, the other kind of defining thing about Hamilton that is difficult to capture is his frenetic pace. There's a good quote from Cherna who writes a copious note taker. He left behind in minute hand in exercise book in which he jotted down passages from the lion in which he jotted down passages from the Iliad in Greek.

Took extensive notes on geography and history and compiled detailed chapter synopses from the books of Genesis and Revelation.  As if wanting to pack every spare moment with achievement, he also found time to craft poetry and write the prologue and epilogue of an unspecified play performed by a local detachment of British soldiers.

Okay, so,

okay, so he's doing everything. Like, he's, he's just got these few months until school starts and he teaches himself Greek and, um, and even reads the Iliad in Greek and, and takes all these notes and he's writing poetry, he's writing plays,  He's studying all the prerequisite materials for college.

Like he's, he's just doing everything. He had this incredible energy to just work, work, work, and get an unbelievable amount done in a very short amount of time

at King's college. When he does enter, he's a star student, never makes trouble, gets great grades, wakes up before 6am and just has this startling capacity for work. And not just work, he's very social, he goes to parties, he's an incredibly hard worker, but he's not a stick in the mud. He uses all his time extremely productively, whether that is for work or whether that is for entertainment.

No waste.  He founds a weekly club dedicated to giving speeches, writing, and debating. These sorts of things used to be common at colleges here in the U. S. Hamilton is the star of his club, and he uses it as an opportunity to refine his thinking and his writing and speaking skills.

Now, this is obviously a time of a lot of Political ferment in the United States. People are already talking about, um independence revolution and by temperament  and by temperament, Hamilton is something of a loyalist. He was someone who liked England. He was moderately conservative. Okay. But he begins to identify with the growing Patriot movement in part because he legitimately thought the British government had overstepped their bounds and were acting egregiously toward their American colonies,  but also I can't help but wonder if Hamilton also smelled opportunity in the air.

Remember, in that letter to his friend, Edward Stevens, he had ended it by saying, I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war.  And this was the context of him discussing his ambition and his desire to get ahead. And so I think he knew intuitively that a revolution and a war would present larger than normal opportunities for ambitious and capable young men.

So,  yes, like, he probably did legitimately intellectually identify With the Patriot movement. But he also probably saw a lot of opportunity there, a lot of opportunity to distinguish himself and make a name for himself,  his first essay, which he publishes in an American newspaper is a defense of the Boston Tea Party, an act in which some disguised Patriots boarded British ships at night and dumped their cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor as a protest of British taxes.

And so this vandalism is a move that is popular in some circles, but in other circles, especially amongst merchants, it's very unpopular. They're worried about having their cargo seized and thrown into the sea. And so with his background in commerce, Hamilton was able to assuage some of these fears from merchants in New York.

He's able to explain why actually in the long run, you know, this is a good and important thing for us and for the colonies.   A few weeks after that, he makes his first big public speech. There is a protest, and some people who know him urge him to get up in front of the crowd and make a speech.

And so he makes this spectacular, eloquent speech and receives a long, sustained ovation. And this speech rockets him in prominence as a popular speaker in defense of American independence.  And this is catnip for Hamilton, who admitted to being motivated by, this is quote, love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds, which would prompt a man to plan and undertake extensive and arduous enterprises for the public benefit.

So that is his driving motivation, a love of fame.  He regularly writes Pseudonymously. He regularly writes under a pseudonym in the New York newspapers and carries on bruising, written fuse with any who challenged him or defended. Uh, the, the loyalist, the crown.  In the, the style of Hamilton is, um,  he liked to just.

write and say more. He liked to overwhelm his opponents with the quantity and quality of his arguments and his research. Which is not to say that he wasn't also clear and incisive, he was, but his go to strategy was always more. Overwhelm.  One major concern of the public at this time was whether America could win a conflict with Britain, and Hamilton writes very prophetically on this topic.

He says, Let it be remembered that there are no large plains for the two armies to meet in and decide the conquests. The circumstances of our country put it in our power to evade a pitched battle. It will be better policy to harass and exhaust the soldiers by frequent skirmishes and incursions than to take the open field with them, by which means they would have the full benefit of their superior regularity and skills.

Americans are better qualified for that kind of fighting, which is most adapted to this country, than regular troops.  And this is so interesting because, I mean, this is a teenager. And here he is laying out the strategy that the U. S. would eventually adopt under Washington well before fighting even breaks out.

One of the crazier things about Hamilton is that he was right about basically everything. He was like a prophet in his ability to predict the future. I think one of the things that made Hamilton so good at this was the breadth of his knowledge. He had an excellent understanding of commerce, finance, law, history, science, literature, poetry, you know, you name it.

And so he could pull together all of this diffuse knowledge to accurately foresee all circumstances that would arise, and then And predict, you know, what would be most important and therefore what would happen.

And it's just amazing to see time after time, you know, he, he predicts here the, the best American strategy in the revolutionary war later in the war,  he has this amazing letter where he just writes down word for word, what the British strategy is going to be for the entire war and the British acted out as if they have this document and are trying to follow it like he really prophetically is able to intuit.

What the British are going to try to do. He also accurately predicts what's going to happen in the French revolution. Like he says exactly like it's going to devolve into anarchy and then they're going to have some despot who's going to come in and take over as a monarch. Um, so he predicts Napoleon. Uh, later he predicts kind of the future of the United States and what it will become, like very good at seeing into the future.

So anyway, it's a few years like this, that he's in college, he's writing, he's speaking, he is raising his public profile as a,  he's raising his public profile as a Patriot intellectual.  So it is in the midst of this public turmoil that the Battle of Lexington takes place in Massachusetts. And as soon as fighting breaks out, he joins up with a local militia as an artillery officer.

An officer because he was a, you know, he had no military background, but he was a university student and therefore educated, and that is where the officer corps was drawn from. But he's obviously a low ranking officer.  He's also still in college this whole time. One of my favorite stories about him comes when he is at college and all this stuff is happening, you know, the battle of Lexington has happened.

And so now this patriotic fervor has reached a fever pitch and King's college was actually a bastion of loyalism. You know, it was King's college. It was supposed to be like a Royal institution associated with the British crown.  Well, one night. A rowdy group of drunken patriots, well one night, a rowdy group of drunk patriot rioters comes to attack the college's president, who is a very outspoken loyalist.

And Hamilton is put in a bind, because he is a leading patriot,  but he's also a friend and protege of this college president. His name's Miles Cooper. And Miles Cooper is the one who let him into college, even though he was underage, and he has mentored him the entire time.  So he's in this bind. What does he do?

Does he side with these rioters, with these patriots or with his friend, the president of the university, Miles Cooper?  Well, loyalty was always near the top of Hamilton's virtues. He highly valued friendship and was extremely loyal to his friends. So here's what he did. Reading now from the Chernow biography, it says, After the mob knocked down the gate and surged toward the residents, Hamilton launched into an impassioned speech, telling the vociferous protesters that their conduct, instead of promoting their cause, would disgrace and injure the glorious cause of liberty.

Okay, so he kind of stops them with his speech. He just, he gets them to listen to him for a few minutes. He can't actually stop them. Like, they don't listen to him, they don't turn around and go home, but he preoccupies them for a few minutes. And that is a long enough time that Cooper can escape out the back window and board a ship bound for England.

And I find this really admirable. I have given a diatribe in other episodes about loyalty, and so I won't reiterate that here. But I will just say that my b But I will just say that I believe there is no cause important enough that it is worth betraying your friends.  There's almost nothing in this world that is more powerful and important than friendship and loyalty.

And I find that really admirable in Hamilton  that he put himself in a dangerous situation and one in which he was kind of, you know, morally and intellectually compromised just to make sure that no harm Bethel his friend.  And, you know, there's another part of this too.

It's not just personal loyalty. Hamilton really detested the mob.  He was a big skeptic. Of  kind of the public in general, especially of like popular emotion. Here's what Chernow writes. He says, even amid an insurrection that he supported, he fretted about the damage to constituted authority and worried about mob rule like other founding fathers.

Hamilton would have preferred a stately revolution enacted decorously in courtrooms and parliamentary chambers by gifted orators in powdered wigs. The American Revolution was to succeed because it was undertaken by skeptical men who knew that the same passions that toppled tyrannies could be applied to destructive ends.

And so that was Hamilton, and it did create some conflict in his life because he was a revolutionary who was by nature kind of skeptical of revolutions. But I also think it's what created part of his greatness, that tension.

Before we move on and talk about Hamilton's life as an artillery officer, I want to tell you about another podcast called All the Hacks. It's an award winning podcast that will teach you to upgrade your life, money, and travel all while spending less and saving more.  so the host, Chris Hutchins, is a friend of mine, and he is genuinely And he is genuinely a national treasure.

I love Chris.  To give you an idea of who he is, I told him I was thinking about getting Asana. And he said, Oh, do you want to see my sauna spreadsheet? I was like, okay. And I was not prepared for what was coming. He had put together a list of hundreds of saunas,  anything that was even possible to buy in the United States.

He had profiled in this document and he had their costs, their size, how hot they could get drawbacks advantages. And he was telling me about saunas that weren't even out yet that were coming soon to the market. And that is Chris's personality. When he wants to learn something, he learns. Everything about it.

He's a very successful guy who has had a successful career in startups. And so if you want to optimize your life, he helps you learn everything you need to know about a topic, whether that is credit cards and points or optimizing your sleep or optimizing your money through investing or starting a podcast.

He has a great episode on starting a podcast. He actually did it with Tim Ferriss. Um, and I told Tim everything there is to know about podcasting.  So all the hacks is just a really great resource. If you want to upgrade and optimize your life. So check it out. That is all the hacks and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay. So Hamilton during this time really takes to life as an artillery officer. He learns by all means available. Yeah. He thinks he's behind. He doesn't know anything about being a soldier. And so he wants to take advantage of every opportunity to learn. So that includes personal experience. He's going out and drilling whenever he can.

That includes book learning. So he's studying up on old military textbooks.  So he's studying up on old military textbooks, old military campaigns,

memoirs, handbooks, like anything he can get his hands on to read. And then it also includes mentorship. So he goes out and he finds other people, in this case old grizzled artillery officers who had served in the British army or in the French and Indian war, or in the French and Indian war. And he befriends them and picks their brains and learns everything he can from them.  I think that's actually, I think that's actually a really key point. Um, that like, if you can learn in all three of those ways, so that is book learning, experience, and from other people,  they have this kind of synergistic effect where if you're just doing one of them,  you just aren't going to learn as fast when you can do all three together.

Okay. I'm learning from books. Like I'm learning the textbook way to do it. I'm actually getting my hands dirty and getting experience. And I'm learning from people who have done it before. When you combine all three of those, that is the way to supercharge your learning and learn to do anything  really fast.

And Hamilton does learn really fast and he becomes a very capable artillery officer in basically no time. So keep that in mind. If you want to learn, get those three things together, book learning, experience, and learn from other people.  He also has a serious love of pomp and circumstance and his men are always the best drilled.

They are the smartest marchers and they are incredibly well dressed. He pays a lot of attention. to their uniforms and the way they look.  He's actually at the center of the action when the British attack New York for the first time. He's manning an artillery batter He's manning an artillery battery that is being fired on by the first British ships to attack New York and he displays extreme bravery.

Like Napoleon, he's very brave under fire and appears to have this Like almost flagrant disregard for his own life. This is displayed in the first battle when he lets one of his men borrow his musket and the man leaves it at the battery near the place where the British fire  in the man leaves it at the battery near the place where the British fire is most intense and so Hamilton asks the guy, Hey, uh, what'd you do with my musket? And he goes, Oh, shoot. I left it back at the fortification, but like at the spot where the British are firing right now with their cannons from, from these ships. And then Hamilton goes and collects his musket as if nothing is happening.

The soldier wrote quote, I told him where I had left it. And he went for it, notwithstanding that the firing continued with as much unconcern as if the vessel had not been there.  I just like, I love that story. He's just like, oh, okay, let me grab my musket.  Goes and grabs his musket, cannonballs are flying all around him, and he just shows no concern.  The battle for New York is a complete boondoggle for the Americans. Uh, if you want to learn a little bit more about that, you can listen to the Washington episode, but they are defeated multiple times and are easily driven out by the British. And Hamilton is one of the few people who comes out looking good from this.

At every step of the way, his artillery company steps into the breach and saves American troops from being overwhelmed and captured or destroyed with timely and with timely and accurate artillery fire. A contemporary wrote, quote, As soon as his company was raised, he proceeded with indefatigable pains to perfect it in every branch of discipline and duty, and it was not long before it was esteemed the most beautiful model of discipline in the whole army.

Okay, and I think that's kind of the key to why he was so successful in New York, is that he just did things the right way. Okay. That, that is one of the things you see from great leaders throughout history. They're professionals. They know their craft. You know, Da Vinci knew how to draw.

Napoleon knew how to position cannons. Rockefeller knew how to read a ledger. Like he could act as a low level accountant if he needed to. They're just very solid professionals who know the minutia of their craft.  One of the other things he becomes known for is sharing the hardships of his gunners and bombardiers.

You know, he always shared their food, their conditions. He slept with his men. Even though he was an officer, he wanted them to know that he was in it with them, right? He wasn't asking them to do anything that he wouldn't do himself.  He was known as a tough and strict disciplinarian, but always fair.

As soon as his company was raised, he proceeded with indefi And he promoted from within his own rank, and he promoted from within his own,  and he promoted from within his own ranks based on merit. In fact, he is. In fact, he's so renowned amongst his men for his fairness that one of his soldiers later in life became a staunch political enemy, uh, you know, Hamilton was a federalist, this guy was a radical Republican  and they had had it out in some newspapers, writing essays back and forth.

And the guy hired Hamilton as his lawyer, regardless.  And when Hamilton asks him, you know,  we're fighting in the political arena. Are you sure you want to hire me as your lawyer? The man responds, quote, I served in your company during the war, and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness.  

So Hamilton now has this, this real reputation. He is on the one hand, a very effective leader. Uh, just a, a great officer, a very capable military leader. And then he also has his reputation from before the war as a speaker and a writer. And this makes him a prime candidate to serve as a staff officer.

Right, you got someone who's both really good at the military side and really good at the writing side. And so he gets recruited to be the chief of staff of three different generals, and he turns them down every single time. He turns thirsts after military glory. He wants to be in the action.  You know, he doesn't want to be a desk jockey translating orders and moving around troops on a map.

He wants to be there with the men, firing cannons, um, you know.  

He wants to be with the men, firing the cannons, exposed to gunfire, like a real military hero. And also because of his independence, which we discussed. He liked to be in charge. He doesn't want to be subservient to anyone.  However, you know, he turns down these three generals, but  When General Washington recruits him, that's finally a big enough offer to tempt him.

He still wasn't thrilled about it, actually. But it seems like he felt that he couldn't say no. This is George Washington, the commander in chief. And he's asking him to come be his aide de camp, his chief of staff. In some ways, this was the second most important post in the entire American military, right?

He's basically going to be Washington's number two. There with him every day in the trenches. And so after an interview with Washington, he agrees to serve. as his aide de camp, and joins the staff of General George Washington.

Hamilton had a lot of respect for Washington. They had a very good working relationship. But Hamilton later said he rebuffed Washington's advances to develop a more personal friendship. And part of that was, Hamilton was turned off by Washington's temper and his personal foibles. Um, like he's getting this really up close view of Washington who did have a temper and wasn't a perfect person.

And, and so part of that is, is just personal differences that they were very different people. But I think most of it was actually not due to that. I think most of it was just that Hamilton could not abide to be subordinate to anyone. He loved control. He loved to be in charge. And so even George Washington, like the man, the hero, the god of the American Revolution, he still just chafes at him to be taking orders all day.

Nevertheless, I mean, despite this mental pain that it puts Hamilton through, it really was an amazing working relationship.  Like I said, I mean, I guess right there I'm kind of playing up the conflict.  They had enormous respect for one another.  But they had enormous respect for one another. And in many respects, Hamilton becomes the brains behind Washington.

He not only writes for him, but thinks for him. He translates general commands into specific orders. He takes control of finance and supply for the military. He offers important ideas and advice to Washington, ideas that Washington often adopts. And in Washington's absence, he often issued orders in Washington's name.

And it's worth noting that Washington never reprimands him for, for issuing orders. It's.

And it's worth noting that Washington never reprimands him for this. He always approves of these orders and tells him that he has done well to be proactive in his absence. So Hamilton clearly possesses a genius that Washington does not. But Washington also has some attributes that Hamilton didn't have.

There's a passage in the Chernow biography that I think really highlights that. He says,

Washington possessed the outstanding judgment, sterling character, and clear sense of purpose, needed to guide his sometimes wayward protege. He saw that the volatile Hamilton needed a steadying hand. Hamilton in turn, contributed philosophical depth, administrative expertise, and comprehensive policy knowledge that nobody in Washington's ambit, that nobody in Washington's ambit ever matched.

He could transmute wispy ideas into detailed plans and turn revolutionary dreams into enduring realities. As a team, they were unbeatable and far more than the sum of their parts.  Okay, I love that. I think that is so true and such a testament to finding the right partner as a team. They were unbeatable and far more than the sum of their parts.

I mean, it reminds me of like a Steve jobs and Steve Wozniak type partnership. Um,  like sometimes people try and talk down on Steve jobs that, you know, he wasn't really this genius. That was really Steve Wozniak. Well, you know what, it is true that he couldn't have done the engineering that Steve Wozniak did, but it's also true that Steve Wozniak couldn't have done the marketing and sales that he did.

That Steve jobs did very similar to Washington and Hamilton. They were unbeatable as a team and far more than the sum of their parts. And so I think  in business or in whatever pursuit you're in, that is true. If you can find one of those partnerships that is greater than the sum of its parts, just, you have these incredible results.

So Hamilton is really succeeding.  So Hamilton is really succeeding at doing well. Uh, in his position on Washington staff. I think it's worth mentioning how quickly this has all happened. In five years, he has gone from an apprenticed clerk in St. Croix  To one of the most important commanders in the American military.

So he's still only 22 years old at this point. And that contributes to his mystique also. He's only 22 and he looks even younger because he's got this slight stature and this youthful face. He just kind of looks boyish. And so he is this wunderkind, this marvel. I love one passage I love one passage that describes this. that describes this.

It says a senior officer recalled Hamilton and his rump company marching into the village.  I noticed a youth, a mere stripling, small slender. almost delicate in frame, marching beside a piece of artillery with a cocked hat pulled down over his eyes, apparently lost in thought, with his hand resting on a cannon, and every now and then patting it as if it were a favorite horse or a pet plaything.

A mythic gleam began to cling to the young captain. The  retreat across New Jersey. 'Well do I recollect the day when Hamilton's company marched into Princeton, said a friend. It was a model of discipline at their head was a boy and I wondered at his youth, but what was my surprise,  but what was my surprise when that's,  but what was my surprise when that slight figure was pointed out to me was pointed out to me as that Hamilton of whom as that Hamilton of whom we had already heard so much.

Okay. So he is this.  Okay. So I think that gives a good feel for him. He is this energetic, smart,  cocky, young, hotshot. in the military.  I should also mention that Hamilton, with his tireless energy, is also studying and learning new things, even as he's engaged in this war. As he sees the horrible problems that Continental Congress is having paying their troops, he studies finance and monetary po he studies finance and monetary policy.

He reads history. I mentioned that he had already read Plutarch's Lives as a child. Well, he has this little notebook of notes and quotes that he keeps for himself,  and he has 51 pages of notes from Plutarch's lives that he writes during the revolutionary war.

Like 51 pages is almost a book. It's amazing to think that he has the time to do all this. He also writes a 7, 000 word treatise on the form of government that he thinks the United States should take after the conclusion of the war. And he's able to do all of this, even as he is very busy as the chief of staff for George Washington, one of the most important people in the entire revolutionary army.

Gives you an idea for his magnificent work capacity They can be doing both of these things at the same time.

And he is doing both. I mean, just because he's doing all this study, I don't want you to get the impression that he's a desk jockey. He's still a fighter,  you know, he, he felt confined. Uh, he didn't like that. He wasn't at the front as much as he would like to be. But if anything, because he's no longer, but if anything, because he no longer has a direct combat role, he has a sort of mania for danger.

In one incident, he rides into the middle of a retreat. And has his horse shot out from under him. And in another incident, he's overseeing a raid when the British come and he and a few comrades run and jump into a boat to cross the river and it is repeatedly shot as they are trying to row across this river.

And one of his companions is killed. Another one is injured by a musket shot and Hamilton and the surviving men have to jump out of the boat.  Some men on the far side of the shore see Hamilton go under the water, and they never see him re emerge. And Chernow writes what happened next. Just before Hamilton returned to headquarters, Washington received a letter from Captain Lee announcing Hamilton's death.

There were tears of jubilation. as well as considerable laughter when the Sodden corpse himself sauntered through the door.

Okay, so he comes so close to death that his death is actually reported to Washington. Although he shows up just a few seconds later. One contemporary wrote that he, quote, appeared to court death.  All right, so just like any opportunity he gets to put himself in danger, he's doing it.  One thing that raises his status even further is when Benjamin Franklin is able to cement an alliance with the French.

And so at that point, you know, the French have a big professional army. Much larger, much more professional than the Americans. And so in some ways they become kind of the primary actors in the war at that point. And, uh, and the Americans become frankly, somewhat auxiliary.

And so coordination between the two is really important. Uh, it's very important to be able to communicate with the French and, and find their plans and be able to act in concert.  And so because Hamilton spoke fluent French, he spoke better French than anyone in the army. So he frequently acted as a liaison.

With French commanders.

And so he kind of becomes the head negotiator with the French army. And, uh, and that makes him even more invaluable, even more important in the American army.  Now, Hamilton asks Washington to leave his staff and be allowed to lead a division. But Washington tells him that he can't do that. He says, you're indispensable.

You know, uh, I can't do without you. Like, I need you for your writing abilities. I need you for your ideas. And I need you, frankly, for your French. Like, no one else can liaison the way you can. And, he also brings up, I can't promote you over full colonels when you are still technically a lieutenant colonel and you haven't been commanding troops for most of the war.

And this really ticks off Hamilton, and he lets it simmer until his frustration eventually explodes.  Is often the case, the thing that causes the rupture between Washington and Hamilton was a very small personal incident. So, Washington and Hamilton are in the same office in Washington.  So, Washington and Hamilton are at headquarters, and Washington is walking by and says, Hey, come see me in my office.

And Hamilton says, Sure, let me just get this order sent off first. So he goes. He sends off the order, he comes to Washington's office, and Washington just blasts him, saying, You have kept me, the Commander in Chief, waiting for nearly 20 minutes. Who do you think you are? And Hamilton says like, What are you talking about?

You're freaking out. It's only been five minutes and it escalates into a shouting match. And in the shouting match, Hamilton quits. He says, I'm done here. I'm out.  Now, Washington had this big temper, but he was at his core a very calm and reasonable man. And he quickly sends a letter to Hamilton saying that he regrets the unfortunate incident and he wants to welcome Hamilton back to his staff.

And I think Hamilton is quite rude in his response. And he says, no, I don't want to come back to your staff. I want independent command. Like this, this wasn't an accident. This has been coming for a long time. No, thank you.  And I think it's a real Testament to Washington that he never punished Hamilton for this insolence.

He was able to set aside his feelings and value Hamilton for what he was instead of focusing on his foibles and Hamilton definitely had foibles. He was very prickly about his honor.  Um, and any sense that that it was being infringed upon or put down in any way. And he had this haughtiness even towards George Washington.

No one thought they were better than Washington, right? Washington was the man, Hamilton alone had this like air of superiority

and to his credit, you know, Washington was able to see past that. I know this isn't a George Washington episode. I just did one of those, but I think there's a real lesson there that when you find a star player,  you can't let that kind of talent,  you can't let that the kind of talent go. And you have to enable them even when they're being a diva, or they have some significant flaw that you have to work around.

And that is what Washington did. Despite. Despite Hamilton's rudeness, Washington consistently promoted him, enabled him, and collaborated with him.

Well, so, Hamilton has to cool his heels for a bit while he waits for a command. He's pretty shameless and badgers everyone all the time, asking if there are any open positions, and that includes Washington, who he had just quit on in a huff. But eventually, a position opens up, and Washington promotes him and gives him his much committed And gives him his much coveted independent command.

This leads him, this leads Hamilton to the siege of Yorktown, the climactic battle of the revolution, where he is given three battalions under the overall command of General Washington.

At the climactic moment of the siege, two redoubts need to be taken. Okay. So like kind of two  little mini forts outside the main fortifications. And the French are allowed to assault one and Hamilton is given the opportunity to take the other redoubt. And this is supposed to kind of show the, and this is supposed to kind of show the, the camaraderie, the, the, the partnership of the French and American militaries, right?

The French take one, and Hamil and the Americans take the other, and Hamilton is the one who, who's given the command of the American assault.  It is a daring nighttime assault. And Hamilton designs and executes a masterful plan. He has his men up.  He has his men unload their guns and attack with bayonets only to preserve the element of surprise for as long as possible, they actually.

Hamilton and his men actually moved so quickly that they almost overtake the siege engineers who were disabling the enemy's fortifications. So they rushed through the redoubt, taking it in 10 minutes with very few casualties. It is quick clinical work, a true Hamiltonian perform a true Hamiltonian performance.

And on the other side of the battle, the French actually really struggle in in there taking the other redoubt. Which is kind of a testament to how capable of a commander Hamilton was, that he does basically the same mission, but with far fewer casualties.  Hamilton, who is already a war hero, gains a new level of stature as the man who led the decisive assault in the decisive battle.

Now, after the Battle of Yorktown, it took months for the war to wind down, but Hamilton could see where things were going and was always in a rush, right? And so he was quick to hurry.  So he was quick to get things going, to move his career forward. So he rushed back home to be with his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, who he had married during the war, and his infant son.

And we'll talk more about his marriage and his family life next episode, as well as the civilian career that he embarked on after the war.  But for now, let's end it here and talk about our takeaways from the rise of Alexander Hamilton.

The first is that idea I mentioned of content, get your thinking out there, start an anonymous Twitter account, start a newsletter, write pieces for an online publication, start a podcast, get your thinking out there, it will open opportunities and attract the kind of people that you are interested in.

Point number two is the law of more. The most sure way to succeed. is to just do more. I'm reminded of the podcaster Chris Williamson. Uh, he has a podcast called Modern Wisdom and he's just had a meteoric rise over the last few years. And one of his strategies was just that he saw that most podcasters who did interview style podcasts, uh, did one or at most two interviews per week.

So he decided that he was going to do three interviews per week.  And that is a strategy that you can always, you know, And that has obviously really worked out for him. He's one of the biggest podcasters in the world now, and that is a strategy you can always control. You can't control  the raw talent, what you were born with, but you can control how much you do and just doing more is something that always works.

And it worked for Hamilton. He always, you know, in his, he always in his essays, He wrote more as an artillery captain. He practiced and he drilled more as a, an intellectual. He studied and he read more like he just did more than anyone else did. And that is a big explanation. And that is a big reason behind his success.

Another takeaway is to go where the opportunity is.  Find a function where you can have responsibility, find the revolution that is happening. Settled places and settled industries are usually not the right place to break through quickly.  Hamilton gravitated to America and then to the army because he intuited that these were frontiers where talented people could rise quickly.

So be like Hamilton, find a frontier industry, a frontier domain, go somewhere where it's not so settled and you'll be able to, and you'll be able to succeed much more quickly.  the next, the next point I have written down is that Hamilton was a quick learner. And one reason for that is he was always learning through three ways, right?

Through experience, from mentors and from reading and research.  And so if you want to learn something really quickly, that's exactly what you do. Start getting some practice, find a mentor or a coach or just someone who knows something about it who can teach you, and then do your research. Every one of those learning styles becomes more powerful when done in conjunction with the others.

And then lastly, I will mention that club that he started in college and the club that  And then lastly, I will mention that club that he started in.  And then lastly, I will mention that club that he started in college and that close group of friends that he seemed to gather every step of his career. I actually didn't mention so much.

He was very good friends with this guy named Lawrence and the Marquis de Lafayette. Uh, he had just like in college, this very close coterie of friends in the military. So don't go it alone. Find a group of peers who you can bounce ideas off of and learn with.  Okay,  that does it for part one. Stay tuned for part two dropping soon.

Until then, thank you for listening to How to Take Over the World. 📍

By the way, if you've listened this far, there's another podcast I want to tell you about that I think you will love. It's actually one that I'm involved with. It's like How to Take Over the World, but for fictional characters. So a number of times I've heard people say, I would love for you to do an episode on Aragorn or Paul Atreides.

And I love fiction. And I didn't have time to start that podcast. I actually thought about it, but, but there's no way I could find the bandwidth. But I love fiction. I love that idea. So I worked with my friend Jameson Olsen to launch a podcast that does exactly that. It's called Becoming the Main Character and I think it's really great.

Jameson has surpassed my loftiest hopes for the show. It's just phenomenally well done and super fun to listen to

and really valuable. I just, I find it so inspiring. So it's called Becoming the Main Character. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts and I've included a link in the show notes. So go give it a listen.

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One gentleman, whose name I never heard, was an earnest friend of the people, and discanted with much enthusiasm upon the glorious future then opening upon this newborn nation, and predicted the perpetuity of our institutions from the purity and intelligence of the people, their freedom from interest or prejudice, their enlightened love of liberty, etc.

etc.

Alexander Hamilton was among the guests and his patience being somewhat exhausted, he replied with much emphasis striking his hand upon the table. Your people, sir. Your people is a great beast.  Hello, and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson. And the preceding passage was a quote from Theophilus Parsons.

Every nation needs a founder. An obvious example is Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore or David Ben Gurion of Israel or Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. But you also Gaulle is kind of the founder of modern France, for example. Anyway, the founder of a nation needs to do two things. They need to have a vision  and a brand, a cult of personality that people buy into.

And America is unique in that it has two founders. Washington provided the cult of personality,  and Alexander Hamilton is really the one who provided the vision.

Okay, most of the time, okay, most of the time, those two things are tied up in a single person, like Lee Kuan Yew, again, great example.

But in this case, it was split, and I think the fact that Washington provided that cult of personality obscures the fact that Hamilton is the one who provided the other half of that equation. He's the man with the vision for the nation. In this episode, I want to discuss the true legacy of Alexander Hamilton.

And And in this episode, I want to discuss that vision that he had for America and the role he played in, in the role that he played in determining America's future, you know, it's really interesting because I think it's really, Misunderstood what role he played. You're likely familiar with the play Hamilton and in it, Hamilton says about himself, I'm just like my country.

I'm young, scrappy, and hungry. He also says things like immigrants, we get the job done. And it's just pretty funny to me that Alexander Hamilton was chosen as the avatar for a liberal re imagining of the American revolution.  Because he was, um, well, imagine this. Okay.   You get put in a time machine, you step out, it's the year 2200. And your guides talk to you. USA is still a thing. There are still Republicans, Democrats, and your guide says, Oh, we made a musical about someone from the time that you were alive. Come check it out. I think you'll love it. So you hop in your flying car, you go see the musical.

You don't catch the title on your way in, but you sit in your seat, waiting for it to start. And the democratic president of the United States is there. You look around, everyone is.  Young and progressive has blue hair. It's clear that this is a cool play to be at. If you are young leftist in 2200,  and then someone comes out and starts singing and the first number teases who this mystery.

Uh, figure is that this, this musical is about  the real estate king, the man with the brand got a headstart millions from his old man, an outsider, non politician with a plan, took the escalator down and said, I'm your man. What's your name, man? Donald J. Trump. My name is Donald J. Trump.  You just look around like, Oh, hold on.

What's happening here. Um, and all these Democrats are going wild. For Donald J. Trump, you know,

and all these Democrats are going wild for Donald J. Trump. They can't get enough. They're like, Oh yeah,  this guy, man of the people love the little man. Uh, you know, I'm going to name my, I'm going to give my son the middle name Trump, like that is what is happening essentially. Like if you went back to the year 1800.

If you asked Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, who is the foremost opponent of American democracy? They would say, Alexander Hamilton. If you asked Alexander Hamilton in the year 1800, who is the foremost American opponent of democracy? He would say, me.

In fact, there's a quote from Hamilton that lays out his position quite clearly. Uh, he says, It has been observed that a pure democracy, if we're practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this.  democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government.

Their very character was tyranny. Their figure, deformity.

Okay, so in this episode, in part two, we will get into the real legacy of Alexander Hamilton, how he shaped the American nation, how he became some of

the economic and institutional legacies that he left, as well as the intellectual ones.

And of course, as always, we will dive into the strategies and the tactics that he used to have such a massive impact on the nation.

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 Okay. So when we left off, uh, the revolution has just ended. Hamilton rushes home to be with his wife and newborn son and starts a career as a successful lawyer. I actually love one quote from Hamilton that shows how he could be self deprecating about his chosen profession. He wrote to Lafayette that he was quite busy, quote, rocking the cradle and studying the art of fleecing my neighbors.

During the revolution, he had been a pretty vocal critic of the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation, which was the constitution that the U S had been operating under. One of the major problems with the Articles of Confederation was the government's inability to levy taxes. This led to huge financial headaches for the emerging nation.

There was just no money to pay for anything. And this meant that revolutionary soldiers wages were often years in arrears. They just hadn't been paid. And the same was true of bondholders. Those who had lent the government money to carry out the Revolutionary War. Now, some officers get it in their minds  Did I already Did I cover the Newberg conspiracy?

industries are usually not the right place to break through with proactive

disasters. So Hamilton clearly possesses a genius. You can find one of those partnerships that is greater than some of its parts. Just, you have these incredible results. So Hamilton is really seeming to be doing well, uh, in his position on Washington staff. I think it's worth mentioning that he had funded, um, was a very small personal incentive.

So Washington and Hamilton are, you know, to keep, keep, keep, keep, appreciate that. Point the law of more. The most sure way to stay awake for the next episode, as well as the, to be with his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, who he had married during the war, and his infant son. And we'll talk more about his marriage and his family life next episode, as well as the civilian career that he embarked on after the war.

But for now, let's end it here and talk about our take on Okay, no, I did not talk about the Newberg conspiracy.

And the same was true of bondholders, those who had lent the government money to carry out the Revolutionary War. So, some officers of the Continental Army get it in their minds that, hey, We are an army. We are the ones with the guns. Let's just march on Philadelphia and motivate Continental Congress to pay us the money that they owe us.

This has come to be called the Newburgh Conspiracy. Newburgh is the name of the town where the officers were, were living, were stationed. Now the whole thing is shrouded in mystery.  Uh, you know, it's kind of a, a nascent military coup. And so it was obviously extremely secretive. It's unclear to this day which members of the conspiracy favored an outright military junta, which ones just wanted to apply some pressure, and how much support there really was for each position.

Hamilton was definitely involved, though once again it's hard to know exactly what his position was and how deep his involvement was.  But we do have some letters, so, so I think we can form a pretty good idea. He wrote to Washington, The claims of the army, urged with moderation, but with firmness, may operate on those weak minds which are influenced by their apprehensions more than their judgments.

But the difficulty will be to keep a complaining and suffering army within the bounds of moderation.

Okay, so he's basically saying, like, yes, maybe we can use this situation to apply some pressure, but there is going to be difficulty keeping the army in the bounds of moderation. So he definitely does not want an all out coup.  Um, Chernow writes, Hamilton still clung to the notion that a convincing bluff of armed force could help spur Congressional action, but that was as far as he would venture.

Quote, as to any combination of force, he observed, it would only be productive of the horrors of a civil war, might end in the ruin of the country, and would certainly end in the ruin of the army.  Okay, so, he writes to Washington, um,  He wants to apply some pressure, but doesn't want this to get out of control.

So he tells Washington, Hey, you need to come take control here. And Washington does, he comes, he gives a speech. He calms down, uh, the army and convinces them to submit to,  and convinces them to submit to civilian rule. And he lectures Hamilton along the way. He says, quote, the army is a dangerous instrument to play with.

And he's right. It's, it's really playing with fire. Like, it's, it's, it's hard to carry out, uh, just a little bit of coup. Uh, those, those things have a way of getting out of control, and so it was good that Hamilton had the superior judgment of Washington in this incident. Uh, you know, why would Hamilton be involved in this at all?

I mean, on the one hand, he really believed that the bondholders and the soldiers of the Continental Army should be paid.   He was a marshal man through and through. Nothing mattered to him. As much as military glory. And he was the world's strongest advocate of a muscular United States with a strong military and strong financial capabilities.

On the other hand, he hated a mob. Uh, you know, you heard those quotes at the beginning about democracy.  He, he viewed democracy, he viewed democracy as mobocracy and having a, an army be that democracy was not any better to him.

Okay. So the idea of disorder really bothers him. And so that's why he's trying to kind of split the middle here. Like he really agrees with the ends. But not with the means,

but like I said, luckily Washington kind of squashes this and what happens instead is that Washington along with his friend, James Madison, and

luckily Washington squashes this. And what happens instead is that Hamilton along with James Madison, George Washington, and a few others, but those were the most important ones. Call for a constitutional convention  of course,  to revise the Articles of Confederation, to make this government work better.

And like I said, there, there were a few people calling, uh, for this constitutional convention, one historian, Catherine Drinker Brett.  One historian, Catherine Drinker Bowen, writes, Among those who began early to work for reform, three names stand out. Washington, Madison, and Hamilton. And of the three, evidence points to Hamilton as the most potent single influence towards calling the Convention of 87.

Okay. So Alexander Hamilton is the primary mover behind calling the constitutional convention.

So all the states send delegates to this constitutional convention at first, again, to revise the articles of confederation, but, you know, pretty quickly they say, look, this whole thing needs to be thrown out. And we need to start from the ground up and design a new government.  Hamilton throughout the entire process, uh, is a advocate of a strong federal government.

He says, if these states are not united under a federal government, They will infallibly have wars with each other and their divisions will subject them to all the mischiefs of foreign influence and intrigue. Okay, so he's worried that if you don't really tie these, these states together into a single nation, if you leave it kind of how it is under the Articles of Confederation, which is that these states are really separate political entities.

With just a coordinating mechanism in the Articles of Confederation.  If you keep with that, eventually there's going to be conflict and war between the states. And when that conflict or war happens, outside actors are going to take advantage of the United States.

So he's really trying to forge a strong, single nation with a strong central government.

So,

and as the debate goes on, um, A lot of viewpoints are put forward. One plan is put forward called the Virginia plan because it's proposed by James Madison with support from the other Virginia delegates. And that is what would eventually be adopted as the constitution of the United States that we know today.

Hamilton, um, likes the Virginia plan, but doesn't love it. And he thinks, you know, this is my one shot. To,

he thought this is my one shot to propose what I really think would be the best form of government. And so, um, he puts forward a plan for  essentially a limited elective monarchy.  And,  you know, it's hard to know exactly what he meant by this. Monarchy, because in some ways the monarch is subject to oversight.

So the Senate could recall him, um, and he only serves on good behavior, but he does in his notes, make some, um, notes that he thinks it should be hereditary and that the monarch should be above ordinary politics and not subject to law.  So like  it is a weird fusion of monarchy with some.  Kind of democratic elements to, to check it.

It is definitely a representative form of government. It's a limited monarchy, but it is sort of a monarchy and it's very quixotic. People kind of can't believe that Alexander Hamilton is coming to the constitutional convention and proposing.  A monarchy. And so, um, like he goes on for hours. It is this marathon speech where he lays out exactly why he thinks this is the perfect form of government.

Every feature and benefit. Meanwhile, everyone is just kind of tuned out. Like, what are you talking about? We're not going to have a limited monarchy. Uh, we just overthrew the British who have a limited monarchy.  And so actually it's funny because the next speaker is James Madison.  He just doesn't address it.

Like, Hamilton has gone on for hours proposing this plan and he goes, Okay,  moving on, back to the Virginia plan. And, uh, and everyone keeps going on about their business. This would prove to be a thorn in Hamilton's side.  There was strict secrecy.  No one was supposed to say what anyone else had said, right?

Um, because they wanted the freedom to debate what they really believed  without it being leaked and people, you know, uh, criticizing or critiquing specific plans. Like it was supposed to be this open conversation. open air where you could brainstorm and talk about anything.

But of course, like, of course, if you do something like propose monarchy, like that's going to get out and it did. And so this is something that would kind of haunt him for the rest of his career is that, uh, other people would say, you know, you're just a crypto monarchist. Like you don't believe in, uh, in this system of government at all.

I should know. Here's what turnout writes about it. He says even here in his most extreme statement, He called for a chief executive subject to ultimate legislative control. However atrociously misguided the idea was, it fell short of proposing a real monarchy, in which a king has permanent, autonomous, hereditary powers that supersede those of all other branches of government.

Okay, but by even attaching his name to the brand of monarchy, which was toxic in the United States at the time, it was, , it was a bad idea. One thing that it does do, though, is there's something called the New Jersey Plan, and that is the kind of more,  And that is the weakest version that's proposed that that's kind of not that different from the articles of confederation.

So there's the New Jersey plan. Then there's the Virginia plan proposed by Madison. And that is much stronger than the Articles of Confederation, but not as strong as Hamilton's plan. And then you have Hamilton's plan. What Hamilton's plan ends up doing is making the Virginia plan seem more reasonable. A lot of people that had been gravitating towards the New Jersey plan say, Oh, okay.

Well, when you put it like that, you know, the Virginia plan actually seems moderate and seems like the middle option, the most moderate thing. And so ,

I don't think that was his intention. was to, you know, push forward the Virginia plan, but that's the effect that it ends up happening.

So the Virginia plan is adopted and is recommended by constitutional Congress. And even though it isn't the plan  that Hamilton had espoused,  he really supports it. You know, he called together this committee. Convention and he believed that hey, we're gonna debate. We're gonna talk We're gonna see what we all think is the best plan and then whatever we propose We're gonna stick to and we're all going to promote and so he does he goes out on the road and he really supports And advocates for this new Constitution,

which I think is a testament to not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good  You know, he did not think this was a perfect constitution. He thought it was too democratic  and it didn't give enough authority to the central government, but he thought it was much better than what they had, that it was good enough to build the nation on.

And so he really supports it. And I think that's a lesson. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let's take a quick break to talk about Henson shaving. Alexander Hamilton was clean shaven.

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 📍 Okay So Hamilton is going to go to bat for this new constitution and one of the big problem areas actually Was his home state of New York It was a big state, a lot of power, big port in the city of New York. And so they weren't crazy about giving up a lot of this power to, to, to submit themselves to the federal government.

And so Hamilton has some work to do in convincing people. And so he dreams up  this series of essays called the Federalist Papers.

And this will be a point by point.  And this will be a point by point explanation of and defense of the constitution. And so he recruits a few other participants, John Jay and James Madison to help him write this. And, uh, Madison makes some pretty significant contributions. John Jay, um,  actually never gets around to writing that much.

Um, and Hamilton ends up writing, uh, 53.  And Hamilton ends up writing 51 of the 85 essays that go into the Federalist Papers, so he writes most of them.

And the Federalist Papers are, are just magnificent.

And it's both a literary and political masterpiece I so to get personal here when I went to college. I was an english major. I flirted with majoring in history I might have changed my my major to history for a little bit And then I took a course in constitutional law and all we did was read and study the federalist papers And I fell in love.

Um, I just,  you know, it's a political treatise. It's almost a page turner it's written in such a compelling style, especially the essays written by Hamilton. And, um, I was just obsessed. I was like, this is amazing. And so I, I ended up changing my major to political science. So, you know, I decided what I studied in college based on these papers, the Federalist Papers.

Hamilton has this amazing ability to be both topical and timeless at the same time to address the issues of the day. Because ultimately this was like kind of journalistic, right? He's writing on a specific issue that was pertinent at that period of time. He's working towards an actual event, the passing of the constitution.

But he brings,  but he brings his writing back to the core principles that resonate across generations. And so it's timeless at the same time.

And so it's amazing that it can serve the dual purpose,  being very timely and very pertinent to people who are thinking about, Oh, should I pass?  To people who are thinking, Oh, should I, should I vote to pass the constitution? And also, you know, I can read them in 2009,  whatever it was, and still think that it's amazing writing and it's interesting.

He,

you know, I talked about this in the first.

He, you know, I talked about this in the, uh, first episode, that he accomplishes like 10 times as much as a normal person. Uh, so he writes these on a tight deadline, uh, cause this stuff has to be voted on. He writes all these 53 essays in less than a year, I think, in, in a few months.  And so it's worth diving into how does he do this?

How does he write so quickly and so well? Uh, contemporary William Sullivan left this account, he said,  One who knew his habits of study said of him that when, and he's speaking of Hamilton, when he had a serious object to accomplish, his practice was to reflect on it previously, and when he had gone through this labor, he retired to sleep without regard to the hour of the night.

And having slept six or seven hours, he rose and having taken strong coffee, seated himself at his table where he would remain six, seven, or eight hours. And the product of his rapid pen required little correction for the press.  Okay. So I think that's a very interesting strategy. Think, sleep, and write.

People talk a lot in that thinking phase, they would see him walking around muttering to himself. He would kind of speak in a very soft voice and, um, and he would do that for hours. Until he really had his thoughts clear. And then he would sit down to write and write it all at once with a very, very few corrections.

He didn't do a lot of revisions or a lot of drafts. So, uh, you know, I think that's a very interesting approach.

The Federalist Papers were extremely influential at the time. They helped convince a lot of people that the constitution was a good idea. And they've been very influential since then. The Federalist Papers have been cited more times by the Supreme Court than any other document.  Or any other ruling, any, anything, including the constitution itself.

Okay, the Federalist Papers have been cited by the Supreme Court more than the Constitution. That's how influential they have been in determining what federal law would look like for the next 200 years.

So it's difficult to overstate the importance  to American government of the Federalist Papers. One of the reasons is the Constitution is not long and is not detailed. And so interpret And so in interpreting it, you can take it a lot of different ways. And so to have this much longer document, the Federalist Papers, that explains the thoughts of Hamilton and Madison and Jay, these people who helped to form the constitution is really helpful in saying, okay, well, this is kind of what we're supposed to do with this.

So Hamilton writes the Federalist Papers, but it's not just heavy, you know, heady academic work that he's doing. He also, in New York, is on the ground, is on the ground at their Constitutional Convention where they bring in all these legislators to vote on, okay, are we gonna pass this Constitution?

Uh, nine states agree pretty quickly. to pass the constitution, but you have some pretty big holdouts, including New York and Virginia. And so Hamilton does some masterful manipulation of procedures. He inserts a rule, uh, in the proceedings of this convention that every clause of the constitution has to be debated, clause by clause.

So this is smart because number one, it makes him the expert. No one can compete with him. If you're just talking about the constitution as a whole, Okay, Hamilton, you got your opinion. I've got my opinion. You think it's a good idea? I think it's a bad idea.  If we're talking clause by clause, whether this is a good idea or a bad idea, well, Hamilton is the expert on the Constitution.

I'm not an expert. And so, it's tough for me to argue with Hamilton in that context. The other thing it does, Is slow down the proceedings. This is going to take a long time to debate clause by clause, every clause in the constitution. And what this does is give more States a chance to pass the constitution, you know, with nine States having passed it.

Okay. That's some momentum, but Hey, we're New York. Maybe we could hold out, but once it's 10, 11, And then eventually it's 12 states. Everyone passes it before New York. Then the momentum is so overwhelming. Okay. Do we really want to be the people on the outside here? Do we want to be the people who

do we want to be the people who don't pass the constitution? And now we have to think about, all right, like, are we going to rebel against everyone else? Are we going to try and go our own way? That's pretty audacious to think about. And so by slowing it down and letting the other states pass the constitution, um, that builds the pressure to pass the constitution.

And so eventually it does. I mean, it's a very near run thing. It's very close. Uh, the final vote is 30 to vote. The final vote is 30 to 27 in favor of the constitution. And one of the people who changed their votes. At the last minute gives credit to Alexander Hamilton and says a certain gentleman has put forward some pretty persuasive arguments that have allowed me to vote for the constitution.

The thing that everyone is worried about when people don't want to pass the constitution, it's because they think that the central government is too strong, especially the executive. So they're looking at this office of the president. Of the United States. And they're saying, you know, that's a, that's a pretty powerful president.

And that's scary to us because we just had this bad experience with the King of England, and we don't like anything that even remotely looks like a King. And this president, he's like a strong executive, you know, he has all these powers, he controls the army, he seems like a King to me. And so to me, this is an example of, there is such a thing as learning a lesson too well,  right?

You, something bad happens and then you over correct.

You know, everyone was scarred by their experience under British rule, and anything that even remotely resembled a king was suspect in the eyes of many Americans. And Hamilton's point was, guys, I hate to break it to you, but the British system, it works pretty well. Like, it enabled this tiny island with no natural resources to become the most powerful nation on earth.

What we need here are small tweaks to make sure you don't have, you know, some tyranny like you had under British rule, but like, We do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This system of government clearly works very well. And so having something that kind of resembles the British system is not a bad thing.

Okay. So I think that's a good lesson. Don't overcorrect. And so I think that's a good lesson. Don't over correct. If you get critiqued or criticized and it really hits home, okay, yes, that is probably a shortcoming that you need to address, but you have to be careful not to learn the lesson too much. Don't obsess over it.

Just make the necessary change and move on.

Anyway, the constitution passes. It's a near run thing, but of course nothing generates enthusiasm.  So even though it was very controversial, as soon as the Constitution passes, the opposition kind of melts away, and the public gives way to public celebrations. In New York, Hamilton is celebrated as the hero of the day.

Some people even suggest renaming New York City in his honor. Flags are flown with his image on them, and a ship is pulled down Broadway in a big parade that has been rechristened the Federal Ship Hamilton.

Now, the big heroes of the day are Hamilton in New York, Madison in Virginia, and also George Washington. And in fact, I don't think the constitution would have passed as written if it weren't for Washington, because everyone had him in mind as the first president. And as I mentioned, everyone was kind of skeptical of this strong executive, but that's kind of softened by, well, we're pretty sure the first executive is going to be George Washington and everyone trusts him.

Everyone knows he's not power hungry. His character is above reproach and he was universally beloved. So he was the only person with the public trust to wield this new public office without fear that he would become a king or abuse this power of the presidency.  So Hamilton is one of the many people who writes to George Washington asking him to run for first president of the United States.

Of course, we know George Washington accepts

and he wins the election and becomes the first president of the United States of America.  I think it's As he steps in to office, it's difficult to stress just how uncertain everything was at this point. The Constitution was like instructions for a painting. Okay, imagine that. You pick up a piece of paper and it says, okay, paint a woman sitting down, wearing a dress, and there's some scenery behind her, there's a river, some trees, and some mountains.

There are billions of ways. That you could actually paint that painting. Is the woman facing towards you? Is she facing away from you, looking at the scenery? Is it a profile of the woman? Are there a lot of trees? Is it a forest? Or is there just, like, a couple trees? Is she in a grove? Is the river a big, rushing river?

Or is it a little stream that's going by? Like, the Constitution  tells you almost nothing about how to actually run the government. To give one example, the Constitution sets limits on the power of the federal government. They can only make laws in certain domains. Like creation of a military, a postal service, taxation, regulating interstate commerce, stuff like that.

Okay,  so what happens if Congress passes a law that is unconstitutional?  Well, there are vague hints that the judiciary should decide what is and is not constitutional, but there are no processes to do that. The processor system just has to be invented.  And it's, you know, during Washington's administration that this is going to be invented.

You know, another question, there's a president, there's But basically no other instructions about the executive branch of government.  What should it look like? How should it be structured? Are there departments? If so, what are they? How many employees, who do they report to? I mean, here's what the constitution says.

It has a number of clauses stipulating how the president will be chosen and who can serve and how he will be paid. But here are the actual instructions for what the president of the United States actually does. Okay. I'm about to read for you the full instructions  of the office of the president of the United States.

Quote. This is according from the Constitution. The President shall be Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States. He may be require, he may require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieve and pardons for offenses against the United States.

Except in cases of impeachment, he shall have power by and with the advice and consent of the Senate to make treaties provided two thirds of the senators present provided two thirds of the senators present concur, and he shall nominate. And by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.

He shall, from time to time, give to the Congress information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. He may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment,  he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.

He shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers. He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed and shall commission all the offices of the United States.

Okay. So there it is.  That's it. I just told you everything. So you get some ambassadors, you get some foreign relations, you get a little bit about his relationship to Congress and what he should do towards them. You get the state of the union. What you don't get is the explicit mention of taxation of, um, tax collectors.

You don't have, uh, like.

You don't have any supervision over industrial policy or economic policy.  Like all the things that the president does today, none of that is in there.

And for George Washington, he's a terrific leader, but he just does not have the organizational mind create this government out of nothing.  And so one of the first people that he calls on is Alexander Hamilton. He actually, at first asks someone else to be treasury secretary. And the guy says, no, the man you're looking for is Alexander Hamilton.

And Washington says, Hamilton? Uh, finance secretary, you know, you get the idea that Hamilton,  you know, you get the idea that George Washington had him in mind to serve in the administration, but probably in the military or some other capacity, uh, they had never discussed finances. He didn't know that Hamilton had done all of this research into financial and monetary policy.

And this guy, Morris is his name. Oh yeah, I've talked to Hamilton. He knows more than anyone about this stuff. Hamilton's the guy you want. So Hamilton it is. And it's Hamilton who, as I mentioned.  And so Washington brings him on as Treasury Secretary, but that is kind of misleading. Like, yes, he sets up the Treasury, he sets up the finances of the United States, but it is Hamilton who, as I mentioned, is really going to be the visionary, the mastermind behind the entire American government.

Cher now quotes another historian who writes, Hamilton was an administrative genius who assumed an influence in Washington's cabinet which is unmatched in the annals of the American cabinet system.  Okay, we've never had a guy like Hamilton. He was essentially the shadow president. Washington asked for his opinion on everything, and he took his opinion on almost everything.

So Hamilton gets in there, he's got carte blanche, and the first thing he does is beef up the taxation system. This is going to be the most unpopular measure that he undertakes, so best to undertake it right after the election, while George Washington is at the peak of his popularity.  And what goes into a taxation system?

It involves tax collectors, inspectors, and taxpayers. A coast guard to clamp down on smuggling and make sure people actually, you know, come to port, pay their taxes, and duties. As well as a system of public works, like lighthouses, to make American ports an attractive place to come and do business.  So, Hamilton organizes all this, he's an extremely detail oriented person, and he carries out this new system with perfection.

Chernow writes, Hamilton's appetite for information was bottomless. To his port wardens, he made minute inquiries about their lighthouses, beacons, and buoys. He asked customs collectors,  he asked customs collectors for ship manifests so he could ascertain the exact quantity and nature of cargo being exported.

The whole statistical basis of government took shape under his command.

Okay. I like that. The whole statistical basis for government took shape under his command. He's the one who says, we need to know everything. We need a quantitative measurement of everything that's happening in the government. He also undertakes two other important measures, the creation of a national bank and And the assumption of state debt,

assumption of state debt was the most controversial of these matters. And Hamilton thought, and Hamilton thought it was essential. A number of states had issued debt to fund the revolutionary war and Hamilton wanted to nationalize it, take on all the state debts and convert it into us debt.  Now this was controversial for a few reasons.

One was the idea of national debt was

now this nationalization of debt was controversial, controversial. Was controversial for a few reasons. One was that the idea of a national debt at all was controversial. You know, again, people viewed the British system with the bank of England. Um, and, and they saw that, Hey, this bank of England that funds the British Navy, the British army, like this is a source of tyranny.

So many people wanted no national debt at all. And then many states, especially southern states, had almost completely paid off their debt already. So they're saying, okay, you essentially want us, through taxes, to help pay off the debts of Massachusetts and New York and some of these northern states.

Like, this is, it's like an anti socialism argument, right? Like, why should we pay? For the financial mismanagement of other states. Now Hamilton's rebuttal would be, yeah, you paid off more of your debt, but part of that is because you did less fighting in the revolutionary war. The North was the main theater of war.

And as a consequence, they'd raised more troops, more material. So Hamilton and his backers say, yeah, we should help pay the debts of these States who did more to win the revolutionary war for all of us. All of us have our independence now.  So Hamilton goes on a high pressure lobbying campaign to see this plan of Assumption and  So Hamilton goes all out.

He goes on a high pressure lobbying campaign to see this plan of Assumption and a national bank passed in Congress.  He has many enemies, especially Southerners, and especially James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton and Madison had just collaborated on the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, but now they have this big falling out over this plan for a bank.

And the assumption of state debt.  There's a famous incident in 1790  where Hamilton says, okay, Jefferson, Madison,  like we have to work something out. And so he invites them to a dinner and says, come on guys, let's come to a deal.  And they come to a compromise. The actual capital of the United States was still in the air for the moment.

He was in New York, uh, but it was viewed as a provisional capital. No decision had been made on where the permanent capital would be. And there was debate about whether it should be in New York. Or Philadelphia, or maybe somewhere in New Jersey or somewhere in the South. And Hamilton says,  if you guys pass this assumption plan and a national bank, then I will give you the capital.

We'll put it somewhere in the South. We'll put it in Virginia  and Jefferson and Madison agree. This is called the compromise of 1790. It's sometimes referred to as the dinner table bargain because they just hash it out over this dinner.

And it is Hamilton at his best. He had this amazing ability to see what really mattered most. Even when it sometimes appeared less significant than others perceived, you know, here, the state capital is going to bring,  you know, here, the national capital is going to bring immediate benefits.  The, the, the national capital comes to Virginia, all of a sudden you have this big economic boom because you're going to have all these government employees and they're going to buy land.

And so you have an increase in land prices and they're going to need businesses to supply them with food and materials. And, uh, if the decisions are being made close to home, maybe that's going to advantage you a little bit. Like the benefits are immediate.  Of a capital  of a capital moving to your area.

However, in the long run, this assumption of state debt and this creation of a bank is going to tie all of the states together. It's going to create a kind of irrevocable basis for this federal government that can't be undone. And so, yeah, they get the capital, but Hamilton  gets the full vision for what the federal government will become.

He gets to create that.

And so it seems like a compromise, but it's actually totally lopsided. In Hamilton's favor, Madison and Jefferson kind of think, well, we can always, you know,  repeal this stuff later, but it turns out you can't, um, once the stuff gets, gets implemented, it has a way of hanging around. So, you know, this ability of Alexander Hamilton to see what is actually the most significant issue and attack that issue.

Reminds me a lot of Alexander the Great, you know, famously at the Battle of Gagamela, he's outnumbered,  you know, famously at the Battle of Gagamela, he's outnumbered, he's outpositioned, he's in,  he's in horrible circumstances, and the battle starts, and he realizes that he's losing, but he says, I don't need to defeat the Persian army, I just need to defeat the Persian king, Darius.

So at the decisive moment of the battle, he takes his elite cavalry and makes a direct attack on Darius himself and his royal bodyguard. And Darius, who is in personal danger, turns and flees. , and his army, which is winning at the time, sees their king, sees their king retreating, running away, and even though they're winning, this freaks them out, and they turn and run as well.

So,  so both Alexanders had this ability to ignore everything except for the crux, the most important issue, and focus on that, and win by focusing on that most important thing.

And look, he was right. You know, Ronald Reagan joked that a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth. Uh, all respect to Brian Johnson who disagrees, but,

but it's true that these government bureaus, they have all this bureaucratic inertia. They're very hard to undo once they've been enacted. And when Thomas Jefferson eventually becomes president eight years later, you know, he has this intention of undoing all of Hamilton's work. He's going to get in there and just press undo, but what actually happens is he gets in the presidency  and he looks at all the revenue that's coming in from this national bank and all the stuff that he can fund with it. And he's like, yeah, I kind of, I kind of need this. And actually after him, Madison becomes president and Madison is like, no, no, no, I'm a committed ideologue.

I am going to repeal the charter of the, of the U S bank. And so  he, he lets it expire. The bank goes away within a matter of months. Madison is like, Oh man, I can't fund anything. I need that bank. And so he recharters the, the, uh, the national bank. So Hamilton, this is a genius plan that allows him to shape the future of the federal government in a real and lasting way.

Passing this stuff has a number of effects. One is an economic boom. When you have the nation put on sound economic footing, you have this, this great economic, you have this great economic upswing, but it also at the same time, And Hamilton should have foreseen this creates a lot of resentment, especially in the South, because,  uh, these new treasuries, these new bonds sold by this national bank are only sold in New York.

Okay. So if you're a Southerner, like, okay, yeah, maybe if you're a wealthy Southerner, you're going to sail up from, you know, whatever, Georgia. And come by us bonds, but probably not the overwhelming majority of these bonds are sold to New Yorkers and beyond New Yorkers, Northerners, right? You might come down from Boston.

That's a much easier trip than from, uh, than from Georgia, but Southerners are essentially frozen out of this bonanza of financial speculation that comes this new national bank.

So that's a tactical error by Hamilton. But having said that, the reason that there's such strong app, But the reason that there is such strong opposition to this bank is not,  uh, these small tactical errors, but it's because people like Jefferson and Madison opposed not only a national bank, but the idea of banks in general.

Okay. That's kind of hard to imagine in the year 2024, but they want no banks.  They just don't think they're necessary to a functioning economy. And they thought they were cesspools of corruption, which, you know, fact check true. But I mean, in the long run, yes, a modern economy needs banks to function. And Hamilton was dragging the country into modernity, kicking and screaming in the case of people like Madison and Jefferson.

And so Chernow points out that it basically falls to Hamilton to single handedly create a blossoming market economy. Here's what he writes, quote, Hamilton did not create America's market economy so much as foster the cultural and legal setting. in which it flourished. A capitalist society requires certain preconditions.

Among other things, it must establish a rule of law through enforceable contracts, respect private property, create a trustworthy bureaucracy to arbitrate legal disputes, and offer patents and other protections to promote invention. The abysmal failure of the Articles of Confederation to provide such an atmosphere was one of Hamilton's principal motives for promoting the Constitution.

It is known, he wrote, that the relaxed conduct of the state governments in regards to property and credit. was one of the most serious diseases under which the body public labored prior to the adoption of our present constitution and was a natural material cause of the state of public opinion which led to its adoption.

Okay, so Hamilton is creating the conditions under which a market economy can flourish. Now, one concern that Washington has with all of this is is any of it even constitutional? The Constitution does not specifically authorize the creation of a central bank to issue debt on behalf of the government.

And so he asks Jefferson, Is this constitutional? And Jefferson writes him a letter saying, no, it's not. And giving reasons why it's not. And then he asks Hamilton, who writes a 40 page, 15, 000 word defense of the funding scheme.

Okay. He's in a great position to do this because not only was he the nations and perhaps the world's foremost expert on central banking, he was also the greatest living scholar on constitutional law, having written most of the Federalist papers and the crux of his argument lies with what is called the implied powers doctrine, which takes use of the necessary and proper clause.

Okay, so this clause. Is, is a clause in the Constitution that says the government shall have power, quote, to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof.

Okay. So it's really just kind of like a technical point that  yes, like, um, you can do anything necessary and proper to carrying out the powers vested in, in you, in the government. And so Hamilton says,  yes, the constitution does not authorize the creation of a central bank, but. A central bank is necessary to the execution of all other governmental powers, because it allows us to raise the funds to carry them out.

So it's a revolutionary interpretation when the,  so this is a very revolutionary interpretation, one that would influence constitutional law up to the present day. And if I'm putting on my constitutional lawyer hat, I'm a real expert here. I took a whopping three classes on constitutional law in undergrad.

To me, though, from what I can see, this argument is pretty thin. Like, you can argue almost anything is constitutional.  Like, you can argue almost anything  is necessary and proper. You know, who's to say what is necessary and proper to the carrying out of constitutional authority? It basically removes all checks on what authority is constitutionally delegated  And this is not just my idea.

Henry Cabot Lodge was an American senator in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Great statesman. And he wrote, That the implied powers enunciated by Hamilton was the most formidable weapon in the armory of the constitution, capable of conferring on the federal government powers of almost any extent. And

the Supreme court took up this idea of the implied powers doctrine. Um,

John Marshall, famous Supreme court justice was like a big devotee, a big admirer of Hamilton, and he just takes us and runs with it, implied powers doctrine. And in my mind, when this happens, this is when the government ceases to be Madison's creation.  And in my mind, this is when the government ceases to be Madison's creation, even though he's the one who actually wrote the Constitution, and becomes Hamilton's government.

Madison is known as the father of the Constitution, but he's just not. Hamilton is. Madison wrote some words on some paper, yes, but that's not what a Constitution is. A real Constitution is how the government operates. And it was Hamilton who determined that  by his work as treasury secretary and by his work in creating this implied powers doctrine.

In the show Game of Thrones,  uh, in the first season, there's this succession crisis. The king dies and his good friend, Ned Stark, is on one side and, uh, and his wife and young son are on the other and this and the deceased king's wife and young son are on the other side. And You know, who is going to take over for this deceased King  and Ned Stark, Lord Stark had gone and seen the King right before he passed away and got him to sign a paper.

Saying that, uh, Lord Stark should be the lord and protector of the realm after I die. Okay, he, he signs this on his deathbed.  And so there's this big crisis in, uh, in the throne room. And Ned Stark marches in and says, no, I'm in charge here. And he holds up this paper. And he has someone open it and read it.

And, uh, it says, you know, signed by King Robert Baratheon. Ned Stark shall be the lord and protector after I, after I pass. And then, uh, the, the queen who's on the other side says, can I see that? And then she rips it up and she says, is this meant to be your shield? Lord Stark, a piece of paper.

And then she tells the guards to arrest them. And  I think it's a really interesting point, right? Like  paper is not what determines what actually happens.

In the battle between action and paper action always wins.

And that is what Hamilton is doing here. He's saying nice paper, Ham.

And that is what Hamilton is essentially doing here. He is the Cersei Lannister of early America. He's saying, nice paper, Madison. Actually, we can do anything that we can argue is necessary and proper for the government to carry out its duties, and that is almost anything. And so, it's my government now.

That is why historians write things like, quote, Hamilton's works and words have been more consequential than those of any other American in shaping the constitution under which we live. And I agree, Hamilton shaped the Constitution even more than the guy who wrote the Constitution.

Okay, so that is how Hamilton shapes the federal government under Washington. He does a lot of other things, too. Uh, one of the big ones is that you have your first minor rebellion in response to some of Hamilton's taxes. It's called the Whiskey Rebellion. And Washington and Hamilton go and personally lead federal troops in response to this rebellion.

It's an overwhelming response.  Some might say it was overkill, but,  but it was an important move to show just how powerful this government was. You know, this is not negotiable. You pay your taxes. We're in charge here.

He also does a lot in foreign affairs. Like Hamilton is the treasury secretary, but he has his fingers in every branch of government and, um, and he shapes everything that happens, especially in the first four years of Washington's presidency  now, at the same time, he's sowing the seeds of his own defeat.

Uh, during his tenure as treasury secretary, there's a very famous incident. That would do more than anything else to ruin Hamilton's career. A woman named Maria Reynolds. It's spelled Maria, but apparently it's pronounced Mariah. Actually, Mariah Reynolds comes to Hamilton and gives him this sob story about her abusive husband.

Uh, she says, you know, he had abused her and then left her in the lurch with no money. To travel home. So she's just stuck and Hamilton always had a soft spot for orphans and destitute women because of his childhood. And so he's moved by this plea and he says, Hey, you know, I'll see what I can do. I'll meet you later.

So he goes over to her house later that night with some money. And she says, come on in and accepts the money. And then makes it clear that she is very thankful for his support. And, uh, you know, would you like me to make it up to you, sir, however I can? You're my hero, Mr. Alexander Hamilton. So, you know, you can paint the picture in your head.

And Hamilton begins an affair with Mariah Reynolds. That would run on for months.  Well, it's not too long until her husband shows up at Hamilton's office. And he says, uh, I know about this affair. And he blackmails Hamilton. And Hamilton pays him hush money.

Now, uh, now Hamilton was always conflicted about whether Mariah Reynolds actually liked him and it just came to blackmail later, or whether this was a scheme from the beginning. I kind of think it was a scheme from the beginning. She and her husband were these very shady characters. Anyway, the whole thing is convoluted, but basically everyone suspects Hamilton of some sort of corruption.

In part because of the Reynolds affair. Because there are these irregular payments coming out of his account. Like, people can tell, um, there's something shady going on here. And then the other thing to consider is that the temptation for an  And then the other thing to consider is that the temptation for financial double dealing as Treasury Secretary would have been enormous.

Yes. The pay was very low, and he has insider knowledge of tons of stuff that was likely to move markets. It would have been really easy to make a fortune dealing in government bonds, or to just instruct someone else to deal in government bonds and make a fortune on his behalf. But Hamilton was absolutely above reproach.

He never gave out secrets to his friends, he never owned any government bonds, never made any trades on his own account while he was treasury secretary. This government was his creation, his baby, and he wanted to make sure that it was a sterling success. And so his behavior was always perfect in that regard.

So when there starts to be some scuttlebutt about Hamilton and secret payments, he is investigated for corruption.  These payments that are going to James Reynolds for hush money, people assume that they are. And so there are some legislators assigned to be government investigators. Uh, three people, including James Monroe, future president of the United States.

And so they come to Hamilton's house to confront him about these charges.  And Hamilton immediately begins to tell them the story of what happened. And he produces documents, and they,  and he produces documents, and he's going into details. And these three legislators are like, Cool. We believe you.  Please don't tell us anything more.

And Hamilton, who as I said earlier, had this just And Hamilton, who has this just shocking lack of discretion. He has this like, autistic need  to say the full truth all the time. Insists on giving them all the dirty details.  It's a funny scene. These investigators are like, clearly extremely uncomfortable as he's telling them like, Detailed descriptions of his liaisons with this woman, but they go home satisfied that, that Hamilton is not actually corrupt, but that he has just been kind of hoodwinked and blackmailed by this guy, but Monroe, one of the investigators asks for the documents in order to make copies.

To have, um, to prove that what has actually happened here.

And it turns out to be a big mistake by Hamilton to allow him, you know, any papers to leave his site. Uh, cause as it would happen, um, the, the papers end up leaking.

So in 1797, after Hamilton was finished as treasury secretary, some of the documents are published in a newspaper.  Monroe probably didn't intentionally leak them, but through his carelessness, they fell into the hands of some of Hamilton's enemies. And the story isn't entirely clear. You know, there's just some papers and there are still allegations that, you know, James Reynolds wasn't just blackmailing him, but that he was using him for some sort of financial malfeasance.

And so Hamilton makes one of the biggest mistakes of his career. He writes and publishes something now known as the Reynolds pamphlet. It's a 95 page explanation of what had happened. And by the way, the full name of the pamphlet gives you an idea of Hamilton's verbosity. Uh, the, the full name is observations on certain documents contained in number five and six of history of the United States for the year 1796, in which the charge of speculation against Alexander Hamilton, late secretary of the treasury is fully refuted.

Okay.  He was not known for his brevity, Alexander Hamilton, but, uh, he writes this 95 page. Once again, he almost like had this need for catharsis, this need to get it off his chest. To say everything that had happened. I think it was like eating at him, this secrecy. And so, um, in this 95 page pamphlet, he gives all, once again, all the dirty details describes all the liaisons.

And so this pamphlet that Hamilton himself writes makes him a laughing stock. Perry to paraphrase,  paraphrase the, the diplomat tally Rand. It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder.

I think a good comparison is with Thomas Jefferson. So Thomas Jefferson eventually becomes president. He had a slave named Sally Hemings. And he probably had sexual relations with her. She had a few children. And Thomas Jefferson was probably the father of at least one of them. And there were rumors about this.

And then during Jefferson's presidency, The story was finally published in a newspaper that Jefferson is the father of this, of this half black child, uh, with, with a slave of his. And Jefferson just refused to comment, and let the story kind of die. Like, it was still out there, it was a rumor, but it couldn't totally be confirmed.

And so, you know, what? The Republicans still support him, the Federalists still oppose him, you know, who cares? And that is exactly what Hamilton should have done. Like, he, he should have just not commented, and kind of let the story, Um,  and let the story die on its own. Honestly, any strategy. Would have been better than what Hamilton decided to do, which was blow up the story as big as possible.

Give as many details as possible. Like it's just, it was an insane response

and it was a blunder. And it's probably the reason why Hamilton never decided to run for president, even before it came out, he knew that others knew, and it was likely to be used against him if he ever ran for president. So it's kind of like this sort of Damocles hanging over him the entire time

for his entire political life,  

and the other thing that makes this, um,  kind of more dangerous to him is the fact that it's at this time that political parties are first coming to existence, our first coming into existence.

So George Washington ran without a political party. Initially, there was a thought that they weren't necessary and they were not desirable. They were called factions and factionalism was seen as a very deleterious  and factionalism was seen as very deleterious. For a Republican form of government. Okay.

You don't want people disagreeing on all this stuff and having all these strong interests and opposing each other. But I mean, realistically, political parties were probably inevitable and as fate would have it, they basically arise in response to Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison start to organize what would become the Democratic Republican party, and they were known as Republicans for short.

And in response, Alexander Hamilton organizes the Federalist Party. Republicans were in favor of sm Republicans were in favor of a small federal government, stronger state governments. They favored agrarian interests, opposed banks, opposed a standing army, and wanted lower taxes, just to name some of the key issues.

They were more democratic in nature and more ideologically leftist. They came to sympathize with the French revolution. Okay. And their opponents would call them Jacobins, right? They thought they were just French revolutionaries in disguise. Whereas the Federalists favored a stronger central government, they favored industrial and commercial interests, favored a strong banking system and a standing army, they wanted higher taxes to fund all of this, and they were seen as more aristocratic in their disposition.

And they were seen as more aristocratic in their disposition. And they were seen as more aristocratic. They abhorred the French Revolution.  They abhorred the French Revolution when it came and identified more with England,  an example of how to do things and as a trading partner.

Now, as you may have noticed, I said Now, as you may have noticed, I said that Jefferson led the Republican Party and Hamilton led the Federalist Party, which is a problem because they're both serving in the same administration under George Washington.  There were these intense, drawn out fights between the two.

They just argued all the time. They're constantly on the opposite sides of every issue. Washington usually sided with Hamilton, though not always. And increasingly, especially after his re election in 1792, Washington comes to be seen as a Federalist. He won't say he's a Federalist. He says he's nonpartisan.

But the Republicans increasingly hate Washington. And everyone thinks that he is a Federalist. And all his policies, frankly, are Federalist.

And part of this is that, like Hamilton, he had this skepticism Of democracy of common people.

You know, he believed that you needed intelligent, enlightened people to be in charge and to manage things. Okay. And so, as I mentioned, like a lot of this is seen through the lens of the French revolution, which breaks out in 1789 during Washington's, uh, term in office, , and this was not just remote for the United States.

It resulted in a number of refugees.  And it was not just remote for the United States, it was personal, it was on their doorstep. Because, uh, when the French Revolution breaks out, , and especially when the terror comes, and they're executing all these people, then you have a ton of refugees fleeing France to wherever they could go.

A number of them go to England, a number of them go to various places in Germany, and a number of Elected to come to the United States of America,  

you know, especially because America was seen as like, uh, a beacon of Republican hope. So when the terror happens, you especially have a lot of moderate  revolutionaries, like moderate liberals who had initially gone with the revolution, but then they weren't extreme enough. For Robespierre, those are the kind of people oftentimes who flee to the United States of America.

As the senior ranking official who spoke French more or less natively. And as someone who sympathized with those who opposed the excesses of the French revolution, Hamilton took on a role as the sort of unofficial ambassador to exiled Frenchmen. He frequently hosted dinners of prominent French exiles.

He helped them set up communities and social functions and find their feet when they came to America. And it was in this capacity that he had the opportunity to intimately get to know the French diplomat, Talleyrand, who frequently shared dinners, attended events, the  And it was in this capacity that he had the opportunity to intimately get to know the French diplomat, Talleyrand.

And they frequently shared dinners together, they attended events, they discussed the news of the day, they became friends.

And then of course, when Napoleon came to power, Talleyrand was able to go back to France, where he served as Napoleon's head diplomat. So, when in the first episode I said that Talleyrand thought that the only person who topped Napoleon as the greatest man of the epic was Hamilton, this is someone who knew what he was talking about.

He was very close friends with Hamilton, got to see him work, and he was a close associate of Napoleon's as well, and got to see him work. And he thought that Hamilton was even greater than Napoleon.

Okay. So, you know, you have Jefferson who says the French revolution is great. And when they start chopping off heads, he's like, well, yeah. What did you think revolution meant? Good vibes. You know, if you want to make an omelet, you got to crack some eggs. And then you've got Hamilton, who is, you know, always feared public disorder, feared the mob, and he is just aghast.

He can't believe, um, that anyone would support this French Revolution. And so they are just increasingly at each other's throats. And so eventually it's like, all right, this situation can't go on. And Hamilton has kind of accomplished most of the things that he thinks he needs to. And so Jefferson and Hamilton both depart from the Washington administration during his second term, early on in Washington's second term.

I like Washington's response to Hamilton's because I think it shows you how much respect. He had for him, he wrote in every relation, which you have borne to me, I have found that my confidence in your talents, exertions, and integrity has been well placed. I the more freely render this testimony of my approbation, I more freely render this testimony of my approbation, because I speak from opportunities of information which cannot deceive me, and which furnish satisfactory proof of your title to public regard.

My most earnest wishes for your happiness will attend you in retirement. Okay. So Washington a little ambivalent about Jefferson who has been increasingly publicly criticizing Washington, although doing it anonymously and organizing opposition to him, even as he's serving in his administration, but he has no ambivalence towards Hamilton.

Like he just really loves and respects him and appreciates what he's done for the administration. And he has done a fantastic job. I also like Ron Chernow's summary. of Hamilton's years as Treasury Secretary, And I think this passage helps hit home just how much he accomplished and how important he was to the formation of the government of the United States.

Chernow writes, Whatever his disappointments, Hamilton, 40, must have left Philadelphia with an immense feeling of accomplishment. The Whiskey Rebellion had been suppressed, the country's finances flourished, and the investigation into his affairs had ended with a ringing ex and the investigation into his affairs had ended with a ringing exoneration.

He had prevailed in almost every major program he had sponsored. Whether the bank, Assumption, funding the public debt, the tax system, the custom service, or the Coast Guard. Despite years of complaints and bitter smears, John Quincy Adams later stated that his financial system operated like enchantment for the restoration of public credit.

Bankrupt when Hamilton took office, the United States now enjoyed a credit rating equal to that of any European nation. He had laid the groundwork for both liberal democracy and capitalism. and helped to transform the role of the president from passive administrator to active policymaker, creating the institutional scaffolding for America's future emergence as a great power.

He had demonstrated the creative uses of government,

he had demonstrated creative uses of government, and helped to weld the states irreversibly into one nation. He had also defended Washington's administration more brilliantly than anyone else, articulating its constitutional underpinnings and enunciating, um, enunciating key tenants of foreign policy.

We look in vain for a man who in an equal space of time has produced such a direct and lasting effects upon our institutions in history. Henry Cabot Lodge was to contend

okay, well, when Hamilton leaves the Washington administration, he resumes life as a lawyer, and it's worth delving a little bit into his legal career. We're gonna have to wind back the clock a little bit because he was also a private lawyer in between the end of the Revolutionary War and the beginning of his time in the Washington administration.

So, winding back the clock after the, so, winding back the clock after the war, he completes a three year legal education in nine months. You didn't have to go to law school, but you had to study a set curriculum and students often compiled their notes into a notebook that covered their thoughts and takeaways on the entire body of law.

Hamilton's notes, called Practical Proceedings, cover 137 pages and were used as a textbook by many New York law students for decades. And again, he did this in just nine months. He's an excellent attorney. He works himself into a passion as he is speaking, which I think is a very effective way to speak.

If you start in a passion, you know, you just start, you know, you just start,  you know, at full steam, then that can sound discordant and jarring to a listener who is not as passionate as you are. But if you build up to it, If you slowly gain steam and enthusiasm as you make better and better points until finally at the end, you're just fired with passion.

Then, the listener comes along that journey with you, they feel that same passion that you do, so it's a very effective tactic that he uses. You may have also noticed that a lot of people talk about his eyes when they describe Hamilton. We heard that in the first episode. And in the context of being a lawyer, many people mentioned his stare.

That he would stare unblinkingly, very intensely at the jury or at whoever he was examining. And I think this is interesting. It reminds me, of course, of Steve Jobs. Many people mentioned how he would just stare at you when he was talking to you. This is something that Grigory Rasputin also was famous for.

It was a big part of his mystique. Anyways, this might be the biggest hack to charisma is to just look  is to just lock in on people when you talk to them and fix them with a gaze. And Hamilton was known for doing that as well.

If he had a weakness as a lawyer, it was the same as everything else in his life. He was a windbag. He could just go on for too long. One contemporary wrote, I used to tell him that he was not content with knocking his opponent in the head, but that he persisted until he had banished every little insect that buzzed around his ears.

As a lawyer, he quickly becomes friends. Kind of frenemies, with Aaron Burr, another hotshot lawyer. They would travel the circuit together, taking cases. Sometimes they would work together on the same case, on the same side. But more often, they worked against each other. But even though they represented clients on different sides of the same case, they still had a sense of professionalism, and would go out for drinks or grab dinner together afterwards.

Both Burr and Hamilton confirmed that in non political matters, they tended to get along quite well. And one reason that he needed to go to work,

one reason that he needed to go back to work as a lawyer, after the Washington administration was because he wasn't making much money in the treasury department. His family was growing and he needed the income. So he's often working with big commercial cases in New York city for major, for major enterprises, where there's a fat legal fee involved.

He's essentially working in big law  now just because he had a thriving legal practice. That doesn't mean that he's completely done with politics and government. He continues to advise Washington who frequently writes to him asking for his advice and policy recommendations. One of the things that he masterminds is something called the Jay Treaty.

There were a number of disagreements between America and Great Britain since the war,  since the end of the Revolutionary War. Britain was capturing American sailors and pressing them into service in the British military. Often these were dual citizens, people who had been English and had immigrated to America.

And, um, in the eyes of Great Britain, they're like, no, you, you still owe military service.  Additionally, Britain still had not evacuated some of the forts that they had promised to. Britain thought that America wasn't paying up on some of their commercial debts that were owed. There were disputes over the placement of the border between the US and Canada and the property rights of British loyalists who had had their property seized since the revolution and owner's burdens that had been placed on American trade in the Caribbean.

So there are all these various legal and trade disputes. So John Jay is sent by Washington to Great Britain to negotiate a treaty. With instructions from Hamilton on what the treaty should look like.  Um, probably Hamilton himself should have been sent and he was considered, but he was such a partisan figure that Jay, who was brilliant,  less capable than Hamilton went in his place.

You know, by this time,  the Republican party led by Jefferson,  like their entire platform is opposition to Hamilton. He is the boogeyman. He is the Donald Trump of his time.

Okay. Not obviously Trump and Hamilton are very different,  very, very different people in terms of their approach to life and their intellect, they're very different, but I'm just saying that they are similar in this one narrow regard that they are, um, the person that everyone reacts to that politics kind of revolves around.

At this time, Jefferson and American leftists, they just hated him. And there were daily attacks in their newspapers on Hamilton. They accused him of colluding with Great Britain, the same way that Trump was accused, the same way that Trump was accused of colluding with Russia. He was the defining personality.

He's constantly accused of monarchism. They say that he wants to end the revolution and, and take America back.

They say that he wants to end the revolution and Republican government that he's betrayed everything that the American revolution stood for.

And so it was probably a good call by Washington not to send Hamilton, this very divisive figure to go negotiate this treaty.  The Jay Treaty, regardless, is on one hand a huge success, and on the other, deeply unpopular. The reason that it was unpopular is that Great Britain had the greatest navy on earth.

America could not compete with them, and so Britain could in many ways dictate terms.

You know, maybe you're thinking, well wait, we just had the Revolutionary War, I thought America had shown that they could compete with Great Britain. And they had shown in the Revolutionary War that, Yeah, England couldn't occupy,  but yeah, England couldn't occupy the United States and hold it against Americans wills, but in a more limited war, Britain could have absolutely devastated American commerce and ruined us economically.

And so when the treaty comes back and Britain doesn't fully promise to stop impressing American sailors and won't fully allow the U. S. to trade with France, It looks bad. We didn't get everything that we wanted, but it is a huge success because it avoids war and it gets America a pretty good trade deal with a nation that was still by far their biggest trade partner.

And this is one of those rare moments in history where you get to see the counterfactual because when Thomas Jefferson becomes president, he allows the trade because when Thomas Jefferson becomes president, he allows the Jay treaty to lapse and he pursues a bellicose attitude toward great Britain. So he basically just undoes.

Everything that is done with the Jay treaty, as does, as does his successor, James Madison, who is kind of a protege of Thomas Jefferson's. And this leads to the war of 1812. Where Britain is able to maintain an effective blockade of the U. S., slap around American troops in Canada, and even march into Washington and burn down the new American capital.

It's a pointless and costly conflict that gains America nothing, and it's exactly what would have happened You know, 20 years earlier,  and it's exactly what would have happened, you know, 15 years earlier, if, uh, the Jay Treaty had never been passed. So, again,  it's fairly unpopular, because it looks like the Washington administration is just kowtowing to England, especially with Republicans who regard it as tantamount to treason, but it's actually a very effective treaty, and Hamilton is just barely able to see it ratified in the Senate, and it becomes law.

So, that is the Uh, a governmental accomplishment of Hamilton that he is the one who masterminds it, he's the one who pushes it through, even though he's officially not in office anymore.  When Washington steps down from the presidency after two terms, eight years, he is succeeded by his vice president, John Adams.

Adams is a very interesting person. He was absolutely brilliant,  but at the same time, he was incredibly vain. And suspicious of his relation,  but at the same time, he's incredibly vain and suspicious and just very prickly, very difficult to deal with. And his relationship with it  and his relationship with Hamilton was always fraught and, um,

And his relationship with Hamilton was always fraught, and then towards the end of the Washington administration, it, it really sours. It goes south. And so Adams tries to freeze Hamilton out of his administration. He doesn't want any Hamilton influence in the Adams administration. But, he makes a big mistake.

He keeps all of Washington's department heads not realizing That they are all Hamilton loyalists. And so even when Hamilton is out of power, he's still kind of in power, still pulling the strings behind the scenes. Adams was as  Adams, John Adams was not a very good manager. And so in absence of strong leadership, his secretaries are looking for someone to give them a strong vision, a strong direction and what they should do.

And so they're often just going behind his back and back channeling with Hamilton and, and carrying out his orders.

The Adams administration brings us one of the most interesting moments of Hamilton's career because there is something that happens that almost changes everything, and I mean everything.  So during the Adams administration, there's something called the Quasi War, and this is an undeclared naval war between France and the U.

S., okay? I think I talked about this in the Washington episode, but basically, the United States had taken out significant loans from France to fund the Revolutionary War.  Well, when the French Revolution happens, the U. S. stops paying back their loans.  And the French say, What are you doing? This is dishonest.

You owe us all this money. And the U. S. says, We didn't have an agreement with the Republic of France. We had an agreement with the King of France. And by the way, you just chopped his head off. So, like, we don't owe you anything. In fact, like, you're enemies with the guy that we owe this money to.  And, uh, and so there's this disagreement, right?

That America thinks that their agreement was with the King of France. France says, no, it was just with France, the government of France, and you owe us this money. And so France responds by seizing American merchant ships. And so then America responds by firing back, and before you know it, you have an undeclared quasi war going on between France and America where you have these ships firing at each other.

Now, it is in the midst of this quasi war that the Adams administration passes the Alien and Seditions Acts, which increased restrictions on becoming an American citizen.  in part because you had all these Irish at this time immigrating into the U. S. and they were Catholic, they tended to side with the French, and they tended to have radical Republican views.

And so they kind of wanted to block these people from becoming U. S. citizens and being able to vote and lending more support to the Republicans. So that is the alien part, and then the sedition part, it cracked down on a bunch of different forms of speech that were critical of the government. And so, you know, what you have at this time period is it's essentially America's first Red Scare.

Okay, not many people know that the first Red Scare was actually in the 1790s. Obviously, the term communism hadn't been invented. Karl Marx wasn't on the scene yet. But the French Revolution was essentially a proto communist revolution, complete with militant atheism, the upending of social norms, radical taxation, and it had the ideological pull in the same way that communism did in the 20th century.

And Adams and Hamilton and these guys are anti communists in the same way that someone like McCarthy was. And they take many of the same actions in order to try and stamp it out.

Jefferson and Madison and the Republicans were of course sympathetic to this line of revolutionary thought. In fact, Hamilton wrote that he thought that if France tried to invade the U. S., That Jefferson and the Republican party would form a fifth column to support them.  So,

so it's in this hyper partisan context and in the context of this quasi war that Adams decides that America needs to prepare for war.  An army is raised, Washington is put in charge of it, and Washington says, Hey, I'm only going to take this position if Hamilton can be my number two. And by the way, I'm old now.

I don't plan on doing a whole lot. So really Hamilton is going to be in charge of this defensive army to protect us from France. And Adams says, no way. I hate that guy. I hate Hamilton. But he basically gets overridden. Washington says, sorry, it's the only way I'm taking this position. Everyone knows that Washington has to lead the army.

And so finally Adams has to throw his hands up and say, fine, you know, have it your way. And so Hamilton gets put in charge of this new expanding American army.  Now the Revolutionary Wars are going on in Europe, France doesn't exactly have the flexibility to launch a transatlantic invasion of the United States.

So what is this army going to do? And Hamilton draws up a plan. He wants to invade French owned Louisiana, And then invade Spanish controlled Florida. Spain was allied with France at the time, and then launch an invasion of South America, starting with Venezuela.

These plans were drawn up without presidential authority or approval. And I think Hamilton was serious about them. He had this unbelievable ambition for military glory.  And, um, and that hadn't been completely sated by the revolutionary war. And if he had done this, uh, you know, Louisiana would not have been a problem.

Florida would not have been a problem. South America, like, okay,

That's stretching it. Could the U S really have funded an invasion of South America? And, um,  could the U S really have funded invasion of South America? I don't know, but if anyone could have pulled it off. It would have been Hamilton. And if he had, if he had pulled this off, if he had returned from South America at the back of victorious army with an entire continent of profitable colonies that he had personally won at his back.

You know, what would Hamilton have done? I still don't think in the end that he would have launched a coup. He cared too much about the United States, the constitution, this government that he had really built with his own hands. I think that this was the accomplishment that he was most proud of.  I think in the final conclusion, he wouldn't have dismantled it,  but also, I mean, I don't know why else do you plan military adventures without presidential approval?

I mean, if anyone was capable of pulling off. A coup and, and, you know, running America by military dictatorship. It was Hamilton. So I know this is not typically how we think of Hamilton, but I think there is a chance that Hamilton could have become the American Napoleon and reigned officially as president, but with more or less monarchical powers.

And if that had happened,  I think he either would have flamed out like Napoleon, you know, embroiled the U S in so many wars that he eventually just lost everything, or he would have made the U S a world power by like 1830.  With significant colonies all over the world, especially the Americas. And challenged great Britain for world supremacy with basically nothing in between, like either he would have flamed out or he would have made America a great world empire a hundred years before it did eventually happen.

So, you know, I'm a little torn on this. Obviously I'm glad things turned out the way they did and that we have a democratic Republic and, uh, the U S is great love, love American history as it happened, but I don't know, there is something kind of attractive that it would have just been interesting to see what Hamilton really could have done.

With a great army at his back and with kind of despotic powers. , I really think he would have pushed America forward. , at what cost of course is the question, but it's just, it's interesting to consider.

As it happened, Adams negotiated a peace treaty with France, which completely undercut the need for an army and Adams disbanded it as it happened. Adams negotiated a peace treaty with France. Which completely undercut the need for an army. And then president Adams disbands this new army at the first possible moment, destroying any possibility of carrying out any of this.

And this peace treaty that Adams signs was controversial in and of itself with the Federalists. They opposed it for much the same reason that the Republicans opposed the Jay treaty. Their domestic partisanship had an international bent. And so peace with France was peace with the hated Jacobins. It's like, you know, you're, you're compromising with the commies.

So anyway, similar to the Jay treaty, it is actually a good move for the United States. It brings peace. It brings economic prosperity, even though it's not popular with one of the parties, you know,  it was the right move. And Hamilton,  And Adams didn't do himself any favors in passing it. He went about it in a very weird way.

He didn't consult anyone else. He kind of quixotically sends this secret delegation to France and, um, and negotiates a peace treaty in secret. And so, um,

and so it's a good decision to do this peace treaty, but it's carried out in a sub optimal way. And this has political implications, um, for Adams down the line as he's alienating his Federalist base.

Hamilton actually struggled with depression throughout his life. He would, he would have these violent mood swings and really go into a deep funk. And this was a moment of deep depression for him.

After this peace treaty is signed, Washington has just died. His political influence had in a matter of just a few years gone from the most powerful man in the nation. to very little influence. And, you know, this is at the same time that the Reynolds affair is becoming public, and now his dreams of military glory are dashed forever as well as Adams dismantles this army.

So it is in this funk that Hamilton makes the third great mistake of his career. The first was his speech at the Constitutional Convention espousing some form of monarchy. Uh, that came back to bite him. The second great mistake was the Reynolds pamphlet. And the third is this anti Adams pamphlet that Hamilton writes.

It's written as a private document meant to be circulated among powerful Federalist politicians. And it's supposed to serve as an argument for why Adams should be kicked off the ticket for president in 1800 and replaced with a friend of his named Charles Pinckney.  It's a total coll It's a total character assassination.

He gets stories and quotes from current and former government officials. He airs all the dirty laundry of the Adams administration. He talks about his temper, his vanity, his lack of communication, his poor leadership. Hamilton brings up his own personal grievances, which makes this just seem petty. And absurdly, he ends it by offering a tepid endorsement of Adams.

He just totally destroys his character and then says, But of course, we can't have Jefferson, so vote for him, I guess, if we can't have Pinckney.  Now this again is supposed to be a private letter, but of course, of course, this letter leaks like, obviously it's so predictable that this is going to get out.

And so, and so Hamilton has gifted the Republicans a full repudiation of Adams. By the founder of the Federalist party, just weeks before the election for president, it totally fails in its stated goal of getting the Federalists to nominate Pinckney and only succeeds in damaging Adams on the eve of an election.

And so Adams has kind of alienated himself from Federalists. Well, now Hamilton is also alienating himself from the Federalist party, uh, because  you know, he's, he's attacking the leader of the party and destroying their chances.

I get the impression that none of this would have happened if Washington was still alive.  The monarchy speech happened when he wasn't working for Washington, the Reynolds pamphlet was written after he left the Washington administration, and this anti Adams screed was written after Washington's death.

It is true that Hamilton was the greater genius of the two, but Washington had the better judgment, and a more even keel.  And so, I just think if Washington had still been around and he had gotten an early look at this paper, he would have said, Hamilton, you cannot write this. You got to put this away.

Like, this is idiotic. What are you thinking? And he just had great judgment and that always balanced out Hamilton. They truly made each other better and Hamilton really lost his way without Washington. Now, the  Federalists were in trouble even before Hamilton wrote this   and most historians agree that Adams probably would have lost anyway.

But this really sealed it. And so the 1800 election totally wipes out the Federalists, not just at the presidential level, but in local elections as well. They would never have another president in the White House again. The Republicans were totally ascendant and the Federalists are just kind of now a permanent minority party.

They have no real share in, uh, in the power, in the power structure of the United States.

Part of this was that some of their policies were unpopular. You know, again, they were kind of elitist. , and part of it was structural changes figured out by Aaron Burr.  So early on in the United States, voting rights were limited to white landowning males.  Well, that heavily favors the Federalists, who are the party of the upper middle class and the merchant class.

Well, Aaron Burr runs a very effective campaign in New York. He completely turns over the state and wins it for Republicans. And one of the ways that he does this is finding a loophole that poorer farmers could pool their landownings to help them all qualify to vote. And so he uses this loophole to greatly expand the electorate, especially among poor German immigrants, of which there were a lot in those days.

That was the first, like, wave of mass immigration to the United States, was Germans and to a lesser extent Irish. And so this is a strategy that has a long history in the United States. If you can't convince voters, go find new ones, and Aaron Burr is really a, um, pioneer in that regard.  Well, Burr does such a good job that Thomas Jefferson feels compelled to add him to the ticket.

This is the man who won New York. For the Federalists,  huge, huge feat.

So he's on the ticket and the Federalists are repudiated so thoroughly that on election day, the vote count is actually tied, but not with John Adams, but between the two Republicans, Jefferson and Burr. So it's a little confusing, but in those days, if you ran for vice president, you did that by running for president and then getting the second most votes.

That was who became vice president back then. So with the vote tied, it goes to the house of representatives where there is still a tie.  It goes to the house of represent.  So with the vote tied, it goes to the House of Representatives. So with the vote tied, it goes to the House of Representatives. They vote on it.

Actually, there's a tie in the House too, and no one can break this deadlock. Now the plan for the Republicans the entire time is for Jefferson to be president and Burr to be vice president.  But Burr is seen as the more moderate of the two. He'd kind of drifted between the Federalists and the Republicans.

So there are a lot of Federalists who are tempted to throw the election to Burr. And Burr sees this and he actually starts campaigning a little bit. He's like, yeah, that wouldn't be the worst thing. You know, just, I know I was supposed to be vice president, but, uh, if you guys want to vote for me, I could become president, I'd be better than Jefferson.

Don't you think Federalists?  And, um, so it looks like this really might happen. The Federalists might throw the election to Burr. But Hamilton comes riding in and says, do not do this. He writes to a leading Federalist Congressman and says, quote, as to Burr, there is nothing in his favor. His private character is not defended by his most partial friends.

He is bankrupt beyond redemption, except by the plunder of his country.

His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandizement. If he can, he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure to himself permanent power and with it wealth. He is truly the Catiline of America. Okay. So this is just like a blistering indictments and insult on his character.

And it's kind of crazy, right? Because I mean, at least, you know, bird didn't have any principles.  That means he could be swayed, but in the end, Hamilton preferred a man in Jefferson, whose values he desperately opposed to a man with no values at all. And add to that, that yes, he radically opposes Republicanism, he opposes Jefferson, but he intuited correctly as it turned out that the presidency would have a moderating effect on Jefferson.

So there are a lot of people who preach radical doctrines until they get into power and then they feel the weight. of that,  and then they feel the weight of that responsibility. And then they act more moderately. And Jefferson was one of those.

You know, the Jefferson presidency,  definitely a mixed record, but he wasn't terrible. He certainly wasn't as bad as you would have believed if you analyzed his political statements from the 1790s when he was saying that the French Revolution was a great thing, and if some heads get chopped off, then hey, you know, that's what you got to do.

He didn't govern anything like that, thankfully.

And part of the reason also that Hamilton, , tries to throw the election to Jefferson is that he was able to get some Federalists to talk to him, and they secure some promises from Jefferson in exchange for getting him the Federalist vote. So he promised not to mess with the Navy or the public credit system.

He would actually go back on a number of those promises, and he said, I never actually promised anything. These were just discussions. Anyway are enough to,  these discussions these discussions are enough to sway the Federalists, and they vote for Jefferson and make him president over Burr.

And so if, if Hamilton had been depressed during the Adams presidency, especially the end of the Adams presidency, now it gets even worse. I mean, at least he was a Federalist and there was a Federalist president. Like now he's got nothing. His political power is lower than it's ever been. He wrote to a friend, quote, mine is an odd destiny.

Perhaps no man in the United States has sacrificed or done more for the present constitution than myself. And contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from the very beginning, I am still laboring to prop, I am still laboring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmur of its friends no less than the curses of its foes for my rewards.

What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me.

And I actually agree. Like, uh, the American president, Woodrow Wilson, commented that Alexander Hamilton was indisputably a great man, but perhaps not a very good American. And that strikes me as true in some way. He was a man fitted for autocratic rule and military adventure. He did not suffer fools easily, and he did not take well to discussion and democratic politics.

And what we see here is, is the end result of that.

And things would only get worse from there at the beginning of the Jennifer at the beginning. And things would only get worse from there. It's during this time that Hamilton's oldest and brightest son, Philip Hamilton has a run in with another young man. Yeah. Escalates into a feud and then into a duel and 19 year old Philip Hamilton Is shot and dies,  

this death of his son sends Hamilton into a really deep depression. And like I mentioned, he had had bouts of depression before, but you wouldn't know it from looking at his output. He was always able to power through them and to stay productive, even when internally, you know, he was suffering from deep depression.

But now for the first time, he finds himself in such deep despair over the loss of his son. You that he really sinks into it and slows down. He  becomes much more religious at this time, spends more of his time in study and prayer. Uh, he never was able to bring himself to fully turn himself over to a particular congregation.

He was never a regular church goer, uh, but he becomes very personally devout and spends a lot of time in religious study.

Of course, like, even in depressed semi retirement. This means he's only accomplishing about twice as much as you or me, instead of ten times as much. He still writes in the newspapers. He takes on one of the most prominent court cases in the history of the United States. Um, that was very influential to the current day.

Um, he's found some new institutions, like he's still doing stuff, but it's a much slower pace and, um, and a much different person and a kind of more sober person than he was before.

Now Burr is kind of now persona non grata. Like, He's had these blistering attacks from Hamilton, who has told all the Federalists, do not under any circumstances trust Burr. But he's also burned his bridges with the Republicans by trying to subvert Jefferson and become president. So he is a man without a home, and in the 1804 election, he is kicked off,  he is kicked off the ticket, and Jefferson is now running with a new vice president.

He had come so close to the very top of political power, just a few votes away. And then, through the actions of Hamilton, He had lost it all.  

And so Burr tries to have some sort of comeback. Uh, he tries to run for governor of New York and the Federalists are such a spent force at this point that they don't even try to recruit a candidate for governor of New York. And so Burr runs as a Republican. hoping to unite the Federalists with the more moderate Republicans.

And sure, like, that sounds like a winning coalition. The problem is, once again, Hamilton launches a full broadside against him, just rakes him over the coals in the Federalist press, and tells all of his friends, like, do not support,  and tells all of his friends, do not support Burr. He's a horrible person.

Now, as we've said, Hamilton did not have the influence that he used to. He's no longer the big party leader that he used to. And he's probably not the reason that Burr lost the election.  But Burr was still smarting from Hamilton's intervention four years earlier, which may have actually been decisive and cost him the presidency.

And this just adds insult to injury. They's campaigning so hard against him in a race that he's not likely to win anyway.  And so it's at this point when Hamilton is campaigning against Burr for governor of New York, that his animosity hardens into true hatred. He just, loathes Hamilton, hates everything about him, can barely bring himself to say his name.

So he seizes on a pretext, something Hamilton has supposedly said about him at a private dinner that was picked up and published in a newspaper, and he challenges Hamilton to a duel.

Because Hamilton was more religious at this point in his life, he was philosophically opposed to dueling. But he also in the back of his mind still had some vague aspirations of a political comeback and any hope of a comeback rested on his reputation as a war hero. So And he thought that charges of cowardice would doom his political career forever.

Like, that removes kind of the shine of being a war hero. He's very jealous of his reputation as, as someone who was brave and someone who was a gentleman. And so even though he's opposed in principle to dueling, he agrees to the duel with Ehrenberg.

He doesn't tell his family to spare them the mental anguish of anticipation.

And there are a couple of weeks of negotiation to see if, uh, you know, their friends kind of come to them and are like, can't we work this out peacefully? And actually at first it's Hamilton who's very intransigent. He's like, I won't apologize for the things I said. I won't retract them. Uh, eventually Hamilton kind of relents and is like, ah, well, let's find a way here.

But by that time, Burr is so upset that he won't relent. And he says, no, no, no, there's no peace to be found here.  This duel is going to happen.

I find the events of the night before very touching. The Hamiltons were always taking in orphans. So Hamilton had this very special affinity for orphans because of his own childhood. And an orphan boy who was living with them asks Hamilton to read to him, uh, before bed, the night before the duel.  And this orphan falls asleep on him and Hamilton sleeps the whole night with this orphan in his arms.

Perhaps I think here at the end of his life, his mind went back to the beginning of his life.  In the morning, he was picked up by a friend and taken to Manhattan, where he boarded a boat to cross the Hudson river to a small patch of land, As a sop to his conscience, he had determined not to fire at Burr.

He would conspicuously throw away his shot, hopefully opening up an avenue for Burr to do the same. He believed that Burr wouldn't shoot to kill, and after all, Burr still had political aspirations. And Hamilton believed, correctly as it turned out, That to kill a defenseless man who had just thrown away his shot would be political suicide.

And so on the morning of July 11th, 1804, Burr and Hamilton observed all the rituals of a duel. They chose their pistols. They each stood ten paces apart. The signal was given for them to begin. Hamilton raised his gun and fired it into the air well above Burr's head.  Burr then took aim at Hamilton's abdomen and fired.

The bullet ripped through his liver and diaphragm before shattering one of his vertebrae. Hamilton was immediately paralyzed from the waist down, and began to experience massive internal bleeding. He almost died in the boat as it crossed the Hudson River, but the doctor managed to revive him.  He lingered for another 30 hours, enough time for him to say a tearful goodbye to his wife and his children.

and some close friends before dying on July 12th,  1804.  The public grief in New York was immense. The city had never seen anything like it. Even when Washington had died, you know, he had been a less controversial public figure, but he also wasn't a man in the prime of his life with seven young children.

And so there's this massive funeral attended by everyone in New York, and for 30 days, New Yorkers wore black bands on their arms to mourn the passing of Hamilton.

Hamilton was correct that this completely ruined Burr's political career. He had no future. And he kind of scratched out a living on the frontier of America,  crafting up these kind of harebrained schemes to invade Mexico and make himself emperor that never came to anything.

And the, and the end of the story is just, it's so unsatisfying to me. I, I hate to talk about it or even think about it. To see genius stuffed out To see a genius, a mind like Hamilton snuffed out so insensibly is just, anyway,  anyway, let's move on. What are our takeaways from the life, the great life of Alexander Hamilton?

I'll go more into it. I'll give a full rundown of the playbook, the Hamilton playbook, uh, in the next episode. But for now, the first is this idea of monarchy.  Great things are only brought into being by a single unified vision. Every corporation is a monarchy. It has one CEO.  And America needed just a touch of monarchy, especially at its inception, to give it that, that vision and that direction.

And so, um, I think in everything, there needs that strength. And so I think every endeavor needs that strength of vision. And I think, Hamilton was correct in that regard.  The second takeaway is Hamilton's work style. I don't know that it works for everyone, but I think it's definitely worth experimenting with.

That idea of think, think, think, um, until it's fully formed in your head, then sleep on it, and then write out your thoughts fully formed.

The third takeaway is to read and study broadly. Hamilton was able to be so successful because he could pull in so much knowledge from so many different domains. From law and journalism, military science, history, literature, poetry, medicine, monetary policy, manufacturing, trade, finance. He was one of those people who was both broad and deep in his knowledge.

My fourth takeaway is to have a vision that is bigger than yourself. Aaron Burr didn't. And even though he lived on that July 11th day, nothing he did outlived him. Whereas Hamilton was able to give birth to something that bears his imprint up to the current day.  And then lastly, I'll just mention that we should learn from his weaknesses too.

And it's difficult.

And then lastly, I'll just mention that we should learn from his weaknesses too. And so, you know, that lack of discretion did him in a number of times. And it's difficult because I think his lack of discretion was the flip side of just the endless torrent of productivity that came out of his mind, but he should have been more discreet.

And knowing when to stay silent is an art of its own.  Okay.  This was a long episode, but man, I just really love Hamilton and his contributions were so vast. And, um, I have him to thank for this wonderful country that I call my home. So, uh, I hope you enjoyed this very long part two on the life of Alexander Hamilton.

That does it until next time. Thank you for listening to how to take over the world.   📍

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